What a surprise that a game that had all the makings of a mediocre game, that cost $70 and skipped platforms had lackluster sales. And while we are at that also very surprising that a series of cheap-looking games, released with barely any marketing for anything between $50 and $60 also failed to perform.
PS5 Exclusivity did nothing. Square needs to learn that constantly excluding a user base hurts the growth of an ip. You are exchanging long term gains for short term profits(In this case, no profit). There is a reason companies like Sega, Capcom, and Namco are growing while Square continues to fall. They better hope and pray FF16 is a success but limiting their biggest IP to one platform is not the right move.
As if making this or FF16 multiplatform would make any difference. Xbox gamers don't buy these kinds of games and the ones that do will just say they will wait until it's on gamepass to play it without spending 70$ because xbox gamers don't buy games anymore.
Releasing on Xbox would just probably be posted as a loss. Highly doubt they would make back their cost of porting the game over. Xbox gamers just don't buy these type of games.
When you see 80% sales of titles on Playstation on Final Fantasy, DQ, KH titles vs Xbox its pretty apparent that a new IP with even less recognition would just be posted as a loss. With Gamepass cannibalizing sales of games in general then it's even less likely this would pull any money in for Square.
Ok let's be real, it wasn't the exclusivity at all as it's on Steam too as well. It was the awful marketing and the dialogue of the game that already set the fate of this game.
Adding an Xbox probably wouldnt have made a difference, and if anything, add more losses due to production costs.
Nothing against xbox there, but that wouldnt have made any much of a difference other than more spent to make it, thus greater loss
@Lightning, two of those titles are on Game Pass, get back when we have sales.
ER sold the most on PlayStation, it sold very good on xbox though, and also great on PC.
But thats not even comparable, this game flopped on pc and ps5, what makes people think adding xbox, the platform that is time and time again the platform selling the less, somehow, in this case, going to recoup of SE lost? LOL
@Lightning, two of those titles are on Game Pass, get back when we have sales.
Doesn't matter if it's on gamepass or not. You tell me how much did Wo Long sell? Monster Hunter on PS5 and X?Elden Ring is not on Gamepass and it sold all across the board and that includes the Xbox version also. That's like saying people don't play Skyrim on Xbox because it's open world fantasy just like Forspoken.
Regardless any game will sell well if it lives up to the hype like Elden Ring. Enough reaching and making excuses. Games that don't live up to expectations don't sell well regardless of platform, simple.
"Doesn't matter if it's on gamepass or not." " "Xbox gamers just don't BUY these type of games"
You know know i was responding to your OG comment about here right?, abour sales vs players playing?
"Really? Wo Long, Monster Hunter, Elden Ring? Of freakin course they PLAY these types of games. Or open world fantasy."
Also
"Games that don't live up to expectations don't sell well regardless of platform, simple." So basiclaly what i was saying, only adding to the fact that having a xbox port probably would have made them lose even more since salss are overall bad on the top performing platform??
ER sold good because its a good game and reviews reflected it as well as the hype. It lived it to what players expected.
Forspoken? That game had little hype to begin with, despite the vocal miniority on the internet. Reviews didnt help those considering it.
Again, an Xbox version would have done shit for square enix, other than cost more to make. If they couldnt recoup cost of the ps5 and pc version, what hope would there be for the xbox then?
Im not debating whether or not it wouldnt have flopped overall, because it clearly did.
And before the whole game pass comes up again, let me remind you that even Microsoft admitted that game pass reduces game sales
"You know know i was responding to your OG comment about here right?, abour sales vs players playing?"
My argument stands. Because look at ER even you mentioned ER Vs the original argument that Chev said that Xbox gamers don't buy those types of games it's plain false. As for Wo Long and others. Allot of ppl are playing those games and enjoying. I don't know what the sales look like no one does on any console yet it's too soon. I say why does it matter if a good number of ppl are playing it and most importantly enjoying it? If people are playing these sort of games they'll most likely buy these types of games.
Look at Crossfire. Your typical western style shooter that's not very good at all the game sucks. It was on gamepass and the game still tanked AND the game is being shut down a year later. Gamepass did nothing for that game because It's a horrible game. People don't play bad games. Again that game is your typical "dude bro" Xbox shooter.
