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The story
On 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board, a thread kicked off over the theory that “FF9 flopped because of FF8, and FF10 sold well thanks to FF9.” The opening post questioned whether this logic “doesn’t hold water,” and the discussion quickly spread to cover whether FF9 was actually advertised, how FF8 and FF9 each stack up critically, and whether the whole “sales chain reaction” idea holds up at all. Posters also disagreed on basic facts, like whether there was a Coca-Cola tie-in commercial and how many copies FF10-2 actually shipped.
What people said
There was a Coca-Cola tie-in commercial, and ads for FF9 itself ran every day. Famitsu even ran actual promotional ads separate from the strategy coverage
If anything it had enough pull to make people buy a PS2 just to play it
That'd be FF11, and yeah, that sold insanely well
Coca-Cola's got nothing to do with it
Wait, did he actually die?
Exactly this. You see plenty of people say they love 9, but not one of them actually remembers the story — that says it all. It's also got a lot of unfriendly design, like abilities you can permanently lock yourself out of learning if you carelessly sell your weapons and armor
So FF12 sold well too then, by that logic?
The one after 11 is 10-2
Then the whole theory's dead
10-2 actually sold fine though — close to FF10's initial shipment numbers. Well, the content was… what it was, so there's that
It only sold about a tenth of FF10, so that's a stretch
It's my favorite. I played it enough to basically do a no-leveling run
They ran tons of commercials for it. I clearly remember the Coca-Cola collab
Re: #73
They went as far as directly emailing individual fan sites threatening lawsuits over strategy-guide content, so even Famitsu had nothing resembling real strategy coverage beyond the pre-release preview article. They also loudly declared there'd be no Ultimania guide published for it…
…only to walk that back later.
What you're watching is the failed scramble to make up for it after that reversal
You're mixing up strategy guides with advertising
'Famitsu had no strategy articles either' — that's just wrong. Publishing an actual strategy guide book was banned, but they ran normal strategy coverage just fine
Did you just learn the phrase 'uncanny valley' recently or something?
If 'a bit odd' is as bad as it gets for people called fanatics, that's actually pretty tame
I think criticism and slander are two different things
If you don't even remember the story, you wouldn't know about the emotional death scene either. Besides, nobody talks about FF8's story that much either
Bad phrasing on my part. Most people only ever talk about the early stretch where you escort Garnet to Lindblum, and then the epilogue after the final boss. Seriously, I almost never see anyone discuss the story outside those two bits
'Love it or hate it' means something completely different in each case though, doesn't it?
I just wonder how they'd rebalance the Junction system for a remake. It's a mechanic where only the players who figure out how useful item refining is actually benefit. Everyone already knows the trick by now, so going all-in on refining makes the game absurdly easy from the very start
FF8's vibes are bad too, so that's even worse then
Brahne isn't let off the hook lol, she's just given a pass because she died — that's it
Background and Key Points
FF8 (1999) hit the highest shipment numbers the series had seen up to that point, while FF9 (2000), which deliberately returned to a more old-school, stylized art direction, is said to have sold less than its predecessor. FF10 (2001) was the first mainline entry on the PS2, and its full voice acting and upgraded 3D presentation were well received, driving strong sales. The thread’s core claim — “FF9 flopped because of FF8” and “FF10 sold because of FF9” — is a retroactive bit of folk theory that tries to explain everything purely through the relationship between consecutive titles, when in reality console transitions and differing creative directions played a much bigger role. As for advertising, a Coca-Cola tie-in commercial did exist, but Square’s hardline stance on unauthorized strategy-guide content may have left people with the impression that the game “wasn’t promoted at all” — and even within the thread, posters couldn’t agree on the facts. Nobody offered concrete figures for FF10-2’s shipment numbers either, and claims about it varied from post to post.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Proposition] FF9 flopped because of FF8! FF10 sold because of FF9! ← Doesn’t this logic have holes in it?“
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