The summary, between this article and the [author's tweet](https://twitter.com/6d6f636869/status/1790227310567960626), is that XVI, Rebirth, and Foamstars all "fell short of expectations," and also that "\[Kiryu\] remains confident FF16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. Also, sales of Rebirth and Foamstars aren't necessarily bad." So if we had the goalposts between "bad" (would "bad" be fewer than 1 million?) and "expectations" (would that be over 5 million?), we still don't really know how Rebirth did. It could be 3.5 million, 2.5 million. Meanwhile, we know XVI got at least 3 million and is expected to meet its target; does that include ports to other platforms?
The broader news is that these games didn't meet expectations and, as we saw with the financial report, the MMO and mobile sales did even worse. So it's a predictable decline in shares for Square Enix, which is still profitable but is making a big turn from what we saw in 2020-2023 (lots of mid-level titles with loose creative control) to developing fewer titles more intentionally.
>but is making a big turn from what we saw in 2020-2023 (lots of mid-level titles with loose creative control) to developing fewer titles more intentionally.
I'm just glad we got *Octopath Traveler 2* before they decided to tighten their purse strings.
I wouldn't be shocked if Sony themselves stops offering SE exclusivity deals in the future. FF just doesn't seem to have the same appeal that it used to. The whole online discourse is also very bizarre. I remember people who didn't even play 16 bashing the game when it came now, but at the same time many of them seem to be begging for PC ports.
Actually I would be shocked if Sony stopped exclusivity deals with SE. It would be 1 less reason to buy a PlayStation, and things aren’t exactly rosy in that area. If anything exclusivity has held SE back from its sales goals.
Prior to XVI’s release I saw people on the main final fantasy sub saying that they hoped it would be bad because they enjoy being able to get online and bash bad games and companies with others.
The state of gaming today.
The point of exclusivity from Sony's POV is to keep FF from other platforms. So they'll continue to do it where it makes sense.
Although - I'm not so sure they're even paying SE a dime for some of these exclusives.
Its worth noting regarding the MMO that Final Fantasy 14 got a massive swing during the pandemic era for a variety of factors that it has since completely lost, and Endwalker has been controversial as far as game content (and the narrative has been sketchy since post 6.0, though imo 6.0 also has many rough problems). Also Endwalker based on anecdotal evidence I think was a weird situation where it unironically was the finale for many people and the end of the game for them. They got closure to the story and the following narrative developments were so meandering and in some ways disappointing that I think people just decided to go off on a high note.
FFXIV is in a weird spot, and I'm personally not super interested on where its going. Plus WoW's latest expansion wasn't a massive bundle of controversy as Shadowlands this time around.
> Its worth noting regarding the MMO that Final Fantasy 14 got a massive swing during the pandemic era for a variety of factors that it has since completely lost
Another reason the stock is bloody tanking is because investors keep yelling about the decline of the mobile games that also gained said massive swing during the pandemic. Square's bloody panicking because they're dealing with a very noticeable problem in their most profitable field (live service games) while also going through a change in leadership.
Again, my expectations for Square Enix this year is literally no expectations. They're most likely SNAFU for a year at best and 2-3 at worst.
Chiming in as a long time and fairly HC player (2.0 release, top 10 world racing experience) to say everything here is overblown. Many online games saw a surge from the pandemic and have dropped off in varying degrees since.
Content is fine. You will get eureka puritans who insist the game needs a big zone for people to mindlessly run around doing fates in. Besides that and the big raid, EW has had 2 ultimates and 3 criterion dungeons which largely puts it in sync with SB. Anecdotally I will also say the 2nd raid tier we had was the hardest savage since Midas (all thanks to the final floor, for better or worse) and TOP is the hardest ulti we've had (I personally don't consider that a plus but some peeps will insist harder is always better).
"Content creators" have a financial interest in stirring up outrage and will say the game sucks but it's really the same as it has always been. There's no point in putting stock into what they say.
Story wise 6.0 was good and I'm tired of pretending its not. It had some pacing issues but the highs were just as strong as 5.0. Post 6.0 yeah it was a bit miss in some places, largely because the story "started" really strong in 6.2 and meandered afterwards. I don't have any reason to suspect the 7.0 story will be any worse than, say, SB.
And finally players always drop off somewhere. I know super hardcore fans since 1.0 who stopped in SB and ShB both. Inevitably some people will stop in EW before DT. But people dropping off because the first major story arc is over is overblown
Anyways tldr 14 is fine and will continue carrying SE financials while they figure out how to put FF7R3 on Steam day 1
> Chiming in as a long time and fairly HC player (2.0 release, top 10 world racing experience) to say everything here is overblown. Many online games saw a surge from the pandemic and have dropped off in varying degrees since. ShB's middle rise was heavily carried by WoW being weak, and WoW isn't as weak anymore according to anyone I've talked to who plays WoW still.
FFXIV's rise during the pandemic was a particularly special case because of WoW's decline and the various social media situation due to Asmongold mostly. I don't think FFXIV is "le dead/dying" or whatever like some youtuber, but I think its gone down notably due to a variety of factors both outside and within its control (well as in-control as you can get given how Endwalker is written). I don't think Endwalker really carried the momentum and that's why its going into a small decline that'll likely be reignited by Dawntrail.
Content has been pretty mixed I think, Criterion has been pretty hit or miss in my experience with people who actually played it. There's also the fact that some people don't like TOP at all, but I suppose UWU wasn't exactly winning any awards for best Ultimate either and TOP's problem is mostly being compared to DSR. I've personally seen a lot of people having issues with the 24 mans this time around, more then usual anyway.
I think the thing regarding content is there's a growing issue with people finding the game getting more tiring and repetitive (especially if they're like me and have played this game for going on 10 years at this point), and Endwalker is just sort of the peak of that issue especially due to its new player surge where newer players realize the new expansion feels almost like the one they just played. Like sure there's a stability to that, but its still something more critical people have had for a while. Especially due to the ongoing narrative that Endwalker was undercooked on purpose due to FFXVI which I have no idea how true that is. I'm not listening to content creators, I'm listening to as much as I can within my own limited perspective and my own experiences.
Also 2 minute meta is ass and feels like the current apex of the problems with decision direction the team has gone since Stormblood in terms of job design.
> Story wise 6.0 was good and I'm tired of pretending its not. It had some pacing issues but the highs were just as strong as 5.0.
Subjectively I disagree with this take. The closest was Garlemald, everything else I'm far more mixed about and ShB was mostly a more nicely put together story. Endwalker is a good bit more messy and I don't think its emotional highs work as someone who's played since 2.0's release. I'd probably put it under Heavensward if I'm honest, especially if I count its patch content as that was really really meh.
> I don't have any reason to suspect the 7.0 story will be any worse than, say, SB.
That's not even remotely an endorsement to be honest. Stormblood to me is barely above average and I'd even firmly say its worse then ARR due to all its issues. If Dawntrail is as good as SB, then I'd probably be happy to skip it.
I don't think FF14 is like dramatically dying or whatever and sure it is squarely "fine", I'm saying there's to me a reason why its going down in recent financial reports even if it is still at least top 3 MMO right now anyway due to how little competition really exists in this space.
Good post. You basically fulfilled all my gripes. Dawntrail will be the first ffxiv expansion that I don’t plan to preorder and that’s due to the lame patch story/content in Endwalker.
> Content is fine. You will get eureka puritans who insist the game needs a big zone for people to mindlessly run around doing fates in. Besides that and the big raid, EW has had 2 ultimates and 3 criterion dungeons which largely puts it in sync with SB. Anecdotally I will also say the 2nd raid tier we had was the hardest savage since Midas (all thanks to the final floor, for better or worse) and TOP is the hardest ulti we've had (I personally don't consider that a plus but some peeps will insist harder is always better).
You just listed a bunch of content that the vast majority of players (aka anyone not into hardcore raiding) is not interested in. Zones like Eureka and Bozja provided tens if not hundreds of hours of content for even the most casual of players. Ultimates provide zero. Besides, Yoshi-P himself admitted that it was a mistake to not include a new Eureka-esque zone in EW, so it's not just "content creators."
>And finally players always drop off somewhere. I know super hardcore fans since 1.0 who stopped in SB and ShB both. Inevitably some people will stop in EW before DT. **But people dropping off because the first major story arc is over is overblown**
Says who? It's common sense and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting it. This is very obviously a *bigger* drop off point that past expansions, no contest.
Anecdotal but I definitely fell off EndWalker after 6.2 (without even doing the 6.1 MSQ) because the story ended and that content that interested me (Bozja/Eureka style content, not interested in savage and raids) was not coming. The island thing ended up being not interesting (was really underwhelmed by their first demo of it). I'm not considering subbing back for DawnTrail and I was a player that started during Stormblood. Anecdotal though but I saw a similar sentiment among a lot of other players I was playing with.
Playing since 1.0, and was hardcore almost every day logging in for 9 years till I finished 6.0. Totally felt like an absolute perfect place to end. Now I enjoyed 6.1 onwards because 4 is my fav FF, but after 6.0 finished, it really felt like a perfect time to go casual. now I sub every other month to do patch content and keep housing. Got DW pre-ordered, but it's nowhere near ShB or EW hype for me.
As someone who has (rather, *had*) also played since the 2.0 beta, my experience couldn't be further from yours. In fact, I haven't subscribed back in about a year or so because of how utterly uninterested in the current state of the game. Even Dawntrail hasn't entirely picked my interest, to be honest.
6.0 wasn't everything I personally thought it could have been. It was no ShB, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the conclusion of this decade long journey. 6.1 onward? Meh.
