Topic: World of Final Fantasy

@Mrtoad
I noticed when saving videos it would hang for some reason- anything you try to do in the OS while the game is suspended is sluggish. I had to use a trick where I put the system in sleep mode and then woke it up from sleep mode for the video to finish saving.

I was not aware of performance not switching between once started, which may explain why I initially thought it looked better in TV mode while @NEStalgia thought it looked better in handheld mode.

I suppose it would be best to simply start it in TV mode so that your handheld performance also looks good, rather than vice versa where it doesn't scale back up when you dock it.

I get the impression this port was down in the lower budget and time frame constraints. Just little niggles like that. I'm pretty sure they'll patch it though. Can't imagine they would allow video saving hanging to persist.

Well, the original FFVII is re-releasing on Switch next year as well, so...

So true.

As for FF VII, Square Enix cancelled the remake that the hired studio was making (what was its name?) and now they just said that they have been busy with Kingdom Hearts III until now so that means that they have started working on the remake again just now... My guess is that they'll need ten years to make it so perhaps by 2028...? LOL

I'm quite excited about Kingdom Hearts III and the Final Fantasy releases next year but I didn't enjoy the World of Final Fantasy demo, specifically the gameplay. The demo is short so I'm not sure though.

@jaxonh

This game is the WiiU of software. It's a good game with some slightly wonky concepts and foundations, but with the right sales pitch could easily have captured hearts. Square, simply, for whatever reason, never, ever believed in this game. Ever. They never tried to convince people to want it. They just assumed nobody did and ran with it. They were on stage for Sony Year of Dreams, announced it...but it was a weird end of show "by the way something for Vita announcment" But people were still interested. I remember people I played Splatoon with at the time following the game. I was following it too. But with zero hype even I lost interest and forgot about it. Around when it should come out, Square just turned on the Tomb Raider/ FFXV hype machine and ignored that this existed. Even I didn't notice it launched....I was over it by then and other things were coming out. Square blew it becuse they treated it as a budget spinoff they didn't want to make. Good product, bad messaging, bad timing, bad presentation.

Most people, I think forgot about this game in Sony land forever after that. I snagged it on a good sale at one point right before they announced it for Switch. I'd stopped caring all that time later until I saw the sale and impulse bought.

Flash forward, and the relaunch is just...missing. No hype, no advertising, no physical, apparently no review copies of a digital game since nobody is reviewing it. Yeah, you're right there's no interest, but it's kind of like the lack of interest in WiiU. There SHOULD be interest but if the manufacturer can't be bothered to pretend you should be interested....not many people will be interested. Especially if the Mfr is telling you non stop to be interested for a half dozen other things instead, including things not releasing for a year.

Did you watch Inside XBox for XO18 with Square on stage for KH3? They announced the FFXIII trilogy BC on Tuesday (no idea if you can digital purchase base game, as of now you cant, but the sequels you can.) While up there they also made sure to remind everyone about the full list of FFs coming to XBox in 2019. And then had a quick "yeah by the way World of Final Fantasy just released too"...... Even at a live stage show they seemed to barely care about their new launch on XBox...... Their messaging tells me "don't actually be interested for this.....instead be interested for 7, 9, 10, 10-2, 12, and 13, 13-2, 13-LR. But also there's this thing.....

It's just weird.

@NEStalgia
Fair enough.

Btw someone was telling me they were gonna announce Civ 6 for Xbox at that presentation (Grumble maybe?). I knew that wasn't gonna happen.

But ya I saw the FFXIII trilogy is BC now. Good. Because I bought those games several years ago in anticipation of them being added to the list and it never happened. To this day those games are sitting on my shelf so thankfully, I can now install them (I quit caring once I got them running on my GPD Win 2 on STEAM).

Still though, regardless of Square Enix's irresponsible treatment of this game, even despite all the things you've said with no physical release and no marketing, etc etc, there should still be at least a minimum level of hype just due to the fact it's Final Fantasy, and one of the games making it over that were previously exclusive to Sony. That alone should garner it least a bare minimum level of interest irrespective of what anyone does or doesn't do. Just on the name alone.

It concerns me. Especially when Final Fantasy X/X-2 and XII are sitting at #1,000+ in the Amazon preorder charts. And look, I know those games don't have a release date and all, but some pretty trashy games without release dates are still charting several hundred spots higher. That's not good. You combine it with the recent lack of interest in games such as Civ 6, World of Final Fantasy and even South Park Stick of Truth and Valkyria Chronicles... it seems like the further we get into this generation the less interested the fanbase becomes.

