Fans and industry experts have noticed that Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is lagging behind in sales compared to predecessor games.
Sales numbers reporting in the video game industry have typically gone one of two ways: if the game breaks a record, it is visibly reported, or if the game is not breaking records, the numbers are not reported until later. The director of research and insights at Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad, stated that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth sales have been underperforming despite Square Enix not releasing any official sales figures yet. The data Ahmad cited explained that Square Enix’s latest Final Fantasy game is behind its predecessors, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy XVI.
One of the latest data collection and comparisons came from entertainment analysis firm Ampere, which compared Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘s daily active users percentage with Sony’s Stellar Blade demo. The report explained the rise of so many recent ARPGs alongside these two, which included Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin in March. It also discussed the rise in concurrent players for Elden Ring following the release of the upcoming DLC, which is coming out in June.
The bottom line of the data they showed was that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth recently had about 2.21 million active users and had about 380,000 users for the demo. This was compared to Stellar Blade, which had about 690,000 users for the demo, and Ampere projected that the upcoming game from Korean studio Shift Up would have about 4.01 million active users. It seems peculiar to get the projected metrics, but it also revealed the approximate numbers for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
So, how did its previous games perform? Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s original PS4 release raked in 3.5 million sales in three days. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XVI sold 3 million at launch. And like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI was a PS5 exclusive. Going off the player data is one thing to see how the reception of the sequel to Rebirth is going. However, many other factors could be at play, especially since Final Fantasy VII Remake came out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Still, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was released back in February 2024 and has managed to get at least 2 million sales. That is still quite an accomplishment. It may even indicate that the Remake player base may not have translated over for numerous reasons. One could be that the PS4 players of Remake did not migrate to the PS5 exclusive market of the sequel, or it could also mean that players did not enjoy Remake after playing it and had lower expectations for the sequel.
While nothing is certain until Square Enix releases the official numbers, there have been reports of disparities in the sales numbers being projected and collected. Many factors could be at work, but without the main publishers and developers’ words, it does not look too great for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