With out gamepass Wo Long and Monster Hunter still would of done well. Again because they're GOOD games. Forspoken would of performed poorly on Xbox because the game underperformed critically. So yes I agree. Wouldn't matter if the game was on GP also it still wouldn't of done well.
Ppl know a good game from a bad game nothing's changed. You play good ones and skipped the bad ones.
The game didn't do well because it sucked, not because of exclusivity. It also released on PC you smooth brain.
And yah'll can't tell me that Xbox gamers are like "wow I wish I got a chance to play that. I can move things with my freaking mind!!! my freaking mind!" -_-
I don't think the exclusivity hurt it as much as it not being great, and word of mouth. You really think porting FF16 to xbox and licensing and whatever would be profitable? Time and time again these types of games have failed to sell on Xbox, if it's not on game pass its DOA.
The game was mediocre. Doesn't matter how many platforms you put it on. People pretty much thought everything they saw from it was crap. When they put out the demo, it was the nail in the coffin.
@Chevalier that's not totally true FF XV sold 20% on Xbox, FF XV sold 10 million that mean around two million copies sold on xbox no way that count as a loss as if port cost more than 120 million dollar lmao. what probably happen was Sony moneyhat offer offset the revenue of not porting to Xbox plain simple.
No, your kidding yourself -Mika- if you think Xbox could have saved this game, and there's several reasons for that: -Xbox players generally don't buy this type of game (it could have even been a loss looking at the cost of porting VS the sales it would earn). -It wasn't a good game overall. -Square-Enix probably set their sales expectation too high... again. -Lack of marketing?
The game had the biggest platforms/markets available to it, Steam and PS5, it had a big enough player base to sell to. Xbox would have been a drop in the bucket, there's no one it would have made a big enough difference to salvage it.
@Madlad, Yeah, I called it too, it's fate was pretty obvious, especially after that demo.
Also, Square-Enix probably set stupid sales expectations for some of their games including Forspoken. Personally, looking at that release list, at least half the games in that list wasn't particularly good games, the best games were probably Harvestella, Tactics Ogre: Reborn, Dragon Quest Treasures and Crisis Core Reunion. And I don't expect Harvestella or Tactics Ogre to have overly high sales despite being a decent budget game and a remake of an old game.
Dude look, I know the writing is divisive, but it’s so far from being the worst thing ever in a recent game.
I think the huge faults is more in just how the game is boring. So much busy work in lifeless vast areas. The story itself isn’t as compelling as it wants to be. Combat is fun, spell effects are cool, but after so many hours it’s just… I don’t know, it’s not bad, I just find it extremely boring.
But it’s so annoying to literally hear people say the dialogue is so atrocious when I’m playing amazing games like Fire Emblem Engage that has even worse cringy dialogue and performances and also Wo Long, like play that and tell me it’s not exceptionally horrid with dialogue and yet they’re all excellent games and nobody is having a prolapse over the dialogue.
Forspoken’s dialogue is fine. The overtly cussing can be graining, but have you ever watched the Castlevania Netflix animated show? It does the exact same thing. It’s like, for whatever reason writers think dropping countless f-bombs is hip and edgy. Yea, it’s annoying but it’s not like ZOMG this game/show is absolute trash because of that.
Forspoken, is just a boring game, in my opinion with little compelling content to keep me pushing through. Dialogue was fine, like I said there’s far worse in better games I’ve played and nobody has once given those games the same grief as Forspoken over it.
“ but it’s so far from being the worst thing ever in a recent game.”
Is the game the worst ever? No
Is it the worst writing? No
Was it hyped up to be a huge “hit”? Yes
Did those other games which were worse than this hype their game up, especially as a new AAA IP? Most of them, no
That’s the difference here, it’s generating the hate because Square Enix really thought they had this massive hit on their hands and even when those early criticisms of the barren looking world, writing and average combat came to light they didn’t do anything.
They don’t take criticism on board, they don’t learn from past mistakes and then are disappointed at low sales and bad reviews.
Look at Capcom, we criticised f****** rain in RE4 and they fixed it. We moaned about RE3 being a letdown and they took RE4 off that team and gave it to the main team.
Why is that someone says they have an issue with writing, the response is always "its not the worse thing ever" or "theres worse" as if that somehow makes it better.
@Nitrowolf2 I don't really get that either, it's like saying "You should all buy this $115 game with crappy writing and mediocre gameplay/world and enjoy it".
