The prices are insane, and I don't mean that in a good way.
Sales figures have revealed that Final Fantasy 16 is the UK's best-selling retail release this week, although its launch sales are reportedly 74 percent lower than that of Final Fantasy 15.
After two years since its reveal, this week marked the long-awaited launch of Final Fantasy 16. While critical reception for the game has been largely positive so far, it seems that it might not have made as much of a splash as Square Enix would have hoped when it comes to the game's sales, at least when it comes to physical retail releases in the UK.
15 launched on PS4, XBOX One and later on PC and FF16 launched only on PS5 so of course sales are lower. The same will happen with Starfield it's sales numbers will be lower than the likes of Fallout 4 because it's only launching on XS and PC and being on Gamepass day 1 will hurt actual game sales too.
Gamepass is going to hit overall sales big time and that's a guarantee but Microsoft already know that. They're trying to get more subscribers for long term. As for Final Fantasy 16 it's going to be a marathon until every PS4 owner upgrades to a PS5. FF16 is also going to PC eventually to help boost sales. Let's not forget this isn't digital sales
Down 74% man that's alot because let's face it Xbox & PC sales for this game typically aren't huge.
The BIG caveat is this doesn't include digital, so as far as we know it's only a big drop in physical sales and we know digital has grown leaps & bounds over the last few years= Im pretty sure the digital sales are pretty good, hopefully because I really dont want to hear SE cry about it.
It’s only on one platform and that platform had fewer units than ps4.
Now are digital sales way more popular than it was when ff15 launched, less people buying retail now
To many great games this month. I just bought SF6 so FF16 have to wait till next month. Cause I promised myself 1 game each month.
According to the last sentence in the preview, this is box sales only so hardly a surprise. A lot has changed between the release of XV and XVI in terms of digital vs physical. I could be mistaken but I believe the EU has adopted digital more than the US, and even then, digital is gaining traction everywhere... just a quick google search, 64% of all sales were digital in '22, down from 65% the year prior according to gameindustry.biz. I don't know what the numbers were when XV released, but if 64% of sales are digital, and XVI sold 74% less physical copies, you do the math...
I've always been a physical collector, but even I have found cause to just start buying more and more games digitally. Let's talk when total numbers are in. Until then, this seems more like a hit piece or, at the very least, a very stupid article written by someone looking to spin it. Because let's be real here, there are always more than variable to consider, and from the looks of it, they simply took one variable and ran with it because that variable must be bad.
"15 launched on PS4, XBOX One and later on PC and FF16 launched only on PS5 so of course sales are lower."
FFXVI exclusive on PS5 sold just 1/4 of copies compared to FFXV, no matter how you try to spin, the numbers are far from great.
Making such huge title exclusive to Playstation might turn out into another disappointment for SE. Hopefully digital sales will perform better than retail. We shall see soon enough.
"The same will happen with Starfield it's sales numbers will be lower than the likes of Fallout 4 because it's only launching on XS and PC and being on Gamepass day 1 will hurt actual game sales too."
Starfield is an Xbox first party games, no matter how many copies it sells, it´s still Microsoft´s money.
If FFXVI don't meet sales expectations, Square Enix will be the only one who will suffer with the losses of tons of money invested in that game.
@ obscureobserver
"The same will happen with Starfield it's sales numbers will be lower than the likes of Fallout 4 because it's only launching on XS and PC and being on Gamepass day 1 will hurt actual game sales too."
How many do you think it will sell at $70?
Se aren't going to be missing many sales from xbox , ie ff15 numbers. This article specifically mentions this is physical sales, you know damn well digital is bigger today then it was when ff15 first released. Leave it to obscure for the neg Sony comment
That's still a huge difference in sales. I feel like Xbox even in the UK would have accounted for only around 25% of FF15 sales surely.
Xbox didn't even account for that percentage of sales of ff15.
Over 10 million sold 1 mill on xbox for ff15.
It's not even that really
After FF13 people gave them a second chance with FF15
They blew it
So while this is a good game and BETTER than 13/15 most people might just feel they don't want to get burnt again.
The 2nd paragraph makes a good a good point that should've been in the headline. Atleast the physical sales. I prefer physical games myself but it seems more and more buy digital these day.
2nd starfield sales won't be that good do to gamepass. I'll be playing on gamepass.
I made a comment a month or two ago saying that Square limiting its IP to one platform is going to hurt the growth of the FF brand. Now look.
