Final Fantasy VII REMAKE - General News Thread

[Storm]

my dick is bigger yo, what about waiting for more concrete data instead of wasting time with unecessary drama?

 

[Somber]

FFVIIR will get an Orchestral Album in October. Hoping for a Piano Collection or perhaps it's too soon but the first part is already loaded enough ahhh.

https://twitter.com/statuses/1288857857572474882

 

[Cloud_CR]

 

[Nova]

Watched that yesterday, pretty alright though I disagree with him on the final chapter on a narrative level.

 

[Lulcielid]

Butterfinger collab DLC now available for everyone.

 

[Bazztek]

FF7R finally hit 5 million shipped + digital sales in around 4 months, and mention that it has the higest digital sales of an FF on PlayStation. Which obviously is thanks to the massive Covid sales boost that propelled its digital sales to even be that high.

https://twitter.com/statuses/1291675455188279298

In comparison it took FFXV 1 day to hit 5 million shipped+digital sales and KH3 hit 5 million shipped+digital sales in its 1st week. Being multiplat has nothing to do with that either because PS4 had sold 110m when FF7R launched in 2020, while PS4 at the end of 2016 was at 50m and XB1 in January 2017 had sold 26m, so even PS4 and XB1 combined when FFXV launched had a smaller installbase than what PS4 is when FF7R launched, making the "but mutliplat" comments completely irrelevant because it being mutliplat has no bearing.

The Japanese FF7R twitter account also states that 7R specifically sold 2 million digital.

https://twitter.com/statuses/1291675661786968064

With what Matsuda had stated only a few weeks ago in that half of FF7R sales have been digital sales, that gives an actual clue as to how much FF7R sold through, so 2 million digital sales would mean 2 million~ physical sales too, putting FF7R's actual sold through sales at 4 million~, with the rest of the 1 million~ sitting on store shelves at retailers.

It's interesting to compare it even to the original PS1 FF7's sales where the US version sold 1.09 million in 3 months and the EU/PAL version sold 580k in 1 month, and the Japanese version selling 2 million in 3 days, and by the end of 1997 the Japanese version was at 3.5 million.
https://web.archive.org/web/2001021...p/investors/exsite/news_97/newsr13/index.html

Here is a google translate version of the same page.

By the end of 1997 FF7 had sold through 5.16 million worldwide, not a shipped figure which obviously would've been higher.
By March 2003 FF7 had its total worldwide shipments at 9.3 million for PS1 and PC combined.
https://web.archive.org/web/2013110...explanatory/download/0404-200402090000-01.pdf

I don't think FF7R will ever even get close to that, and that only by SE counting the sales of whatever FF7R Part 2 and Part 3 or however many parts will they ever even reach that kinda number with the FF7R project.

 

[Ikkin]

In comparison it took FFXV 1 day to hit 5 million shipped+digital sales and KH3 hit 5 million shipped+digital sales in its 1st week. Being multiplat has nothing to do with that either because PS4 had sold 110m when FF7R launched in 2020, while PS4 at the end of 2016 was at 50m and XB1 in January 2017 had sold 26m, so even PS4 and XB1 combined when FFXV launched had a smaller installbase than what PS4 is when FF7R launched, making the "but mutliplat" comments completely irrelevant because it being mutliplat has no bearing.

Perhaps a more interesting way to consider these numbers is to look at the player stats:
FFXV PS4
FFVIIR

Obviously, player stats aren't identical to user stats, but they're at least somewhat instructive. Gamstat's information includes the first 119 days of FFVIIR's official sales, during which time it was played by 4.2 million users. In the same time frame, FFXV was played by 4.14 million users.

There's a slight wrinkle in this apparent equivalence, however (even beyond the obvious fact that some players who played on Xbox might have bought FFXV on PS4 if no Xbox version existed):

1. Taking the most recent data as an ending point, it took FFVIIR 25 days to sell 100k units
2. Taking 119 days as an ending point, it took FFXV 14 days to sell 100k units

In other words, it seems like FFVIIR's userbase growth trailed off a lot faster than XV's did.

(It also seems like the time to start playing FFVIIR after purchase might have been shorter than the time to start playing FFXV after purchase, which is interesting in its own way! I strongly suspect that VIIR was received as an Event, while XV was picked up by a lot of people who were curious as opposed to ravenous.)

