Final Fantasy XV now ships 6 million units

[Loony BoB]

Man, if you genuinely think that XV gets more criticism than XIII, I'm just going to hold my hands up and say I'm not going to argue the point, because that's legit insane to me. xD Fun fact: I like FFXIII, this isn't a secret at EoFF or elsewhere. But the game got shredded more than any other single player FF by a huge distance based in my own anecdotal experience on the internet.

[Fynn]

Man, if you genuinely think that XV gets more criticism than XIII, I'm just going to hold my hands up and say I'm not going to argue the point, because that's legit insane to me. xD Fun fact: I like FFXIII, this isn't a secret at EoFF or elsewhere. But the game got shredded more than any other single player FF by a huge distance based in my own anecdotal experience on the internet.

Yeah. I remember. I was there, too. Heck, XII got more hate than XV is getting. XV is the best received mainline FF in a while, tbh.

[Sephiroth]

As I said once - Fans in the West massively started complained about XIII when it was not even released as 2009 was only the Japan release. I will never forget the thread of some fans "blabla Linear as a piece of string" and them ranting on about it even though they did not know anything about it.

[Fynn]

(they was right tho)

[Sephiroth]

(they was right tho)

About what? Their rant based on nothing? No.

[Scruffington]

Man, if you genuinely think that XV gets more criticism than XIII, I'm just going to hold my hands up and say I'm not going to argue the point, because that's legit insane to me. xD Fun fact: I like FFXIII, this isn't a secret at EoFF or elsewhere. But the game got shredded more than any other single player FF by a huge distance based in my own anecdotal experience on the internet.

There is one huge difference between XV and XIII to me: XV brought in a surprising amount of newer players compared to XIII. I haven't seen this many new people jump on board with a new FF game before.

My point with this is that a lot of these newer players aren't aware of what past FF games were comprised of. They didn't know that the games had engaging stories, full character development, strategical combat, and a huge amount of fantasy elements including unique settings, summons and magics. Therefore they don't see its flaws or its lacking components nearly as much as an OG Final Fantasy fan would.

On the surface this sounds great. I think every gamer should come into a new game neutral and open-minded. But this is a series in its fifteenth entry in 30 years, so there has to be some sort of standard and consistency. You have to consider the legacy of Final Fantasy each time a new game comes out, and how it retains core elements from the series while creating something new.

Ultimately though, I try to base my opinion on fact more than anything. I do think a lot of the numbers point to XV being worse received than XIII -- at least by critics.

[Freya]

I remember when Del Murder and I were at that PR event, where we met Director Motomu Toriyama and Producer Yoshinori Kitase, for Lightning Returns. They were trying to hype us about Lightning Returns, giving us exclusive info and what not. In turn, we had to then try to write for EoFF and attempt to Hype them too!

Let me advise you how hard it was:

Hard.

It was hard.

More people were excited that Square Enix had invited us to such an event than another sequel to XIII. Trying to convince fans (and our much larger user base at the time) that this new XIII entry was totally going to be better, was hard. The fans just.. weren't there. At the time we were in contact with many fansites as part of this PR event. We talked a lot. They also had a tough time.

You probably have the perspective as a pure fan who did enjoy it. Well from a perspective of a "Gaming Journalist" trying to write about it and generate content for it, XIII and its sequels were not received as well. So we had to be careful on what we wrote cause otherwise, we wouldn't get any activity on an article. Fans just weren't as interested. We want to celebrate all FF here so it made our jobs a little harder.

I'm not nearly as active in writing about it or connecting with my fellow writers anymore but from what I have, the XV hype has been much more positive.


Hope that puts a little context on the topic at hand

[Slothy]

XIII has also sold somewhere around 7.5 million units (including the Steam release). It sold over 6.6 million units by mid-2013. This is despite its disadvantage of having come out in 2010 when digital purchases of full games weren't as frequent as they are now.

So you're saying that FFXIII was a success because it sold 6.6 million units in about 3 years and XV is a failure because it's shipped (and let's face it, it will sell all of the shipped copies) 6 million in under 3 months? I'm not sure you know what success means.

And you're going to use critic scores with a difference of 1% average to claim XIII is better while ignoring user scores which show a significant percentage difference going the other way and saying those user scores don't matter?

Honestly: FFXIII was a bad game in the eyes of a large number of people. It did not do that well (compared to previous entries, and isn't doing well compared to XV), and I will even go so far as to suggest that had XIII and it's sequels been much better games, XV would probably be doing even better than it already is because people like me who consider FFXIII to be one of the worst games ever made (or really even just didn't like it) might have actually been hyped for XV and willing to buy in at release sight unseen.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Man, if you genuinely think that XV gets more criticism than XIII, I'm just going to hold my hands up and say I'm not going to argue the point, because that's legit insane to me. xD Fun fact: I like FFXIII, this isn't a secret at EoFF or elsewhere. But the game got shredded more than any other single player FF by a huge distance based in my own anecdotal experience on the internet.

