In 1997, Final Fantasy 7 was released into the world for Playstation. Since then, the game has remained in the collective consciousness of gamers around the globe. It was received with widespread critical success and remains one of the most influential video games ever created. Over 25 years later, the beloved game is being remade into a trilogy, with the first installment released in 2020 and now, in 2024, the sequel, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Video game launches of this magnitude often impact searches on Pornhub. In our 2023 Year In Review, the character Tifa was the second most searched for video game character of the year.
On February 29th, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was released. Naturally, our statisticians pulled some data to find out how the latest installment impacted searches.
The week leading up to the release saw a small increase of searches for “final fantasy” compared to the average amount in the first quarter of the year. However, the day before the release date saw a +600% increase in searches. That number continued to climb for a few more days, reaching +1,146% on February 29 and then peaking at +1,543% on March 3. Viewers might have finished playing the game for the night, but they were still thinking about its characters.
As expected, Tifa, one of the main characters in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, saw a massive rise in interest. She was searched for nearly 6x more than the next most popular character, Aerith. In third place was the game’s protagonist, Cloud, followed by Jessie, Yuna, and then the villain, Sephiroth.
We hope you enjoyed this Final Fantasy edition of Insights!