All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2023 Edition]

[eastmen]

The article literally states FFXIV sold well and income was up.

View attachment 9358

MMO - net sales down YoY
Mobile+Web - weak existing titles and new titles

"Furthermore, the publisher’s net sales are up by 14.4%. It sold 7.54 million games in FY24 Q1, almost twice as many as it shipped in FY23 Q1. HD sales have also seen a massive 140% increase due to Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters."

As for being platform exclusive hurting the bottom line, I thought Sony paid for it? How much did Sony pay for exclusivity? if that didn't cover the lost sales from PC (and XB) why did SE make that deal?

That's inevitable. You don't sell less by increasing your market size! Unless the PS market is only 20% of FF's market and 80% of FF fans are on PC and XB, that alone wouldn't account for this.

But the performance of FFXVI isn't the issue as evident in actually reading the article.

You should re-read what I wrote.

I never said FF16 sales were down. I said putting tittles on only ps5 is hurting its operating income. If they put it on my platforms like pc and certianly pc+xbox they would have sold more copies and would have increased its operating income.

Looks like putting titles on only ps5 is hurting its operating income. Perhaps they should have at least launched on ps5/pc

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Like I said this has already passed xbox one and xbox original in sales.

Yeah, but those were such small numbers that beating them doesn't mean establishing a footprint.

Xbox 360 sold 1.6m so for them passing 1.6m would be pretty good considering the amount of effort they put into the xbox one and the japanese support they purchased vs now.

I agree, more than XB360 is a good target for XBS.

I don't think you read the article right or maybe I didn't

That data is from a different article to the one you posted and I responded to. - https://ovogaming.com/news/xbox-series-xs-sales-pass-original-xbox-sales-in-japan/

The Ovo Gaming article doesn't mention launch aligned growth at all. It only mentions the sales milestone which I slapped on the first graph I could find to try and gauge performance and that looked like it was tracking well below 360.

However, your VGChartz article you are now quoting showing a closing gap is from February, month 28. The latest graph I could find was from May where I roughly extrapolated the latest milestone. Oh, I see I had my extrapolation pretty wrong as it's month, not week...



XBS had caught narrowed the gap from your February article, but then it widened.

So, the article said XBS is performing better than XB360 from that single milestone. Isn't that an erroneous conclusion to make considering lifetime sales of XBS are currently tracking below XB360 sales? This isn't a statement on XB's sales but on that's article's editorial, that it was making odd claims and bizarre comparisons; it's a criticism of the article content for being plain wrong.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You should re-read what I wrote.

I never said FF16 sales were down. I said putting tittles on only ps5 is hurting its operating income. If they put it on my platforms like pc and certianly pc+xbox they would have sold more copies and would have increased its operating income.

But doesn't the Sony exclusivity payout cover that loss of PC sales?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

But doesn't the Sony exclusivity payout cover that loss of PC sales?

Unfortunately it isn't something we'll ever know. It might, it might not.

It may just cover what Sony and/or Square-Enix projects to be lost opportunity sales from launch plus a little extra. IE - those people that would have bought it at launch on PC but maybe won't buy it on PC if it releases later on PC.

One might think, why wouldn't someone that would have bought it at launch also buy it if it launches later? Well, for one, maybe they buy it on PS5 instead, but those don't matter since those aren't lost sales, just shifted sales. OTOH - some people (like me) have a huge backlog of unplayed games. By the time it launches on PC and/or Xbox they may or may not still be interested in the game or they may feel their gaming time is better spent on another game that just released or is in their backlog (IE - the launch hype is now over, so they've moved on).

So for example, I would have bought RDR 2 if it had simultaneously launched on PC. I still want to play it, but I still haven't bought it because there are too many other games that I currently feel are more worth my time.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just trying too find some details on the deal.

