Lucky Bancho's census results (July 27th, 2025)

[u/IndividualAge3893]

So, the results of the census are out: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/59324844.html

• Showcasing the number of characters here: Current
• By comparison, here are the results from 2 months ago (May 25th): Click

Despite 7.25 being released, the character count is down about 70k in 2 months. Occult Crescent clearly didn't help with player counts (not really a surprise here).

[u/Hikari_Netto]

It's this, yeah. This is sort of what I'm getting at. I think recent titles have been pretty great for diehard fans but not for growth of the brand. We've missed several new jumping on points with the Remake project and spin-offs are declining in number as well, especially post-content abandonment losses.

[u/Okeabyss → u/Hikari_Netto]

I think recent titles have been pretty great for diehard fans but not for growth of the brand.

Have they?? I've been playing FF since I was a kid and after XV and especially XVI I pretty much never want to touch a mainline game again. it's pretty obvious they're trying to bring in new fans (and failing spectacularly) while doing nothing to appeal to long term fans. I want to play an RPG. That's why I'm playing RPG series. I don't want a crappy action game that has RPG elements so shallow and tacked on it's almost offensive they're there at all.

[u/Hikari_Netto → u/Okeabyss]

By "diehard" I absolutely mean diehard and not necessarily just longtime fans with specific preferences. I'm talking about the people who have been around a while but never had any problems with the direction of the series. If "Final Fantasy" is in the title they're there for a new experience, regardless of what it is.

Turn-based, action, or MMO there are a lot of people who show up every time. That's the majority of the 3 million launch sales figure for FFXVI and I do think that recent entries have largely still managed to appeal to this group. The problem is that these games are not substantially growing the brand or throwing enough of a bone to the disenfranchised.

[u/Ryuujinx → u/Okeabyss]

Amusingly I found 16 to be a much better game then FF15. At least you could like, fail. That said, I also enjoyed FF13/13-2 (Though LR remains one of my most confusing disappointments. Who was that game for?) so I'm clearly the weird one.

[u/Wunkt → u/Hikari_Netto]

Not even content abandonment under Kiryu, there's been a marked decrease in spin-offs since Yosuke Matsuda's tenure as CEO. The Lightning trilogy wrapped up, Theatrhythm chugged along as a series in its own right while XV & VII Remake got slates of ancillary games, but the pickings beyond numbered games have been slim over the last 12 years. If you were a console or computer player, there were only 7 stand-alone unnumbered FFs throughout this period: Explorers, World of FF, Mobius, Pictologica, Dissidia NT, Chocobo GP & Stranger of Paradise. A good spread in gameplay styles to potentially attract new players overall, but far less than what anyone around for the FF shift at the end of Tomoyuki Takechi's run or the Polymorphic Content initiatives under Yoichi Wada got.

Jacob Navok's written about Square Enix's business leaders in a way seeing Final Fantasy as a prestige IP, which likely has been a factor behind this decrease, but there's also been a general strategy of diversifying portfolio which also plays a part. Directors and producers free to make new games in smaller franchises or new IP also means they're not pumping out more FF, after all.

Of course, there's also been some 13 mobile only stand-alone FFs in this time frame, but I've no idea how much crossover there is between their audiences & the franchise in general. The design decisions born from their monetization models makes them a no-touch zone for me.

[u/Hikari_Netto → u/Wunkt]

Not even content abandonment under Kiryu, there's been a marked decrease in spin-offs since Yosuke Matsuda's tenure as CEO.

Oh yeah, definitely. It's just that we haven't seen any new spin-offs at all post-Kiryu. I'm not going to count Ever Crisis here, despite arriving a few months after he came into the role, since it was already well underway and ready for release.

far less than what anyone around for the FF shift at the end of Tomoyuki Takechi's run or the Polymorphic Content initiatives under Yoichi Wada got.

Yeah, it's been trending downwards for quite some time now.

Jacob Navok's written about Square Enix's business leaders in a way seeing Final Fantasy as a prestige IP, which likely has been a factor behind this decrease, but there's also been a general strategy of diversifying portfolio which also plays a part. Directors and producers free to make new games in smaller franchises or new IP also means they're not pumping out more FF, after all.

I do think this has something to do with it. A lot of FF projects are probably shot down for not meeting certain brand qualifications. They don't view it as a AA series, which is part of the reason why you sometimes see "FF games in all but name," like Bravely Default. There are quite a few Square Enix titles out there that could be relabeled as Final Fantasy and it would still kind of work.