I find crappy writing is becoming a standard for Square-Enix games lately, at least people stopped pushing the racism angle now that the game is out.
The gameplay was the closest thing to keeping a lot of people curious / interested it was the dialogue that started to turn people away it's the reason i see most people complaining
you need to learn that your subjective distaste for fire emblem dialogue doesn't match with other people
“you need to learn that your subjective distaste for fire emblem dialogue doesn't match with other people.”
Geezus, all this criticism is subjective, Einstein. You need to learn that. Seriously, you’re going to tell me objectively Fire Emblem doesn’t have terrible dialogue and delivery?
My point with all of this was to put light that there’s a number of games with far worse dialogue that gets critical praise and nobody is making a big stink about the dialogue.
The dialogue in this game is NOT bad. What, are you going to quote me the whole, “I do magic!? Yep that’s something I do now,” line?
Is the writing great, no. But we’ve all been playing games with not the most stellar dialogue and nobody jumped down the throat of a game over it like I’ve seen with Forspoken.
Btw, I like Fire Emblem Engage, but I use that as an example because it came out during the same time Forspoken did and not once have I seen it called out over the dialogue, which is absolutely cringe to the max. To the point where Forspoken looks like academy award written and acted dialogue.
Like. does any of this make sense or is the hate boner for Forspoken just difficult to allow for any sort of comparisons?
Did those other games which were worse than this hype their game up, especially as a new AAA IP? Most of them, no”
See, I don’t think that’s fair. There’s definitely hype for a new Fire Emblem and I saw plenty of people hyped about Wo Long.
Forspoken, was a swing and miss from Square. It happens. Also, they did delay the game twice, so for all we know they did take things into account, but they flopped with piling it off in the final release.
You’re always going to have vocal complaining on things. Look at Final Fantasy 16 and how there’s a massive vocal complaint to make the battles turn-based. Devs have to stick to their guns at some point and hope consumers see the vision. There’s quite a bit of people who like Forspoken.
I just think the game is downright boring and incredibly derivative with just making a large open area with a bajillion chests, challenges, puzzles, temples, etc. to check off the box for an open-world game and it lacks anything else to kind of incentivize me to go on.
Yea, I get that whining enough you can get your way with changes, but the dialogue was not anything worth needing to spend tons of money to fix and people overreacted sooooooo hard over it. Speaking of RE4, I find a lot of RE4’s dialogue to be cringey in the original game, but because the game is excellent it’s fine and I get that it’s supposed to not take itself seriously… I think.
I feel like you’re speaking in terms of Square not learning their mistakes from, I guess FF15? Which I think Forspoken is far worse than that. The truth is I think the dev studio just didn’t have a clear vision of what the game should be and had to get a product out the door.
I’m kind of glad they dissolved the studio. Nothing from them has been particularly excellent. FF15 I did enjoy until you realize they rushed it in the last few chapters and the story was told in a way that is beyond atrocious (although the story they had come up with was actually pretty fantastic).
It’s just one of those things where I think the director dropped the ball, I heard story revisions happened a lot, like where there was no Frey in the beginning. Mixture of different ideas and things just didn’t come together and the game feels pretty rushed in some sense. I know they worked on it for 4 years, but look at FF16 to this (both I believe had a 4 year dev cycle).
That’s why I find fault in saying that the issue was due to “hype” vs issues with the other examples. You can’t say people weren’t hyped about those other games and give things a free pass. If we’re going to stone this game then I want unscrupulous criticism to every game that has bad dialogue.
I’m not defending this game. I think it has problems, like even glaring problems, but it’s irked me that there was this tumultuous downpour of hatred over the dialogue, when I scratched my head thinking, “what’s the issue with it?” Yes, there’s cringe swearing, yes there’s some NPCs that have terrible delivery, but my god… the overall sum of all dialogue is not bad, like I’d say it’s fine. I think her trying to be quippy and the bracelet’s sarcasm just made people roll their eyes.
"Let alone the game was pretty heavily criticized from the first trailer being shown."
Was it? Not on N4G from what I recall - I specifically remember (and people can easily go through and find it) when the first gameplay trailer was shown making an artistic comparison to The Witcher 3, a nearly ten year old game and saying aesthetically and mechanically, it looked considerably worse from the evidence we had. Appreciating that they were different games and that TW3 was one of the games of the last generation but a AAA PS5 exclusive should be exceeding that. Lets just say politely that the response to those comments were rather hostile.
