Final Fantasy 16 successfully expanded the series audience, says DLC director

eurogamer.net:

Final Fantasy 16 successfully expanded the audience of the series, though future games won't necessarily take a similar direction.

Ahead of the release of The Rising Tide DLC, its director Takeo Kujiraoka spoke to Push Square about the audience growth of Final Fantasy 16.

«In recent years, players of the Final Fantasy series have tended to skew towards a higher age range,» he said. «However, this time there are survey results showing that more people in their teens and 20s played Final Fantasy 16.

»I think this shows that, to a certain extent, we've achieved one of our initial goals — to have players of all ages play the latest Final Fantasy game."

He clarified: «This doesn't mean that all future Final Fantasy games will take a similar direction to Final Fantasy 16, but I do think it means that we've been able to bring new players on board and open new possibilities for the development teams that will work on future instalments in the series.»

This mirrors similar comments from producer Naoki Yoshida from before the game was released, to support the game's action-RPG combat as opposed to the turn-based combat from earlier games in the series.

«I'm from a generation that grew up with command and turn-based RPGs,» said Yoshida back in July 2022. «I think I understand how interesting and immersive it can be. On the other hand, for the past decade or so, I've seen quite a number of opinions saying 'I don't understand the attraction of selecting commands in video games'.

»This opinion is only increasing, particularly with younger audiences who do not typically play RPGs."

He continued: «It's now common for gamers younger than me to love [action] games. As a result, it seems that it does not make sense to go through a command prompt, such as 'Battle', to make a decision during a battle.

»This is not an argument of