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[Square2015]

From what I've seen this is the only TVCM for the game running right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYtrhkQ7O9o and the only one they've made since the event in March.

What an awesome TV spot. Hearing the FF anthem gets me excited for this and gives me the classic feels that our FF is back.
We need a spot like this in the West with the anthem in the background. I saw a commercial over Thanksgiving (USA) but it was mute so not sure if the anthem was playing (I really doubt it) and I don't remember it being near as sweet or moving as that J cm.

 

[Mario007]

Honestly, SE has been such a mismanaged company when it comes to anything but Mobile and Online games that it's embarrassing. And that goes for the Eidos branch and the Japanese branch.

I mean look at the IPs Square has: Hitman, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy. Each of those, in today's market should be 5+ million seller.

Instead, Square was able to almost successfully and without fail destroy each of those IPs. Tomb Raider had a ridiculous exclusivity deal that pretty much halved the sales of its predecessor.
DE got so bugged down in its own DE Universe shit that by the time the new game came out and was only a marginal upgrade people have moved on.
Kingdom Hearts suffered from SE Japan not being able to contract out a team to make a proper ps3 entry and thus relegating the franchise to irrelevancy abroad.
DQ- I suppose this one wasn't mismanaged yet, the online X didn't seem to hurt it as much and we'll have to see how DQXI preforms.
Hitman- they basically got saved here by I/O being a good developer who was able to use the shackles of low-budget episodic game that SE imposed on them and make it work.
Sleeping Dogs- Triad Wars...enough said.

Now we're about to get FFXV and no matter how SE wants it to feel like an event it really doesn't. The game, again, spent such long time in the oven and the devs were chasing the trends in gaming from the time it came out that you can clearly see the 2012/2013 open world! Skyrim influence, when again the industry has moved on following the Witcher 3 last year that did open world and seamless storytelling. Instead, FFXV seem to arbitrarily split the two into two different parts.
Also the overall change from Versus to FFXV was handled awfully. All the things people were excited for the Versus (the Insomnia invasion, the dark theme, the interactive between Noctis and Stella) were cut and changed to the point that FFXV stopped resembling Versus (a game that crushed famitsu's page in 2011 when it was rerevealed) apart from Noctis and his crew.

It should have been the easiest thing in the world to figure out why people are excited for their games and double down on it. However, SE for all their focus testing, can't seem to figure this one out.

And that is not even talking about their marketing for their games, where having a CG movie seems like a money well spent but organising preview events, getting skilled people to cut the trailers to hype up the game etc. seem like a waste of an effort.

 

[L~A]

Yo-kai Daijiten (mobile) delayed to Spring 2017 (was supposed to launch this month).

http://www.4gamer.net/games/297/G029753/20161128045/

Level-5's track record on the mobile space isn't pretty at all.

 

[Jacobson]

Yeah, whatever goodwill and success BD created, BS threw them out of the window. And BS wasn't even the biggest idiotic move Senix did in 2015!

Their biggest idiotic move was not making a sequel to TWEWY.

 

[duckroll]

Their biggest idiotic move was not making a sequel to TWEWY.

Yes, their biggest idiotic move is definitely not expanding on a ~200k title. That's definitely it.

 

[encephalon]

I hope open world was worth it. They've been left with no marketing material to appeal to Japan and combined with an anemic industry, the result shouldn't have been surprising to anyone.

Oops.

 

[L~A]

Week 48, 2016 (Nov 28 - Dec 4)

new releases

YSO predictions

03. [3DS] Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS < 90k (average 75k)

Wow, that's a lot of releases. Super Mario Maker 3DS should pretty popular, if SMM is any indication.

RE7 will see the biggest decline out of the big PS franchises.

Being FPS + VR focused....

If it does 1/2 RE6 numbers Capcom should be thankful.

Didn't RE6 actually sell even better than expected?

Then Japan is healthy too.

More serious subject: Anyone that has followed Miitopia news knows what's the deal with it, something like Tomodachi life or irrelevant tile?

It's basically Tomodachi Life RPG. Main draw is that all the characters are your Mii (down to the town NPC), that you can set up manually. It's as wacky as Tomodachi Life, and seems to be more meaty than you might think at first glance (as in it's a proper RPG, several dozen hour long iirc).

I think that word of mouth will be crucial for that game, and with how Tomodachi Life (DS and 3DS) sold, I think it should resonate well with players.

Honestly what success stories have we seen in Japan's dedicated device market in the past couple of years?

