Square-Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has high hopes for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII – he expects the title to sell over six million copies, and to help Square double its profits within the next five years.
Speaking with Reuters Japan, Wada talked about the JRPG giant’s flagship properties. Its last big title, Dragon Quest IX, has shipped approximately 4 million copies in the Land of the Rising Sun, and the Squeenix CEO thinks that the title is on track to hit its sales projections of 5 million units sold. Final Fantasy XIII, though? Wada has even higher hopes for that game: Personally, he’s hoping (and predicting) that FF13 will outsell its predecessor, Final Fantasy XII, which is clocking in at just shy of six million copies sold right now.
Given that it’ll have been close to five years since FF12 was released, and that FF13 will be the first installment of the long-running series on the current generation of columns, one might imagine that gamers have a Final Fantasy hunger that hasn’t yet been sated, and so Wada’s predictions may well be correct. On the other hand, one might also argue that over the five years since FF12, JRPGs have gone “out of style,” so to speak, and perhaps gamers simply won’t care.
By “by expanding the company’s range of games and by growing its overseas operations,” Wada hopes that Square-Enix can double its operational profits in the next three to five years. To that end, the company is currently in the middle of negotiating with Chinese online game operators in order to try and tap that vast potential market.
Speaking of online games, Wada reiterated the claim that Final Fantasy XIV might not necessarily be exclusive to the PS3 and the PC as Final Fantasy XI had been (well, replacing PS3 with PS2 in that sentence). Squeenix and Microsoft are apparently in talks to bring the MMOJRPG to the Xbox 360 as well. After all, having a wider range of names can’t hurt, right?
(Via Edge)
Published: Sep 29, 2009 09:12 pm