They say that the devil works hard, but Square Enix’s marketing team, specifically for Final Fantasy 16, works a lot harder. A month after we saw a barrage of marketing campaigns from Square Enix as it tried to keep atop mainstream consciousness against other industry giants like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in May and Diablo 4 just a few weeks before it came out, Square Enix can finally rest on Odin’s laurels and celebrate a hard-earned victory.
- Final Fantasy 16 sold three million copies in its first six days.
- The game, a PS5 exclusive, succeeded despite other major releases.
- Square Enix’s marketing kept FF16 trending at launch.
- Despite review-bombing, FF16 showed resilience and success.
- FF16’s success could shape future Final Fantasy titles.
According to Square Enix, Final Fantasy 16 has sold a combined total of three million copies (both physical and digital) in six days since its launch on June 22.
Publicly, Tears of the Kingdom is still this year’s hottest item, with 10 million copies globally flying off the shelves in three days, gliding well past the Resident Evil 4 remake (3 million copies in two days) and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (unknown, but it topped sales charts in April despite coming out on the 28th), and is neck-and-neck with Hogwarts Legacy (12 million copies in two weeks).
We’re delighted to announce we’ve shipped and digitally sold 3 million copies of Final Fantasy XVI on PlayStation 5. Thank you for your support! #FF16 pic.twitter.com/8YGfo1RXyV
— FINAL FANTASY XVI (@finalfantasyxvi) June 28, 2023
Keep in mind though that Final Fantasy 16 is an exclusive title and a supposedly divisive one at that, coming out after an even more polarizing installment in Final Fantasy XV, which, by the way, is the franchise’s fastest-selling game with 5 million copies falling on the audience’s lap on its first day of available.
Again, context: Final Fantasy 16 is exclusive to the PS5, which only recently came out of a years-long stock shortage, and is effectively sandwiched between the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and the upcoming game, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Not to mention, Square Enix’s most recent AAA outings that didn’t have a spiky-haired dude who thinks he’s another person is not at the lead, specifically, Final Fantasy Origins: Strangers of Paradise and Forspoken, both sold relatively poorly.
TLDR; no one would’ve been surprised if Square Enix expressed disappointment in the supposed-to-be low sales figure of Final Fantasy 16.
However, what ended up happening is Square Enix is enjoying one of its best launches ever. Final Fantasy 16 is technically selling just as well if not better than Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which had a larger fanbase for the PlayStation 4 (the eighth-generation console had already sold well over 100 million units at the time).
It’s safe to say that the pre-launch talks of Final Fantasy 16 struggling to get pre-orders ahead of the release of its well-received demo and even better-welcomed launch, were all playground talk.
Much like how Clive Rosfield, the game’s protagonist, defied destiny and the odds, Final Fantasy 16 is showing admirable resilience, all things considered.
Final Fantasy 16 was recently review-bombed by unhappy fans who felt like it deviated too much from the stereotypical Final Fantasy formula (and we aren’t just talking about the series being turn-based strategy games, because we’re well past that) and its dark, mature, medieval aesthetic is definitely not what most people would associate Final Fantasy with.
Again, as we’ve previously mentioned, Final Fantasy 16 is sandwiched by Square Enix’s golden goose, with all of the hype surrounding Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters taking away some of the limelight from the game.
To make matters worse, Square Enix started heavily promoting Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth just as FF16 was about to come out; it’s either Square Enix was very confident in the product that they had (which is possible), or it had already accepted that FF16 wouldn’t meet expectations, at least, in terms of sales.
There’s an argument to be made for FF16 to sell even better than it did if Square Enix spaced everything at least a year apart if only to guarantee that there’s enough hype for each upcoming Final Fantasy game, to go around.
But, at the end of the day, it is what it is, and this constant bombardment of Final Fantasy appears to have done the series well.
Thus, it doesn’t come as a surprise that we’re hearing talks of remasters and remakes of Final Fantasy 9 and Final Fantasy X as well as Final Fantasy Tactics with some within the company wanting to see Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI either remade or remastered for modern consoles as well.
We can’t say for sure what’s next for FF16 or the franchise, in general, because, the last we heard, a post-launch expansion isn’t a priority, but we can probably expect to see more of Square Enix’s flagship franchise in the next few years, perhaps much more so than ever.
Fingers crossed, future installments won’t cause the PS5 to overheat.