Luigi's mansion -maintained relevance

The what? Luigi's Mansion 2 ended up selling over 1m, as opposed to ~350 000 for the original on GC. That's more than "maintained relevance", ha ha. (Not to mention there hadn't been a sequel in 12 years, not sure you could even argue LM was relevant at all last gen.

Always a bit surprised at how well Luigi's Mansion 2 sold in Japan.

 

[Man God]

Yes, their biggest idiotic move is definitely not expanding on a ~200k title. That's definitely it.

Yep, not The Spirits Within or releasing an unfinished largely outsourced MMO and then using all of their resources to completely rebuild it in under two years.

 

[CaviarMeths]

Spirits Within was a megabomb, but it wouldn't have been quite as bad if its budget wasn't so insane. Don't know why SE thought there was a market for a $137m anime film in 2001. That shit came out the same year as and cost more to make than the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies.

 

[Vena]

We have our general ballpark for XV's review scores in the west, to hark back to something Nirolak brought up ages ago about really having to stand out amongst a genre. So its not knocking it out of the park/genre defining, but its also not a total crapshoot and with today's standard for ratings its actually good.

 

[duckroll]

Spirits Within was a megabomb, but it wouldn't have been quite as bad if its budget wasn't so insane. Don't know why SE thought there was a market for a $137m anime film in 2001. That shit came out the same year as and cost more to make than the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies.

There's no Square Enix in 2001, it was just Square. They were trying to break into the Hollywood CG industry. The budget is on par with Pixar at the time, which was what they hoped to compete with. This wasn't some anime film made in Japan. It was a brand new CG studio in Honolulu staffed by a mix of Japanese staff and Hollywood veterans. It was aggressive expansion.

 

[Nirolak]

We have our general ballpark for XV's review scores in the west, to hark back to something Nirolak brought up ages ago about really having to stand out amongst a genre. So its not knocking it out of the park/genre defining, but its also not a total crapshoot and with today's standard for ratings its actually good.

I would consider an 86 to basically be the best possible outcome for the game.

I think they can actually be really happy with the title on a critical level.

If they can follow up by shipping somewhere in the 6-7 million range after a year or so, I feel it would speak really well to the team's future potential when not burdened by a gigantic albatross, even if it is technically a decline.

Now, I'm not sure if Square Enix themselves would be happy with this result given how they're going about, but I'm more assessing this as a salvaged product fighting an uphill battle than their flagship game of the generation or whatever.

 

[Edge_Maverick]

I would consider an 86 to basically be the best possible outcome for the game.

I think they can actually be really happy with the title on a critical level.

If they can follow up by shipping somewhere in the 6-7 million range after a year or so, I feel it would speak really well to the team's future potential when not burdened by a gigantic albatross, even if it is technically a decline.

Guess Tabata will be able to work on a new AAA game after all

 

[Nirolak]

Guess Tabata will be able to work on a new AAA game after all

I think even if the game were to fail financially, the review scores and relatively reasonable development schedule since he took over would ensure that.

Generally teams are thrown overboard for failure of process (making a poor game or having an outrageously bad development cycle) as opposed to failure of product (the game was unappealing to the market) unless the company is having a lot of financial trouble.

The people who steered the game into a cliff in the first place were already moved offf the project, so he's going to be judged on shipping Square Enix Japan's first open world game in ~4 years while tackling a new engine and new console set and then landing it with an 86.

 

[Durante]

The first thing you see every time you start FFXV is a text, saying: "A Final Fantasy for Fans and First-Timers". I had to deal with some SE marketing a while ago, and it was extremely important to them that it'll be emphasized that FFXV is designed to appeal to people who haven't played a Final Fantasy before.

And yet, FFXV seems to become a total failure in that regard.

Well, I've played every single-player Final Fantasy released in the past 2 decades, and I'm still not particularly interested in FFXV. It seems like they didn't just fail to appeal to first-timers

 

[Edge_Maverick]

I think even if the game were to fail financially, the review scores and relatively reasonable development schedule since he took over would ensure that.

Generally teams are thrown overboard for failure of process (making a poor game or having an outrageously bad development cycle) as opposed to failure of product (the game was unappealing to the market) unless the company is having a lot of financial trouble.

The people who steered the game into a cliff in the first place were already moved offf the project, so he's going to be judged on shipping Square Enix Japan's first open world game in ~4 years while tackling a new engine and new console set and then landing it with an 86.

Yeah, honestly I thought the game wasn't going to review so well. It's not something stellar or groundbreaking, but for S-E it could mean **finally** they can still compete in the AAA segment (although I'm really curious if the game will have any decent legs worldwide).

In any case, the dev team must be happy with the results, considering all the problems the project faced even after being rebooted for the new gen. Since they were already talking about a new project/IP after XV was completed, perhaps with the good reviews and reception it's getting from most of players it's safe to say they can move on.

