Was FFVII a bomb?

Umatbru

Umatbru

TLS's Resident Troll
Final Fantasy VII cost US$144 Million to make. It only sold 9.72 Million copies. If anyone here lives in the USA, how much did the game cost to buy at launch? (Hence the clickbaity title).
 
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Ⓐaron

Ⓐaron

Factiō Rēpūblicāna dēlenda est.
AKA
The Man, V
Considering that new video games usually retail for like $50 (which, according to this, was the price - learn to Google, man), they easily made their investment back with plenty of cash to spare. Granted, not all of that goes to profit for the video game publisher, but even if we assume they got like $20 per copy sold, they still made over $50 million on it.

Also, bear in mind that the 9.72 million sales figure is almost 10 years old. Given the number of re-releases the game has gotten in the last ten years, it's bound to be several million more than that by now. Granted, those probably wouldn't make them $20 per copy, but it started out as $16 on Steam iirc and is $12 now so they probably make like $10-13 from each of those sales.
 
Octo

Octo

KULT OF KERMITU
AKA
Octo, Octorawk, Clarky Cat, Kissmammal2000
Probably sold for about $40. IIRC they were around £30 back in the day.

I cannot be arsed doing the maths, but a lot.
 
Wolf_

Wolf_

Pro Adventurer
Yeah if the game wasn't profitable the first time it would be given as one of the list of bullshit reasons of why they aren't remaking it as we speak.
 
Flintlock

Flintlock

Pro Adventurer
Even taking your figures as fact, the game only needed to generate $14.82 in revenue (after tax and retailer's cut) per unit to be profitable, which I'm sure it did. It might not have been a massive financial success for Square(soft), but it introduced a new generation of gamers to the series - it was my first Final Fantasy game, and I know the same goes for a lot of other people here - and undoubtedly led to higher sales for future titles. And that's not to mention all the ports and spin-offs.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
It was £39.99 here, so was FFVIII. FFIX was £49.99, I remember going to get them on launch day. I don't know why FFIX was more expensive, I assume they used some laughable lie like inflation to wheech the price up a whole tenner. I know that every release since has been £39.99 on average. The lowest I've ever paid for a launch day FF was FFXII, and that's because I swapmagic'd my PS2 and burned myself a copy of the north american version 3 months before it released here, so I didn't bother getting the UK version until a few months after it came out. Even then I think I paid £34.99 or something.

Back then the Rip-Off Britain effect was far worse because the internet wasn't huge and consumers weren't savvy to it, so I wouldn't be shocked if it was $39.99 USD in the US while it was the equivalent of ~$65 USD here at the time.
 
Splintered

Splintered

unsavory tart
Final Fantasy VII was both a critical and commercial success, and set several sales records. Within three days of its release in Japan, the game had sold 2.3 million copies.[6] This popularity inspired thousands of retailers in North America to break street dates in September to meet public demand for the title.[91] In the game's debut weekend in North America, it sold 330,000 copies,[92] and had reached sales of 500,000 units in less than three weeks.[93] The momentum established in the game's opening weeks continued for several months; Sony announced the game had sold one million copies in North America by early December,[94] prompting business analyst Edward Williams from Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. to comment, "Sony redefined the role-playing game (RPG) category and expanded the conventional audience with the launch of Final Fantasy VII."[94] As of December 25, 2005, the game had sold over 9.8 million copies worldwide,[95] making it the highest-selling game in the Final Fantasy series.[96] Final Fantasy VII is credited as "the game that sold the PlayStation," as well as allowing role-playing games to find a place in markets outside Japan. As of May 2010, it had sold 10 million copies worldwide,[97] making it the most popular title in the series in terms of units sold.[98][99][100][101]
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I know wikipedia isn't exactly a reliable source, but this is pretty common knowledge. FFVII was and is a cash cow.

but it introduced a new generation of gamers to the series - it was my first Final Fantasy game, and I know the same goes for a lot of other people here - and undoubtedly led to higher sales for future titles. And that's not to mention all the ports and spin-offs.
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Exactly. If nothing else, it was a huge investment that paid off, it was my first final fantasy and I would go on to play most of the titles after it, and retroactively played the older games. It had a strong impact on US gaming culture, and that alone isn't something to shrug off.
 
Umatbru

Umatbru

TLS's Resident Troll
Wolf_ said:
Yeah if the game wasn't profitable the first time it would be given as one of the list of bullshit reasons of why they aren't remaking it as we speak.
Click to expand...

You do know that the main protagonists are terrorists, right? Therefore 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror have made Squaresoft too scared to remake FFVII.
 
Ⓐaron

Ⓐaron

Factiō Rēpūblicāna dēlenda est.
AKA
The Man, V
I'm pretty sure that doesn't make a damn bit of difference in Japan, and if it did they'd be using that as another of the bullshit reasons they aren't remaking it as well. You're quite possibly the only person in the entire world that actually gives a fuck about that, and that's only because you're blatantly grasping at straws for reasons to hate it.
 
Flintlock

Flintlock

Pro Adventurer
Umatbru said:
You do know that the main protagonists are terrorists, right? Therefore 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror have made Squaresoft too scared to remake FFVII.
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Cthulhu

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Star Wars totally wasn't popular after 9/11 anymore either. "Rebels"? Doublespeak for terrorists.
 
Octo

Octo

KULT OF KERMITU
AKA
Octo, Octorawk, Clarky Cat, Kissmammal2000
Yup, nobody did anything to do with terrorism after 9/11. Thats why they had to postpone Collateral Damage for 5 whole months! :monster:
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
I actually think this thread has touched on something quite serious without us all realising it - the perception of someone who hadn't moved beyond childhood when 11/09/2001 happened is going to be entirely different to that of the rest of us. I mean, most of us are older and we remember life before that particularly infamous terrorist attack, but someone slightly younger will have experienced this "war on terror" crap in US media at a crucial stage in their psychological development and some of them might have big problems overcoming it.

FF is Japanese. The terrorist attacks that took place in your country in 2001 have no more bearing on Japanese gaming than my toenail clippings do on your school work.
 
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