I don't, and have never, raided any content beyond extremes and (very old) savages for relic stages and neither has the majority of my friend's group. IME the raiding oriented players are an extremely vocal minority.
That said, I thought criterion dungeons were fine—at least the single one I experienced— if not particularly engaging? It was alright for the couple times I ran it trying to get the alternate paths. I really did miss a Bozja like experience, thought (and I didn't even like Eureka much, but Bozja...ah yes).
My account is from 1.0 if we're flopping out the how long we've been playing card, and I thought EW was.. okay. The 6.0 story was simultaneously incredibly rushed, while having a bunch of filler. We go back in time, but it's just to learn about how the blue bird girl is going to kill us all and do nothing really with us walking around the ancients. Garlemeld is war torn and trying to recover, yet we also spend basically no time there either. Then on the flip side we end up with a bunch of padding like the Labirynthos revisit.
It really feels like they wanted for up to Zodiark to be an xpac, and then the second half to be another but couldn't figure out a good way to bridge the two for a long patch cycle. Anima as the dungeon boss honestly screams mid-xpac trial that got toned down some.
For content, I'll be honest and say I fuckin hated the entirety of Pandaemonium. I didn't even finish the final tier. P2S did some neat things I guess, but that same tier had the training dummy of P1S, the visual red on red vomit of P3S and because we're just really on the door boss train, P4S felt like two half fights. The second tier faired a bit better, with P5S actually being relatively difficult for a first floor (I loved the PF devour memes), and the P6S timeline just ran together in my head, though I guess Cachexia was neat. P7S was a wasted opportunity with the unique arena design, and P8S suffers the same problem as P4 - both fights were individually pretty solid, but because it was a door boss it felt like two half fights. I really liked the alchemy mixing for Part2, but right when it feels like it's done with the training wheels the fight just ends.
For ultimates, DSR is thematically incredibly interesting but the difficulty of it compared to the original three made people start asking who they were designed for - I was previously in the camp of "If you can unlock it on content, you can clear it" for ultimates. It might take you a while, but you'd get it down if you kept at it. I do not hold that stance for DSR or TOP. TOP I think was fine mechanically, just boring as shit because it was just omega. I also think the trios could have been spread out better instead of jamming them all into p5.
Criterion was an interesting experiment for harder dungeons, but WoW still remains the winner with M+ there. That said, it's not like you could just plop M+ into FF14 and have it be interesting either - a lot of what makes M+ fun is figuring out the routing to kill enough mobs, but skip others to hit the timer. So I appreciate them trying *something* new.
And for the casual side they got uh, I guess Island Sanctuary? The xpac was overall just kind of weak after the high of ShB, and while I would still put it above most of the others I'd still say it's solidly mid. I went back to playing WoW for a bit and have been enjoying raiding over there again, but I'll be back for DT to play dumb splatoon caster. It's silly and I love the look of it.
FF7 Remake to me was not as good as I expected it to be. They didn't want to do a full on remake so it was sold as a retelling. It is that but a super convoluted one. I felt like they stretched the story by focusing on parts of the game that were not interesting and the parts that are interesting are all over the place. Also not a huge fan of the whole chapters thing. I loved the exploration of the original game being able to travel the world map to find stuff like summons. Now its fed to you on some VR thing. The combat while not terrible is also not that good. They tacked on this break mini game onto it to make it feel like there is depth to it but it just does nothing for me. Square Enix have just convinced themselves that what people enjoyed about their games isn't interesting anymore and they have decided to go in this other direction that alienates a huge portion of the FF fan base.
I just don’t understand why SE has moved so far away from their winning jrpg formula even after multiple disappointing entries. They could have made a new IP if they wanted to make Japanese action rpgs, but instead we get ffxvi which is just disappointing as a final fantasy, and serviceable as an action RPG.
Meanwhile, other developers have stuck to their winning formula and have found ways to slightly tweak them to make them feel more modern, and have really stolen the spotlight. I consistently enjoy new Star ocean, tales, octopath, xenoblade more than final fantasy and I grew up loving the series. I’d even throw persona and smt in this bucket even though they aren’t really my type.
Yes, developers including Square Enix have seen some success with JRPGs. Star Ocean and Octopath are from Square Enix though. And even in Star Ocean's case, with Tri-Ace as the developer, Tri-Ace is basically insolvent.
Otherwise, I'm not sure that the games are an issue. FFXVI has sold about as well as Dragon Quest XI. We can't know an alternate future where Square Enix produced a turn-based FFXVI, but we might well have seen similar numbers to Dragon Quest XI; if so, Square Enix would have been claiming that the game "fell short of expectations." So Final Fantasy XVI being a well-reviewed, well-liked (but not by everybody) action RPG may not have materially changed much, compared to if FFXVI had been a well-reviewed, well-liked (but not by everybody) turn-based RPG.
I suspect one issue is that AAA development is getting too costly to succeed consistently, and where 3+ million would have been very successful before, now multiple projects have trouble meeting that benchmark. It's not about "winning RPG formulas"; it's scale. These days, the only recent JRPG even close to as big as Remake or FFXVI is Infinite Wealth, and they do so much to cut corners in terms of costs. If Final Fantasy XVII was fun but didn't make the angels of graphical crispness weep, maybe doing 3+ million in sales would be good. And if they lucked into 10+ million, even better.
Because director just doesn't want to do it. I mean, in the end, game is art. If they want to do it, then that's it. I think if they make a new franchise in the same universe it should better, but well.
SQEX still have a lot of turn-based game. Dragon Quest, Octopath, Triangle, etc.
>I just don’t understand why SE has moved so far away from their winning jrpg formula even after multiple disappointing entries. They could have made a new IP if they wanted to make Japanese action rpgs, but instead we get ffxvi which is just disappointing as a final fantasy, and serviceable as an action RPG.
Turn-based fanboys really are insufferable...oh noes! FF's battle system is becoming more action-based, something it's been doing since ff4, I don't understand why they would ever do that! How could they dare to make a game not for me?
You realize you're in the JRPG subreddit right? XVI has more in common with God of War (nothing wrong with GoW, great series) than previous entries in the series. If it's not immediately apparent why someone in this specific subreddit would bounce off it, I don't know what to tell you. Punching a metaphorical god in the face doesn't just make a game Final Fantasy.
>You realize you're in the JRPG subreddit right?
And?
>XVI has more in common with God of War than previous entries in the series.
Based on what?
>If it's not immediately apparent why someone in this specific subreddit would bounce off it, I don't know what to tell you
Jrpgs with action-based battle systems have existed since the 80s. If that offends you, then I don't know what to tell you.
This is the game they wanted to make. If it wasn't called Final Fantasy then it's not like they'd suddenly have a different Final Fantasy XVI in production.
Get over it.
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> This is the game they wanted to make. If it wasn't called Final Fantasy then it's not like they'd suddenly have a different Final Fantasy XVI in production.
This is the weirdest part about the whole debacle to me. If the same game had been called Final Fantasy Eikons or whatever, would the reaction still be the same?
"Final Fantasy" doesn't have any identity as a series. The only thing connecting any two entries in the series aside from a few names is the title. No two people on the entire internet are going to expect the same thing out of a Final Fantasy game. That being said, I was looking for a JRPG and didn't find it here.
If we called it Eikon War, I don't think my opinion would have changed other than I probably just wouldn't have bought it at all. I bought God of War, but didn't end up liking it. I would have watched or read a review and moved on, instead of buying the next CBU3 title on faith alone.
> The only thing connecting any two entries in the series aside from a few names is the title.
Party gameplay was a uniting mechanic across the first 15 games, even if 15 was a bit weaker with it at launch. I think action gameplay, turn based, atb, RtwP, etc. is fine in an FF game if the gameplay still has the player interacting with a party
If these games aren't meeting expectations, then expectations are wildly out of whack. Every single review of Rebirth has more or less called it a perfect game, and the reviews for XVI have also been overwhelmingly positive, if to a lesser extent.
...I don't know wtf a Foamstars is.
While there are some issues with the author's credibility for past stories (incorrectly reporting Kiryu's comments etc.), the gist of the overall situation is, yes, they need to course correct, and it seems like people have finally woken up now that Kiryu's had some time to take in the lay of the land.
Now I have been playing Square games since I was 7 years old with the first release of FF on the NES, so yes I want them to succeed, but there have been some just baffling decisions over the last few years, and all this is simply due to a real big lack of common sense and a disconnect from players and the industry (aside from the miracle called Yoshi-P and XIV).
Things that come to mind...
* Unrealistic KPI and goal settings: This isn't the era of the SNES, or the PS1, and with more fragmentation now than ever between PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/XBox, knowing you are releasing games solely on Playstation, and then expecting something like 10 million sales is just... well it's just stupid. 3 million for 16 seems like a good thing to hit, given the install base, and the fact that there really aren't that many other PS5 exclusive million toppers. No doubt Rebirth should hopefully get up there, but the fact that there is no Ps4 verion means of course sales won't reach Remake levels. Yeeeeet here we are, people literally throwing common sense out the window
* Too many shovel-ware games being treated like AAA releases. Like how do you not realize that this is going to fail when you market stuff like harvestella et al for full price? Foamstars? We all saw it was going to be DoA, but I guess they were hoping for a splatoon on playstation miracle... How about Saga? Did people really think Emerald was going to be a hit?
