Do you think development of future parts will depend on sales figures?

[nazhus]

There has been no information on part 2 or 3 etc, or if they have started working on them.

If sales do not meet their expectations do you think that they may not invest in the future of the game? perhaps this is something they are waiting on.

I hope i am incorrect though as it is looking amazing, but lets say for some reason we only get Midgar and it's a 30+ hour game then i will not be dissapointed because i can still replay original to finish off the story, just happy to have a remake.

Also let's just take a guess and say they make part 2 and it releases in March 2022, that's surely a PS5 title right? will they also release on PS4?

Can't wait for more information in following months.

 

[pxp]

I can’t see it not making an absolute ton load of $$$ considering how well XV did fiscally despite its very well known dev problems.

 

[rimavelle]

Not making another parts would be a PR disaster for them, and that hurts the sales too. I think Part 2 would be on PS4 with "upgraded" version for PS5. Part 3, if there's going to be one, would be tricky. That would be like 4-6 years in new gen. At least there's a chance I will get PS5 in those 6 years.
I can't wait for the Complete edition on 6 blu-rays ; D

 

[ForceStealer]

I'm sure Part 1 will sell like gangbusters no matter what. I worry that it will be diminishing returns if they stretch it out to too many parts. Lots of people who aren't really big fans but might be nostalgic for that game they played as a kid, after seeing Cloud and friends in super high definition and stuff will feel no need to purchase more parts. So If they tried to string this out for 4, 5+ parts, I would absolutely predict a sales drop-off and then them cancelling or rushing the end

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

@ForceStealer
That's me too. Even if sales are good on Part 1, there's possible room for diminishing returns with the next one. I just hope we don't end up with a situation like FFXV's canceled final DLCs that only saw the light of day as a novel.

It seems silly to even be having such a discussion about a FFVII remake, but unfortunately, that's the reality we play in and the reality they develop in. Sales will definitely impact where things go from here, for better or worse.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I'm reasonably certain that the FFVII Remake is going to be completed regardless. The QUALITY of those things is obviously going to fluctuate some based on the income and how much that increases or decreases their available resources, but the whole, "The Promise Has Been Made" statement from the very first teaser trailer made it pretty clear that they've committed to making ALL of FFVII as the massive goal that they're not going to back down on. Given that this isn't like some new film trilogy reboot being promised well in advance of reception, I think that the number of preorders for the game have easily secured the financial confidence to guarantee the entirety of the original game being released.




X

 

[Jairus]

What I keep thinking of is how Peter Jackson made the LOTR movies, all three at once, which at the time was practically unprecedented. So it occurs to me that SE may possibly be making the entire thing as they go and just releasing episodes as they finish them but never actually stopping development and production of the entire project until the whole thing is completed. That would allow shorter time periods between episodes to keep hype at the stratosphere while still being able to work on the next part without stopping. In any case, I'm sure they won't quit after the first episode, that they know that would be PR and corporate suicide to do so. And the remake so far looks excellent so I doubt sales numbers are going to be any concern. FFVIIR will probably utterly destroy all previous game sales records ever made!

 

[FFShinra]

What I keep thinking of is how Peter Jackson made the LOTR movies, all three at once, which at the time was practically unprecedented. So it occurs to me that SE may possibly be making the entire thing as they go and just releasing episodes as they finish them but never actually stopping development and production of the entire project until the whole thing is completed. That would allow shorter time periods between episodes to keep hype at the stratosphere while still being able to work on the next part without stopping. In any case, I'm sure they won't quit after the first episode, that they know that would be PR and corporate suicide to do so. And the remake so far looks excellent so I doubt sales numbers are going to be any concern. FFVIIR will probably utterly destroy all previous game sales records ever made!

That is almost certainly what they are doing. Just looking at the rest of the company docket, they are either focusing on their subsidiaries or on (relatively simple by comparison) remasters. They clearly want to strike lightning twice and make this a magnum opus for the trio of Nomura-Kitase-Nojima.

 

[Syntax Error]

Has it been confirmed all the various different business divisions have pooled together in SE to focus on FF7R pretty much exclusively for the next few years? So say Business Division 1 focusing on Part I, and Business Division 2 focusing on Part II in parallel?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Has it been confirmed all the various different business divisions have pooled together in SE to focus on FF7R pretty much exclusively for the next few years?

That's almost definitely not what they're doing. No way a major video game company that isn't Konami would deliberately choose to withdraw from diversifying their product lineup in this day and age.

 

[Misterbadguy]

Has it been confirmed all the various different business divisions have pooled together in SE to focus on FF7R pretty much exclusively for the next few years? So say Business Division 1 focusing on Part I, and Business Division 2 focusing on Part II in parallel?

I doubt that'll happen; as evident as it is that 7R has a lot of money and resources behind it (for the first game anyway), them putting all their other big ticket IPs, including the rest of the FF franchise itself, on ice for several years doesn't seem sensible.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was also taking actors' time and aging feasibility into account. If you have everyone together, the production gets a lot easier for the later films. You don't get that as much with the games.

With something like FFVIIR, the Midgar section of the game won't help them solve the technical challenges around how they're going to deal with large scale world map traversal, or combat against something like Diamond Weapon as it approaches Midgar, or portraying the defense of Fort Condor, etc. They will have the advantage of being able to use some assets and things for the five characters they've introduced already, but they have to build up four completely new ones: Yuffie, Cid, Cait Sith, & Vincent from the ground up still. Additionally, having all of Midgar done doesn't give them any locations that they can reuse, and it nets them only a small number of enemies that they're able to reuse, within limited scenarios.

That's all work that they'll have a better sense of how much time it'll take to accomplish now, but even if it's a near-continuous project, it still won't produce the kind of efficiency reduction that you'd get in other industries.



