Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Sales Remain Muted in the USA, Compared to Past Games

@Yorozayu 100% agree. Feels like there is a target on Square Enix for some reason. Give it a rest.

But, But, people still refuse to admit this game's financial failure.

Give it time guys

I am starting to think that ppl are getting Final Fantasy fatigue. It definitely hurts its appeal with casuals when you have to play the first one and that's a 50hr game minimum.

I feel like casuals just want a 8-15hr game now. Just like in the PS3 era. This wont stop me from buying it when its on sale for less than $30. Fans will continue to support it, just don't be surprised when SE decides to make the game smaller and shorter.

@Yorozayu :
This is Final Fantasy, this is not just your average 3rd party game here.

Square Enix put a ton of money on this game hoping for at least 4x the return....and obviously it hasn't happened.

It's ok to like the game but it's also ok to admit the game has been a financial letdown by many standards.

@KillerBoy
If the game hasn't been a financial success within 3 months of release, most studios would consider the project dead in the water.

None of the articles I've seen talking about the sales mention the fact that the first one came out in COVID. People were stuck in their homes, of course it sold more!

It's on one platform and is also a sequel (something those top 3 aren't) I don't get how people expected it to sell gangbusters. In Japan it's day one sales were higher than Princess Peach, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Granblue Fantasy Relink, Like a Dragon Infinite and Persona 3 Reloaded. If it's sales are in the 3-4 million range so far then that's perfectly fine.

In comparison it took Dragon Quest 11 a year to sell 4 million copies.

@Jeaz It's definitely a great time for sure, although I would've certainly liked it more if the open world aspect was better.

@Yorozayu :
Do you really need an inside when this game's financial troubles are the world's worst kept secret.

I guess some people would prefer a phone call from Square Enix letting them know so.

@Yorozayu You're more observant than me!

@Yorozayu And everything below 5m copies sold is just not enough to justify its enormous AAA production costs. But people wouldn’t buy a FF7R with only 12 hours of playtime and without expensive cutscenes. I think that’s a real problem for SE.

The context is definitely different.

Direct sequel to a previous game, and also somewhat confusingly titled at that.

Released as an exclusive on a platform that has half as many units in the wild as the PS4 when FF7 Remake was dropped.

Remake released during COVID.

And, frankly, probably much of the nostalgia appeal of a release like this was expended with Remake.

This was always going to be one of the major issues with Squeenix's 'trilogy' approach to FF7.

Also Final Fantasy 15 is so high because of the massive hype and marketing surrounding it and the amount of years we waited for it. It had a film and an anime before release to draw in more buyers.

@Yorozayu
Sure because this article among many others are not proof enough....got it 😉

@Yorozayu well budgets do come into it. It’s not a case of 2m copies sold being “good” or “bad”. It depends how much they spent to achieve that.

If GTA6 sold 2 million it would be a disaster, for example.

But seriously, time to ditch the BS exclusivity now Square Enix.

@jorel262 @Yorozayu "Feels like there is a target on Square Enix for some reason"

The reason there is a target on Squenix is b/c Squenix put it their themselves. They are the ones continually complaining about their games not making their absurd predictions about how many copies it will sell.

Really this is less a testament of how many copies the game sells and more a testament as to how stupid Squenix continues to be. 🤷‍♂️

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2016/03/final_fantasy_xv_has_to_sell_a_helluva_lot_of_copies_to_be_a_success

Here's an 11 year old article about how bad Squenix is at doing business. Nothing has changed for the better in over a decade that their self imposed target has bene there.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/07/departing_eidos_montreal_boss_says_square_enix_has_some_things_to_learn_about_selling_games

@jorel262 "Feels like there is a target on Square Enix for some reason"

They release great games and FF7 ReBirth is one of the highest rated games this year so their output isn't the issue, the reason it's getting hate from a certain crowd is because of how close they are with Sony/Playstation.

Stay turned for next week’s ff7 rebirth underperformed article unless we don’t get stellar blade hype sales numbers then we, twitter and Reddit will move on to endlessly speculate about its sale and ff7 rebirth much like 16 will be considered a moderate success.