The Japanese FF7R twitter account also states that 7R specifically sold 2 million digital.

https://twitter.com/statuses/1291675661786968064

With what Matsuda had stated only a few weeks ago in that half of FF7R sales have been digital sales, that gives an actual clue as to how much FF7R sold through, so 2 million digital sales would mean 2 million~ physical sales too, putting FF7R's actual sold through sales at 4 million~, with the rest of the 1 million~ sitting on store shelves at retailers.

This comports quite well with the Gamstat data, given that the game would have been played by users who rented/borrowed it as well as by those who initially purchased it!

 

[Bazztek]

Perhaps a more interesting way to consider these numbers is to look at the player stats:
FFXV PS4
FFVIIR

Obviously, player stats aren't identical to user stats, but they're at least somewhat instructive. Gamstat's information includes the first 119 days of FFVIIR's official sales, during which time it was played by 4.2 million users. In the same time frame, FFXV was played by 4.14 million users.

There's a slight wrinkle in this apparent equivalence, however (even beyond the obvious fact that some players who played on Xbox might have bought FFXV on PS4 if no Xbox version existed):

1. Taking the most recent data as an ending point, it took FFVIIR 25 days to sell 100k units
2. Taking 119 days as an ending point, it took FFXV 14 days to sell 100k units

In other words, it seems like FFVIIR's userbase growth trailed off a lot faster than XV's did.

(It also seems like the time to start playing FFVIIR after purchase might have been shorter than the time to start playing FFXV after purchase, which is interesting in its own way! I strongly suspect that VIIR was received as an Event, while XV was picked up by a lot of people who were curious as opposed to ravenous.)



This comports quite well with the Gamstat data, given that the game would have been played by users who rented/borrowed it as well as by those who initially purchased it!

The thing with Gamestat is that it's all estimates and it's not really accurate and has huge margin of errors, especially for anything prior to 2018 when the PSN trophy hack happened, since the site was created after that happened so anything prior to that 2018 date has even more inaccurate and incomplete data, and is unreliable. It can be helpful for rough ballpark basic idea kinda thing but when getting into specific numbers it doesn't really hold up.
Gamestat only uses trophy data obtained from 8 million PSN accounts, it then extrapolates that by artificially inflating the numbers, so it doesn't have data tracking the 100m+ PSN accounts either.

For example Atlus announced vanilla Persona 5 had sold 3.2 million in December 2019 but Gamestat says it has 3.6m players in December 2019, inflating it by 400k.

Currently gamestat says vanilla Persona 5 is at 4.3m players, even though Atlus says that the combined sales of Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal is 4.6m, with P5R doing 1.4m by July 2020, meaning vanilla P5 is still 3.2m.

So in December 2019 Atlus said vanilla P5 was 3.2m and that Persona series sold 11.1m, and then in July 2020 they said P5R sold 1.4m and that P4 on Steam did 500k, and that Persona series now has sold 13m, so the 1.4m of P5R and 500k from P4 Steam added to 11.1m give us accurate display of actual official sales for Persona 5, which gives us proof that vanilla P5 has still sold 3.2m by current 2020 date which compared to what Gamestat says has a margin of error by inflating P5's players by 1.1 million above what its actual sales are.

http://p-ch.jp/news/5850/
http://p-ch.jp/news/4855/

So like how FF7R had "4.2m players" according to gamestat since mid July, that too would be an inflated sum above what its actual sales were at the time. The FY2021 1st quarter SE total sales (shipment+digital sales) were 6.21m, of that number there was 5m shipment+digital of FF7R, and the rest of the 1.21m~ was Trials of Mana and whatever else games that sold that it is accounting for.

The whole quarter has 56% digital sales distribution of that 6.21m, and with Matsuda's statement 2 weeks ago about 50% of 7R being digital and it implying 7R had 4m sell though, it's possibly even higher than 50% for 7R's digital sales.
According to gamestat 7R had "4.2m players" by mid July 2020, which is already higher than what the latest sales chart would imply its actual sell through is by at least 200k

 

[Ikkin]

The thing with Gamestat is that it's all estimates and it's not really accurate and has huge margin of errors, especially for anything prior to 2018 when the PSN trophy hack happened, since the site was created after that happened so anything prior to that 2018 date has even more inaccurate and incomplete data, and is unreliable. It can be helpful for rough ballpark basic idea kinda thing but when getting into specific numbers it doesn't really hold up.
Gamestat only uses trophy data obtained from 8 million PSN accounts, it then extrapolates that by artificially inflating the numbers, so it doesn't have data tracking the 100m+ PSN accounts either.

For example Atlus announced vanilla Persona 5 had sold 3.2 million in December 2019 but Gamestat says it has 3.6m players in December 2019, inflating it by 400k.

