Final Fantasy 15 Broke Even On Development Costs In First 24 Hours

Final Fantasy XV might have taken more than a decade to come out, but it didn't need nearly that long to recoup its development costs. Game director Hajime Tabata told Dualshockers that the game broke even in just one day when it launched on November 29, 2016.

The game shipped 5 million copies on its first day, setting a new franchise record. In January, Square Enix announced that the figure rose to 6 million copies shipped. The company has not yet said how many copies of the game have actually been sold to consumers.

Before Final Fantasy XV came out, Tabata said the game needed to sell 10 million copies to be a "success." He later clarified that comment, stating that 10 million is the studio's personal goal, not necessarily how many units it needs to move to turn a profit.

Despite only being out for a month, Final Fantasy XV landed in the No. 10 position for best-selling games in the US for all of 2016.

Square Enix, like most other publishers, does not disclose budget specifics for its projects, so we don't know how much Final Fantasy XV actually cost to develop. The game was backed by a major marketing push as well, which would be separate from the development costs.

It was a long road to release for Final Fantasy XV, as the game was announced as Final Fantasy Versus XIII more than a decade ago, at E3 2006. At E3 2013, the game was re-revealed as Final Fantasy XV. It was delayed multiple times after that before it finally came out in November.

GameSpot's Final Fantasy XV review scored it an 8/10. Reviewer Peter Brown said it is a "fascinating game" with a "beautiful world and exciting challenges."

In other news, Tabata has talked about possibly bringing Final Fantasy XV to PC. It is currently available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.