Its easy for everyone to be saying it looked average back then with hindsight, but the fact that it was a precious PS5 exclusive meant that the majority of people (in this community anyway) were actually (blindly) full of praise for it. The article I'm talking about above is full of people saying it looks like a 9/10 game, goty contender, etc.
It absolutely was. It's been dragged through the mud for its writing since day 1 of that trailer.
***but the fact that it was a precious PS5 exclusive meant that the majority of people (in this community anyway)***
This is blind spot you have. Most people weren't praising the game.
I was, at best, on the fence, and that demo completely unsold me on it until it's a deep price cut. And the only reason I was even on the fence is because I could ignore the bad lines since I'm used to my nieces and nephews.
Thats about where im at and its not really for whats been said about the game its more its not my usual type of setting for games. Idk how to explain it. Like back in the day id play jrpgs with the type of setting but these days that type of setting is harder for me to get into, meanwhile I can go back to old school games perfectly fine. I have no idea if this will make sense to anyone.
No, thats me too, despite the old graphics and sometimes clunky gameplay/controls, some of those older JRPGs had a certain charm or magic that's hard to replicate these days. Plus with the hardware limitations they had to get really creative, it also helps that the writing for most of those games was at least acceptable enough to enjoy.
The small to mid size games had barely any advertising. Hell I only knew about tatcics ogre reborn due to being in the loop. Alot of gamers arent in a loop
Those mid size games was on multiple systems. Ogre, star ocean, valkrie, etc if they didn't do that well it was just the lack of advertising and lack of interest in them. They put a lot effort into there FF games but the rest of there games dont get that treatment. Apparently Namco is the only one doing fine with new rpgs and quality behide them
Someone gave me their copy from a GPU promotion. I tried it on the steam deck and it ran poorly so uninstalled after 10 mins and haven't gone back. I completely forgot that I own a copy of this game.
As expected? By who? You? Ff16 will sell quite a bit on ps. You can't use forspoken as a marker. Most people didn't have interest in that game from the get go. The demo didn't add anything and may even hurt it. Final fantasy name alone guarantees big sales whether it's good or bad. I believe after the Activision deal happens square will be bought but until it happens sony can't move on that. Just my opinion
FFXV sold 20% on xbox it sold 10 milion LTD which mean 2 million sales on xbox that potential 140 million dollar sales lost. No way SE would decided FF16 to go exclusive without moneyhat to offset potential sales lost unless their board director is incompetent.
Weird FF7 broke sales records and the sequel will most likely as well and you think FF16 will fail why?! Lol. FF games have always done well on Playstation even with Xbox gamers not really buying the games despite asking for them. Forspoken literally has ZERO to do with FF16 sales.
If anything its expected to sell well. It's no different than say any 'bad' COD game affecting the next annual release. Which is to say minimal.
"Weird FF7 broke sales records and the sequel will most likely as well and you think FF16 will fail why?"
That depends on SE expectations which may vary from game to game.
I mean, how many copies SE can realistic expect to sell for a main FF game only available on PS5? I don´t know, but you apparently do know, so; come on, YOU tell me! How many copies? Just give me the numbers!
We all know that's not the case, plus FF sells on brand name alone despite how bad the games get, there isn't many FF games that sell badly, even the side games tend to sell alright from just having the brand name attached. SE as a whole just can't get their crap together, that's all it is.
Waiting for forspoken at the bargain bin. Good news for me. I probably won't ever buy a 70 dollar game at this rate. The games are dropping in price so quick nowadays, oversaturated market it looks like
I have a stupidly large library of games on Steam/Nintendo and PS consoles as it is, I'm in no rush, there's always too many games, I just wishlist the more interesting ones and grab them on sale.
What a surprise that a game that had all the makings of a mediocre game, that cost $70 and skipped platforms had lackluster sales. And while we are at that also very surprising that a series of cheap-looking games, released with barely any marketing for anything between $50 and $60 also failed to perform.
No one could see this coming. /s
Gee what a surprise
You make an average game with sloppy writing and it doesn’t do well
When the game is mid and doesn't performed well I'm not surprised tbh.
I might pick it up on sale for PC at some point, but it would have to be $30 at most.