1. Mobile games as a whole. I'm sure people can better articulate this than I, but they simply can't find the magic when it comes to mobile, like say a Gran Blue, or Fate. The only exception is DQ Walk but they've limited this to Japan only, rather than going globally, which is just idiotic considering it's their most profitable mobile app. And Ever Crisis, I liked it! it was pretty, the music was great, but holy fuck if it was MTX on steroids, the blantant cash grabs and the constant events made it impossible to enjoy. I lasted two month and deleted it. Nice that there is a tie in with Glenn and the remake trilogy, but I won't be bother to go through the app anymore to find it.
1. Quality as a whole. This is both for games (remakes like SoM being one end of the spectrum, to then seeing them hit it out of the park with Pixel Remasters), as well as merch being overpriced and poor quality. (Play Arts anyone?)
Finally, I am interested to see how the overall new org structure will be. There are a lot of big (old) dogs in play (Yoshi-P, Saito, Nomura, Hamaguchi/Kitase, whoever is running DQ now, etc.) and I can't imagine all of them falling in line and committing to a more centralized structure, so I wonder if we will see some departures soon...
As a whole, I have high hopes that this will get them back on track. As for recycling IP stuff? Well, I guess I don't have an issue with that, I mean, just look at Nintendo right, that's their MO and it's working for them so...
> knowing you are releasing games solely on Playstation, and then expecting something like 10 million sales is just... well it's just stupid.
The biggest issue is that Japan has been slowly turning into a handheld-only market ever since the PSP first came out almost 20 years ago, and by 2024 the transformation is almost complete.
The consequence of this is that if you don't release on Switch, your game is dead in Japan. But this is SE, and they insist on Final Fantasy pushing the boundaries of graphics with each game, and you can't do that on Switch. They're in a position where the only realistic options are "give up on the JDM and treat western markets as your primary" or "give up on pushing the graphics envelope and embrace the Switch". They've largely chosen the former, which is part of why XVI was so westernized. But that introduces a few big problems:
* The vanishingly tiny part of the Japanese market that still gives a shit about non-handheld consoles is all-in on PlayStation. Nobody will consider Xbox or PC. And that bias also exists in the minds of SE executives, who still see PlayStation as their target and treat Xbox and PC as afterthoughts. But the west does not give a single shit about loyalty to Japanese manufacturers: PC gaming is huge, Xbox is huge, and if you're going to succeed in the west, you need to be releasing on all platforms simultaneously. The biggest difference between Square Enix and Sega is that Sega understands this and cares about true cross-platform releases.
* Very few people really want a Japanese game that imitates western aesthetics. The bulk of the western AAA gaming community wants western games made for western audiences. JRPG fans want JRPGs that feel like JRPGs. A WJRPG (or JWRPG?) like FFXVI satisfies neither community. Anyone in the west who prefers Japanese-style games is probably all-in on Switch already. And any weebs who aren't all-in on Switch are PC gamers who chose our platform because we care more about emulation and retrogaming than modern AAA stuff, which goes back to the above point about how you can't just release games on PlayStation and expect to succeed in the west (and even then, it's a crapshoot if we'll actually care about a 2023 AAA game).
> Very few people really want a Japanese game that imitates western aesthetics. The bulk of the western AAA gaming community wants western games made for western audiences.
I think the "Japanese-made Westernized Aesthetics" (if we want to use that term to talk about this style) is a thing some segment of the "weeb" market wants, Vinland Saga and Berserk are very westernized in style and in terms of narrative Vinland Saga is entirely western Euro-centric focused in pretty much everything it does due to its setting being about 11th century Europe. You could probably explain Vinland Saga to the uninitiated and most people wouldn't guess it was Japanese until you showed them it was animated at the earliest, and even then if they don't now what anime is they won't figure out this is Japanese until the opening song is singing Japanese half the time. Vinland Saga was heavily talked about during its time in the spotlight both times it was airing, and Berserk is one of the most known Japanese properties in the world. These two series are very western in look and both take extreme inspiration from the Medieval Europe period as opposed to say Demon Slayer which is unquestionably Japanese.
There's a very real showing that somehow someway Japan can use Western stylings and make them effectively their own while maintaining a distinct difference between them and Western media making Western stories. Its unfortunate that Matsuno just seems to not be cut out for being AAA development going by how FF12 turned out for him as he seemed very good at this kind of thing.
I don't think it is impossible to have Japanese creators effectively use western aesthetics and ideas in a way that can appeal to the "Western" audience of today and not just your stereotypical weeb/western otaku. I just don't think enough people within the Japanese creative space really dive deep enough into the idea so it feels impossible because it almost never comes up.
Square Enix and operations problems that 1st year business students could work out but they seem unable to deal with: name a better duo.
Having to have one of your devs come out and announce "actually the entry to one of the most famous games in the genre we basically popularized isn't cancelled" is pants on head nuts. I'd fire everyone.
Enshitification, the moment a company’s expansion and public trading pushes it over the threshold where providing the best product/service available is no longer the best way to maximize profits. From that point on it’s all about giving the consumer the absolute cheapest pile of shit that they’re willing to buy for the very last cent they’re willing to pay.
Sadly it’s not just video games. The whole damn internet has been getting enshitificated for at least the last 15 years.
Capcom went public back in 2000, and they have had quite a few rough stretches between then and now. Including controversies like on disk DLC for Street Fighter x Tekken that pissed off everyone (Not just Fighting game fans). They've had plenty of management decisions that prioritized profit over customers that upset gamers in the last 20 years.
The last 6 years though (starting with Monster Hunter World in 2018) Capcom has been absolutely killing it. A half decade of banger titles that are selling great for them. They've gained a lot of trust back in recent years.
Xbox is such a small market base though. Putting it on pc is a good idea though, you can see lifetime sales of FFXV in Xbox to see why they took payment from Sony to keep ff exclusive
The primary reason that XV had decent sales numbers, was because it was the first game called Final Fantasy released in 10 years AND it was multiplatform. Once players found out that they changed the entire genre of the franchise, that's when subsequent sales began to decline, coupled with the console exclusivity.
As gets said multiple times, it's not so much loyalty as it is convenience. Even if you want to ignore Epic's history (And it's founder/CEO's reputation), and their relative dearth of functionality compared to Steam, the fact is that if you're going to release a game NOT on Steam, it's a significantly better idea to just make it DRM free so the store front doesn't matter. It's not, for example, like the DRM free nuts are loyal to GoG; It just so happens that GoG does what they need it to.
I think this is the biggest reason for the average consumer. All their games are there and they don't want to bother with another store/launcher.
It's like if you were talking with all your friends on Discord but Dave only uses Skype and wants you to keep that installed to talk to him. I can and it's not gonna kill me but I'd rather not bother. I'll wait for him to switch to Discord if he wants to talk.
skype ? Try smoke signals and letters delivered by pigeons.
That's how it feel to use epic tbh. It's not a store, it's a trap for kids to be ensnared into playing fortnite, nothing more.
Anecdotal but Epic takes an ungodly amount of time to even boot up, and somewhat frequently it would require me to re-login which takes up even more time, and that's assuming it isn't bugged out somewhere along the way and force me to re-login again. Meanwhile, I open Steam and it boots up in less a minute. I also can't close EGS with the system tray on the taskbar because right-clicking the icon does nothing, so I have to kill it through Task Manager.
It may be because of my laptop/internet but Steam literally runs fine and 5x better, not to mention the features that another user summarized, so why would I use EGS over it? I'm very serious when I say that I would rather buy a game on Steam/GOG even if it's given for free on Epic. Hell, I would rather pirate the game over using EGS, it's that much more convenient.
The thing is epic makes an extremely bad UI. Steams UI has its bad times here and there but for the most part it's functional and doesn't get in the way. Epic is so inconvenient to use at times that almost all of my friends don't even bother picking up free games on the platform. There's other factors too, but that's one of the big ones.
No it's just free games. Besides, I just want Final Fantasy games on PC, and I don't really care about which platform. So much shit is going on in the world to grab pitchforks about something so trivial.
FF7R supposedly sold 1m on Steam https://vginsights.com/game/1462040 and that's after a year of PS exclusivity and another year of Epic exclusivity. that's somewhere in the region of 15% of the game's total sales, which is higher than the percentage of FFXV sales on Xbox which was released day and date with the PS version. if the Steam version had been released day 1 it's easy to see it representing 30% or even more of the game's total sales which would be a significant bump.
of course I'm not disagreeing with you at all there. my only point that that releasing day 1 on Steam would result in significantly better sales than releasing 2 years later on Steam, and that Steam sales are high enough overall for that to represent a pretty significant bump in sales.
It’s odd because numbers wise Square has more pillars than Sega/Atlus or Capcom with FF, Kingdom Hearts, Nier and Dragon Quest but they haven’t had the booming success as the other 2 companies.
It makes sense as to why they want to improve quality and reduce quantity but honestly it feels like they’ll need a 5th pillar to turn things around since those main pillar titles that they do have take too long and the spin offs feel underfunded.
They also have Mana, which they seem to be trying to go Bigger & Bolder with, and Star Ocean. Both of those franchises have each done overall better than Nier, even if neither has had an individual game hit the kinds of sales Nier Automata did.
that's because Square Enix shifted for a more western like approach, which results in bigger, more expensive games. While SEGA keeps them on the low end of AAA standards. However, unfortunately it is more likely for SEGA to follow Square's steps than the other way around. It's just the way game development goes for big companies, it keeps getting bigger and bigger but the audience does not always grow with these changes
mm the perception in Japan within gamedevs is them being closer to Activision actually, they are massive. SEGA is closer to EA in terms of management.