Given that FF15 sold only like 9% on Xbox and 80% on PS4 with 11% on PC making FF16 multi woudn't result in much of an increase in sales also Game sales in the UK are different since a few years ago with 90% of game sales now in the UK being mostly digital. https://www.ign.com/article...
Where did you get those percentages for Playstation, Xbox and PC sales of FF15?
It doesn't matter. It still did not sell well. First, Playstation gamers prefer to buy boxed games. Second, It being 74% lower than 15 sales is bad. That is a very sharp difference. There is no spin on this to make this look good. When they release the digital sales numbers, we get our confirmation.
@lelo2play
"Where did you get those percentages for Playstation, Xbox and PC sales of FF15?"
He made that up.
@mika where did you get the idea most playstation gamers prefer boxed games, not true.
Playstation are the leaders for digital game sales and have been for a while.
@Mika
I purchased 15 physical years ago... but I got 16 digitally. I didn't know that I had to buy physical simply because I have a PlayStation. Your just making stuff up.
Lelo the numbers are out there
Taylor of course Sony is the leaders in digital. It's common sense with the bigger install base.
They are not limiting themselves, this is just physical and even did better than Diablo 4. Using your logic was Diablo 4 growth hurt because it performed worst than FF16 with physical? The answer is No
First off, A lot of gamers bought Diablo 4 on digital because they got to play it 4 days early. FF16 did not have any digital advantage over physical. You can't use that as an excuse here.
Mika
Actually you can connect the dots because now a days AAA games get 70-75% of their sales in digital so if it’s not the best selling game on PSN we will have something to discuss
And they aren’t limiting anything. It’s the worst kept secret that Sony and square have a deal in place so as soon as ABK deal is done Sony will announce the acquisition
@Neutral
I highly doubt Sony will purchase Squareenix, maybe another smaller studio or even an IP. I still think they overpaid for Bungie over estimating their GAAS evaluation.
@Mika
FF16 did not have any digital advantage over physical.
Actually if you are old enough, you would actually know, about 70-80% of all games sold on Playstation are digital. But we can ignore that fact if it makes you feel better. We can also ignore the fact that, the whole industry has shifted towards more digital and millions of Playstation owners got a PS5 digital version.
So guess we can't point out excuses, such as, more people are buying digital over physical, compared to 8-10 years go or a good percentage of PS5 owners have a digital version. Yeah, just excuses.
FF is a bigger Franchise than Diablo, so that's not a good comparison. I mean it probably do better than a lot of other multiplats that have a smaller fantasy as well like Dead Island 2.
“I made a comment a month or two ago saying that Square limiting its IP to one platform is going to hurt the growth of the FF brand. Now look.”
Digital sales aren’t included yet.
The ignorance of you bots truly transcends time itself. Final Fantasy 15 released as a multi-platform game and that game sold about 80% on Playstation alone in the UK and only sold about 20% on Xbox. That game is estimated to have sold about 10M and that same estimated has Xbox sales at around 1.4M. What growth exactly is Square missing with such laughable numbers from Xbox? Significant amount of their base are on PS and Nintendo. They are not missing anything when you consider hiw bad the last game sold on Xbox. Apart from Forza and Halo, how many Xbox games even make it to their chats?
As Square stated, they approached numerous platforms holders, Sony gave them the better offer. Just like with Marvel and Genshin Impact
LMAO these are physical sales only and it sold more than Diablo 4 physical sales. Everyone knows most sales nowadays are digital.
Xbox fanboys talk a lot of shit about exclusives but when FF showed up on Xbox, it literally sold less than 10% off the overall sales. Seems like all the moaning and bitching about exclusives doesn't really results in sales on Xbox. Put your money where your mouth is and maybe you'll get more 3rd party games on it.
It didn't, the article is just making you believe so.
FFXV released on a Tuesday during Black Week
Ofc a full week of sales during Black Week will be more than 1/2 days of sale in the summer.
If this game was also released on Xbox, it'd be a maximum of 5-10% extra in sales, buy to the cost of quality of the game.
I speak from first hand knowledge when I say that casuals are afraid of going into FF due to the numeral titling..
They're alianating a lot of players by also going full action game, rating M, and being PS5 only.
One can hope that they'll have long and healthy tail of sales.