There is one huge difference between XV and XIII to me: XV brought in a surprising amount of newer players compared to XIII. I haven't seen this many new people jump on board with a new FF game before.

My point with this is that a lot of these newer players aren't aware of what past FF games were comprised of. They didn't know that the games had engaging stories, full character development, strategical combat, and a huge amount of fantasy elements including unique settings, summons and magics. Therefore they don't see its flaws or its lacking components nearly as much as an OG Final Fantasy fan would.

On the surface this sounds great. I think every gamer should come into a new game neutral and open-minded. But this is a series in its fifteenth entry in 30 years, so there has to be some sort of standard and consistency. You have to consider the legacy of Final Fantasy each time a new game comes out, and how it retains core elements from the series while creating something new.

Ultimately though, I try to base my opinion on fact more than anything. I do think a lot of the numbers point to XV being worse received than XIII -- at least by critics.

You're spot on with that. I'm seeing people who have never played a JRPG or FF before in their entire life and interested in this game. Could have to do with the open world aspect and how, with many casual mainstream gamers, a game with open world slapped on it, pretty graphics, and a flashy combat system equal a buy. These people will never be inclined to play the older games. Angry Joe is an example of this. I've always labelled hjm as a Japanese game basher but this game got his attention. However, the old games are too drastically different from XV for them to feel accustomed to it. Like going from XV and then to FFX or FFVI. Stark difference.

[FinalxxSin]

..

The legacy of Final Fantasy? What difference does that really make in the grand scheme of things? Sure, one can look and say x,y,z is how things should be done based on past examples. I’m more concerned with what is going on today, and not so much with what took place in the past. You speak of newer people probably not being able to see the flaws in FFXV, but wasn’t that the EXACT same thing that happened with FFVII? I believe so. Hell, there are people still today that will talk up FFVII like it’s the Holy Grail of gaming, despite the reality that the game has some glaring flaws. That isn’t taking place with FFXV on the vocal side. People acknowledge the game has flaws, but despite that most are still able to enjoy the game greatly. Perhaps that boiled down to the pros of the game being so significant that the cons ended up not being as major of a problem for a good number of people. A game with flaws =/= a game that will be chalked up as a bad game. A game from a design outlook could objectively have the best everything, but none of that matters if it fails to connect with people.

Also, FFXIII objectively from a vocal aspect is the most criticized mainline game in the series. The only game imo that would have gotten more criticized would be FFII. Luckily, the internet had not blown up during the release time frame of FFII, therefore it evaded that bullet. If you want to argue that FFXV has gotten more criticism, then not only will you be barking up a tree, but you will also give me proof of how out of touch you are with the vocal part of the community.

One more thing: Critics can have a bias rather that is in support or against a title. I personally tend to take some things with a grain of salt.

[Scruffington]

You probably have the perspective as a pure fan who did enjoy it. Well from a perspective of a "Gaming Journalist" trying to write about it and generate content for it, XIII and its sequels were not received as well. So we had to be careful on what we wrote cause otherwise, we wouldn't get any activity on an article. Fans just weren't as interested. We want to celebrate all FF here so it made our jobs a little harder.

I'm not nearly as active in writing about it or connecting with my fellow writers anymore but from what I have, the XV hype has been much more positive.

Your story was about the second sequel to XIII, not XIII itself. Each mainline entry is always going to get more hype than its potential sequels, so I hardly think that's relevant.

So you're saying that FFXIII was a success because it sold 6.6 million units in about 3 years and XV is a failure because it's shipped (and let's face it, it will sell all of the shipped copies) 6 million in under 3 months? I'm not sure you know what success means.

And you're going to use critic scores with a difference of 1% average to claim XIII is better while ignoring user scores which show a significant percentage difference going the other way and saying those user scores don't matter?

Honestly: FFXIII was a bad game in the eyes of a large number of people. It did not do that well (compared to previous entries, and isn't doing well compared to XV), and I will even go so far as to suggest that had XIII and it's sequels been much better games, XV would probably be doing even better than it already is because people like me who consider FFXIII to be one of the worst games ever made (or really even just didn't like it) might have actually been hyped for XV and willing to buy in at release sight unseen.

First of all I never said XV was a failure. I simply stated that it underperformed compared to its predecessor. Initially that has proven to be the case, but we'll see if the lifetime sales of XV end up higher than XIII's. It does look like they will, however.

