Final Fantasy XVI physical sales have plummeted after launch in Japan

It seems like Final Fantasy XVI might be in a bit of trouble, at least in one region, after it was revealed that sales of the game have dropped almost 90% in Japan only one week after its release.

The news was shared by Bloomberg, where they noted that Square Enix’s latest game has made the news in the financial world after only managing to sell 37,763 copies during the week of July 2. This according to the data collected by Famitsu, which coincidentally does not include data about digital downloads. What this means is that physical sales have been affected, but at the moment there is no way to figure out if numbers are plummeting in every aspect or not.

Square Enix shares fell by 1.3% as a response to the news but managed to recover by 0.1% through trading in Tokyo during Friday’s early morning. There has been no statement made by the company as of yet, but the game has been regarded as the publisher’s flagship title for 2023, and while it managed to sell over 3 million copies worldwide during its first week, it’s performed behind previous releases of the same franchise.

“Everything in XVI is just so different from the previous Final Fantasy games that fans loved,” said Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda. “It would be difficult to sell more without a deep price cut.”

Is Final Fantasy in trouble?

Long time fans of Final Fantasy might be worried about what this development means for their beloved RPG franchise, especially when considering that previously, Square Enix has called sales of 5 million or more “failures”. Such was the case with Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The reason for why they would consider such titles failures is still a mystery to everyone but themselves, as almost all of those releases have been considered great games, but they still ended up selling off all of those studios and franchises to focus on internal development.

We’ll have to wait and see how they choose to respond to these numbers, as well as how sales of Final Fantasy XVI continue to grow or slow down. Until then, don’t forget to check out our review, where we said that “Final Fantasy XVI has arrived to mark a before and after in the AAA industry. From its evolution of a long-established franchise to something completely new and exciting, to the care its devs have had to the most minute aspects of the title, this game squeezes every ounce of performance from the PlayStation 5′s next-gen hardware, optimized and perfected as much as possible to create an astonishing experience.”

Final Fantasy XVI is now available exclusively on PlayStation 5