Final Fantasy 16 PS5 Exclusivity Explained by Square Enix, Technical Support and More Provided by Sony

Final Fantasy 16's PS5 exclusivity explained by Square Enix, as it involves optimization and promotional support offered by Sony.

mp1st.com

Yoshi-P revealed the story behind FF16’s exclusivity with Sony in an interview with 4Gamer. Here’s the full question-and-answer, machine translated into English:

4Gamer: Regarding the PC version of FFXVI, Mr. Yoshida’s comment during the distribution became a hot topic, but please tell us again.
Yoshida: First of all, FFXVI cannot release other platforms for six months after the PS5 version is released due to a time-limited exclusive agreement with SIE. But I think many of you probably don’t know why we make these contracts.
4Gamer: From the player’s point of view, I think it’s probably because the hardware manufacturer sells its own hardware during the contract period.
Yoshida: Of course, I think there is such a sentiment on the part of hardware manufacturers. However, from our point of view, concluding such a contract with a hardware manufacturer is due to the fact that we receive technical support. This time, we are developing together with a group of SIE engineers who know the basics of hardware, and we have received generous support for optimization that we cannot easily do on our own. In addition, by not developing on the premise of multi-platform, man-hours can be invested in creation and optimization. In addition, we can work together on promotions such as “How much would this be if converted into money?” on a global basis. Technology and promotional support is something you want to receive if you can.

From their perspective the investment from Sony's support offset costs. Therefore, if the deal didn't happen SE would have gotten more sales but at additional cost that they felt would have been a negative in that time-frame. This would have been reflected in higher revenues but no better/worse operating income due to higher costs.

I don't know how true that is. It's SE's reasoning for accepting a 6 month delay in other platform sales and technical support. One wonders on the nature of the technical support and if SE shouldn't really have that in-house?

 

[eastmen]

But doesn't the Sony exclusivity payout cover that loss of PC sales?

It depends on how the deal is structured. If the game eventually is able to come to PC then I don't see why it would cover PC sales loss, there is likely a smaller fee to cover some delay.

 

[RobertR1]

Just trying too find some details on the deal.

Final Fantasy 16 PS5 Exclusivity Explained by Square Enix, Technical Support and More Provided by Sony

Final Fantasy 16's PS5 exclusivity explained by Square Enix, as it involves optimization and promotional support offered by Sony.

mp1st.com

From their perspective the investment from Sony's support offset costs. Therefore, if the deal didn't happen SE would have gotten more sales but at additional cost that they felt would have been a negative in that time-frame. This would have been reflected in higher revenues but no better/worse operating income due to higher costs.

I don't know how true that is. It's SE's reasoning for accepting a 6 month delay in other platform sales and technical support. One wonders on the nature of the technical support and if SE shouldn't really have that in-house?

You're focusing too much on the technical support and forgetting an important element: promotional support. Aka money.

 

[eastmen]

Yeah, but those were such small numbers that beating them doesn't mean establishing a footprint.

The entirety of MS console sales are less than 2.5m. That includes the 450k ish of the series . Which means if we exclude the series consoles ms is 1/4th of the way to total xbox brand sales in japan with just this one console.

I agree, more than XB360 is a good target for XBS.

That data is from a different article to the one you posted and I responded to. - https://ovogaming.com/news/xbox-series-xs-sales-pass-original-xbox-sales-in-japan/

The Ovo Gaming article doesn't mention launch aligned growth at all. It only mentions the sales milestone which I slapped on the first graph I could find to try and gauge performance and that looked like it was tracking well below 360.

However, your VGChartz article you are now quoting showing a closing gap is from February, month 28. The latest graph I could find was from May where I roughly extrapolated the latest milestone. Oh, I see I had my extrapolation pretty wrong as it's month, not week...

View attachment 9360

XBS had caught narrowed the gap from your February article, but then it widened.

So, the article said XBS is performing better than XB360 from that single milestone. Isn't that an erroneous conclusion to make considering lifetime sales of XBS are currently tracking below XB360 sales? This isn't a statement on XB's sales but on that's article's editorial, that it was making odd claims and bizarre comparisons; it's a criticism of the article content for being plain wrong.

