Did Ff16 Flop?

I absolutely agree with the logic you shared in general in your post, but wanted to add something on this point specifically.
At launch, FFXIII (which sold way less than that) was considered a "failure" compared to how much it costed and how much SE was aiming for.
The additional projects (the 2 sequels) were greenlighted not because FFXIII was a huge success, but rather because it didn't make enough money so they tried to re-use FFXIII assets as much as possible to make low effort games.
Basically they tried to "invest" a little amount of money trying to make the "FFXIII whole project" generate more money than FFXIII standalone game did on itself.
If this makes any sense to you? This is basically what happened.

The whole point of the thread was to ask if it was a flop, and it was. Really case closed. While overall sales don't necessarily mean a game is good or bad, this game was truly awful. I can honestly say its the worst FF game I have ever played. The worst for me is the only reason this game gets defended is because of Yoshi PP and how fervent his worshipers are. He should not be allowed to touch another game, he thinks XIV is the pinnacle of gaming but it absolutely is not and copying so many aspects of it leads to an obvious fail because deep down the game is garbage and hollow also, but not as bad as this one at least.

Also, while putting on my tin foil hat, I feel like this game had a massive ad push behind its initial popularity that made it seem like it had a lot more sales than it did. There are still comments all across youtube and social media like Instagram of people claiming "this is my favorite FF game! wow what a game!" like these people cannot be real. I hate how companies use fake ad pushes thru comments, its the scummiest thing possible to try and sway gullible masses in my opinion.

At the macro level story doesn't really matter for video games, it's nice to have but rarely impacts overall popularity. What does impact popularity is gameplay, as in this question "Is The Game Fun To Play". This is where most bad studios screw up, they focus so much on story, graphics, some novel idea or mechanic that they don't spend nearly enough time, effort, energy in making the game enjoyable.

People play games as a form of interactive entertainment, if they wanted to just stand there watching CS's the whole time, they would of rather watched a movie, tv show or anime. Previously SE was really good at making enjoyable games that also had good stories, so much so that we ended up forgetting about how much fun the game was to play in the first place. Then FFXIII happened, which has a boring game play loop with shiny cutscenes. And every FF game afterwards was a train wreck as it used the same formula of shiny cutscenes + mediocre game play. FFXIV got saved by a new producer summoning a meteor on the servers and time warping everyone to the point after the game got fixed.

FFXVI flopped and flopped so hard people aren't going to just blindly trust Square Enix to have good gameplay anymore. Thing is, they are completely capable of making a RPG game with good gameplay, see Bravely Default or the Mana series, they just keep getting in their own way.

As the 16th FF it probably is a flop, but nowhere near as damaging as something like The Spirits Within was for the brand.

SE don't primarily make new FF games to make money, they are made to push up the stock price. Positive reaction from the fanbase, proof of staff competency, good review scores, growing the fanbase, company prestige and things like that are why they make them and it pushes up the stock price. This is why they often spend obscene amounts of money on them (ff7 remake is a good example of overspending), far more than it's possible to get back. These games can lose money, and still be a success.

16 was a flop, cause it failed at the primary reason it was made, it was not a masterclass and divided the fans. Also because Yoshida who many at the company thought was going to be a big deal and some kind of new brand developer made a fool of himself.

If the game did well this would have been a massive deal for him, and I imagine he is incredibly salty about it.

You only get one chance at the superbowl, and he blew it.

Oh hey, I see RA still excels at making ***up.

I mean...that's not entirely wrong. For the wrong reason though.

Sony bribed Square to put the biggest name they could get to move playstation 5s more than Square needed to make the game good.

They sacrificed the name for the bribe. They got kind of a free pass to try something new (garbage) it did not go well.

I'd love to know how much Sony paid, and how pissed they were

it seems some eastern devs are slowly fighting back against the disaster of the last few years, but Sony sure isn't. They probably forgot SE even exists while chasing the next live shooter when Marathon runs out of gas.

One hundred and fourty-four seconds. What a *** loser lmao

Yes The Spirits Within has absolutely terrible game play. The worst SE has ever made.



16 flopped because it wasn't fun to play. It looked pretty and had the usual sound track and epic scenery, as a piece of art it's good, but as an interactive medium it sucked.

Any game's, video or otherwise, first and more important job is to provide interactive entertainment. This is true for everything from Go Fish, Spades, Uno to board games and even to video games. Humans spend money to buy entertainment, that is the product that is being purchased when someone gives money for a video game. The measure of success is if lots of people chose to give money to someone in exchange for that entertainment.

He was a staunch defender, I know he loves Yoshi PP. But you have to admit when youre wrong, and you know this was bad.