Despite some negative commentary surrounding the game’s performance following an announcement of 3 million copies sold, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XVI (FF16) – the latest instalment in its RPG franchise – actually performed robustly in its launch month; both in Japan and further afield.

Ampere Games – Analytics data shows that the PlayStation 5 (PS5) exclusive title was the sixth biggest title by monthly active users globally on the console in June, and around 13% of PS5 players played the game. The top markets by active users were the USA, which represented a third of players, Japan, which represented a quarter, the UK, Germany, Canada, and South Korea. Interestingly, average play time per player was at its highest in Japan, at more than 22 hours in the month, which is almost four hours longer than the average player in the US. This suggests that players in Japan are more engaged, possibly because there are fewer highly popular PS5 titles in the market compared to the USA, where games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) regularly duke it out for player attention.

For three days following the launch, FF16 was the second-highest PS5 title by daily active users globally, just falling short of FIFA 23, but surpassing the likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty. By the end of June it had dropped to fourth place, but now seems to have stabilised, and is maintaining a solid lead ahead of big live service titles like Diablo IV, NBA 2K 23, and GTA V. The most popular other title among FF16 players is Diablo IV: almost a quarter of FF16 players in the USA also played Diablo IV on PS5 in June, perhaps as a result of FF16’s notable shift away from Japanese RPG (JRPG), and towards the Action RPG (ARPG) genre.

There has been much commentary around FF16’s performance in its domestic market, Japan, but the perceived lack of sales are more due to the relative popularity of the PS5 versus the Nintendo Switch there. Switch titles dominate the charts in Japan, but when focusing solely on PS5 activity, FF16 was very successful in June. It attracted twice as many daily players as the next most popular PS5 game, Apex Legends, and it was far and away the most-played game for that time period.

*Note: The June FF16 data includes user activity for the demo, which preceded the full launch of the game.