Final Fantasy creator shocked by Square Enix's pricey $16,500 Prime 1 Studio FFVI statue

The latest entry in Square Enix's Masterline series of highly detailed and expensive statues is a 1/6 scale model of Terra Branford, the central character in Final Fantasy VI. And boy, is it expensive. It sells for 1,485,000 yen (about S$16,000 today), which shocked Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi into asking via a Tweet, "Isn't it a bit much? Square Enix, are you okay?"

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Sakaguchi created the Final Fantasy series at SquareSoft (before the merger with Enix to be the Square Enix of today) but he left in 2003 to form his own developer company Mistwalker.

Sakaguchi is no stranger to spending on things he wants. One of Mistwalker's most recent games is 2021's Fantasian, which was only released on Apple platforms. The game uses 3D capture of over 150 hand-crafted dioramas for its in-game locations, which was both time-consuming and costly. But even placed against that, this US$12,000 statue has Sakaguchi questioning Square Enix's pricing decision.

The Square Enix Masterline collection series was launched in 2020 with the 1/4 scale statue of NieR:Automata, currently priced at US$2,849 and decidedly out of stock. The newly launched statue of FFVI Terra atop a Magitek Armor is only the second Masterline statue introduced and Square Enix is banking hard on the hope that collectors will gobble it up regardless of the price.

And that's because there will only be 600 Masterline statues of Terra produced worldwide (with 150 just for Japan) and you only get to reserve one for yourself before that number runs out.

It is designed based on Yoshitaka Amano's Final Fantasy VI illustrations and made by high-end figurine maker Prime 1 Studio. The statue is expected to ship out on July 23, 2023.

The piece is made from polystone, Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and die-cast, with a completed height of 78cm and weighing a hefty 34kg. You definitely don't want to drop it on your toes. There are also a few versions of Terra that you can swap around. 

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The statue looks incredible, but the price is really something else. For the same 1,485,000 yen that you pay for the statue, you can get a Suzuki Jimny SUV in Japan to drive around instead.

Of course, in Singapore, you can't even get a Certificate of Entitlement that gives you the rights to own a car at that price, not to mention actually buying a car - but hey, instead of spending it all on one paperweight centrepiece that you keep sealed up, you can always grab a hundred other figurines that you might actually play around with.

ALSO READ: Square Enix is suspending sales of Final Fantasy 14 because it's too popular

This article was first published in Geek Culture.