And it is absolutely imperative these FF games do well, we might not see the next mainline Final Fantasy come to a Nintendo system for another 20 years.

@AlternateButtons
I kinda thought the same thing when I first saw the game back on Vita, but truthfully, once I started playing, not only did it stop bothering me but I actually grew to kind of like it. And I know that doesn't make sense to you because right now you just can't see that. Right now you're seeing what I saw when I first saw the game. And nothing is going to change that looking in from the outside.

All I can tell you is, once I started playing the game, the art style really grew on me to the point I started questioning how I hated it so much initially. What's weird though, is I could still totally understand why I didn't like it at first, I still remembered how I felt when I first saw it (as I do now), but that feeling I had toward it... just left

Game caught my eye from a visual perspective, so I'm not disinterested, but it seems logical for someone like me to wait for the inevitable price cut on this. It's not like I have any attachment to the series.

Did someone mention Tomb Raider? Given the latest game's lacklustre sales performance, the series will probably have a rest - perfect time for a Switch port...

But that Chibi proportion was so CUTE !

@JaxonH Well, to be fair, grumble's been making a ton of completely off the rails predictions that fall flat lately Though Civ6 was believable with mouse + keyboard. The actual list of support for that is pretty dismal as it turns out.

Also FFXIII went live for digital purchase on MS Store today, so I can finally have the whole trilogy digitally. PS3 can finally be abandoned. It's sad that simple BC support of an ancient FF is more well received than WoFF though.

In terms of hype though, even Nintendo specific hype, this is a game that never had hype on Sony either. It's not a platform thing it's this game. Maybe there really is no market for the game. Maybe the art style is too the-saccharine that nobody cares to look at what it plays like and turns everyone the-off instantly. At least Tama actually is the-adorable versus the HORRID HORRID ANNOYING moogle voice in Dissidia NT, kupo!!!! Seriously who approved, that kupo!!!? Remember to block kupo!! Remember to block kupo!! Did you make sure to block kupo!! I loved moogles until Dissidia NT. Where's my Doomguy shotgun?

The lack of hype isn't platform specific, so it's either that the game just has no market appeal (since when does FF fan service not have appeal?) or Square's dismal marketing screwed it from the start. The fact that nobody even reviews it has more to do with square not putting it in front of the media....really at all. They have pushed almost nothing in the PR feeds. No PR, press doesn't pick it up. Press doesn't pick it up, no interest.

And with no retail, no impulse buys on Switch. On other platforms, I'm betting this goes on GwG/PS+/GamePass by June.

I can't explain the low interest in mainline FF though. Civ6 was never going beyond niche. It's not even above niche on PC, and that's by far less niche than on console. (MS announced CivRev on Gamepass.....nobody cared.) That's just what Civ is. I can get that VC4 is niche too...it's veeeery Japanese type gaming, and has flailed around forever (PS1 exclusive that became PSP exclusive......then that best forgotten multiplat game. It's always struggled to find an audience.) Even in Japan it's been kind of hit or miss. Not sure why, it's solid, but it never really hit it big. Those two I can understand, as it's not a Nintendo problem, these are games that were never going to be big sellers.

South Park didn't do as well as I thought though. "Late port syndrome" is a serious problem. I know you often defend the $60 game when it's new to a given platform, but sales are showing it's not that easy. If you figure for the typical 3rd party game most sales are made in the first 3 weeks, that means the majority of people interested already played it. After that, the majority of bargain hunters already bought it on deeply discounted digital sales (or retail sales/used.) Once something comes to Switch months later, given a lot of the type of gamer interested in those multiplat games is likely a multiplatform gamer, who already decided they're interested in that game or not, and already bought it if they were very interested, or are considering getting it much cheaper elsewhere if they hadn't.....the leftover market isn't very big. Those with interest of a game like South Park on Swtich is effectively limited to "people who own no other consoles but like the kinds of games that are on other consoles, haven't already bought the game, and would rather pay full price long after launch than just buy it at 60% off elsewhere, and people who adore the game and want it handheld. How big a cross-section is that, realistically? ) The other harm is Nintendo's famous closed mouth where they reserve all announcements to make their own games have ideal showings. Maybe if South Park were announced before launch, some people would have said "nah, I'll wait and get it on Switch" as has happened with DQXI, but instead nobody knows it's coming so they buy. Trouble is that doesn't help Ubisoft anyway. If the same people would buy on either platform, why support the second?