I posted this second article to shed more light on sales.

The original article I posted pointed out it beating xbox original sales and of course xbox one sales. They only used life time to date numbers from the previous consoles so I can't conclude from that article if they are right or not. If this information is correct they have already hit 1/3rd of xbox 360 life time sales. Will that be enough to over take it ? Who knows but the brand is recovering from the xbox one days

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They only used life time to date numbers from the previous consoles so I can't conclude from that article if they are right or not.

But they did draw the conclusion, that having sold less consoles in the same amount of time, XBS was doing better than 360. That's just wrong, isn't it? XBS might go on to sell more, but their data-driven conclusion from the data they used makes no sense to call XBS out as doing better than 360, which is all I've said and what you arguing with me on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It depends on how the deal is structured. If the game eventually is able to come to PC then I don't see why it would cover PC sales loss, there is likely a smaller fee to cover some delay.

If? It's been confirmed it's 6 months platform exclusive. Down to SE when they release after that. At which point SE will be making more money offsetting the lower operating income these past two quarters, so they're no worse off. Unless they sell less because launching later loses interest - at which point they should have factored that in with the deal and made up the difference with Sony payments which means their operating income is no worse than if they had rejected the deal and sold multiplatform on release.

The only way SE can be down on OP is if they made a really dumb deal.

Edit: Or putting it another way, it's claimed Sony pays for deals for exclusive content. If these deals were disadvantageous to the publishers, they wouldn't make them. Ergo, either there's no way OP is down because of exclusivity deals, or these exclusive deals don't involve the exchange of significant amounts of money as suggested and are done for other reasons, the publisher choosing lower income over gains elsewhere.

 

[eastmen]

If? It's been confirmed it's 6 months platform exclusive. Down to SE when they release after that. At which point SE will be making more money offsetting the lower operating income these past two quarters, so they're no worse off. Unless they sell less because launching later loses interest - at which point they should have factored that in with the deal and made up the difference with Sony payments which means their operating income is no worse than if they had rejected the deal and sold multiplatform on release.

The only way SE can be down on OP is if they made a really dumb deal.

Edit: Or putting it another way, it's claimed Sony pays for deals for exclusive content. If these deals were disadvantageous to the publishers, they wouldn't make them. Ergo, either there's no way OP is down because of exclusivity deals, or these exclusive deals don't involve the exchange of significant amounts of money as suggested and are done for other reasons, the publisher choosing lower income over gains elsewhere.

There can be a multitude of different reasons for a company to choose a deal. SE has claimed technical help. Would that technical help be enough to offset costs ? The other issue is that no one knows how well a game will sell until its released. So even if the deal sounds good on paper , in practice it could be a disaster.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There can be a multitude of different reasons for a company to choose a deal. SE has claimed technical help. Would that technical help be enough to offset costs ? The other issue is that no one knows how well a game will sell until its released. So even if the deal sounds good on paper , in practice it could be a disaster.

You believe SE made a really bad deal then?

 

[eastmen]

You believe SE made a really bad deal then?

We will have to see how the sales shake out then but I believe any timed exclusivity will only end up hurting sales on other platforms. I might have tried FF16 if it launched on pc(or xbox) when it launched on ps5. But now there is no time frame for it to come to any other console so I have zero hype for it and will likely never pick it up. It's the same with BG3. I might have picked it up if it launched on the xbox at the same time as the ps5/pc but it didn't and so now I will either wait for it to be on game pass or when its a $5 on pc.

I am sure there are many more like me who when these games eventually land on other platforms there are new games that have a bunch of hype around that them will divert attention away.

Look at ratchet and clank. Delaying the game 2 years on pc hasn't done it any favors in terms of concurrent steam gamers. Same with that online ff . If it came out to xbox when it originally came out maybe I would have tried it but it didn't and MMOs esp but most live service games are extremely difficult to get into once they are out for a few years.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm trying to understand the working model your presenting here and failing. You've mentioned two points across this forum that seem directly opposed:

• On the one hand, Sony makes exclusive deals that MS can't afford because the compensation Sony needs to pay for lost sales would be far lower than what MS has to pay.
• On the other hand, pubs making deals are making less money as a result.