@Yorozayu Don't waste your time. That profile was created on April 1st and has mentioned either Xbox or gamepass in a 1/3 of the comments they've made here so far.

In other news, Rebirth is a great game, and although the numbers are by no means terrible, it's a shame more people haven't given it the support it deserves.

@Mikey856 The physical version was around £60 almost everywhere before launch, Mikey. I got mine for £59.95 from the game collection.

Man, pushsquare sure loves this topic. The daily square Enix bash continues. The only FF people here ride up to defend like it's their firstborn child is FF16 , for no reason other than that it's a long term exclusive. Not that that shallow tech demo has anything meaningful to offer.

One nice tidbit of information however was that XV was the top seller. That game, flawed as it was, was a game and had fun things to do and a fun set of characters.

Wow, there is quite a bit of cope going on in the comments here. I guess it just goes to show you that no matter how much evidence you put infront of someone they will still choose to believe whatever it is they wish to believe.

"Its only not selling well because its a PS5 exclusive!"

Or

"Well it IS a sequel, so of course its not going to sell as well. Sequels never sell as much as the original!"

Well whatever the reason is, it sounds like the game just isnt living up to sales expectations then, does it? You can sit there and try to justify it whichever way you want to but at the end of the day it doesnt change the reality of the situation. For whatever the reason is, FF7 Rebirth is a soft commercial failure. That doesnt mean you can't still like the game, that doesnt mean it cant still be your game of the year, but stop burrying your heads in the sand and pretending like this game isnt selling softly, because it most certainly is. And most importantly stop attacking people for just pointing it out, we arent the reasons why your favorite video game sold poorly.

@jorel262 Square Enix put the target on themselves, to be fair, by releasing their own statements indicating that Rebirth hasn't met their expected sales figures. Rags like PushSquare simply grab onto that and run it for as long as they can to keep people clicking links and leaving comments.

It's behind other game in the series while also being the 4th best selling game of this year in USA (behind Helldivers, CoD and Dragon's Dogma) - which I guess tells more of a general market story than FF specifically.

@Mortal "Square Enix put the target on themselves, to be fair, by releasing their own statements indicating that Rebirth hasn't met their expected sales figures."

I don't think they've released a statement on it. Do you have a link because I can't find anything official from them?

I personally did not like the game. I won’t launch into why here. However, I bought it launch day. Since then?

20 hours in Rebirth
52 hours in FFX
41 hours FFXII

I am just one consumer and cannot speak for anyone else, but I have told people in the weeks since its been out that I personally would not buy it if I had a second chance. That word of mouth can matter in a game tappering off.

After playing and experiencing the combat in Remake, I had no desire to play this.

I bought the bundle with Remake a long time ago when that was a thing. In retrospect having played Rebirth now, I wouldn't have bought it. I acknowledge it's a very good game, but not really for me. Too much fluff with the collection and mini games. Felt like it was jammed full of stuff just for the sake of having stuff. This is the problem with trying to stretch one game into three full games.

The only ones who can say if the game was a flop or or is Square.

People said the same thing about FFXVI, conveniently forgetting Square used Sony money to pay the development costs upfront, which also meant that every copy sold was pure profit once the game released.

@Mikey856 I wasn't being facetious, I'm not sure how you've arrived at that from my reply. I was just saying £70 isn't an accurate representation of the physical copies cost as it was at least a tenner cheaper than that at launch.

@Yorozayu Rebirth is meant to be one of the biggest games this year yet Rise of the fricking Ronin seems to have done much better.

Slow news day it seems. Let's hate ff7 again. We know it now, Pushsquare hates square-enix and ff7 and loves everything that's from Atlus.

How many times are we going to read about this, about some YouTube/Twitter Analyst that want some extra cheap clicks. The game sold great for the time and it will sell more in the future. Nothing indicates this game is a failure, the only ones claiming are social media screamers. To bad Pushsquare is doing the same.

Comparing it to remake also doesn't make sense. The PS4 was at it end with alot of consoles sold. PS5 is halfway. It will be the same if Nintendo releases a new Mario on the next console and everyone will be saying it's a failure because it didn't sell as much as the previous in switch.

