Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth failed to meet sales expectations

Square Enix made it clear during its recent financial results call that it will be revamping its development operations, with a greater emphasis on cross-platform releases in the future. As far as game releases go, this should have been a huge year thanks to Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. However, it appears that most major releases “failed to meet expectations.”

Square Enix and “failing to meet expectations” go hand in hand at this point. This has very little to do with the quality of the games themselves and more to do with Square Enix’s own sales goals. Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and IO Interactive have also struggled to meet Square Enix’s expectations, despite excellent games like HITMAN, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy.

As Bloomberg reported, during Square Enix’s latest call, it confirmed that recent releases like Final Fantasy 16, Foamstars, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth all failed to meet expected sales targets. Sales of more recent Final Fantasy titles have been hampered in part by lack of platform availability. Both games are expected to eventually release on PC, with Final Fantasy 16 expected on PC this year. Once both games become more widely available, sales should reach expected levels.

Foamstars, on the other hand, is a bit strange. Square Enix made the decision to launch it as a PS+ title. This has led to great revenue success in the past for games like Rocket League, but the main difference here is that Foamstars is a PlayStation exclusive, while Rocket League was cross-platform. With Foamstars only being available on PlayStation, most interested players would have gotten it for free through PS+, and any good word of mouth generated wouldn’t have helped increase sales across all platforms.

KitGuru says: Although they may not have met sales expectations, the two most recent Final Fantasy games have been my favorites of the modern era.

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