Final Fantasy XIII-2 Sells 350K First Month in the US

Following Final Fantasy XIII-2's January release, Square Enix seemed unusually quiet. Back when FFXIII launched, they seemed eager as ever to proclaim it the "fastest selling entry in the series." Yet with XIII-2... no shipment numbers, no nothing even from Japan. The RPG giant had gone quiet.

I suppose the writing was on the wall. After all, the game shifted around 525K on PlayStation 3 and 10K on Xbox 360 its first week in Japan. Current Media Create sales data through March puts those figures at 798K and 13K respectively.

The NPD Group (via NeoGAF) has since released their sales figures for the United States, covering January 29th through February 25th. In the all formats chart, Final Fantasy XIII-2 managed to place in the number 2 position, just below Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Using some math and factoring in other game data on the chart (for example, Twisted Metal is #2 on the individual SKU list at 221K, the #10 SKU on the chart is 135K, and while the PS3 one came in at #7 the 30 version did not make the top 10), we can summarize that combined sales of XIII-2 are approximately 350K combined, including collector's editions.

Quite the difference from two years ago when FFXIII sold 1.3 million copies in the US. That's a drop of nearly 73% if you do the math.

What about Final Fantasy X-2, the only other "direct sequel" in the series? How does it compare? Well, I'll start out by saying that in Japan, the game currently sits at having sold more units than FFXIII, so that should give you an idea of how far the series has declined since the early 2000s. As for US sales, a quick Google search tells us that it sold around 400K its first month, yet went on to top 1.6 million units. But times were different then. The PS2 was still on high and X-2 was the sequel of a game loved by the majority of fans. FFXIII, however, was met with a lot of disappointment, and as a result I have a hard time seeing XIII-2 get anywhere close to those numbers. Let's not forget that FFXIII itself is only at 1.8 million units sellthrough as of December 2011.

Despite lower than expected sales, there's no doubt this game must be profitable for Square Enix. The large amount of reused assets and engine guarantees that. They've likely been making somewhat of a profit off DLC sales as well, with more in the pipeline through May.

So what happened? Is this the result of brand fatigue? Or were fans really put off Final Fantasy XIII that much? If you recall, we reviewed the sequel higher than the original, such as it deserved. Metacritic currently lists the game at a 79 average, which isn't bad by any means. Square Enix spent a lot of effort in marketing XIII-2, and ideally, a sequel should sell more than its predecessor. With Final Fantasy, it's become quite obvious that the words "sequel" or "spin-off" present somewhat of a negative stigma.

Such performance really has to make us wonder what will become of Final Fantasy Versus XIII... and perhaps the series going forward.