Thank you for our weekly low Rebirth sales report. As I continue to play it and love it, I could care less. It's also not a big deal since it's not like the 3rd and final one isn't still coming.

It's a shame, because it's easily one of the best games of the year. But I also understand why a lot of the hardcore FF VII fans don't care for Remake and Rebirth, and that's a large part of the audience. Not being about to win them over has clearly hurt Rebirth and it could mean even worse sales for the third part.

@Tchunga There will always be an excuse for this franchise other than to admit it’s fallen off significantly

Modern Square-Enix. 😂

Hopefully square enix start releasing everything on at least pc day 1 and forget the exclusivity crap. It's hard to sympathize with the self inflicted wounds they keep giving themselves.

I think a lot people’s problem with the game is the fact it’s in three parts that are about three to four years apart that’s why I’ve not bought it yet I’ll wait until all parts are out then get them

@CieloAzure Fatigue is why I skipped it (mught buy later). Heard it was a lot of fluff in the game and I wasnt in the mood for that.
I also believe they have flooded the market too much on FF stuff these last years, pixel remasters, regular remaster, ff16, ff14 going strong, crisis core and not to mention some people thought ff7r had too much padding and/or didnt like the direction rebirth was heading (i personally enjoyed the story). And ff7 rebirth is ps5 only. No wonder it sells less. But the predicted numbers are still high though.

I think the ps5 install base is to blame. It's much smaller than the ps4.
People want ps5 exclusives, but it just doesn't make much commercial sense.

I don't think it has anything to do with narrative choices. Most people don't know anything about that.

If it was something it's that it's a 2/3 (we think) parter and middle of the stories are less attractive than the ending.
That is my personal reason. I have no reason to rush into rebirth cause then i will have to wait for the final part.

The original fans of FF7 just wanted a graphical upgrade with QoL improvements and not this weird Kingdom Hearts-style fan fiction split into 3 parts and spread over a decade and 3 generations of consoles. That is why nobody is buying it. You need to make what your customers want if you want to sell it.

IMO SE needs to return to its roots in the Sakaguchi era of FF. They have been trying so hard to reinvent the wheel and attract new customers since FF13 that they have lost all the FF brand prestige and the majority of their fanbase who supported them while bringing in very few new customers. IMO they need to make a turn-based game in a fantasy setting with a great hero, badass villain, cool party members, hot/cute heroine, beautiful soundtrack, and a romantic but complex story.

Introduce choices and decisions for both the main story and side quests to give players some agency if they want to evolve the series instead of shoving in action combat and a grim depressing story like FF15 and FF16. Cut down the excessive focus on cutting-edge graphics, improve project management, and control their production budget. That is how they can succeed and not lose $140 million. Unfortunately, SE just can't figure out what they are doing wrong and keep spiraling down the drain. There was a time when Squaresoft was considered kings of JRPGS but they forgot their roots and now they have become a shell of their former selves.

It also could be that a number of people are waiting for the inevitable intergrade version to be released.

Or cbb and will wait another 3-4 years for the final part to be released

@nyr2k2 Yeah, it's extremely padded, and could've probably easily made two games tops if they didn't throw endless annoying minigames and Chadley at you every half an hour

@Yorozayu He is definitely a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Another doom and gloom article about SE. Someone at Pushsquare must have something against them.

I'm looking forward to playing this still, just waiting for a steep discount. I really liked Remake.

@OnlyGaming it hasn’t been 3 months though. It’s been a packed year for gaming so people are still finishing other games.

Well yeah, we're not on lockdown with nothing to do anymore! When are they going to realize that? All games are selling less than they did in 2020.

Terrible economy, direct sequel, divisive part 1, 10+ year span and it's the middle entry. It needed to be 2 parts or they needed to plan the release pacing much better. It would be fine but they budgeted like it was going to be a marvel blockbuster and it never was going to be.

@OneWingedAngel sadly the lesson they've learned is 16 brought new customers and made a success, and they need even more streamlined mainstream, graphics pushing games and then, surely then, they'll finally hit those cod numbers! And that ff isn't an RPG!

@tameshiyaku lol. 16 isn't a tech demo unless its goal is to demonstrate poorly designed tech. And I like the game. But that engine.... That's not something you try to demo...