The good thing? This time it won't be a project built with remnants of a cancelled game.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Now, I'm not sure if Square Enix themselves would be happy with this result given how they're going about, but I'm more assessing this as a salvaged product fighting an uphill battle than their flagship game of the generation or whatever.

You would hope so but this is SE we talking about .
After TR nothing would shock me with them.

 

[CircusOfClouds]

Sony vastly underestimated PS4 Pro demand in Japan. It has been consistently sold out and very hard to get since launch. It's not that people don't want it. On the contrary, it's super popular and people are desperately trying to find one with resorting to second hand scalpers.

 

[Vena]

I would consider an 86 to basically be the best possible outcome for the game.

I think they can actually be really happy with the title on a critical level.

If they can follow up by shipping somewhere in the 6-7 million range after a year or so, I feel it would speak really well to the team's future potential when not burdened by a gigantic albatross, even if it is technically a decline.

Now, I'm not sure if Square Enix themselves would be happy with this result given how they're going about, but I'm more assessing this as a salvaged product fighting an uphill battle than their flagship game of the generation or whatever.

While I do think the end aggregate will probably drop down to 84-85 since some reviews are still pending from the harsher critics (Edge, for instance), I agree that they should be happy (whether or not they will be is another matter) with the critical response.

But as you said, it will be interesting to see how Square actually sees this in the end, and how the product actually performs as a whole world wide. Its going to be a slide from XIII, how big of one and how that's seen in the eyes of SE's higher ups will be interesting to see.

Tabata, at least, is golden for another project after his successful salvage operation of this albatross of a project.

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Well, I've played every single-player Final Fantasy released in the past 2 decades, and I'm still not particularly interested in FFXV. It seems like they didn't just fail to appeal to first-timers

You'll come around. They always come around.

 

[Vena]

You'll come around. They always come around.

I mean, I also echo his sentiments and I don't see myself picking this game up pretty much ever. I've had my fill of open world games, and I already own the Witcher 3 (an enormous and very replayable game) and Xenoblade X (where I can fly in robots rather than drive a car), leaving me with no real desire to buy FFXV. #FE probably scratched my major JRPG itch this year, too, and I'll probably be grabbing P5 next year.

And that's a big one for me, since I have every other FF mainline entry that has released since I started gaming, and even several remasters. Just feeling no real compelling reason to buy it aside from the name.

 

[Kresnik258]

I mean, I also echo his sentiments and I don't see myself picking this game up pretty much ever. I've had my fill of open world games, and I already own the Witcher 3 (an enormous and very replayable game) and Xenoblade X (where I can fly in robots rather than drive a car), leaving me with no real desire to buy FFXV. #FE probably scratched my major JRPG itch this year, too, and I'll probably be grabbing P5 next year.

And that's a big one for me, since I have every other FF mainline entry that has released since I started gaming, and even several remasters. Just feeling no real compelling reason to buy it aside from the name.

I thought I'd never buy XIII-2 then ASDA were selling it for £5.

You'll come around. They always come around.

 

[ZSaberLink]

The what? Luigi's Mansion 2 ended up selling over 1m, as opposed to ~350 000 for the original on GC. That's more than "maintained relevance", ha ha. (Not to mention there hadn't been a sequel in 12 years, not sure you could even argue LM was relevant at all last gen.

Always a bit surprised at how well Luigi's Mansion 2 sold in Japan.

Wait the first one sold only 350K on GC? Then it did quite well on 3DS. Hm, I thought the worldwide sales were similar so I kind of assumed with the JP sales. Anyways, reviving a 12 year old game with a sequel and having it sell that well is still fantastic. I didn't want to overstate it though.

 

[VLQ]

Wait the first one sold only 350K on GC? Then it did quite well on 3DS. Hm, I thought the worldwide sales were similar so I kind of assumed with the JP sales. Anyways, reviving a 12 year old game with a sequel and having it sell that well is still fantastic. I didn't want to overstate it though.

WW Luigi's Mansion sits on 3,33 millions, sequel is 5,03 and keeps selling

 

[Vena]

I thought I'd never buy XIII-2 then ASDA were selling it for £5.

You'll come around. They always come around.

You say that, but the only reason I own XIII-2 right now is because it was given to me for free, and I had seen it regularly on sale and never bought it.