Currently gamestat says vanilla Persona 5 is at 4.3m players, even though Atlus says that the combined sales of Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal is 4.6m, with P5R doing 1.4m by July 2020, meaning vanilla P5 is still 3.2m.

So in December 2019 Atlus said vanilla P5 was 3.2m and that Persona series sold 11.1m, and then in July 2020 they said P5R sold 1.4m and that P4 on Steam did 500k, and that Persona series now has sold 13m, so the 1.4m of P5R and 500k from P4 Steam added to 11.1m give us accurate display of actual official sales for Persona 5, which gives us proof that vanilla P5 has still sold 3.2m by current 2020 date which compared to what Gamestat says has a margin of error by inflating P5's players by 1.1 million above what its actual sales are.

http://p-ch.jp/news/5850/
http://p-ch.jp/news/4855/

So like how FF7R had "4.2m players" according to gamestat since mid July, that too would be an inflated sum above what its actual sales were at the time. The FY2021 1st quarter SE total sales (shipment+digital sales) were 6.21m, of that number there was 5m shipment+digital of FF7R, and the rest of the 1.21m~ was Trials of Mana and whatever else games that sold that it is accounting for.

The whole quarter has 56% digital sales distribution of that 6.21m, and with Matsuda's statement 2 weeks ago about 50% of 7R being digital and it implying 7R had 4m sell though, it's possibly even higher than 50% for 7R's digital sales.
According to gamestat 7R had "4.2m players" by mid July 2020, which is already higher than what the latest sales chart would imply its actual sell through is by at least 200k

Isn't the easiest explanation for why player count is higher than sold-through that some players are playing used or borrowed copies?

If Gamstat has data from 8 million out of 110 million or so accounts, and those accounts are a legitimately random sample, they'd be able to calculate player count with a high degree of accuracy. After all, lots of statistical analyses of groups even larger than the PS4 userbase are made using sample sizes in the hundreds or thousands.

 

[Somber]

All these numbers game sound so boring and irrelevant in this uncertain pandemic age

 

[Bazztek]

Isn't the easiest explanation for why player count is higher than sold-through that some players are playing used or borrowed copies?

If Gamstat has data from 8 million out of 110 million or so accounts, and those accounts are a legitimately random sample, they'd be able to calculate player count with a high degree of accuracy. After all, lots of statistical analyses of groups even larger than the PS4 userbase are made using sample sizes in the hundreds or thousands.

The margin of error on display with P5 there though is way too high for that (and the entire site as a whole for that matter), like 400k to 1.1m of P5 is used or borrowed? 10% is already way too high a margin of error and both of those figures even go beyond that for the dates gamestat has listed.
Pre-owned game sales have also been on a decline for a years now, and for a game such as P5 is it unlikely it would have the same % of people buying pre-owned copies as say Call of Duty and other big western games which is what really drives the pre-owned market share.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-03-is-it-all-over-for-pre-owned-video-games

 

[Ikkin]

The margin of error on display with P5 there though is way too high for that (and the entire site as a whole for that matter), like 400k to 1.1m of P5 is used or borrowed? 10% is already way too high a margin of error and both of those figures even go beyond that for the dates gamestat has listed.
Pre-owned game sales have also been on a decline for a years now, and for a game such as P5 is it unlikely it would have the same % of people buying pre-owned copies as say Call of Duty and other big western games which is what really drives the pre-owned market share.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-03-is-it-all-over-for-pre-owned-video-games

Persona 5 probably isn't the sort of game that's frequently bought used, no... but the Persona fandom is highly evangelistic, and having an old copy of the original version lying around that you no longer need is a pretty strong motivation to let one's friends use the extra copy. =P It makes perfect sense that the sales of P5 would remain the same after the release of P5R even as the player count continued to increase.

It's also worth pointing out that player count is based on discrete accounts rather than individual owners/borrowers, so multiple players on the same system would increase the player count, too. If one player who owned the game let someone else try the game out on their own account -- a possibility that would increase with a highly evangelistic fanbase -- that would increase the player count, too.

With that said, I don't think it's perfectly accurate... but I don't think it has to be for the purposes of comparison. As long as the biases affect different games in the same way, the exact numbers are unnecessary when considering general trends.

My purpose in bringing up the numbers was to compare PS4-specific trends for FFVIIR and FFXV. What that seems to show, regardless of the exact numbers, is that even though the PS4-specific numbers at 119 days for the two games are very much within margin of error (setting the question of XBO copies aside entirely), FFVIIR seems to be a lot more front-loaded than FFXV, and therefore the numbers are likely to diverge further over time.