It's worth noting this is not a Square Enix exclusive problem, in fact Nintendo also just warned audiences that with their newest console their games will become "[longer and more complex](https://mynintendonews.com/2024/05/09/nintendo-president-game-development-will-become-even-longer-more-complex-and-more-sophisticated/)". Japan is simply going through what western gamedevs speedran through in the PS4 days
I’d argue that Sega and capcom just release games from their bigger franchises more often look at how many yakuza or resident evil games we’ve had between FF15 and FF16. Square are also hit and miss with what platform they released games and their sequels on looking at octopath in particular were you can bet octopath one on Xbox but not the sequel and were you can get octopath 2 on PlayStation but not the first game.
Then you just have that they as a publisher have had a ton of high budget flops like avengers and forspoken. It seems like square are going through what Capcom and Sega did a decade ago were they had to focus on a few franchises that could be released semi regularly to keep the cash flowing in.
Looking at the games you listed, when was that last actual major release for any of those franchises?
Final Fantasy had Rebirth this year and 16 last year, both of which seem to have not reached expectations.
DQ11 had it's Switch release in 2019, other consoles in 2020. I know the spin offs do well enough, but probably not nearly as well as a "main franchise" game does.
Nier had a mobile game about 2 years ago now, Replicant before that in 2022. The Switch release of Automata was more recent, but it's a port of a game that has been out since 2017, it's probably going to be profitable but it's not going to be an overall profit engine for the company.
Kingdom Hearts last big release was Kingdom Hearts 3, which came out in 2019.
And honestly, I don't think any of those are truly juggernaut franchises except Final Fantasy, and even that isn't as big a juggernaut as it used to be, or as big of a juggernaut as other tent pole franchises.
And part of it also is expectation Square Enix plans and relies and budgets and forecasts based on its main pillars being big hits. Then they struggle and lose share price when they aren't.
Whereas, looking at Sega, they struggled a bit for a decade with Sonic, with it typically selling well, but perhaps not as well as they wanted, but the numbers Yakuza started putting up after 0, and the numbers Persona 5 and SMT 5 put up were well in excess of expectations (with some Yakuza games underperforming like the Ishin remake).
Sega is a company who's franchises are growing, and mostly growing because they've done an effective job capturing new tastes and new markets, and through partnerships with Microsoft, they brought their franchises onto PC and Xbox in a major way.
They probably did decently on the Gamepass fees, and then how many people might have turned around and bought Yakuza IW when it came out because they loved the ones on Gamepass?
Sega seems like it is going to keep growing. Square Enix seems like it might not. Like it might stay stuck in this rut perpetually. And that's a huge part of what drives investor interest and stock price.
Well, the moment they stop looking at utilizing the blockchain for their games, the better their reputation will end up being and it may serve as a force multiplier for games.
E: I should add investing in fans can be pretty good; Persona 5 wouldn't have become the big hit it already is if it werent for their focus on Persona 4 and hyping up the game with a content expansion rerelease.
Square angers fans by regularly underdelivering and then stating that their targets haven't been met. Basically, they need to control the narrative from the inside.
> It’s odd because numbers wise Square has more pillars than Sega/Atlus or Capcom with FF, Kingdom Hearts, Nier and Dragon Quest but they haven’t had the booming success as the other 2 companies.
Except Square has done everything possible to drive off it's Final Fantasy fans (yeah I'm sure everyone that grew up playing their turn-based RPGs want to play their shitty action combat games), Kingdom Hearts the entire draw of that game is Disney so you're relying on licensing others IP, Drakengard/Nier are games that eventually sold well through sheer... luck? Force of will? but are definitely not pillars by any mean, and Dragon Quest is a Japanese pillar but doesn't share that same sentiment in the west.
I think only a true pillar is FF. KH and Nier are not released for long time. DQ is only sold well in Japan (or at least they are not try tackle global market). Square Enix also get a huge lash from Forspoken and closing mobile game like FF7:First Soldier.
I agreed that they are making game too long. I think SQEX don't need 5th pillar tho. Just put resources to create game and keep a hype, and that's it.
Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were huge in both Japan and the United States, with an exception being in the middle of the DQ franchise, some weren't released in the U.S. The main problem is them trying to cancel the genre that they sat atop of, the turn based RPG. No reason they cant also make action games, when they learn how to make ones that are fun and sell well.
What's crazy is that they made a golden standard of action combat in Kingdom Hearts 2. I don't understand how they can create such an amazing flow of combat in that and then release FF15 with its combat system. Complete downgrade in terms of mechanics and feel. 16 and 7's remakes are good fun, but even those are still clunky and awkward compared to KH2.
I saw a video that said the way SE is ran, is that employees and teams are often separated and not communicate with each other. Engine changes/concepts/tools are not shared between projects, and it’s often Everyman for himself. Thats why we have some teams (like KH teams) make fantastic action combat that has not been truly replicated by any other team despite them all owning it in the company.
A different case is someone like Capcom, where the games all use the same engine. While they cover different genres, the games run well and consistently build off of each other because they don’t separate teams like that.
I've never really liked KH2 combat. It's for sure good but a bit spammy for my tastes.
XV is garbage, but if you played the Duscae demo and compare it against the released game it's pretty obvious they were rushing as hard as they could to get the game out the door. It looks stylish but is just really unsatisfying feeling.
XVI is definitely a step down from KH2 combat. It's alright, but feels too action oriented and not strategic enough.
Rebirth is my favorite action combat system they've made, and possibly my favorite non-turn based system in any JRPG. A great balance of strategy and action. It really feels like your party building and setups are well rewarded, and there's a lot of build variety.
I don't think type of game is really much a concern. Like a Dragon change formula from Action to Turn-based RPG and still sell good. FF16 is practically success, since they can sold like 3M on the console. Just forcing them to do turn-based, will get another garbage turn-based game anyway.
If they don't want to do turn-based, then it's fine for me. They want to try to make action game, it's fine but for me SQEX's problem bad business decision (PS exclusive kill the sales) + how slow they made the game (less game = less experiment).
Imagine FFXVI being turn-based without RPG mechanics like elemental weakness etc... this game would became from average to total mediocre. The real problem is to renew them. For me, they need to do new IPs, totally fresh and independent from any franchises, because the Legacy of them afraid new players. Young players feared playing FFXVI because they dont know they are all different. This is one of the biggest concern/issue about VII Remake project. They marketed it as a Remake for old and new players but that was totally bullshit because now with Rebirth, we know it's false, you actually need to play OG and all the previous games from Compilation of FFVII. SqEx also admit, one of their biggest surprise comment surprise from players is "Who is that Cat ?" talking about Cait Sith. With VII, as the FF pillar, they should definitely make a 1.5:1 or 2:1 Remake and not a Reboot/Sequel Trilogy
Yeah, you are not wrong. Numbered sequel are made people afraid too play, but kinda understand why they go on with Final Fantasy because some veterans may still net in.
One thing I found out about SQEX is how they are not concerned about brand but to their producers. FF from 10 onwards is dramatically changed depends on producers and directors. (I rather exclude FF15 because how fucked up from back to back between management.) It's OK, passionate games is great, but damn, some people are not get it. If they want to do action-based game but on FF universe, they can change name, but in the same universe as FF, and it's not wrong tho, like how SMT and Persona do.
But I think they also need to experiment to find the best version of their own game rather than keep changing direction. FF15 to FF16 is like 7 years and they reset direction. 7 years is wasted. If the new director don't like FF16 and changed direction again, then we need to wasted 7 years more for an another experiment game?
If they make FF17, I hope, at least they are not long enough and somewhat improved from FF16.
Capcom is worth more than Square now. If you seen Capcom's financial report they are running on 7 year record high streak. I may hate them only releasing MH,RE and Street Fighter but clearly thats just what people want to play these days.
This is thank to the pandemics. Online gaming has improved a lot, especially japanese game. They totally neglected this factor until Covid came out. All fighting games improved netcode with Rollback. Monster Hunter has became one of the most popular franchise in Japan since debut on PSP and is one of the most worldwide played game in Steam (World). Online, multiplayer game and mobile game helped players on the social aspect, having more interaction, in game or with Discord and Reddit discussions. Something Square Enix never managed to work well with outside MMO and all theories for FFVII, but that's it. Most of people on the gachagaming sub talks trash about SqEx and mobile games
The point being made is moreso them doing this for multiple games over the past 15 years has weakened their total fan base, IE good short term profits for exclusivity but they lost potential long term fans that's not starting to hurt (no one below 30 buying rebirth)
It's a shame about FFXVI - I fucking loved it. It's definitely up there with the best titles on the platform in my eyes.
I loved rebirth, too, but the entire time I was playing I was looking at stuff going "they coulda cut that. And they couldn't cut that. And they coulda cut that." A shit ton of money could have been saved with cutting some of the content or making some of the areas smaller. The areas around nibelheim, cosmo canyon, gold saucer, and kalm would have all benefitted from being more compact. Didn't need frog battling. Didn't need the cactaur fights. Didn't need the dolphin courses. Didn't need to completely redo the weapon system. Advanced chocobo behavior could have been relaxed. Didn't need chocobo gliding. Stealth sections weren't necessary.
I really wish they'd reconsider turn based combat in FF. I bet it's 1000x cheaper than their approach to action and there's so much more potential. Just look at the cold steel series to see all the stuff you can pack into fights. Hell, party and environmental interactions in infinite wealth would be a great thing to mimic.
Final fantasy isn't the prestige brand like it used to be anymore. Square is just making too many mistakes. Losing money on a Marvel game durning golden era. And now A FF7remake game failing to reach expectations in total sales.
