Square-Enix has been smiling from ear to ear today, as they announced that Final Fantasy XIII is the fasting selling title in the entire franchise's history. With sales of the game reaching one million in the first five days in North America alone, combined with the huge amount sold in Europe, Final Fantasy XIII has "recorded the largest first-week sales in franchise history."
Of course, this is the first Final Fantasy title released on two platforms simultaneously, as well as the first on this generation of consoles, which has definitely contributed to the amount of copies sold.
With Final Fantasy XIII being a week old outside of Japan, VGChartz is reporting 1.2 million copies sold, bringing the total to just over 3 million copies sold worldwide.
According to the reported figures, there is a split of 61% to 39% in sales in favour of the PlayStation 3 worldwide. We know how the console split went in the UK, so by breaking these figures down in all regions, how do things look?
Final Fantasy has in recent years been a very PlayStation orientated franchise, but when Square Enix announced it would be coming to the Xbox 360, many were curious as to how it would sell.
Well, we have some information, for the UK at least, where Chart-Track have disclosed that the PlayStation 3 version of Final Fantasy XIII contributed 54 percent of total sales. Considering the amount of marketing Microsoft has been doing, with the Xbox 360 bundle, and Xbox 360 exclusive TV ads, some might actually see this is something of a failure. However, they have still managed to take a huge chunk out of Sony's profits, so from that perspective it was still a result.
Final Fantasy has been Square Enix's signature property for some time now, and perhaps at the present time, they need it to be successful more than ever. Final Fantasy XIII itself has been hugely anticipated ever since it was announced all those years ago, and Yoichi Wada has now voiced his expectations for the title. Surprisingly though, they are rather lower than most people would have probably expected as he only expects the title to shift around 6 million units worldwide.
While this may seem like a large figure in itself, it's actually quite the opposite when compared to previous Final Fantasy titles. It's even more surprising given the decision to release the game on the Xbox 360 as well, a move which was done to increase sales. Has the appeal of Final Fantasy really fallen this far?
Continue reading the article to see why these predictions are worrying.
Following February's NPD sales figures, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all put together their respective media spin on their performance throughout the month. As part of this, Microsoft proudly declared that they're out-performing Sony on franchises previously associated with the Playstation brand, and to cap it off they declared that they believe Final Fantasy XIII will sell more comprehensively on the Xbox 360 than the Playstation 3.
Final Fantasy XIII isn't expected to be released in the Western world until after April 2010, over a year away. Microsoft should be commended for how well they've pulled the Xbox 360 up this generation, but their latest claim looks grossly misinformed, as even they surely must be able to see that when it comes to multi-platform titles, the Playstation 3 is in the ascendancy.
When comparing 68 multi-platform titles (nb: titles with split release dates have been excluded) from the beginning of 2007 up until the most recent titles, it shows that the Playstation 3 is very rapidly pulling in the Xbox 360. This is true when looking at purely North American sales figures, and North America combined with European figures.
Much has been made of Dissidia: Final Fantasy. It was in theory every Final Fantasy fan's dream, and it has the potential to even bring in players who might normally be put off by the RPG nature of the series. Given this, it's hardly surprising that Dissidia beat Crisis Core's first week sales figures.
However, not only did it do that, but it's also continued to sell well since its release on the 14th of December. After just 3 weeks, it has already managed to sell 750,000 units, and it looks more than likely to overtake Crisis Core's lifetime Japanese sales of 790,000 next week; just a month after it was released.
It wouldn't be too much to suggest that Dissidia could well break the 1,000,000 units sold in Japan, and with the prospect of North America looming in Q2/Q3 of 2009 and Europe also on the cards at some point, Dissidia's sales could put it close to rivalling Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G, on a worldwide scale.
Everyone had high expectations for Dissidia: Final Fantasy after all the hype its been receiving, and it appears to have delivered. Some thought it might actually break the one-day sales record, but it didn't quite meet that target as it managed to sell 350,000 units.
This amount of units sold matches that of Crisis Core, while it's still some way of short of the 670,000 that Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G managed when it was released. However, Crisis Core went on to sell almost 500,000 units in its opening week, so it'll be interesting to see how Dissidia performs.
It's also been reported that 40,000 of the units were obtained via sales of the Limited Edition PSP-3000 Bundle.
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