 

[Nirolak]

I went and did some research, and Final Fantasy XV is currently the 12th best reviewed $60 retail game of the year out of 41 titles: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=225592062&postcount=1937

Adding a Square Enix $60 specific list for this thread:

Rise of the Tomb Raider: 86
Final Fantasy XIV: 86 (both 2.0 and Heavenswards on PS4 got the same score, depending on which you want to count)
Final Fantasy XV: 86 (only 25 reviews so far)
Deus Ex 4: 84
Dragon Quest Builders: 83
World of Final Fantasy: 78
Dragon Quest Heroes: 77
Just Cause 3: 74
Star Ocean 5: 59

Bonus:
Hitman Compilation Pack: 82 (Only 19 reviews. This probably will get full reviews once the retail release comes out in January, and they're still patching in enhancements.)

(Did I miss any $60 games that weren't remasters?)

 

[Vena]

(Did I miss any $60 games that weren't remasters?)

#FE, 81/100.

That's about it.

 

[dracula_x]

#FE, 81/100.

That's about it.

#FE was published by Square Enix?

 

[Vena]

#FE was published by Square Enix?

Nirolak was talking about 60$ games in general, unless I misunderstood. (See the first link.)

 

[CaviarMeths]

There's no Square Enix in 2001, it was just Square. They were trying to break into the Hollywood CG industry. The budget is on par with Pixar at the time, which was what they hoped to compete with. This wasn't some anime film made in Japan. It was a brand new CG studio in Honolulu staffed by a mix of Japanese staff and Hollywood veterans. It was aggressive expansion.

Well sure, but Spirits Within was sure no Pixar movie. As Illumination, DreamWorks, and Disney themselves has shown, there's certainly room in the market for competitors, but not for... whatever that was. It seemed to target a different audience entirely than Pixar, one that apparently doesn't go to theaters to watch movies.

It may not have been what they were going for, but the end product was still an expensive ass anime movie.

 

[Ōkami]

Square had a launch event in Akihabara, Famitsu was there to take pics.

Somewhat serious event as the SE president, Tabata, the game's voice actors all attended and the Final Fantasy car all attended, this guy got the first copy, given to him by Tabata personally.

Also here's Tabata showing his clear Xbox bias.

Bic Camera is one of the few stores to still sell Xbox One games, right? Wonder if they'll sell them all, they're all the CE anyway.

Check the Wii U section all the way back there

 

[encephalon]

Does anyone else have any anecdotes about how the game is being advertised in Japan? I posted this in the OT, but essentially Pokemon is being advertised over this game at my local TSUTAYA. I was actually a little surprised.

 

[L~A]

To be honest, there are not that many games that would be advertised over Pokémon, especially now that the holiday period has started. Only a major franchise like Monster Hunter would be, I think.

***

Denpa Ningen no RPG Free! now at 2.9 million downloads. Downloads have increased noticeably in the past few weeks:

2.7m in April > 2.8m in September > 2.9m in November. I guess Pokémon is partly responsible for the increase (it IS a F2P title after all, doesn't cost anything to try out).

http://www.4gamer.net/games/264/G026408/20161128079/

 

[encephalon]

I guess that make sense, but upon entering the video game section it wasn't immediately noticeable that FFXV was even out. No prominent displays inside the store or out.

 

[Chris1964]

FF belongs to a genre with very frontloaded sales that preorders give a good indication of where it will land. If retailers and/or S-E don't expect big things from FFXV there is no point to risk risinp up advertising budget with uncertain results for that investment.

 

[sanstesy]

I'm asking this here because I don't know where else but what are expectations of worldwide FFVX sales?

Would 4-5 million sales be a good result when all is said and done? I really don't know what the expectations are with this title.

 

[Kanann]

IMO 4-5m would be a stellar result, below that seem bad, and beyond 5m is a success of reviving FF name.

 

[DKHF]

I'm asking this here because I don't know where else but what are expectations of worldwide FFVX sales?

Would 4-5 million sales be a good result when all is said and done? I really don't know what the expectations are with this title.

I think 4 million would be an underperformance (at least definitely in Square Enix's eyes) and I expect it will sell in the 6-7 million range worldwide LTD before a PC version. With 900k-1mil coming from Japan.

