KuwabaraTheMan said:
I'm fairly confident it will outsell XII.
Lifetime? Including GH sales? Maybe. It'd have to add around 500k to its first-month total to do that. If it added almost 100k this month (not
entirely unbelievable)... then... a GH/Platinum release later... well... maybe. :lol
Manmademan said:
Sales for XIII were astronomical.
In terms of "all games"? Yes. In terms of the franchise? Decline from XII, which was a decline from X, which was a decline from VIII. The absolute numbers are still high but the trend is downwards.
Darthdevidem01 said:
1. FF12 was out of the top 10 in its 2nd NPD month, that was IN the holidays.
Yeah, but it was at 11 with somewhere around 300k sales (because it was December.)
That said, FFXIII is almost certainly still ahead of FFXII after two months of sales for each in the US, so while the decline talk is real and accurate, it's not exactly a
huge failure either.
donny2112 said:
charlequin eventually called it "101-level strategy"
Well, I did this more as a way to insult the developers that don't attempt some sort of smart-growth strategy than as an actual suggestion that it was that obvious. :lol
Opiate said:
I don't think a DQ-esque approach will work for FF.
I don't think a DQ-esque approach specifically will work, but I think you underestimate how possible it is to cut these types of Gordian knots.
FF is a series that's innately tied to attractive presentation, and
that can't be changed. However, right now it's caught up in a very specific
type of high-quality presentation that's really expensive, and I don't think
that is in any way unchangeable. I don't think the idea of an FF that plays faster, has more freedom, utilizes attractively stylized (rather than realistically-styled) graphics, cuts CGI almost entirely, and otherwise tunes the experience towards a more holistic blend of style and substance, with less filler and linearity, is at all inconceivable.
(I see Vinci was thinking along very similar lines.)
However, I don't think anything this will happen because Square-Enix is not managed for intelligent growth or wise management of their IP and manpower assets, and has not been at least since Sakaguchi left -- and also, potentially, because the gap between what Japanese audiences and Western audiences consider "cool" is too difficult to meaningfully bridge now.