So why do they make these deals?? The two ideas seem mutually exclusive to me. If pubs get payouts for exclusivity, they shouldn't be getting lower OP for lack of sales*. Or, if they are getting lower OP from lack of sales, they can't be being compensated. Or, they keep accepting bad deals and losing money??

How do you personally relate the payouts for exclusives with the lower operating profits? What do you think is happening in this industry and what do you think the future will be regards timed exclusives? AFAICS the argument here is pubs will keep making bad deals and losing money instead of giving up on timed exclusives.

* That'll go for technical support and advertising, as that'll reduce expenses to balance lost sales.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Final Fantasy 16 sales did not meet high expectations, says Square Enix president​

Final Fantasy 16 sales did not meet high expectations, says Square Enix president

Sales of Final Fantasy 16 did not meet Square Enix's high expectations, said president Takashi Kiryu.

www.eurogamer.net

Conflicting messages from SE. Two weeks ago they called sales extremely strong.

"With 38m PS5 consoles shipped globally (as of March 31, 2023), sales of Final Fantasy 16 surpassed 3m units worldwide several days after its release on June 22, 2023," said Square Enix.

"Taking into consideration the sales figures of the acclaimed Final Fantasy 7 Remake and the difference in size of the install base of the PlayStation 4 at the time of this title's release, we can see that the attach rate of Final Fantasy 16 is considerably high, given the PS5 install base.

​

Actual report is behind paywall so only have EG's take.

Comparing to FF15 which launched on PS4 and XBO, XBO accounted for 1/5th of sales. That'd be an extra 600,000 on FF16's. FF16 sold to a higher proportion of PS owners than previous FF iterations with a 10% attach ratio. I wonder what their expectations were and why? Checking the comments on EG, it suggests there aren't any quoted expectations, so I'm not sure how valid the Bloomberg article is. Could be the expectations of investors and analysts rather than SE.

Square Enix share price drops amid claims Final Fantasy 16 didn’t meet ‘high end’ expectations | VGC

The publisher's share price dropped nearly 15% following its latest earnings report…

www.videogameschronicle.com

The publication (Bloomberg) cites three separate sources who attended Square Enix’s post-earnings call, all of whom claimed president Takashi Kiryu said the game’s initial sales, in Bloomberg’s words, “did not meet the high end of the company’s expectations”.

Kiryu also reportedly said that “slow adoption of the PS5” was also a limiting factor in Final Fantasy 16’s sales, and that the end of hardware shortages should open up opportunities to boost software sales.

 

[eastmen]

I'm trying to understand the working model your presenting here and failing. You've mentioned two points across this forum that seem directly opposed:

• On the one hand, Sony makes exclusive deals that MS can't afford because the compensation Sony needs to pay for lost sales would be far lower than what MS has to pay.
• On the other hand, pubs making deals are making less money as a result.

So why do they make these deals?? The two ideas seem mutually exclusive to me. If pubs get payouts for exclusivity, they shouldn't be getting lower OP for lack of sales*. Or, if they are getting lower OP from lack of sales, they can't be being compensated. Or, they keep accepting bad deals and losing money??

How do you personally relate the payouts for exclusives with the lower operating profits? What do you think is happening in this industry and what do you think the future will be regards timed exclusives? AFAICS the argument here is pubs will keep making bad deals and losing money instead of giving up on timed exclusives.

* That'll go for technical support and advertising, as that'll reduce expenses to balance lost sales.

The problem you have is that you approach things as if both things need to be true at all times.


With Sony 3rd party exclusives.

There are 40m or so ps5's to about 22m xbox series. So if MS wants to get square to make ff17 as exclusive or even timed they need to make up for that missing 40m consoles. If sony wants ff17 to be exclusive they only have to make up for 20m consoles in the deal.

