The very polarizing Final Fantasy XIII series concludes with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, which just released last week in Japan. Sadly, this time around, the game did not impress sales wise with an almost 50% drop in sales between Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
The original Final Fantasy XIII launched in 2009 in Japan to 1,501,964 in sales, while Final Fantasy XIII-2 launched to only a little over a third of that at 524,217. Now comes Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII with better retention at 277,082. However, you would expect that the third game would see less of a drop if someone bought the first two in the series, especially with this one looking pretty promising so far.
Perhaps this could be as a result of people just being worn out of the series and the Lightning character, or maybe some have just decided not to play another Final Fantasy game until Final Fantasy XV. Either way, if you want to get the game, you can do so now in Japan. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII will also release in the US on February 11, so it will be interesting to see how the launch numbers will be in the US after the reviews come out from Japan.
lightningsucks
November 29, 2013 at 12:28 AMGee who could’ve guessed? They couldn’t possibly think people actually want this crap, right?
Sinead
November 29, 2013 at 2:12 AMI’m a HUGE Final Fantasy fan. VII being my favourite and XIII-2 following as my second. This series is different ..but just like with IX and then XII, people didn’t give them the chance they needed. XIII is more like watching a movie but XIII-2 is very different again and very good. I’m looking forward to Lightning Returns, even though it does sound quite odd =P
FalafelWafer
November 29, 2013 at 9:45 AMHey look, another cocksucking retard trying to deliberately mislead people about an FFXIII game just because they’re a pathetic cocksucking retard.
God, someone needs to kill the fucking writer of this bullshit. Or better yet, they should throw themselves out of a twentieth-story window. Fucking die, you cocksucking piece of shit.
Dean James
November 29, 2013 at 9:08 PMActually I am quite a big fan of the FFXIII series, especially FFXIII-2 and am very looking forward to this one. The launch week sales were disappointing, plain and simple.
No
December 2, 2013 at 6:14 AMIt’s a sad, sad world when selling a quarter of a million copies of a game on ITS FIRST DAY is considered “bad”.
First of all, from a fiscal stand point, they have earned all the money they lost on XIV back, and have broke even on all 3 FFXIII instalments. The first cost 65,000,000 to make allegedly, whilst the subsequent ones that used the same engine and featured fewer CG cutscenes would have costed, most likely, less than half the amount to create. Perhaps even less than a quarter.
Financially, these game are doing fantastically, “poor sales” my ass. If they break even, it doesn’t matter how underwhelming their sales are because they’re still making profit. This is how a business works, Crystal Tools cost millions to create and they wanted to use it as much as possible. Aka, the series is justified financially. Also, there are a lot of fans of Lightning, therefore it’s justified on a social level and not just a financial one.
Kyle Goins
December 13, 2013 at 2:47 AMYep, Lightning Returns isn’t selling as well as the previous two, but do you wanna know something interesting (and extremely relevant) the article doesn’t state? Lightning Returns has been the highest selling game in Japan since it released. This is indicative of the fact that Japan’s entire economy is doing poorly, not anything else… Good job on the “journalism”…lol
LightningReturnsButNobodyCares
December 14, 2013 at 9:58 AMlol at these retarded people defending this garbage
I hope it bombs hard so Square gets the picture that people hate FFXIII.