FF, however...I don't get it. 1000+ on Amazon for 12 and 10? Switch is a desirable platform for that, and the audience is an FF audience. Sure they're old games, everybody played them already.....but there's hype on XBox and not Switch (unlike WoFF that has hype nowhere.) Maybe people want it digitally. Maybe people aren't buying at Amazon anymore after the discounts ended (I'm not!) But what are the 1000 things ahead of FF 12? Maybe it's because there's no date. Is it just PS loyalism? FF fatigue in general? Boycotts waiting for 8 and 7-R? That makes no sense to me.

Actually look at the numbers for Zodiac age in amazon ranking:
FFXII: Zodiac
PS4: #790
Switch: #1473
XBox One: #3528 (!!)
PC: 41215 (irrelevant since Amazon is not the popular store)

FFX/X-2 HD:
PS4: #699
Switch: #987
XBox One: #5820 (!!!!)
PC: N/A

FFXV Royal:
PS4: #381
Switch: N/A
XBox One: #1169
PC: 25615 (irrelevant since Amazon is not the popular store)

Taken in that context that shapes the picture a lot more. The issue here might be a mix of overall FF fatigue, plus Sony loyalism/brand association. FF=Playstation, Playstation=FF, or at least the FF base are all PS fans.

The games aren't hyper popular on any platform right now, but the fact that they're the most popular on the platform they've been out for years on is telling. In both cases PS4 is the highest on the list. But I wouldn't worry about Nintendo. Switch has considerable interest, not too far behind PS itself for X, and trailing reasonably behind on XII. The more interesting part is just how bad interest on X1 is. Of course it could just reflect that X1 buyers are more likely to buy digital like PC.

Either way, we're not looking at a Nintendo problem with FF. We're looking at signs that either the whole FF franchise has lost its mojo everywhere, or at least, FF really doesn't matter much outside Playstation which would be truly a shame...maybe it was happiest as an exclusive after all. Or maybe Square-Enix couldn't sell water in a desert.

Either way these numbers make their decision to skip physical WoFF on Switch but do physical on X1 that much more perplexing.

@NEStalgia
No hype on Sony is understandable. It's not a big deal on Sony because FF has been on those systems forever.

It is a big deal, however, on Nintendo, specifically because it hasn't been on Nintendo for 2 decades aside from old handheld remakes and occasional spinoffs. This was one of the exclusive games coming over, and for that reason, there should be hype on Nintendo regardless of whether there was on Sony. Not being hyped on Sony is irrelevant because it's a completely different set of circumstances.

The thing to note about FFX and FFXII is, its charting higher despite already being out for years. That definitely shouldn't be the case stacked up against a new version.

@JaxonH But that's just the point. It's old hat and has been out forever on Sony. And it's STILL far more popular there.

BUT it's also far more popular on Switch than XBox.... (by a far greater volume then the amount which PS is more popular than Switch) while Square still prioritizes XBox.

But again that still builds the conclusion that whether due to brand association or what, the FF fanbase is simply on Playstation, period. On one hand it says Square may have been right to keep it exclusive. The other hand says it's a bleed effect of keeping it exclusive for so long, that everybody just migrated to accommodate it. I don't expect XBox to suddenly be a haven for FF. The majority market is so different there, and nobody that likes Japanese games goes to XBox exclusively. But Nintendo..... maybe it will just take time. Octopath did well for a reason. Dragon Quest did very well on 3DS. It seems mostly that FF just remains locked to Sony in the public mindset. Maybe that's fair. Anyone who loved FF in the past 20 years had to buy a Playstation and thus already played on Playstation. Even people that hate Playstation had to buy a Playstation if they love FF (until 13 and 15.)

The question here is simply is there enough additional fanbase to sustain it outside PS. Switch and XBox don't need to replace PS as the lead, they just need to be markets for growth.

I, too expected FF on Switch to be wildly popular. But I guess Sony got their money's worth out of it by locking that whole audience into a PS mindset. Paystation Stockhom Syndrome.

@NEStalgia
FF XIII on MS Store (Xbox 1 eshop) ???
Haaa....
If only FF XIII also on Switch standalone, not combined in Trilogy, i might to check it out.
Well, as long not digital download only.