Here is the important thing Shifty. Both companies making the deal would have to settle on what they believe a title would sell across the other install base vs the install base they are going exclusive on. So if the companies agree that game would be forecasted to sell I dunno 5m copies on xbox series then that would be the magic number for a game to be exclusive or timed. The issue comes when a game doesn't meet its expectations on a single platform.

You can see in your following post that the last ff only sold 1/5th on the xbox one. But that wouldn't account for any growth of the franchise on xbox. Square expected better sales and now have only hurt their brand on the xbox.

There are a lot of people who felt burned that Square continues to skip xbox and are less likely to go and buy the next final fantasy release on xbox. Perhaps next time they only sell 1/10th of what they do on playstation. That would effectively kill the brand on the xbox platform and in the long run Sony wouldn't have to worry about purchasing exclusivity because no one will buy it on xbox.

 

[see colon]

There are a lot of people who felt burned that Square continues to skip xbox and are less likely to go and buy the next final fantasy release on xbox. Perhaps next time they only sell 1/10th of what they do on playstation. That would effectively kill the brand on the xbox platform and in the long run Sony wouldn't have to worry about purchasing exclusivity because no one will buy it on xbox.

I honestly think that this phenomenon is partly responsible for Titanfall 2's lackluster retail performance. Titanfall 1 was an Xbox exclusive at exactly the wrong time. All of the marketing made it seam like an Xbox One exclusive (kneecapping the 360 release), during a poor transition for Microsoft. By the time Titanfall 2 came out, PS4 was far and away the market leader, and the oft cited release schedule (Titanfall 2 came out between Battlefield and Call of Duty) could be survived by a title with better brand loyalty, but that had already been squandered by the first game's exclusivity. There's a reason why Apex Legends isn't Titanfall Legends.

 

[eastmen]

I honestly think that this phenomenon is partly responsible for Titanfall 2's lackluster retail performance. Titanfall 1 was an Xbox exclusive at exactly the wrong time. All of the marketing made it seam like an Xbox One exclusive (kneecapping the 360 release), during a poor transition for Microsoft. By the time Titanfall 2 came out, PS4 was far and away the market leader, and the oft cited release schedule (Titanfall 2 came out between Battlefield and Call of Duty) could be survived by a title with better brand loyalty, but that had already been squandered by the first game's exclusivity. There's a reason why Apex Legends isn't Titanfall Legends.

Yup , in life every choice has positives and negatives and something can look positive from all angles until it fully plays out.

So Square may be gaining short term money from Sony but is killing their brand with pc and xbox gamers. Not sure if over the long run that is the wisest choice. I think BG3 is going to be effect buy this also. I don't think sales on the xbox when it finally launches will be very strong.

 

[eastmen]

Sony to Stop Disclosing PlayStation Plus Subscriber Numbers, Focusing Instead on Improving the Service

Sony will no longer reveal PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers. Instead, they want to focus on improving the service.

appuals.com

Sony said they have decided to stop disclosing PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers at their financial results briefings. They said they are looking at ways to continue making PS+ grow and be more attractive. They want to expand the PS+ business and promote the shift to Extra and Premium tiers by increasing the appeal of the service.

and

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

and



I wonder what games are getting delayed ? Will wolverine hit next year or will it be delayed out till 2025 ? I wonder what else they have in the pipeline since I haven't heard anything after spider-man 2.

 

[chris1515]

Sony to Stop Disclosing PlayStation Plus Subscriber Numbers, Focusing Instead on Improving the Service

Sony will no longer reveal PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers. Instead, they want to focus on improving the service.

appuals.com

and

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

and

View attachment 9394

I wonder what games are getting delayed ? Will wolverine hit next year or will it be delayed out till 2025 ? I wonder what else they have in the pipeline since I haven't heard anything after spider-man 2.

At least the Last of us Factions. It doesn't mean games are delayed in 2024 but no game will release after Spiderman 2 and 31rst March 2023.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1689672163085697024

Some sales new from UK