I did not buy the XIII compilation due to XIII and I bought XV on sale due to my impressions from the demo. I'm currently on the fence with XVI. 7 Remake Day 1.
So how about digital sales? Do most people
Realize digital sales trump physical?
It’s number 1 in the UK so that accounts for something. What about in the US and Japan market? Again collectively with digital and physical?
It's basically the problem with modern numbers reporting. You don't get digital sales until the publisher reveals numbers directly, and that often only happens at end of fiscal year shareholder meetings as far as when the general public gets to see the numbers. Physical still plays a major role, but that role strongly differs across markets. So while this article sounds doom and gloom for FF16, we don't have any concrete idea of the actual numbers it's doing right now.
No no no you don't get it. Digital only matters when talking about Xbox version sales. With PS, they like to pretend that digital is negligible.
Don't trust me? Just go back to articles about sales of multiplat games when the PS is doing 2X or 3X the xbox numbers and see how quickly the "xbox sold more digitally" statement came up.
Theres also only 2 days of data as well as what others have mentioned that this is comparing a multi platform. The game is one of the greatest I’ve played. Ignore the review bombing and fud about sales. It’s excellent
It's a good game, nothing special though, think it's getting overrated due to it being a PS exclusive, still a solid 8/10 though.
LMAO yeah sure bud. Whatever makes you sleep at night. It is still the highest rated exclusive this year in-between Xbox and PlayStation. So far, it is easily in the top 3 FF games I've played. Watch the same hermits run out with their pitchforks if Starfield gets a 7 when someone calls it overrated.
When did 8/10 become a bad score? I'm enjoying my time with it, but I don't think it's as good as 7 Remake because it's not a final fantasy game.
Pathetic cunts 😂
“When did 8/10 become a bad score? ”
I have no qualm with your score.
“Pathetic c***s”
🤪
https://media1.giphy.com/me...
Forspoken, a game by the same publisher, was also a PS5 exclusive and it was not overrated. FF16 is just a great game period.
@randomvoice
Isn’t it basically tied with Hi-Fi Rush though? Not that I see how either of them having “the highest” score has to do with him saying its an 8 (which is not a bad score by any means)
I wouldn’t say “nothing special,” I mean if that’s your take you clearly didn’t get to the Bahamut bit. That had my jaw hit the floor and stuck out to me as one of the coolest fights in any game, period.
And it is not even the original Source gamesindustry.biz. I am wondering how this news got approved on n4g.
However:
"Final Fantasy 16’s UK physical launch was bigger than Diablo 4’s and Dead Island 2’s, so I really wouldn’t conclude anything from the boxed figures. It sits behind Resident Evil 4, Star Wars, Hogwarts and Zelda in terms of week 1 boxed sales."
I wonder if they will mention that FFXV came out on a tues and FFXVI came out on Thursday so there is a shorter first week for FFXVI. Surely a journalist would mention that?
Thats hilarious if your serious about that being a journalism standard. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be, IT SOOOO SHOULD BE but in recent memory, that certainly hasn't been the case. And I'm speaking as a whole of journalism.
Managers and supervisors are being asked or told to continue going to closed stores as CeX moves to online-only retail.
Cex should be sanctioned by the GOV for this. Not only is it an absolute crap place to shop but asking your staff to risk themselves to work in what is one of the worst stores in the UK.
That's because gamers prefer saving £1 on a used copy rather than goto the game retail shop which is normally within the vancinity and support the dev and buy new.
Seriously I've been in there more from a curiosity point of view and I remember spiderman, death stranding, gow etc all being £1 or £3 cheaper than new.
Now I understand over the course of a year that probably adds up to 1 more game a year but common support the dev
Not many second hand stores open now, I imagine they will get a lot of custom from people who have been laid off.
I always call it "C-E-X" but really it's just short for computer exchange.
Spurg
A lot of people still go to work in this situation. I don't understand the problem if the staff are still required. Also I'm sure the employees would rather take their full wage than the 80% from government handouts or losing their jobs completely.
Also CeX is very popular for a reason. If you want point at terrible UK stores you should be pointing at GAME.
What's the reason for their popularity?
Also... A lot of people on Twitter have argued that they're being bullied into going to work. Otherwise they will face disciplinary and lose their jobs after all of this is over.
And honestly... You're trying to tell me that people would rather work for 100% pay (whilst paying for travel and food) as opposed to sitting at home and getting 80% for free?
