Final Fantasy XVI and its (Nonexistent) Cultural Impact

Let's talk about Final Fantasy 16.

I bet that’s a sentence nobody really says in real life anymore. No, this isn't another late game review. This is an autopsy. I want to talk about how a mainline Final Fantasy game, backed by millions from Sony in marketing, launched with celebratory headlines and then vanished from the cultural landscape with a speed that is genuinely baffling. It’s a level of achievement in irrelevance I still can't quite believe.

To understand how we got here, we have to look at what was working against it from the very start. We have to talk about Yosuke Matsuda, the previous CEO of Square Enix. We all know and love him for his late-tenure evangelism for NFTs and blockchain, but his real obsession was something else: "Western prestige."

His insane, decade-long mission to Westernize Square Enix games gave us such certified bangers as Marvel's Avengers, Babylon's Fall, and Forspoken. This vision also led him to sell off Deus Ex and Tomb Raider, two iconic Western franchises, for pittance cash to fund his crypto ambitions. All while trapping geniuses like Yoko Taro in gacha garbage, because clearly the West hated NieR:Automata, right? It was just some weird Japanese trash!

Now, back to 16. The game was greenlit and produced under Matsuda's vision, with the added chaos of COVID. That's a recipe for disaster from day one. And while they correctly brought in the trusted Yoshi-P to deliver the project, there was a problem. Yoshi-P, as much as we love him, was also wrestling with Final Fantasy 14's development during the pandemic (Teary stream anyone?). No matter how brilliant you are, helming two of the world's biggest RPGs during a global crisis was bound to impact the quality of both FF16 and FF14's eventual Dawntrail expansion.

I won't dwell on 16's desperate appeals to a Western audience, because frankly, it still pisses me off. But I want you to think about it. Does any gaming community you're a part of, any group of friends, or any outlet still talk about FF16 in any meaningful capacity? Its own subreddit is a pathetic echo chamber of shipping and generic thirst posts for Clive. The only time it comes up is in abstract discussions about what the next mainline game might be.

That’s it. A massive AAA game, a mainline Final Fantasy, launched with a celebratory "3 million copies sold" week headline (for context, FF15 sold 5 million on day one), and then just… poof. It didn't become a cool sandcastle on the beach. It became a single grain of sand, immediately washed and buried away by the waves.

For all the talk of making the game streamlined and action-focused to attract new fans, and survives as a franchise, it succeeded in neither. Square Enix has stated at least twice that the game underperformed.

The PC port arrived with a whimper, but let's talk about the Xbox release. Oh, did you know they finally released Final Fantasy 16 on Xbox last month? Me neither! Not until I started doing research for this very piece. And looking at the numbers, it's clear that almost nobody else knew or cared, either.

After two full years, Square Enix unceremoniously shadow-dropped it onto the Xbox storefront, where it was met with complete and utter indifference. An analyst firm reported a pathetic estimated 22,000 copies sold in its first week. That’s not a typo. It’s less than 1% of its PS5 launch. The game was so irrelevant it failed to even break the top 400 "Most Played" games on the platform. To cap it all off, technical analyses found it was an inferior port, running at a shockingly low 720p in performance mode.

It very much felt like an obligatory port that SE just wanted to be done with.

So what has Square Enix done to keep this game relevant? You can see the corporate checklist being ticked off in real time.

First, you have the forgettable, pre-planned DLCs that did nothing to move the needle. Then there’s the Tekken 8 collab, a deal undoubtedly made years ago when Namco, like everyone else, expected FF16 to be a cultural juggernaut like its predecessors (Noctis DLC).

And of course, we have the textbook case of corporate synergy: the crossover event in Final Fantasy 14. They put Clive in their own successful MMO, complete with his armour and a Torgal mount, for the sole purpose of running an in-house advertisement to their most captive audience. Add in the obligatory appearances in mobile gacha games, and you see the full picture.

Every single appearance Clive has made outside his own game has been a calculated, top-down marketing decision from Square Enix. It's manufactured relevance. Meanwhile, how many games has 2B from NieR:Automata shown up in because players and developers genuinely wanted her there? I've lost count. That's the difference between a character with real cultural impact and a corporate asset being pushed in a spreadsheet.

Let's compare the highly flawed but extremely memorable Final Fantasy 15. When people talk about 16, what can they even say? "Did you see that cutscene?" Or how the fights were like Dragon Ball Z? Now ask someone about 15. Even a non-fan can probably tell you something about the boy band, the Cup Noodles, the food, or the fishing.

That's my biggest problem with 16. It is utterly soulless, propped up entirely by its massive budget for cutscenes. It's a one-time watch. There's nothing to discuss because everyone has the exact same adventure, the same progression, and sees the same cutscenes. It’s fundamentally designed to be a "one and done" champion. It feels less like a flagship title and more like a high-budget Game Pass game you play for a weekend and forget.

And this, I cannot stress enough, is a mainline Final Fantasy. A game that should be setting trends, sparking debates, and being remembered for its quirky charms, characters, and music for a decade. Oh, and the music? I have no idea how it won any awards. It's as generic and forgettable as the game itself. It felt like sterile, corporate Soken compared to the natural, experimental genius he unleashes on 14.

All of this stems from Matsuda's obsession. You get this soulless pandering that completely misses what fans loved about the brand in the first place.

But the ultimate humiliation for Final Fantasy 16 wasn't its own failure. It was the staggering success of something else.

You have to remember how Square Enix sold this game to us. They lectured us. They insisted that turn-based combat was a relic, that deep RPG systems were too intimidating, and that the only way for the series to survive was to chase this imaginary Western audience with a streamlined, cinematic action game. They gutted Final Fantasy of its soul, presented it as the only path forward, and acted like they were doing us all a favour.

And then Baldur’s Gate 3 showed up a few months later and simply set their entire philosophy on fire.

It was the perfect antithesis. Larian wasn't chasing a focus group, they were just being authentic to themselves and DnD. They trusted their audience. They doubled down on everything Square Enix had abandoned: deep, complex, turn-based combat; insane player freedom; a true, unapologetic RPG experience.

The market delivered a swift and brutal verdict. Baldur's Gate 3 became a cultural and commercial juggernaut that is still a top seller on Steam today, often breaking in the top 10 concurrent players. It proved that players were starving for depth, not scared of it. It proved authenticity crushes desperate pandering every single time.

The success of Baldur's Gate 3 is a direct and humiliating refutation of Final Fantasy 16's entire reason for being. It made Square Enix’s grand vision for the future look like a pathetic, misinformed relic of the past before a year had even gone by.