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Accuracy of sales question

Posted: 21st April 2012 21:59

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-...ing_video_games

I found this list,and i wanted to know if anyone finds this source trustworthy?

It says FF8 sold very very well,but it says that the last final fantasy to do relatively well,was FFX.

It says that FFXIII barely broke the 3 million mark.


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Posted: 23rd April 2012 15:49

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Well, it seems to have a lot of sources. I suppose it's as trustworthy as any wikipedia article can be, and as trustworthy as sales figures can be in general. Can't say as I'd be interested in doing much more research into it than that.

The thing is, I think you're loading the terms "very well" and "relatively well" with meaning that you can't exactly accurately get from those numbers. Final Fantasy VIII sold more copies than X, which sold more than XIII according to those numbers, that's true. But even XIII is on the list for Playstation 3 there, and the three million sold/shipped that it mentions both doesn't include the half-million or so that went out for Xbox 360 either (for obvious reasons).

Further than that, note that even though Final Fantasy VII is without question the most successful product Square ever launched, even those numbers are hard to compare to a lot of other Square games. Note that the numbers include at least the sales for the alternate release of FFVII International, for instance, and note also that the ten million copies sold took place over a lifespan of a system that had ten games, according to that wiki, sell more than five million. Only two games have done the same for the PS3 - again, according to that source.

In short, it's probably as trustworthy as you might expect, but the numbers mean almost nothing when stripped of all their context. You can't just say that a game that sold a third as much as a previous game in the series didn't do well based on numbers - you'd probably be more or less right in the case of Final Fantasy XIII, but it's hardly definitive proof.

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Posted: 23rd April 2012 16:23

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What i really want to know,is why ff9 sold so badly?

Was a return to the old roots so bad? I mean:I liked it,and the other 4 million 999 thousand did too.

I actually so far like ff9 more than FFX.



This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 23rd April 2012 16:59

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Posted: 23rd April 2012 16:42

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If I were to guess, I would say it was two things: one, that Final Fantasy VIII might have turned some folks off, and two, that Final Fantasy IX came out towards the end of the standard PSX lifecycle. Just like what everyone else might say, though, that would be a guess and based on conjecture more than anything else.

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Posted: 23rd April 2012 17:02

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I hope for square enix's sake,that they somehow find a way into people's hearts,so more buy their games.

I may have hard feelings about FFXIII,but i don't want them to run out of business.



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Posted: 27th April 2012 23:01

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To answer your main question, I think the website is as accurate as anywhere else. I've used it to check sales records before, and it's an article that's kept up well.

As for IX's sales records, I have a few theories. First, I think part of it was natural regression. The series peaked at VII, and in marketing hype is destined to drop. I think the general style of the game had a bit to do with it also. Maybe some newer fans at the time didn't care for the return to a traditional form. Remember, the series was popular before VII, but it was more of a cult series before VII took it to the mainstream.

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Posted: 27th April 2012 23:18

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I think that IX was less successful due to timing. It had good reviews (higher-ranked than FF VII and FF VIII on both metacritic and gamerankings, surprisingly) and is still beloved by fans, so it's probably not due to reasons of quality or lasting popularity.

But keep this in mind: FF IX was released a few months after the PS2 came out and over a year after the Dreamcast came out in certain territories. Hype was already building for Final Fantasy X, which came out about a year after Final Fantasy IX did and had been announced formally prior to Final Fantasy IX's release. So Final Fantasy VII and VIII were only competing with games of their own era for sales, while FF IX was already a game of the prior generation when it landed. And it still managed to sell over 5 million copies. The other 9 games on that list of 10 each had a 1-4 year headstart on FF IX.

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Posted: 28th April 2012 01:24

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I didn't know that the PS2 was released in 2000. Actually, that's a fantastic sales number if you keep that in mind.

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Posted: 29th April 2012 05:39

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Quote (BlitzSage @ 27th April 2012 17:24)
I didn't know that the PS2 was released in 2000. Actually, that's a fantastic sales number if you keep that in mind.

I'm going to throw an olde geezery story at ya:

When I was in college, my math instructor kept talking about the PS2. It seemed really really weird but he was a grandpa whose grandchildren HAD TO GET a PS2 for Christmas. That being said, I feel old now XD

Anyway, back to topic: I didn't really care for FFVIII. I didn't care for it so much I gave up on playing it and never completed even though I had invested over 20hrs in the game. I can't really say that it was THE reason I never played another FF game after it, but it certainly didn't help. Also, having a modern console to play another FF game would help.

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Posted: 29th April 2012 07:44

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What about FFXII? the sales had dropped a lot.

People seemed to like FFX,so was it FFX-2 that brought upon the lack of desire for getting new games for people?

FFX-2 was popular with some,and some say it was the best gameplay of that time.


This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 29th April 2012 07:46

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Posted: 4th May 2012 21:30

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Quote (Magitek_slayer @ 29th April 2012 03:44)
What about FFXII? the sales had dropped a lot.

People seemed to like FFX,so was it FFX-2 that brought upon the lack of desire for getting new games for people?

FFX-2 was popular with some,and some say it was the best gameplay of that time.

Well, that's probably why people have said that JRPGs have declined. Compared to the late 90s and early 00s, JRPGs have declined, but that's because that time was a major spike in their business.

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