Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth may be in the mix for GOTY come the end of 2024, given its stellar reviews and all-around positive praise, but according to industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, citing equities research reports and data trackers, it’s “underperforming” in terms of sales. Here’s what he said:
“Not to be that guy, but Rebirth is underperforming sales-wise…It’s selling about half of what Remake sold in the same timeframe and looks like it’ll have a weaker tail (prior to any PS+-like release).”
There are a few factors that may be playing into this, one being that Final Fantasy 7 Remake was released during the start of the pandemic in spring 2020 when gaming sales and playtime were surging.
The other being the nature of Rebirth more generally, as it’s not just a new numbered sequel in a series, it’s the second part directly connected to the first, which may be harder to onboard, like how you will often see second seasons of TV show have declining viewership unless there’s been some crazy viral word of mouth spread.
Both games reviewed well, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake has an 87 on Metacritic and an 8.1 user score. But Rebirth reviewed even better, a 92 “must-play” from critics and a 9.0 from fans. Again, there are a few factors working against it that may be different than other releases. I do think the main one is that you can’t really just hear that this game is reviewing well and dip in to start playing it without playing the very long Remake first, which I think is heavily working against it (well, you can, but it would be a lesser experience). And there will be a third game too, and if it’s this size and these downward trends continue, that would not be great.
There’s also been a long running debate about whether Square Enix was smart to exclusively partner with PlayStation. Rebirth has quite literally only released on PS5, certainly a boon to PlayStation, but a severe limit for sales. Remake is available on PS5, PS4 and PC right now. The PS5 may be selling well, but that’s a pretty hard cap based on the total number of units, and it will likely expand to try and push more sales.
Final Fantasy continues to be one of the most iconic IPs in gaming, but Square Enix seems to be struggling a bit with perhaps not the quality of the series, but its reach. We had this debate about Final Fantasy 16 in 2023 where it too was said to be “underperforming,” but whether that was actually true or not was never quite made clear. Here, we have a direct comparison point between Remake and Rebirth, so it’s a different situation. We do know for sure that Rebirth undersold Remake at launch, so it stands to reason that has continued post-release. We’ll wait to hear if Square Enix will further elaborate on sales in the near future, likely in an earnings brief.
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