A casual look at some numbers
I was rooting around YouTubes as one does when a number of (hah) zeros caught my eye:10,018,000. That was the view count on the PlayStation upload of theFinal Fantasy VIIremake announcementtrailer (there’s an additional million views between the Square Enix North America and Square Enix Japan pages).
That seemed rather high and indeed that video (10M) outpacesUncharted 4(3.6M),The Last Guardian(3.1M), andHorizon(2.4M) as far as E3 view count on the PlayStation channel goes. For context, though mostly for fun, I went to check on Nintendo and Microsoft’s channels and E3 videos.
This is to say nothing for how many people might have watched these things live, nor does it offer a barometer beyond general curiosity, people who sought out or just clicked a video (Mariogames will sell like water in a desert, Nintendo YouTube view ticker be damned, because they have Mario).
But it’s mildly interesting to me for two reasons. One is sorting these channels by most popular video. AHalo 5ad from early this yearreigns on Microsoft(7.8M), followed by the Xbox One reveal (6.9M), and a 30 second commercial ofBreaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul (5M), hah. Nintendo’s top is the 2DS reveal (6.1M), then a few2-3 year old trailers(New Super Mario Bros.,Game & Wario,New Super Mario Bros. U).
It’s weird. Have you seen the footage captured from theCars 2game that has 120 million viewsfor some reason? (It’s because parents and kids search “Cars 2” a lot, that shitmade bank).
Back in PlayStation YouTube land, it’s 1) the PS4 reveal at 32.1M, 2) thatsick “how to share used games” burnfrom a couple years ago at 15.2M, 3) that god damnPowersTV show. TheFinal Fantasy VIItrailer (10.1M) is right behind “PlayStation Heroes” (13.1M), a video for charity done in Hanna Barbera cartoon style with Snoop Dogg and a bunch of famous athletes (recent NBA champ Steph Curry of the Warriors, Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers).
Before I got lost in amusing myself with numbers, I had some mild point. I heard some “is it too late?” and “do people still care?” rumblings about theFinal Fantasy VIIremake. But people obviously still care, at least to peep their head in at an above average rate. Maybe it doesn’t translate into anything. Maybe those were novelty looks. Maybe the game toils in development hell forever or is filthy with changes at launch.
But even people I ran with who were exclusivelyHaloandMaddentypes had playedFinal Fantasy VII.Final Fantasy VIIwasa thing, it’s worth remembering. Not that anyone’s forgotten, or anything, judging by thegeneral response to the announcement. It made PlayStation and has sold, incidentally, around 10 million copies. Fun to think about. We might be looping back 20 years later.