 

[L~A]

Nintendo eShop Sales - Week 47, 2016 (Nov. 21 - Nov. 27)

Nintendo 3DS

(+1) 01. Pokémon Sun (The Pokémon Company) [18.11.2016]
(-1) 02. Pokémon Moon (The Pokémon Company) [18.11.2016]
(N) 03. Romancing Sa&#12539;Ga (Square-Enix, Virtual Console) [21.11.2016]
(N) 04. Tactics Ogre (Square-Enix, Virtual Console) [21.11.2016]
(N) 05. Mega Man X3 (Capcom, Virtual Console) [21.11.2016]
(N) 06. Super Castlevania IV (Konami, Virtual Console) [21.11.2016]
(N) 07. RPG Maker Fes (Kadokawa) [24.11.2016]
(-1) 08. The Battle Cats POP (Ponos) [31.5.2015]
(N) 09. Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Welcome amiibo [23.11.2016]
(-5) 10. Pokémon Yellow Version: Pikachu Special Version (Nintendo, Virtual Console) [27.2.2016]

Wii U

(=) 01. Minecraft: Wii U Edition (Microsoft Japan) [17.12.2015]
(=) 02. Discovery (Rainy Frog) [31.8.2016]
(+3) 03. Super Mario Maker (Nintendo) [10.9.2015]
(B) 04. Bomberman '94 (Konami, Virtual Console) [19.11.2014]
(+3) 05. Splatoon (Nintendo) [28.5.2013]
(+4) 06. Super Mario World (Nintendo, Virtual Console) [27.4.2013]
(-3) 07. Terraria (Spike Chunsoft) [15.9.2016]
(-1) 08. Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo) [20.5.2014]
(=) 09. Super Mario 64 (Nintendo, Virtual Console) [08.4.2015]
(-7) 10. Paper Mario: Color Splash (Nintendo) [13.10.2016]

https://topics.nintendo.co.jp/c/article/8a746adb-b2c7-11e6-9aaf-063b7ac45a6d.html

 

[Durante]

IMO 4-5m would be a stellar result, below that seem bad, and beyond 5m is a success of reviving FF name.

How would selling less than half of the previous main numbered entry "revive" the FF name?

I think the only truly positive sign for it would be a 10 million LTD (which is still less than FFXIII, but at least not woefully so).

 

[Alrus]

How would selling less than half of the previous main numbered entry "revive" the FF name?

I think the only truly positive sign for it would be a 10 million LTD (which is still less than FFXIII, but at least not woefully so).

Huh, I agree 4-5m LTD for FF XV would be pretty bad, but iirc FF XIII alone didn't sell over 10 millions. I don't see the point of grouping the entire XIII saga against one game.

 

[Durante]

Huh, I agree 4-5m LTD for FF XV would be pretty bad, but iirc FF XIII alone didn't sell over 10 millions. I don't see the point of grouping the entire XIII saga against one game.

Right, brainfart on my part. I just had that 11 million number in mind for FF13 alone.
Given that it's actually ~ 7 million (6.6 confirmed on consoles and ~0.65 on PC) I guess anything above 6 would be good enough.

This does reinforce in my mind that despite the importance attributed to it in gaming circles, FF just isn't a particularly big franchise in modern mainstream terms.

 

[Kanann]

How would selling less than half of the previous main numbered entry "revive" the FF name?

I think the only truly positive sign for it would be a 10 million LTD (which is still less than FFXIII, but at least not woefully so).

I think 5-6 million before PC is the best they can hope.

 

[Mr. Pointy]

FFXV pulling an 86 review average is better than I thought. That's around MH4U's level, which was a GOTY contender, though it's possible the 'Western reviewer handheld tax' is taking a 3-4 point cut from MH.

That being said, I would be surprised if XV sold close to as much as XIII in Japan. I'll aim high and say 1.2 million LTD.

 

[L~A]

Time to turn on the hiska-kun light, need those blog leaks

Really curious about 3DS HW (more than SM 2nd week), and the latest software releases.

 

[hiska-kun]

Time to turn on the hiska-kun light, need those blog leaks

Really curious about 3DS HW (more than SM 2nd week), and the latest software releases.

I think he says xbox reached 4 digits this week. There're was a bundle. Nothing else.

 

[Moor-Angol]

I think he says xbox reached 4 digits this week. There're was a bundle. Nothing else.

XBO S launched last week iirc

 

[Moor-Angol]

Bic Camera is one of the few stores to still sell Xbox One games, right?

Yodobashi also, I think just small shops don't sell XBO and save space for other stuff

Yamada Denki also iirc

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

I'm asking this here because I don't know where else but what are expectations of worldwide FFVX sales?

Would 4-5 million sales be a good result when all is said and done? I really don't know what the expectations are with this title.

SE will make money regardless but seeing series expectations 6-7 million would be the ideal zone.

 

[L~A]

Media Create:

New3DS LL 45,622
PS4 33,859
2DS 18,158
Vita 12,240
PS4 Pro 8,243
New3DS 6,955
Wii U 3,493
Xbox One 778
PS3 623
3DS 482
3DS LL 95

175k for Gundam (all versions)
375k for Pokémon. (381k with dual-pack)