CEX isn't the best employer. Especially when all they do is pay minimum wage.
Don't believe me? Just look on Twitter.
Do you not understand the government's advice of essential? Plus you really think employees on minimum wage want to go in and risk there life to get 100% not 80%?
I take you will eventually be one of the death toll.
^^^ 80% can only be claimed by employers though for their staff. As pranster has said, many are forcing their staff to go in and threatening them with unpaid leave. I doubt the government have robust policies in place to dealing with rogue employers just yet.
I like CEX and use them a lot, think my store is a franchise too. If they close then that's a good thing for staff. But I can understand why staff would still go in to closed stores as most of there mail order is done via store stocks
Well there 'online' stock is held in each individual store around the UK. So if they are to continue trading online, they need staff members in the store to pick the items and dispatch them accordingly.
I'm not sticking up for them, i'm just letting you know why they have to be in store.
That's what I can gather as well. It's not exposing their employees to the public, which here in the US seems completely irresponsible where they have these mandated shut downs for essential business only, and still just go shopping like normal. But, if the company is taking proper precautions, and not forcing people who may be sick or exposed to go to work, then I don't see it as overly risky for these employees. Plus, they're talking maybe just a couple employees at a time.
This is really no different to Amazon continuing business. Don't be a hypocrite by criticising CEX and then ordering the latest game or movie from Amazon.
Actually... Amazon aren't as expensive, and some of the revenue goes back into the games industry.
CEX overcharge on second hand goods and ensure that all the money goes in the pocket of its head office (and barely any to staff).
Amazon also offer free shipping via Prime. CEX upped their postage rates recently.
There is plenty of difference.
Amazon are only doing medical supplies etc and other essential goods and important services.
@prankster101
That's not the argument dude. This isn't about the gaming industry; this is about whether they're within government guidelines, and if they're coming in to process online orders then they're 100% following said guidelines.
If your takeaway from this story is about CeX's role in the games industry you've got fucked up priorities.
@sprinterboy
"Amazon are only doing medical supplies etc and other essential goods and important services."
You're bullshitting. I just ordered a new sleeve for my laptop off amazon.
Amazon's free shipping is pretty costly nowadays. Even if I ordered several games a month from them, I'd still be paying more for the free shipping. At least there's their streaming service.
I use them often but the day after all this shit started happening and everyone was panicking CEX decided to put the delivery price up which is shady AF
Have you ever used Music Magpie? I buy from them often.
I never use CEX.
Bricks and mortar stores just don't do it for me anymore.
GAME staff face a worrying week as stores stay open amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Could probably also apply to GameStop and CEX.
Well, the uk has not told any stores that they should close yet, so it's business as usual. I think it is the governments responsibility to tell these companies they have to close. Gamestop, GAME etc. are on the verge of collapse, they can't afford to be closing. They need support from the government to pay their employees during a shutdown.
Do this "journalists" not realize that some of these employees depend on a paycheck to pay the bills? No work = no pay which means in some cases people could end up on the streets. There are multiple ways to look at these situations.
This is how I think because I’ve been in those shoes. Others may say that staying open puts that person health at risk. I’ve personally just been cut back to 40hr work weeks form 55+. Losing overtime pay means I am making significant lifestyle changes but I should be able to pay essential bills. These retail workers don’t have that luxury unless their companies are giving them paid time off which I highly doubt GameStop or Game will do.
They wont be happy untill riot police are beating business owners and dragging homeless off to the designated camps.
Not really now considering the announcement from the government about paying employee wages. I'm more worried about our frontline healthcare professionals and those in mandatory jobs that need to stay in work and deal with a lot of people daily.
LOL, how did you guess the Super Metroid used price?
This makes me want to go to this place
I can't read the article. It's been pulled off the site. I really wanted to read that...
Retro gaming is in.
Yeah. They definitely need to lower prices a bit.
Super Metroid should be around $50 used.
TMNT:TF should be around $20 used.
Castlevania: Dracula X should only be $130-$140 used. Even the collectible version doesn't sell for $250.
Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 for Xbox at $169 is the new price and even that is pushing it quite a bit.
Paying 1/3 value is almost criminal for SNES games. My old store paid at least half on all SNES cartridges.
If you're going to open a game store, you HAVE to understand business.
If this store were in any other town, it wouldn't last a year.
I bought mortal kombat for the Genesis for $5 at a thrift store.