Edit, I'll also say again that xiv is a double edged sword. It's the cash cow that saves them, but, I have dawntrail pre-ordered and won't buy rebirth until part 3 is out in 4 years. A lot of ff fans get more than enough ff fix in xiv. And I'm sure SE doesn't mind at $13/mo.

I switched to PC this gen, which is why I haven't gotten yet. Waiting on a PC port now. I bought the original Remake at launch.

Just a reminder that being on PC won't sell any better.

This is not about being console exclusive or not being on PC situation. We increasingly see a current generation of gamers who prefer to play multiplayer, Gaas, Gacha, and mobile games, instead of singleplayer narrative games.

@NinjaWaddleDee What's the point of being here if you don't have a PlayStation? It must be sad having this masterpiece on digital only. I bought the steelbook edition of Rebirth and is beautiful. It's a must have physical copy.

@Vault_Mcfly I come here because I like Push Square's video game news.

Enjoying it, and I never play remakes. This was the exception to the rule

@UltimateOtaku91 "the reason it's getting hate from a certain crowd is because of how close they are with Sony/Playstation." FINALLY you said it.

@Yorozayu Agreed. If it wasn’t selling well, the game would’ve been on sale or dropped in price. After nearly 2 months, I don’t think I’ve seen any price decrease or sale. It’s clearly selling well, even if not as well as Square or news outlets expected.

@DennisReynolds because rise of the ronin is awesome 👍

@Uromastryx Its a perfect 7/10 and scratches that Ubi style open world itch if you like those types of open worlds. I like it its a really fun but its certainly not up there with FF7 Rebirth.

I just don’t have time for these longer games and I think a lot of people have open-world fatigue right now. Linear games are what I’m focusing on right now and it helps me to be able to complete more games.

@DennisReynolds I really enjoyed it, fun platinum aswell not too much of a grind,
Nonits definitely not up there with ff7, I love bough remake and rebirth I have nonproblems at all with them, apart from minigames in Rebirrh testing my patience,
Unfortunately for square they sit in a hard place, if they changed nothing about the game and just updated the system and gfx people would complain, " it's same game new gfx and you charge us loads for it" but now they sit in place of " too much change, convoluted story and such,
Tough for them Unfortunately and I think that effects sales from people who were on the bench about it

@NEStalgia I agree that the tech was also unimpressive, but people just kept raving about it. But if the tech was just the least of it's problems though. The action gameplay is ok, but there's nothing between that. No meaningful character or item customisation, side quest are the most basic fetchquests, cut scenes are drawn out which "borrow" so heavily from game of thrones you can't call it flattery no more,...
Some people blame rebirth for bloat with it's extra content, but at least it has something to do and the mini games are mostly fun as well. Even if you'd cut that away you still have a fun original story and good core gameplay.

My favourite part of this game is seeing people taking the sales numbers personally, like someone insulted their mother or something😅

@Ichiban As Cait put it: "Can't go lettin' our foe(the ones who want this to fail, especially that one dying console brand) win the information war, eh?"

@tameshiyaku "Not that that shallow tech demo has anything meaningful to offer." So the modified Luminous engine that FF16 uses is a tech demo? Wasn't that for Agni's Philosophy and maybe even Episode Duscae?

@Savage_Joe And your assumptions are optimistic: The average price should be lower than what you mentioned AND includes taxes (at least in Europe). I‘m keen to see what part 3 is going to look like! If SE hadn’t announced a trilogy, it would probably not be realised at all.

@tameshiyaku Yeah, XVI and Stellar are the biggest two examples I can think of recently where I'm convinced the marketing budget was more than 100% of the development budget. Those two games had a different level of media-generated hype non-stop promoting it, and are the two games I think that demonstrate more than anything how marketing-impressionable "core" gamers are. No matter how young or old gamers have the brain capacity of a 7 year old watching a commercial for a new breakfast cereal. XVI most of all, because you take two games, both tentpole mainline FF series games, one of them is the long-awaited FF7 trilogy, the other is a relative shadow drop announced a few years before release featuring a massive departure from everything known as FF, market the latter to no tomorrow and generate a non-stop media frenzy as though it's the greatest thing of all time, only moderately market the former, and people would not shut up about the latter, now wholly convinced it's truly the greatest thing of all time. And the former withers and dies.