Oh, People keep saying FF = PS.
For me, when FF also on Nintendo, i don't see any PS image at all.
Sony CAN'T hypnotizing me with their Paystation Stockholm Syndrome. Just only PS1 & PS2 i still have interest, but NOT anymore start from PS3 & PS4.

@Anti-Matter i think XIII remaster (and thus) switch is indefinitely delayed or abandoned. If they went through the trouble if backward compatibility, that must mean they're not currently doing a remaster. Part of the issue is the engine. Crystal Tools was a disaster and was abandoned after the trilogy. DQX is the only other game using it. (And FFIX originally, but they ported it away). They haven't even ported XIII to PS4!

@NEStalgia
BUT it's also far more popular on Switch than XBox

Little comfort when it's still struggling to hit the bare minimum threshold necessary to keep SE interested in bringing the series over in the future. Porting to Switch costs more money, cartridges cost more money, it's tougher to get running with less powerful hardware using different architecture... so the fact is they might be coming out more ahead with Xbox than Switch, given just how easy it is to port between PS and Xbox.

@JaxonH true, but if switch is in a position where third parties need to be smashing success to justify the port, were right back to Nintendo for Nintendo games. I thought Western games would struggle, but not Japanese, let alone square rpgs. It's hard to tell if it's third party in general or just FF and Western games. FF really doesn't seem wanted outside PS. Maybe squares fault.

Either that or switch owners are mostly a mix of Nintendo only or multiplat gamers plus indie hipsters, neither desiring big games on the machine. Which is a dreary thought.

@NEStalgia
And it was so weird to see from Google image, i saw SquareEnix will port FF XIII Trilogy on PS4 & Xbox1 long time ago and it still never happened.
Just port FF XIII to Switch for the last time and i can kiss goodbye entirely for PS3 version.

@NEStalgia
I think it's the latter.

I don't think third party games need to be a smashing success to justify the port but I do think they need to be moderately successful to justify the port. If games can't even do that much then they're really not justified.

It's weird though- certain games do really well, and other games you would expect to do even better just seem to tank, or indicate they have a high likelihood of tanking. Octopath sells over 1m in 3 weeks, Final Fantasy X and XII charts lower than most shovelware preorders. Skyrim does very well, DOOM does ok-ish and Wolfenstein 2 seems to fall flat. Dark Souls is down to #600 while Diablo 3 is at #60. The only reason MHGU didn't tank was all the World fans who bought a Switch to play it, or already owned the system and bought it because they liked World.

Idk man. I just wish all these indies weren't topping the freaking eshop year round while bigger budget, quality games suffocate from slow death of indifference

@Anti-Matter The turmoil at Square is just incomprehensible. It seems like they start a lot of projects they later cancel. Now they've cancelled FFXV 2019 DLC except one. They cancelled, for now, FFVII-R. FFXV itself was shelved and restarted numerous times from it's Versus-XIII origins (partly to remove it from the Fabula Nova Chrysalis after everyone hated the plot of XIII.) WoFF and Octopath are the only clearly defined projects they've done in a decade. No doubt they started porting XIII more than once to PS4 and realized there's not a chance Crystal Tools is going to be ported anywhere. It's easy on XBox because it can use the DirectX PC version. But there's no x86 OpenGL version to port. The engine would have to be ported. IMO they're just going to wait for PS5 for Sony to be able to emulate PS3. On that note, it's unlikely it comes to Nintendo ever (No Microsoft DirectX version from PC to run, and no emulation of PS3 proprietary hardware.) I'd hoped they were porting it instead of BC....but since they did it as BC, that implies they're not working on the port. That means their (really really really) garbage engine from that game is trapped on PC/XBox due to it's natural BC, and anything that can emulate a PS3, which means PS5...) Unless they port it for FFXIV....maybe there's a business case for that. More likely they'll port XIV to UE4, but leave XIII, where it is.

@JaxonH Indeed a dreary thought. I suppose we're trying to solve a 30-year old puzzle that even people paid six figures with more information available than us have tried and failed to solve. What is it about the Nintendo consumer base that's so inherently different and what does it actually buy?