 

[Bazztek]

Persona 5 probably isn't the sort of game that's frequently bought used, no... but the Persona fandom is highly evangelistic, and having an old copy of the original version lying around that you no longer need is a pretty strong motivation to let one's friends use the extra copy. =P It makes perfect sense that the sales of P5 would remain the same after the release of P5R even as the player count continued to increase.

It's also worth pointing out that player count is based on discrete accounts rather than individual owners/borrowers, so multiple players on the same system would increase the player count, too. If one player who owned the game let someone else try the game out on their own account -- a possibility that would increase with a highly evangelistic fanbase -- that would increase the player count, too.

With that said, I don't think it's perfectly accurate... but I don't think it has to be for the purposes of comparison. As long as the biases affect different games in the same way, the exact numbers are unnecessary when considering general trends.

My purpose in bringing up the numbers was to compare PS4-specific trends for FFVIIR and FFXV. What that seems to show, regardless of the exact numbers, is that even though the PS4-specific numbers at 119 days for the two games are very much within margin of error (setting the question of XBO copies aside entirely), FFVIIR seems to be a lot more front-loaded than FFXV, and therefore the numbers are likely to diverge further over time.

While there would be used copies and borrowed copies, it is just unlikely that number equates to 400k or 1.1 million for P5.

 

[Vallen]

Eh, too many factors to even have proper comparisons. Given that people lost jobs during the pandemic slows sales, but being at home boosts sales. The game is a PS exclusive and not on PC/xbone, but on the other hand there are more PS4s out there now. Then there are those waiting for a complete edition, or those simply waiting for the PS5 port to get the superior version. Then there is the questions of revenue versus sales, XV had a much more aggressive marketing budget and a lot of side media that cost a lot to make, so did the higher sales lead to higher revenues when expenses were so high on marketing etc? But then again, VIIR looks like a more expensive game to make given it's astounding quality, or maybe it wasn't more expensive, we simply don't know. Will more VIIR copies for part 1 sell when part 2 is announced? Yes! Will some people simply not buy part 2? Also yes. It's honestly hard to compare the games' sales and revenues as the development and marketing and sales strategies are so different. I personally think they'll be roughly the same with maybe VIIR taking the lead down the line a decade later.

 

[Somber]

TGS is nearly upon us. It means new music is about to be cherished.

FFVII have two different albums to offer. One is "FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE SHINRA Tracks" which featured SHINRA related music tracks. The other is the recordings of SQUARE ENIX JAZZ -FINAL FANTASY VII- at billboard Live TOKYO.

 

[Somber]

Clocks with FF music.

 

[Skye]

Final Fantasy Union posted the survey results for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it's extremely detailed and informative. Over 14,000 people participated in the survey. What's more surprising is that 87% wanted Nomura to continue to direct the entire FF7R trilogy!

Here's the video

 

[SerjAngelo]

What's more surprising is that 87% wanted Nomura to continue to direct the entire FF7R trilogy!

I can't see why not? The overall game experience was great and the attention to details, combat gameplay, characters, writing and cutscenes direction were all pretty awesome if you ask me. And a game really has to have a decent director for all those elements to come together neatly.

People still act like the questionable ending was his decision alone, but there were enough interviews released confirming that it was a decision made on the whole production level, with Kitase at the helm. And it was in fact thanks to Nomura (and other team members, naturally) that all the old parts were recreated with such care.

 

[CloudBuster]

Final Fantasy Union posted the survey results for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it's extremely detailed and informative. Over 14,000 people participated in the survey. What's more surprising is that 87% wanted Nomura to continue to direct the entire FF7R trilogy!

Here's the video

Not surprising that people want Nomura to stay on. I'm a fan of keeping a consistent creative team at the helm because handing off a story to another person midway usually results in a disjointed feeling. So hopefully they can keep Kitase, Nojima, and Nomura on board until the project is done so that way whatever we end up with is at least consistent with itself for the most part instead of feeling like a patchwork job by many teams with many visions.

 

[Storm]

Not surprising that people want Nomura to stay on. I'm a fan of keeping a consistent creative team at the helm because handing off a story to another person midway usually results in a disjointed feeling. So hopefully they can keep Kitase, Nojima, and Nomura on board until the project is done so that way whatever we end up with is at least consistent with itself for the most part instead of feeling like a patchwork job by many teams with many visions.

Did KH remain consistent with itself? Lol

regardless, I agree with you.