SB is an echo of it, but I think XVI is the watershed moment where I realized just how much of all gaming opinion, conversation, and "truth" is based on nothing more than the level of marketing budget on a thing. Hype is paid for in coin, it's not organic. The market loves the thing that paid to have them love it with a rare occasional non-marketed success that results from viral social media/youtube trending.

And I like XVI a lot as a game, it's a good time, but it's FF in name only, and I think it's depressing that FF has been reduced to trying to imitate other popular things for a buck. Game of Thrones plus Souls (Souls-lite in combat, Souls directly in the "Enemy Slain" popup that I roll my eyes to every time. XV was trying so hard to be MonHun. XIII was intentionally imitating corridor shooters of the era. Ironically Remake/Rebirth are the only ones not imitating some other company's product, I guess because it's imitating Sakaguchi's game for once. Despite liking XVI, the tech is horrendous as was XVs on which it's based, fighting randos is fun but button mashy, but I can't stand damage sponge boss battles that go on for 20 minutes and cramp your hands. And the always depressing Game of Thrones skin is almost offensive.

@Cloud39472 Nah, @tameshiyaku has it right, it's very, very very Game of Thrones. I don't even like GoT, never watched, GoT more than snips here and there, and could tell at an instant it was copying GoT. It's not just "dark fantasy", it's a complete art aesthetic, tone, costume design, character concept and design, world design, the overly intricate court intrigue. It's GoT except for the points with the eikon-influenced but not "primed" dominants which are straight up Marvel rips. It may as well have been a licensed crossover of both IP.

Plus that fits the pattern of Square and their use of FF these days. They seem to run from trending thing to trending thing, while it's at the peak of its trend, and decide that imitating that thing will get the big audience they want. And then with the long schedule of development always they land with it years after the fad already died and feels dated.

I like XVI but the feeling that it feels like it's an imitator rather than creating a really new and unique world like, heck, even XV, makes it feel sort of cheap.

It's pretty hard to believe the same producer as XIV is behind it. There's got to be more to the story. The only thing that feels related are the bland fetch quests which are ripped right out of XIV, except it works in XIV because it's a ginormous world, with thousands of them spread all over with travel time between. I love doing them in XIV and hate doing them in XVI, and they're pretty much action-for-action the exact same quests.

Again, I say that as someone that actually likes the game, but it really should have been more of a cult niche thing than this hyped super amazing thing because it's pretty derivative with a bunch of jank across the board. But somehow comes together into a fun time either way.

I fully intend on getting this eventually (at a lower price), but I still haven't even beaten FF7 Remake yet.

Remake released on a console with 100m+ user base.

Rebirth did not.

The biggest issue with sales for PS5 games is Sony has just assumed people would buy a console and wait patiently for games to release on it. In reality it’s becoming a Wii U situation where it doesn’t matter if a few good games are appearing on the system because all the general consumer sees is the droughts in between. Plus I bet £70 puts a lot of people off of the game.

@thepaulcutts Exactly. That is, by far, the main reason.

I think gaming media is still in denial regarding how brutal the industry crash has been, and I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Destroyed the core fan base with the jarring combat change in these new FF games... Now just a flash in the pan and mixing with the rest of generic norm, nothing special anymore

@Cloud39472 there's just too much to list... Clive is the unwanted ***** son who rises up to the occasion (John snow), father gets killed early on which sets things in motion (Ned stark), Clive's Stepmom is a Cercei like schemer, there's even a hodor like character and a direwolf. That's just character similarities, but you got a bunch of plot similarities as well.

I'd rather square Enix just reinvent themselves within their own style and culture rather than pandering to the 18+ "we want gritty dark fantasy" crowd. I think from software has that well covered.

I mean, remaking one single game and splitting it into 3 different parts over the course of a decade and expecting all 3 parts to sell gangbusters was always a deluded idea. It might be one of the most famous JRPGs ever, but it's an enormous commitment to ask of players. A lot of marriages don't even last that long these days!