Every pattern I try to find leads to a dead end. Like you said, some games you'd never expect to succeed do. Games that seem like a slam dunk fail. No wonder no company wants to mess around on Nintendo, it's such an unpredictable market. And I can't figure out why. It's not that you can't succeed on Nintendo, it's that there's no indicator to gauge and predict success, it's more like a roulette wheel. Octopath seemed like a guarantee, Square didn't think it would be.....and it was. FF seems like a guarantee, and nobody seems to care. I suppose FF is a bad example since it's soooooo Sony, and the Sony fanbase is pretty rabid. But I'd have bet against Skyrim and DOOM....yet here we are with Skyrim a success and DOOM getting the sequel. Wolf 2, eh...that one fell flat everywhere for some reason. Maybe "worse" on Switch, but as a matter of percentages it was kind of a failure and ended up on Game Pass in mere months, so I don't think Bethesda is counting that as a Switch failure (and is including the sequel/spinoff for Switch.) Sure, Fallout 76 won't run on Switch, but from what I hear, it won't run on anything. (ba-dum-tss.)

Dark Souls....the game is like 4GB, so I'm betting a lot of people, like me, bought it digitally. That one seems really popular overall, and I know re-entered Japanese charts just due to Switch.....I think sales on that are better than Amazon makes it look. And I think a lot of gamers ditched Amazon physical games after the discounts. I really want to know digital sales on a lot of this. For Switch I'm mostly a physical buyer, but, most of the big games that have released in the past 3 months I've gone all digital (including Smash), because all of them are games I want to jump into on a whim (Smash, DS, Diablo, Civ, TWEWY, Starlink, MHGU.) Most of the 2019 games are going to be physical for me though..... Maybe others feel the same and the numbers aren't as bleak as they seem.

But I also agree.....I'm kind of tired of seeing all the indies heralded as the best thing in gaming and dominating Switch. I mean I could have kept my Vita if that's what Switch was about. There's a few of us who love taking console games on the go with us but by and large it seems like the two camps are either "I only use it as a handheld and want it to play more mobile-type games like 3DS. Phone games but with better controls and Nintendo charm.", and "I only use it as a docked console so why not just play the same game cheaper and better on PS4/XBox/PC? I just get it for the exclusives." I don't really hate indies, but between Diablo, Civ, MH, and FF versus the $20 8 hour indie flavor of the month.....I don't understand why the popularity favors indies here. There's the whole 17-22 year old "Commercial games are sellouts. You just don't understand raw art, maann. All games need Japanese voice tracks because the acting is more emotional, and no I don't need to understand what they're saying." hipster vibe on Switch. Ok, the advertising seems to target that group. But I feel like I've walked into a Starbucks filled with MacBooks every time I load a Switch conversation page. Is this video game far trade, sustainably produced, with only organic plastics? I hope the soundtrack features my favorite folk singer-songwriter nobody's ever heard of. Pffft I followed her BEFORE 8 other people joined the bandwagon. What sellouts.

It seems Nintendo is "doomed" to be stuck in that "other" category, where multiplats are preferred anywhere else, and people look for unique games only, when on Nintendo hardware. I technically never expected otherwise on Switch, but it was a hopeful tease. The draw of full console games on the go has more limited appeal than I'd hoped (and streaming will probably replace that gimmick for mainstream games.) OTOH, I suppose it's working well for them, and the more niche Atlus and Nippon Ichi type games should start arriving in the next year in bigger numbers. And with Sony cracking down with "beams of light" I think a lot of that Sony hipster Japan content might become Nintendo hipster Japan content.

I understand all the reasons a Nintendo console is what it is, and why Switch in particular as an odd audience (the 3DS/dedicated handheld semi-mobile crowd meeting the small niche of Nintendo console fans with either arbitrary nostalgic, Wii-like, or arbitrary anti-everything else tastes.) But even in that context I still can't fathom why FF and Valkyria would falter, and why Skyrim and Doom would not. Yet Octopath thrives, and WoFF does not..... Nintendo really is a weird market. So far nobody has figured out how it ticks.

Of course Treehouse gave us half an hour at E3 of Killer Queen Black, a hipster limited run 8-bit arcade game. They barely even mentioned Fighter Z, MHGU, or a dozen others. Are they setting the tone, or just recognizing it?

@JaxonH Plus, I just noticed X/X-2, 9, is on sale for $12.50 on PSN. VII is $10. XII is $25. XIII series is $7.50 each, but only runs on PS3. Against prices like that, for multiplat owners, it does make buying on other platforms less appealing. One would hope Square has factored that into their sales estimates. It's not the first time those prices have been seen. But if they heavily discount one platform and sell the other two as a luxury....we can kind of predict the popular outlet.