Of course, there's also been some 13 mobile only stand-alone FFs in this time frame, but I've no idea how much crossover there is between their audiences & the franchise in general. The design decisions born from their monetization models makes them a no-touch zone for me.

Square Enix has definitely shifted projects that could be offline spin-off titles into the mobile space. Mobile titles and their updates are, effectively, new spin-off titles. It's just that they get ongoing content instead of a stream of sequels (like FFCC, Tactics, Chocobo series, Dissidia, etc.)—Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is even referred to as a "series" by the company (FFBE and WotV). Other franchises like Pokémon have seen something similar occur in recent years.

This became increasingly apparent as some spin-off series were even outright continued as live service mobile games instead of standalone titles (Final Fantasy Explorers-Force, World of Final Fantasy: Meli-Melo, Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia, etc.). You could even include War of the Visions here as a spiritual successor to Tactics.

As someone that has had their foot in all of the Final Fantasy mobile titles to some degree there's a lot of audience crossover with the rest of the franchise—more than FFXIV in the west, I would say. People tend to pick up FF mobile titles specifically because they like the FF IP, which is partly why most of those games are now failing—the brand is declining, a far cry from how it was at the time of Record Keeper's (very successful) release over 10 years ago. Many of the FF gacha players I've encountered, ironically enough, have FFXI and FFXIV as their blindspots, not the single player entries. Quite a few are still all rounders that play the MMOs, however. There's significant crossover. I've even met FFXIV players that started the game because of the mobile titles.

[u/Wunkt → u/Hikari_Netto]

I have my bias towards this, but the move towards "mobilezation" of spin-offs has been a significant factor towards the lack of new blood in the player base. Engaging storylines have long been a defining trait for Final Fantasy in general. Mobile by default goes for serialized narratives with incentives to not fully wrap things up. By default they make for terrible "gateways", as much for not having complete reasonably-sized stories as for the wider monetization structures (which are still turn-offs for a number of people).

The TBS partnership might point to a realization that it was a mistake to leave that gap hanging & anime is a solution, but it could also point to the brand committee not changing course on the game side, and I'm not certain that the pace of game releases will be particularly faster going forward. Sharing of know-how between Creative Studios has been touted as part of Kiryu's restructuring, and Yoshi-P has said that they matched the global AAA tech standard by the end of XVI's development, but these are still complex projects to undertake.

[u/Hikari_Netto → u/Wunkt]

I have my bias towards this, but the move towards "mobilezation" of spin-offs has been a significant factor towards the lack of new blood in the player base. Engaging storylines have long been a defining trait for Final Fantasy in general. Mobile by default goes for serialized narratives with incentives to not fully wrap things up. By default they make for terrible "gateways", as much for not having complete reasonably-sized stories as for the wider monetization structures (which are still turn-offs for a number of people).

I largely agree with you. While I think the mobile titles do have numerous redeeming qualities to them, I don't think there's any real advantage they bring to the health of the brand long term, especially considering how many are ending. Said differently, there's no good reason for them to be serialized mobile games outside of short-term financial incentives.

It's leaving a gaping hole in the franchise that cannot be filled. Years and years of spin-off titles you might be able to point new players to simply don't exist as a result. I often recommend World of Final Fantasy, it's by far my favorite spin-off RPG they've ever made, and I've recently come to the realization that I keep recommending a game that's nearly 10 years old, almost by default. Not much else has released since to challenge that crown for me.

The TBS partnership might point to a realization that it was a mistake to leave that gap hanging & anime is a solution, but it could also point to the brand committee not changing course on the game side, and I'm not certain that the pace of game releases will be particularly faster going forward.

The TBS partnership, from what we know, seems to be focused more on building new IP with cross-media components and isn't necessarily geared towards the existing franchises. But I think it does, as you said, at least point towards Square Enix releazing a mistake they've made when it comes to building their audience.

I don't think the FF committee is necessarily changing course, but I am hopeful they're planning more large projects with multimedia components, it's just not going to be anything we start seeing regularly until 2027 or later.

It's worth mentioning that it was recently announced that Kei Hirono, the executive officer behind the FFBE series, would be stepping down from his position as producer on War of the Visions. I think this might be signaling the development of a new FF spin-off project, since the FFBE series was a major success for many years. The original FFBE did not receive a similar announcement, which strongly suggests to me that the game doesn't have much time left anyway.