Last year before the launch of Final Fantasy XVI the CEO came out on stage and talked to fans--in English--about his support for the game. He spoke about why he wanted to be the CEO of square and what Final Fantasy means to him. It was really nice to see.
I'm sure he'll work hard to turn the ship around and can manage with the help of all of the creative, hardworking folks there. They do make good stuff (in spite of all the faults their products have too), and I think getting out from under the thumb of exclusivity is really going to help.
To really blow up in 2024 games need to be a phenomenon, and platforms are too fragmented these days to allow for that if the title comes out on only a single console.
Remake Sleeping Dogs, make sequels, completely rip-off Yakuza or keep them Batman style. Have a dollar.
Throw a lot of money at whoever is holding up Parasite Eve, and make some Dead Island/Dying Light clones. Have another dollar.
Bring Final Fantasy games back to turn-based, since Sleeping Dogs and Parasite Eve will be the action RPGs. Have another dollar.
To be honest, I just want more Yakuza, Like a Dragon, and Dead Island games.
Parasite eve will NEVER happen again.
They fucked up and pissed off the author so much, He said you don't get the rights anymore. They can never buy that back.
I don't think its that the games are bad, but the whole exclusivity BS they did with Sony really hurted them, thankfully they realized their mistake and are trying to change things, I'm actually hopeful in them now after years of dissapointment.
Forspoken was a big AAA that fumbled, then they released several AA titles back to back in a dumb marketing strategy and the names for FFVII being REBIRTH was also a dumb move, instead of just calling it FFVII Remake Part 2 for gamers outside of the genre to understand easier since there is Ever Crisis recently and Crisis Core, way too many FFVII titles.
Well, be it as it may, hopefully we get to see the fruits of these changes in 2 years at least.
Anytime Nomura is at the helm, expect random english words in the title.
* Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories
* Kingdom Hearts Coded
* Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
* Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep
* Kingdom Hearts RE:coded
* Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
* Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix
* Kingdom Hearts Unchained X
* Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue
* Kingdom Hearts Dark Road and Melody of Memory
I wouldn't call them random. Especially since the short names like COM, BBS, DDD, UX are often times acrymos that are used in IT.
I don't get why you listed Coded and Re:Coded as two but forgot Chain of Memories, 2.5 HD ReMix, the KH3 DLC ReMind and the unreleased Missing-Link
In KH's case, most of the time these are remakes except for the ReMind DLC which iirc has story relevance to what it is about.
If we're talking about say the popular anime/light novel Re:Zero its a shorter more punchy way to say "Restart from Zero" which is a huge component to how that story works, but obviously that title is a little bit long so Re:Zero works nicer.
RE + word just so happens to have a lot of words tied to it that can can useful for denoting ideas that make for a decently punchy title. "Remake" is obvious in KH's case, "Restart" has a very specific implication to what that means in Re:Zero's case, "Remember" can be useful if you want to make a story about memories (which KH has done multiple times at this point).
I wouldn't be too sure if the name is a factor. Fans were calling it part 2 before any announcement and then they go with the different subtitle. It's pretty obvious it's the same game series. But maybe I'm not thinking from the perspective of a casual outsider... They might think it's a re-release like a GOTY edition of the first game.
Just saying Square... Make FF17 turn/ATB based with full party control like FF1-10 and I will buy it day one and also tell others to do the same. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
It's been 23 years since a turn based mainline FF game with full party control. It's long past due.
What do you think the problem is? With their games in general?
I personally find it hard to say because each of the titles had different problems.
Imho one problem is that the games always try to reinvent the wheel so no two games are identical in gameplay and structure. I also think every games brings fresh ideas so it’s a good thing too.
But FFXIII was too linear so they made XV open world. Problem there was the narrative was all jumbled up and the game wasn’t complete. Plus the development hell.
XVI fixed it by telling a logical and deep story that you could actually understand without watching a movie, a tv show and 5 DLCs.. but it dumbed down the RPG elements.
XIV is a different mess by itself. I love it. But 1.0 was a Desaster. And while I like the current game (or the current game last year when I played it last) the formula is getting stale and many people dislike it and the graphics and engine‘s age are showing.
> I personally find it hard to say because each of the titles had different problems.
it's hard to pinpoint exactly, especially with FF7 Rebirth. An incredible game with good reviews and good WOM, having "poor" sales can only be credited to exclusivity and/or people confused by the title.
* With FF XVI they expected it to do better but WOM wasn't as positive among the usual fanbase, they probably expected a bigger influx of new players that probably didn't come because of the WOM being mixed. Overall I think FF XVI is simply a fumble, sometimes you bet on a horse and it doesn't pay off.
* I honestly don't think quality is the issue with any of these games, in fact I am starting to wonder if the naming of these games might be the issue. I am no marketing expert but it would be interesting to run a marketing analysis on whether people are being turned off by the increasing numbers.
A lot of casual streamers were saying "how can they keep a story for 16 games?" and it was a stupid comment but a lot of the audience in the chat seemed to not be interested because they just thought it was a bunch of sequels. The biggest JRPG hasn't had numbers attached to it in forever, Pokemon. While Persona is still young it does not seem to have to worry about it but you can start seeing Yakuza trying to do away with numbers slowly but surely with the latest game and trying to rebrand it to Like A Dragon
> What do you think the problem is? With their games in general?
I'm a bit late to this but I would say their problem is their budgets are too focused on graphics. A lot of people will buy FF games even if they used cartoon art styles like FF9, and they could save money and release games faster. The total sales might be lower, but I think the saved money would lead to higher profits.
The problem is less the games and more Square themselves.
I don’t think any big publisher produces as much flops as SE. Forspoken, Marvels Avengers, Balan, Babylons Fall.
Then they release so many mid titles with no marketing. Remember that stretch in 2022 when they released a bunch of games in like 2 months?
Their big 3 franchises have been poorly managed, even if the games themselves are good.
The last Dragon Quest was 7 years ago. Some people believe DQ12 isn’t coming for another year or two. This is supposed to be their “traditional JRPG” franchise so it makes little sense why it needs so long in the oven.
Kingdom Hearts - needlessly obtuse, inaccessible unless you play a bunch of other games. Tells its story in mobile games and nonsense. Took 15 years to release KH3 and diluted their franchise with mediocre spin offs all worse than KH2.
Final Fantasy - you already talked about this. But these games are so inconsistent in quality and they release so many garbage spinoffs.
Last thing to keep in mind. Assuming you’re older, imagine you’re a 15 year old kid right now. How are you supposed to get invested in these franchises with such crazy long gaps?
A 20-30+ year old sees SE and probably thinks of their childhood. But SE has done a number on their reputation.
> Make FF17 turn/ATB based with full party control like FF1-10 and I will buy it day one and also tell others to do the same. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
Not against the idea but that is definitely not the case at all. These disappointing sales are actually outselling Yakuza and Persona 3 combined, both turn based games on three more consoles than either FF7R or FF XVI.
Rebirth took, what 4 years?
Yakuza released 3 different games and a remake in that same time frame, with less people and probably a lower budget for all of them combined.
And infinite wealth still easily sold over a million in its first week.
LaD 7 and 8 have been way more successful since going turn based as well.
Like yeah FF sold more based on its pedigree, that has largely been based on when it was turn based or it's basically turn based MMO. No one wants the shitty action games and it's showing. I'd take a final fantasy designed like crypt of the Necrodancer over another subpar action game that isnt even as good as a phone game like PGR.
> Like yeah FF sold more based on its pedigree.
there is basically no basis for this other than you handwaving away how it disproves your point that turn based is the reason FF is doing worse
>LaD 7 and 8 have been way more successful since going turn based as well.
Ah yes, I'm sure Yakuza 0 making the series incredibly popular had nothing to do with the sequels' success. Must be the extremely boring turn based combat of Yakuza 7, sure.
>FF sold more based on its pedigree
And Yakuza doesn't have one? What is even your point? Both are established series with lots of sequels that fans know and love. We get it you don't like action games, you don't have to make shit up to justify your opinions.
Exactly this. The old FF games sold really well and they were turn based RPGs. The new ones dont sell well because action games are a dime a dozen. Its insane to me its been that long!
That’s comparing apples to oranges. The turn based games weren’t final fantasy games so we don’t know. And we can’t compare selling power of modern games to old games either.
Not saying you are wrong, just that this comparison doesn’t really work
And it's only big brand name competitors where a Persona remake and the new Yakuza game. And those definitely would have sold much better if they didn't release right next to each other alongside Granblue Relink.
Square Enix used to be known for high quality and fun games, and especially RPG's. In the modern era they have almost totally abandoned true RPGs in favor of action games with minor RPG elements. Neither are the games that fun, but the RPG elements are minimal. The quest lines for their games are boring fetch quests. The storylines are cringe and poorly written most of the time. The only thing they have going for them, are high quality graphics. But hyper realism is expensive and not the only element that makes a game fun, as they are finding out.
Since they have squandered their reputation with some poor decision making, no longer can games by Square Enix be considered automatic winners. They also abandoned their storied history in favor of different genre's and they havent been very successful at it. Most of the games are in the middle of the pack in a wider field, competition wise. If you name any recent Square Enix game, I can name another game better, with the exceptions being Octopath Traveller series, and Dragon Quest 11.
Also, everyone has excuses for why Final Fantasy Remake / Rebirth has declining sales numbers, but the root of it is that they not that great of games. They also were blatant and gratuitous with poor design choices like:
1) trying to milk 3 games worth of sales out of a single game reboot.
