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Square Enix recently announced that Final Fantasy 16 launch sales reached 3 million copies worldwide. What was supposed to be a celebratory tweet quickly ended up sparking an intense debate about the game’s PS5 exclusivity, with one side insisting that exclusivity has doomed FF16’s sales and the other side pointing out that it’s the fastest-selling PS5 exclusive.
Are Final Fantasy 16 sales really all that bad?
FF16 launched on a single platform, so compared to its predecessor — which hit 5 million copies sold at launch — it understandably posted lower numbers. Add to that the fact that FF16 has landed on an install base of roughly 40 million consoles and has a PC version coming in the future.
Nevertheless, a report by Bloomberg has seemingly spelled doom for FF16 in Japan at least, and its reporter insists that Square Enix is to blame.
The data above shows a similar percentage of second week sales drop-off for the last three Final Fantasy games, and while FF16’s position seems weak, it’s worth noting that these figures do not include digital copies.
That said, even with the lack of digital data considered, it looks like FF16 will fall behind previous entries due to its limited reach.
What we don’t know, however, is how profitable FF16 will be for Square Enix especially since its PS5 exclusivity wouldn’t have come without financial compensation from Sony. Square Enix also revealed that it received marketing and development assistance from Sony, but it’s unclear if that helped cut development costs significantly or not.