X

 

[ForceStealer]

It'll be interesting when or if FF7R development starts overlapping with that of FFXVI.

 

[FFShinra]

I don't think we hear of XVI for a while. Not until its only about a year out from release anyway. They learned their lesson with 13 and 15.

 

[OdaDaimyO]

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was also taking actors' time and aging feasibility into account. If you have everyone together, the production gets a lot easier for the later films. You don't get that as much with the games.

With something like FFVIIR, the Midgar section of the game won't help them solve the technical challenges around how they're going to deal with large scale world map traversal, or combat against something like Diamond Weapon as it approaches Midgar, or portraying the defense of Fort Condor, etc. They will have the advantage of being able to use some assets and things for the five characters they've introduced already, but they have to build up four completely new ones: Yuffie, Cid, Cait Sith, & Vincent from the ground up still. Additionally, having all of Midgar done doesn't give them any locations that they can reuse, and it nets them only a small number of enemies that they're able to reuse, within limited scenarios.

That's all work that they'll have a better sense of how much time it'll take to accomplish now, but even if it's a near-continuous project, it still won't produce the kind of efficiency reduction that you'd get in other industries.



X

When it comes to the Remake, it seems people forgetting all the other trilogies in gaming history... there will be NO differences when it comes to HOW the process, to create a multi-part structured game, will be executed. What makes it a much more outstanding case here, is that it was advertised as such (multi-part) from the START! And this takes alot of... wait for it... BALLS! But maybe that is one of the reasons why people are confused and think, this is all ONE big project, but in reality, it's more than that. And with every part of the Remake, at least development-wise, everthing begins from zero.

 

[Knuxson]

What I keep thinking of is how Peter Jackson made the LOTR movies, all three at once, which at the time was practically unprecedented. So it occurs to me that SE may possibly be making the entire thing as they go and just releasing episodes as they finish them but never actually stopping development and production of the entire project until the whole thing is completed. That would allow shorter time periods between episodes to keep hype at the stratosphere while still being able to work on the next part without stopping. In any case, I'm sure they won't quit after the first episode, that they know that would be PR and corporate suicide to do so. And the remake so far looks excellent so I doubt sales numbers are going to be any concern. FFVIIR will probably utterly destroy all previous game sales records ever made!

I agree that, if they are going to do this right, they need to have the FFVII Remake games in constant development to minimize the time between games, and maximize the overall sense of connectivity between the games (graphics quality, gameplay, etc.). I think two (MAYBE 3) years between each game would be the right amount of time, similar to the time frame between big movie sequels, to keep people interested and to make sure that, once we finally have all the games, it feels like one big game instead of several disparate ones.

I am also very interested to see how they tackle character progression between the games. It would kind of feel cheap to go through Midgar, leveling up and getting new skills and weapons, to, at the start of the next game, be reset to level 1 without all the stuff you acquired. Maybe they could do a Mass Effect style save import to transfer your progress between each game, while giving brand new saves a set level with appropriate equipment and a stock of items. This would obviously be way easier than what Bioware had to do, since they had to also import story choices, whereas FFVII presumably would just import level, stats, and items. Of course, maybe the game will be linear enough (i.e., no branching paths with hidden items, etc.) that this won't matter. As in, two players finishing the first game as the group leaves Midgar basically are the same level with the same equipment.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Would it be feasible to scale the stats and challenge of later installments to whether a player has existing data?

 

[Ite]

Maybe they could do a Mass Effect style save import to transfer your progress between each game, while giving brand new saves a set level with appropriate equipment and a stock of items. This would obviously be way easier than what Bioware had to do, since they had to also import story choices, whereas FFVII presumably would just import level, stats, and items.

Well Mass Effect *only* imported story choices, and remade the gameplay ground-up each game. This would have the opposite problem of having the story be the same, but your power level be drastically different than someone who didn’t, say, grind for 8 hours in every respawning enemy zone

Scaling enemies is tough to do well. FF8 has... mixed reviews, and random overworld encounters in TES start getting ridiculous at higher levels. I don’t mind my grinding paying off by making the next game easier, it means the time I spent in Game 1 was actually spent on an advantage in Game 2.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Perhaps when beginning Part 2 we'll be asked if we have stat data we want to import? So you can choose to do it fresh and difficult or be rewarded for the extra time and effort you put in on Part 1.

 

[Ite]

If it begins with the Nibelheim flashback, it will be a nice equalizer for the first bit. Back to level 5 with you!

 

[Suzaku]

I really don't think they're going to have to worry about low sales figures for this game, barring some sort of catastrophic marketing disaster between now and March.

And with the clear intent to handle FFVIIR as a series of games rather than a single episodic game, it means that future installments will be better positioned to recoup development costs than, say, the DLC episodes released for FFXV.

There's a chance that breaking the game up into multiple full-priced games will turn some people away, but if the first game really delivers on their promises to make each entry an experience worthy of that price tag, I think people will become more open to the idea of paying full price for the sequels. And that's of course assuming that the sequels don't come with some sort of discount for people who own the base game, which is ultimately most likely.

 

[FFShinra]

I'll go one further. I think if this project is successful, they will do a couple of others. By that I mean either 6 or 8 or both. 8 mostly because of how broken its combat is (and its why I think they made the effort to find the code or the license or whatever was holding them back, to gauge interest), and 6 because it is 7's only real contender for greatest in the series.

 

[Kain424]

They could also do a proper damn sequel.

 

[Odysseus]

and 6 because it is 7's only real contender for greatest in the series.

FF9 would like a word

 

[FFShinra]

I agree about 9 personally, but most I ever hear about FF on the internet eventually devolves into 6 vs 7.

That being said, if they were to remake 9, I dunno how they'd go about it. Their art style is so veeeerrry different....