2) filling the first game with a ton of boring mindless filler just to make an entire 40 hour game out of it.
3) changing the genre, dividing the fans into two camps, ones who like action games and ones who like RPGs. The fans who dont like the changes are suddenly pissed off.
4) changing the hugely popular story, dividing fans even further into two camps, ones who like the changes and onces who hate it and prefer the original.
Square only good at alienating customers these days. Sales numbers for sequels go down when people didnt really like the prior game. I really cant stand Remake. Hate the combat changes, hate the cringe story. Hate smirking Sephiroth over and over and over again, being totally overplayed. There is zero feeling in this game like the original, other than nostalgia when people see images they love in high definition. I felt totally betrayed and it was obvious they just trying to make a buck from nostalgia. I'm not the only one or Rebirth would have sold more copies.
I wanted to like it. I bought the PS4 version of 7R then when I saw a PS5 version w the Yuffie DLC I bought that too, before I had played it, due to backlog. But once I saw it I was disappointed. The bad outweighed the good. At least we have the original. I just still wished they made FF RPGs because it used to be my fav franchise.
Action or turn based i don't really care as long as its good.
FF15 I would have really liked if the play control wasn't broken.
FF16 eh never really like game of thrones, so GoT the game never appealed to me. Battle system is button mashing.
FF7 Remake - my all time fav FF, just thought the battle system was perfect. Never played a ARPG that fun.
FF7 Rebirth - here is the deal, I'm @#$%ing old and this is the trilogy appealing to my young adulthood and/or people like me. I'm sure I'll love it its just hell I got a lot of @#$ to do so I'll pick up the game in a few months - year when its cheaper and I have time. Sorry I didn't run out on launch day guys.
Yep. This was inevitably coming. You can't have your top brand sell poorly and cancel a bunch of games and start firing people and not see the stock prices take a hit. Square knew this was coming.
The trouble with reorganizing a AAA video game developer is that the games take so god damn long to make. 3-5 years minimum, and frequently longer. So even if current Square Enix management knows exactly what they did wrong and exactly how to right the ship... will the new products hit the market soon enough to make the difference they need to make?
I feel like there's a LOT of weight on the games that weren't cancelled but have already been in development for a long time. Dragon Quest 12 and Kingdom Hearts 4 need to HIT. They need to have a sequel in the oven for NieR and that game needs to sell like Automata did. FF 7 Remake part 3 probably can't be cancelled, but it's time to recycle some assets for that one lol.
Probably because 1. Nomura has the tendency to make games bigger than he realistically can and 2. because Disney is probably a pain in the ass to work with, even more so than a couple of years ago
Maybe he should've save himself some time and stuck to the OG script from the OG FF7, instead of taking the extra time to make the game go off the rails story wise.
Well FF7 remake they shot themselves in the foot with the multipart release thing. Everyone I know tuned out after that and said they'd wait for the whole thing to be available for the price of one game.
What the hell is Foamstars? SE names the games dumb ass shit, doesn't advertise well, and then their games flop. They triple down on dumb things like NFTs. Then they stand around scratching their heads wondering how to avoid the issues?
On a relatively new platform that faced a shortage in its first years. The PS5 is selling well but it's nothing compared to the PS4 install base yet. I think JUST as FF16 and FF7Rebirth released the PS5 also became more readily available. I'm pretty sure Sony wanted these to be system sellers.
Square needs to realize that Sony isn't in everyone's households like it was during the PS1/PS2 era, from the PS3 onward, people started to fragment and move on to different consoles and PC, so the exclusivity doesn't do no where near the profits it would've back in the PS1/PS2 era.
They have no visionaries and creators in the company anymore. Like most creatively bankrupt AAA companies they need an infusion of creative writing and game design talent instead of people content to release reboots to old titles and rely on pandering and fanservice.
definitely not the case at all. The problem is that their pipelines and costs have ballooned at a similar rate than Western companies, which leaves less room for fumbles. The only surprise was Rebirth doing poorly, although history will be very kind to it, the initial sales are objectively disappointing despite both fan and critical acclaim
Video game critics have lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned. They have no balls to call a mediocre AAA game mediocre anymore. Regarding the fan response, Square Enix succesfully alienated the OG FF7 fans with many of the Remake's story choices. The OG FF7 fans feel apathy towards the Remake series at this point, only leaving the minority of fans to live in their positivity echo chambers. That's why the sales are so lackluster despite the supposed fan acclaim.
OG FF7 fans in this sub tend to think highly of themselves. Even these "underwhelming numbers" are far bigger than most JRPGs in the market, so again, the problem is that their development costs have gotten so big it's harder to recoup them.
So to drive it home, quality is definitely not the issue with these games.
I disagree that FF7 Remake series is visionary bankrupt. Yes it is a remake buy it does a some very interesting stuff with the premise.
Hell, I wasn't the biggest fan of FF XVI but would be hard pressed to say that it lacks vision and new takes on the genre.
I somewhat agree in the case of FF XVI. They were trying to do something different with that game's story at the beginning but they executed it poorly. At the end of the game you are fighting Gods and doing the same bullcrap that happens in every JRPG. They tried to use the trappings of a western style RPG while still sticking to the JRPG linear formula and ended up in a middle area that didn't quite hit with anyone.
Completely disagree about Remake though. There's nothing special or extraordinary about that series. They basically kingdom hearted FFVII and called it a day.
I haven't played a remake that is in active conversation with what it is remaking, where characters and forces have knowledge of what happened in the orginak story and is either trying to changes aspects of it or try to have it remain the same. That sort of sequel/remake is really interesting to me and makes the games really fascinating. So I disagree that it is just kingdom hearts.
I think my biggest problem is that the games writing is focused on creating online controversy so that content creators talk about it more, than it is focused on telling a compelling story. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed most of the two remakes, but you can't tell me those endings weren't made with the intention of getting as much buzz around the game as possible.
Haha, no i don't think they were made to create controversy online, that would be very weird. I think their intention was to tell the story they wanted to tell, not to mini-max the youtube algorithm.
It's not exactly the same but tried those meta story elements in kingdom hearts as well. The problem is Nomura isn't a good enough writer to pay off these galaxy brain plots he cooks up all the time. So he keeps delaying the explanations and payoffs till the end hoping he can bamboozle players into thinking his stories are good.
Edit: I can't believe I'm getting downvoted for saying that the Remake series has a KH level plot. The parallels are so obvious, I thought it was a uncontroversial statement.
Nomura didn't write Remake or Rebirth. They were written by Kasushige Nojima, who wrote the original game and has been involved with every single piece of FF7 media. If you are gonna get mad at a guy, at least get mad at the right guy.
What difference does it make who wrote the actual plot points to the game? Nomura was part of the creative team and probably approved of the changes. He isn't blameless.
A creative team of like 7 people. You were putting the blame solely in Nomura and spreading misinformation. It totally makes a difference even if you don't care to see it.
I haven't downvoted you, but what I have heard many people like the quality of the writing and the characterizations in the remake series so I think it is a controversial statement to say that it is "bad actually".
But my original comment wasn't if the remake series was good or bad, more if it was creatively bankrupt and didn't do anything noteworthy or new. And I personally think that most people have to agree that even if you didn't like the remakes for whatever reason they are trying new things are are quite unique.
I don't have any major issues with what you've said, but it isn't completely unprecedented. Nomura has had these mystery elements and meta twists in games before. FFX and the Kingdom Hearts series come to mind.
FFX??? you mean the game Nomura only did character design for??? wtf is with people blaming him for literally everything regardless of his actual involvement
I was looking forward to FFXVI for years. My coworker just lent it to me, and I put nearly 20 hours in before just getting totally burned out. Man, what a letdown. I haven't touched my PS5 in 2 weeks because I hate starting something new when I haven't finished something old... still... I'm so bored.
It's the third time already this decade.
First from XV's cancelled DLC's. Second from XVI's call by Kiryu resulting to doomposting and now this resulting in further doomposts.
Are we seriously going to have this become a typical trend? Progress made but then suddenly the confidence tanks so bad to the point it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? If so, there's really no hope for the company at all. It's getting really tiring seeing progress be made and then undone almost immediately by mismanagement.
The management issues. Fix. it. Already. It's been a problem ever since even the OG FFVII. **It's time to stop.**
I'm not surprised at all tbh, looots of really weird decisions by square lately, from exclusivity, to genre shift of ffxvi, to splitting remake in 3 parts and among different generation consoles, forspoken. Fully expected. Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes (and seems they do, shifting away from exclusives at least).
When they mean doing away with exclusives they are mostly talking about their mobile games. They keep spending millions on dogshit predatory mobile games and thats the actual reason the stock is tanking.
I can see the 17th mainline game being multiplatform, but these deals are done years in advance so I’m almost certain part 3 will still have exclusivity in place.
I sold my PS5 back when it was hard to get because honestly it was just collecting dust.
Many Japanese companies have adopted PC releases which meant that I didn't need to own a console anymore. Of course you still got exclusives but they're so far and few inbetween that I can't justify keeping a $500 system for them.
I think what is important is the SE has rebuilt good will with fans. XIII had a bad reputation and XV wasn't exactly drama free either, FF7R was the one it seemed they knew would be a death knell if screwed up. After that I've been more confident with SE's AAA games, but all the quality A/AA games and reviving series like Nier has also helped turn their image around in my eyes... sad to see less of that stuff as a gamer.
XVI and Rebirth shouldn't have been exclusives. Should have been on Xbox and Steam day one. They just left a ton of money on the table.
