Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series sales have surpassed 2 million units shipped and downloaded in total worldwide. The six games first released across PC and Android and iOS devices in 2021 and 2022, with the first three games launching in July 2021 and the other three releasing one at a time till February 2022. Then the series finally came in full (and with upgrades) to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 last month, and across all platforms, the games can be bought individually or in a bundle.
On one hand, it shouldn’t be surprising whatsoever that Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series sales have cruised past 2 million in total, since these are the first six games in one of the most venerated RPG series of all time. On the other hand, in North America, Square Enix made the physical bundle of the games into a preposterously limited edition that was only sold through the Square Enix Store, whether a standard copy or the collector’s edition. The large majority of people who wanted a physical copy had no choice but to buy the international Asian release from a storefront like Play-Asia, which continues to be available for purchase but is in heavy demand. (My brother’s copy only finally arrived in the mail yesterday.)
The fact that the sales of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series are so good should kind of be a source of modest embarrassment for Square Enix, in that it could probably be making more money if it had just printed more physical copies for the rest of the world. It doesn’t help that Square sold the few physical copies it had at what could be interpreted as quite a premium when factoring in shipping costs. In fact, there are some, albeit a minority to be sure, who are refusing to buy the games at all out of spite for how Square Enix handled the release.
Of course, I’m not one of those people. I’m one of those suckers who spent crazy money on that Switch collector’s edition. And it really soothes the hurt that the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games are overall fantastic, as my review described.