Having said that, I personally feel as though XV has a lot of advantages compared to XIII in terms of sales. First, I don't even remember if XIII was available as a downloadable title. This factor alone counts for over one million of XV's sales. Second, word of mouth definitely hurt XIII. A bunch of people got angry and decided to reduce the game to simple phrases such as "corridor simulator" and "linear." A lot of people associated the term "linear" with being "bad" and therefore wrote the game off entirely. Because of this kneejerk reaction, a lot of potential buyers got turned off of the game based on bad things they heard about it. This hurt the lifetime sales of the game, as had people actually given it a chance, they would have possibly found the complaints of players as an overreaction.

TL;DR: No digital release and false negative connotation of "linearity" hurt the lifetime sales of XIII.

Also as I explained earlier, user scores are highly manipulable and unreliable. And if you really think XIII is "one of the worst games ever made," I legitimately don't take your opinion seriously. That's such an overreaction it's almost funny. A little sad, too.

[Sephiroth]

Those sales will all not matter anyway once FFVII comes out next year.

[Slothy]

Your story was about the second sequel to XIII, not XIII itself. Each mainline entry is always going to get more hype than its potential sequels, so I hardly think that's relevant.

The reason people weren't interested in it had nothing to do with it being a sequel.

First of all I never said XV was a failure. I simply stated that it underperformed compared to its predecessor. Initially that has proven to be the case, but we'll see if the lifetime sales of XV end up higher than XIII's. It does look like they will, however.

Except, again, it's sold almost as many in under three months as XIII did in three years so saying it's underperforming compared to XIII is flat out wrong.

Having said that, I personally feel as though XV has a lot of advantages compared to XIII in terms of sales. First, I don't even remember if XIII was available as a downloadable title. This factor alone counts for over one million of XV's sales.

This assumes that people who prefer to download games never bought them in any other way which is a pretty silly assumption to make. If those million that have bought XV as a digital download were gaming in 2010 and wanted XIII they would have gone to the store and bought it. The lack of digital downloads at the time wouldn't have any impact on a sales performance difference between the two.

Second, word of mouth definitely hurt XIII. A bunch of people got angry and decided to reduce the game to simple phrases such as "corridor simulator" and "linear." A lot of people associated the term "linear" with being "bad" and therefore wrote the game off entirely. Because of this kneejerk reaction, a lot of potential buyers got turned off of the game based on bad things they heard about it. This hurt the lifetime sales of the game, as had people actually given it a chance, they would have possibly found the complaints of players as an overreaction.

I seriously doubt that anyone who actually listened to the negative criticism of FFXIII was likely to buy it in the first place. And there was a lot more to said criticism than it simply being linear. Linear can be fine. FFX was just about as linear for most of the game and it wasn't bad.

[Mirage]

ffx still had more things to do along that linear path. more variation

[Scruffington]

The legacy of Final Fantasy? What difference does that really make in the grand scheme of things? Sure, one can look and say x,y,z is how things should be done based on past examples. I’m more concerned with what is going on today, and not so much with what took place in the past. You speak of newer people probably not being able to see the flaws in FFXV, but wasn’t that the EXACT same thing that happened with FFVII? I believe so. Hell, there are people still today that will talk up FFVII like it’s the Holy Grail of gaming, despite the reality that the game has some glaring flaws. That isn’t taking place with FFXV on the vocal side. People acknowledge the game has flaws, but despite that most are still able to enjoy the game greatly. Perhaps that boiled down to the pros of the game being so significant that the cons ended up not being as major of a problem for a good number of people. A game with flaws =/= a game that will be chalked up as a bad game. A game from a design outlook could objectively have the best everything, but none of that matters if it fails to connect with people.

It makes a huge difference. A series in its 29th year (at the time of XV's release) has a history and reputation to live up to, as well as certain themes to maintain.

The unique thing about Final Fantasy is that every entry has its unique flair while still maintaining a specific formula in each installment. Specifically, each game has several key 'fantasy' elements. For example, the magic and enemies are huge parts of the Final Fantasy universe. A newer fan might look at XV and think that the magic looks cool, yet they won't be aware that the very first game of the series (FF1) actually had more magic spells and more varied enemies to fight.

My main point is that newer fans who started with XV won't be aware of the reduction of fantasy elements or other downgrades compared to past entries in the series.

One more thing: Critics can have a bias rather that is in support or against a title. I personally tend to take some things with a grain of salt.

Critic scores are far more reliable than user scores. There is always bias when someone gives their opinion on a video game, but critics have their opinion published and held to a professional standard.

ffx still had more things to do along that linear path. more variation

This is utterly untrue. FFX was identical to XIII in linearity, it just did a better job of disguising it.