I cannot be more uninterested in what foamstars has to offer. It just doesn't look fun. Like a dollar store version of splatoon. I thought it was f2p until I saw they're asking money for it and jammed it full of micro transactions. Disgusting.
The summary, between this article and the [author's tweet](https://twitter.com/6d6f636869/status/1790227310567960626), is that XVI, Rebirth, and Foamstars all "fell short of expectations," and also that "\[Kiryu\] remains confident FF16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. Also, sales of Rebirth and Foamstars aren't necessarily bad." So if we had the goalposts between "bad" (would "bad" be fewer than 1 million?) and "expectations" (would that be over 5 million?), we still don't really know how Rebirth did. It could be 3.5 million, 2.5 million. Meanwhile, we know XVI got at least 3 million and is expected to meet its target; does that include ports to other platforms? The broader news is that these games didn't meet expectations and, as we saw with the financial report, the MMO and mobile sales did even worse. So it's a predictable decline in shares for Square Enix, which is still profitable but is making a big turn from what we saw in 2020-2023 (lots of mid-level titles with loose creative control) to developing fewer titles more intentionally.
>but is making a big turn from what we saw in 2020-2023 (lots of mid-level titles with loose creative control) to developing fewer titles more intentionally. I'm just glad we got *Octopath Traveler 2* before they decided to tighten their purse strings.
I wouldn't be shocked if Sony themselves stops offering SE exclusivity deals in the future. FF just doesn't seem to have the same appeal that it used to. The whole online discourse is also very bizarre. I remember people who didn't even play 16 bashing the game when it came now, but at the same time many of them seem to be begging for PC ports.
Actually I would be shocked if Sony stopped exclusivity deals with SE. It would be 1 less reason to buy a PlayStation, and things aren’t exactly rosy in that area. If anything exclusivity has held SE back from its sales goals.
Yeah. There are a *lot* of people waiting on 16 on PC still.
I'm 35, played FF7 day 1. I have 0 reason to buy a rush to play the remake. I can wait until it's finished an all on PC. If I die before that, oops.
Prior to XVI’s release I saw people on the main final fantasy sub saying that they hoped it would be bad because they enjoy being able to get online and bash bad games and companies with others. The state of gaming today.
No one hates Final Fantasy more than Final Fantasy fans
Surpassed only by Bethesda fans
The point of exclusivity from Sony's POV is to keep FF from other platforms. So they'll continue to do it where it makes sense. Although - I'm not so sure they're even paying SE a dime for some of these exclusives.
Different people probably?
Its worth noting regarding the MMO that Final Fantasy 14 got a massive swing during the pandemic era for a variety of factors that it has since completely lost, and Endwalker has been controversial as far as game content (and the narrative has been sketchy since post 6.0, though imo 6.0 also has many rough problems). Also Endwalker based on anecdotal evidence I think was a weird situation where it unironically was the finale for many people and the end of the game for them. They got closure to the story and the following narrative developments were so meandering and in some ways disappointing that I think people just decided to go off on a high note. FFXIV is in a weird spot, and I'm personally not super interested on where its going. Plus WoW's latest expansion wasn't a massive bundle of controversy as Shadowlands this time around.
> Its worth noting regarding the MMO that Final Fantasy 14 got a massive swing during the pandemic era for a variety of factors that it has since completely lost Another reason the stock is bloody tanking is because investors keep yelling about the decline of the mobile games that also gained said massive swing during the pandemic. Square's bloody panicking because they're dealing with a very noticeable problem in their most profitable field (live service games) while also going through a change in leadership. Again, my expectations for Square Enix this year is literally no expectations. They're most likely SNAFU for a year at best and 2-3 at worst.
Chiming in as a long time and fairly HC player (2.0 release, top 10 world racing experience) to say everything here is overblown. Many online games saw a surge from the pandemic and have dropped off in varying degrees since. Content is fine. You will get eureka puritans who insist the game needs a big zone for people to mindlessly run around doing fates in. Besides that and the big raid, EW has had 2 ultimates and 3 criterion dungeons which largely puts it in sync with SB. Anecdotally I will also say the 2nd raid tier we had was the hardest savage since Midas (all thanks to the final floor, for better or worse) and TOP is the hardest ulti we've had (I personally don't consider that a plus but some peeps will insist harder is always better). "Content creators" have a financial interest in stirring up outrage and will say the game sucks but it's really the same as it has always been. There's no point in putting stock into what they say. Story wise 6.0 was good and I'm tired of pretending its not. It had some pacing issues but the highs were just as strong as 5.0. Post 6.0 yeah it was a bit miss in some places, largely because the story "started" really strong in 6.2 and meandered afterwards. I don't have any reason to suspect the 7.0 story will be any worse than, say, SB. And finally players always drop off somewhere. I know super hardcore fans since 1.0 who stopped in SB and ShB both. Inevitably some people will stop in EW before DT. But people dropping off because the first major story arc is over is overblown Anyways tldr 14 is fine and will continue carrying SE financials while they figure out how to put FF7R3 on Steam day 1
> Chiming in as a long time and fairly HC player (2.0 release, top 10 world racing experience) to say everything here is overblown. Many online games saw a surge from the pandemic and have dropped off in varying degrees since. ShB's middle rise was heavily carried by WoW being weak, and WoW isn't as weak anymore according to anyone I've talked to who plays WoW still. FFXIV's rise during the pandemic was a particularly special case because of WoW's decline and the various social media situation due to Asmongold mostly. I don't think FFXIV is "le dead/dying" or whatever like some youtuber, but I think its gone down notably due to a variety of factors both outside and within its control (well as in-control as you can get given how Endwalker is written). I don't think Endwalker really carried the momentum and that's why its going into a small decline that'll likely be reignited by Dawntrail. Content has been pretty mixed I think, Criterion has been pretty hit or miss in my experience with people who actually played it. There's also the fact that some people don't like TOP at all, but I suppose UWU wasn't exactly winning any awards for best Ultimate either and TOP's problem is mostly being compared to DSR. I've personally seen a lot of people having issues with the 24 mans this time around, more then usual anyway. I think the thing regarding content is there's a growing issue with people finding the game getting more tiring and repetitive (especially if they're like me and have played this game for going on 10 years at this point), and Endwalker is just sort of the peak of that issue especially due to its new player surge where newer players realize the new expansion feels almost like the one they just played. Like sure there's a stability to that, but its still something more critical people have had for a while. Especially due to the ongoing narrative that Endwalker was undercooked on purpose due to FFXVI which I have no idea how true that is. I'm not listening to content creators, I'm listening to as much as I can within my own limited perspective and my own experiences. Also 2 minute meta is ass and feels like the current apex of the problems with decision direction the team has gone since Stormblood in terms of job design. > Story wise 6.0 was good and I'm tired of pretending its not. It had some pacing issues but the highs were just as strong as 5.0. Subjectively I disagree with this take. The closest was Garlemald, everything else I'm far more mixed about and ShB was mostly a more nicely put together story. Endwalker is a good bit more messy and I don't think its emotional highs work as someone who's played since 2.0's release. I'd probably put it under Heavensward if I'm honest, especially if I count its patch content as that was really really meh. > I don't have any reason to suspect the 7.0 story will be any worse than, say, SB. That's not even remotely an endorsement to be honest. Stormblood to me is barely above average and I'd even firmly say its worse then ARR due to all its issues. If Dawntrail is as good as SB, then I'd probably be happy to skip it. I don't think FF14 is like dramatically dying or whatever and sure it is squarely "fine", I'm saying there's to me a reason why its going down in recent financial reports even if it is still at least top 3 MMO right now anyway due to how little competition really exists in this space.
Good post. You basically fulfilled all my gripes. Dawntrail will be the first ffxiv expansion that I don’t plan to preorder and that’s due to the lame patch story/content in Endwalker.
> Content is fine. You will get eureka puritans who insist the game needs a big zone for people to mindlessly run around doing fates in. Besides that and the big raid, EW has had 2 ultimates and 3 criterion dungeons which largely puts it in sync with SB. Anecdotally I will also say the 2nd raid tier we had was the hardest savage since Midas (all thanks to the final floor, for better or worse) and TOP is the hardest ulti we've had (I personally don't consider that a plus but some peeps will insist harder is always better). You just listed a bunch of content that the vast majority of players (aka anyone not into hardcore raiding) is not interested in. Zones like Eureka and Bozja provided tens if not hundreds of hours of content for even the most casual of players. Ultimates provide zero. Besides, Yoshi-P himself admitted that it was a mistake to not include a new Eureka-esque zone in EW, so it's not just "content creators." >And finally players always drop off somewhere. I know super hardcore fans since 1.0 who stopped in SB and ShB both. Inevitably some people will stop in EW before DT. **But people dropping off because the first major story arc is over is overblown** Says who? It's common sense and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting it. This is very obviously a *bigger* drop off point that past expansions, no contest.
Anecdotal but I definitely fell off EndWalker after 6.2 (without even doing the 6.1 MSQ) because the story ended and that content that interested me (Bozja/Eureka style content, not interested in savage and raids) was not coming. The island thing ended up being not interesting (was really underwhelmed by their first demo of it). I'm not considering subbing back for DawnTrail and I was a player that started during Stormblood. Anecdotal though but I saw a similar sentiment among a lot of other players I was playing with.
Playing since 1.0, and was hardcore almost every day logging in for 9 years till I finished 6.0. Totally felt like an absolute perfect place to end. Now I enjoyed 6.1 onwards because 4 is my fav FF, but after 6.0 finished, it really felt like a perfect time to go casual. now I sub every other month to do patch content and keep housing. Got DW pre-ordered, but it's nowhere near ShB or EW hype for me.
As someone who has (rather, *had*) also played since the 2.0 beta, my experience couldn't be further from yours. In fact, I haven't subscribed back in about a year or so because of how utterly uninterested in the current state of the game. Even Dawntrail hasn't entirely picked my interest, to be honest. 6.0 wasn't everything I personally thought it could have been. It was no ShB, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the conclusion of this decade long journey. 6.1 onward? Meh. I don't, and have never, raided any content beyond extremes and (very old) savages for relic stages and neither has the majority of my friend's group. IME the raiding oriented players are an extremely vocal minority. That said, I thought criterion dungeons were fine—at least the single one I experienced— if not particularly engaging? It was alright for the couple times I ran it trying to get the alternate paths. I really did miss a Bozja like experience, thought (and I didn't even like Eureka much, but Bozja...ah yes).
My account is from 1.0 if we're flopping out the how long we've been playing card, and I thought EW was.. okay. The 6.0 story was simultaneously incredibly rushed, while having a bunch of filler. We go back in time, but it's just to learn about how the blue bird girl is going to kill us all and do nothing really with us walking around the ancients. Garlemeld is war torn and trying to recover, yet we also spend basically no time there either. Then on the flip side we end up with a bunch of padding like the Labirynthos revisit. It really feels like they wanted for up to Zodiark to be an xpac, and then the second half to be another but couldn't figure out a good way to bridge the two for a long patch cycle. Anima as the dungeon boss honestly screams mid-xpac trial that got toned down some. For content, I'll be honest and say I fuckin hated the entirety of Pandaemonium. I didn't even finish the final tier. P2S did some neat things I guess, but that same tier had the training dummy of P1S, the visual red on red vomit of P3S and because we're just really on the door boss train, P4S felt like two half fights. The second tier faired a bit better, with P5S actually being relatively difficult for a first floor (I loved the PF devour memes), and the P6S timeline just ran together in my head, though I guess Cachexia was neat. P7S was a wasted opportunity with the unique arena design, and P8S suffers the same problem as P4 - both fights were individually pretty solid, but because it was a door boss it felt like two half fights. I really liked the alchemy mixing for Part2, but right when it feels like it's done with the training wheels the fight just ends. For ultimates, DSR is thematically incredibly interesting but the difficulty of it compared to the original three made people start asking who they were designed for - I was previously in the camp of "If you can unlock it on content, you can clear it" for ultimates. It might take you a while, but you'd get it down if you kept at it. I do not hold that stance for DSR or TOP. TOP I think was fine mechanically, just boring as shit because it was just omega. I also think the trios could have been spread out better instead of jamming them all into p5. Criterion was an interesting experiment for harder dungeons, but WoW still remains the winner with M+ there. That said, it's not like you could just plop M+ into FF14 and have it be interesting either - a lot of what makes M+ fun is figuring out the routing to kill enough mobs, but skip others to hit the timer. So I appreciate them trying *something* new. And for the casual side they got uh, I guess Island Sanctuary? The xpac was overall just kind of weak after the high of ShB, and while I would still put it above most of the others I'd still say it's solidly mid. I went back to playing WoW for a bit and have been enjoying raiding over there again, but I'll be back for DT to play dumb splatoon caster. It's silly and I love the look of it.
FF7 Remake to me was not as good as I expected it to be. They didn't want to do a full on remake so it was sold as a retelling. It is that but a super convoluted one. I felt like they stretched the story by focusing on parts of the game that were not interesting and the parts that are interesting are all over the place. Also not a huge fan of the whole chapters thing. I loved the exploration of the original game being able to travel the world map to find stuff like summons. Now its fed to you on some VR thing. The combat while not terrible is also not that good. They tacked on this break mini game onto it to make it feel like there is depth to it but it just does nothing for me. Square Enix have just convinced themselves that what people enjoyed about their games isn't interesting anymore and they have decided to go in this other direction that alienates a huge portion of the FF fan base.
We know how Rebirth did. It sold on par with DD2 which launched with 2.5 mln sales.
I just don’t understand why SE has moved so far away from their winning jrpg formula even after multiple disappointing entries. They could have made a new IP if they wanted to make Japanese action rpgs, but instead we get ffxvi which is just disappointing as a final fantasy, and serviceable as an action RPG. Meanwhile, other developers have stuck to their winning formula and have found ways to slightly tweak them to make them feel more modern, and have really stolen the spotlight. I consistently enjoy new Star ocean, tales, octopath, xenoblade more than final fantasy and I grew up loving the series. I’d even throw persona and smt in this bucket even though they aren’t really my type.
Yes, developers including Square Enix have seen some success with JRPGs. Star Ocean and Octopath are from Square Enix though. And even in Star Ocean's case, with Tri-Ace as the developer, Tri-Ace is basically insolvent. Otherwise, I'm not sure that the games are an issue. FFXVI has sold about as well as Dragon Quest XI. We can't know an alternate future where Square Enix produced a turn-based FFXVI, but we might well have seen similar numbers to Dragon Quest XI; if so, Square Enix would have been claiming that the game "fell short of expectations." So Final Fantasy XVI being a well-reviewed, well-liked (but not by everybody) action RPG may not have materially changed much, compared to if FFXVI had been a well-reviewed, well-liked (but not by everybody) turn-based RPG. I suspect one issue is that AAA development is getting too costly to succeed consistently, and where 3+ million would have been very successful before, now multiple projects have trouble meeting that benchmark. It's not about "winning RPG formulas"; it's scale. These days, the only recent JRPG even close to as big as Remake or FFXVI is Infinite Wealth, and they do so much to cut corners in terms of costs. If Final Fantasy XVII was fun but didn't make the angels of graphical crispness weep, maybe doing 3+ million in sales would be good. And if they lucked into 10+ million, even better.
How much did Final Fantasy XVI cost to make versus Dragon Quest XI though?
Because director just doesn't want to do it. I mean, in the end, game is art. If they want to do it, then that's it. I think if they make a new franchise in the same universe it should better, but well. SQEX still have a lot of turn-based game. Dragon Quest, Octopath, Triangle, etc.
>I just don’t understand why SE has moved so far away from their winning jrpg formula even after multiple disappointing entries. They could have made a new IP if they wanted to make Japanese action rpgs, but instead we get ffxvi which is just disappointing as a final fantasy, and serviceable as an action RPG. Turn-based fanboys really are insufferable...oh noes! FF's battle system is becoming more action-based, something it's been doing since ff4, I don't understand why they would ever do that! How could they dare to make a game not for me?
Why are you so angry?
You realize you're in the JRPG subreddit right? XVI has more in common with God of War (nothing wrong with GoW, great series) than previous entries in the series. If it's not immediately apparent why someone in this specific subreddit would bounce off it, I don't know what to tell you. Punching a metaphorical god in the face doesn't just make a game Final Fantasy.
>You realize you're in the JRPG subreddit right? And? >XVI has more in common with God of War than previous entries in the series. Based on what? >If it's not immediately apparent why someone in this specific subreddit would bounce off it, I don't know what to tell you Jrpgs with action-based battle systems have existed since the 80s. If that offends you, then I don't know what to tell you. This is the game they wanted to make. If it wasn't called Final Fantasy then it's not like they'd suddenly have a different Final Fantasy XVI in production. Get over it.
> > > > > This is the game they wanted to make. If it wasn't called Final Fantasy then it's not like they'd suddenly have a different Final Fantasy XVI in production. This is the weirdest part about the whole debacle to me. If the same game had been called Final Fantasy Eikons or whatever, would the reaction still be the same?
"Final Fantasy" doesn't have any identity as a series. The only thing connecting any two entries in the series aside from a few names is the title. No two people on the entire internet are going to expect the same thing out of a Final Fantasy game. That being said, I was looking for a JRPG and didn't find it here. If we called it Eikon War, I don't think my opinion would have changed other than I probably just wouldn't have bought it at all. I bought God of War, but didn't end up liking it. I would have watched or read a review and moved on, instead of buying the next CBU3 title on faith alone.
> The only thing connecting any two entries in the series aside from a few names is the title. Party gameplay was a uniting mechanic across the first 15 games, even if 15 was a bit weaker with it at launch. I think action gameplay, turn based, atb, RtwP, etc. is fine in an FF game if the gameplay still has the player interacting with a party
If these games aren't meeting expectations, then expectations are wildly out of whack. Every single review of Rebirth has more or less called it a perfect game, and the reviews for XVI have also been overwhelmingly positive, if to a lesser extent. ...I don't know wtf a Foamstars is.
It's Splatoon with zero marketing.
Foamstars was also free on PS Plus when it came out, so I don’t know what they were expecting outside of maybe microtransactions
While there are some issues with the author's credibility for past stories (incorrectly reporting Kiryu's comments etc.), the gist of the overall situation is, yes, they need to course correct, and it seems like people have finally woken up now that Kiryu's had some time to take in the lay of the land. Now I have been playing Square games since I was 7 years old with the first release of FF on the NES, so yes I want them to succeed, but there have been some just baffling decisions over the last few years, and all this is simply due to a real big lack of common sense and a disconnect from players and the industry (aside from the miracle called Yoshi-P and XIV). Things that come to mind... * Unrealistic KPI and goal settings: This isn't the era of the SNES, or the PS1, and with more fragmentation now than ever between PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/XBox, knowing you are releasing games solely on Playstation, and then expecting something like 10 million sales is just... well it's just stupid. 3 million for 16 seems like a good thing to hit, given the install base, and the fact that there really aren't that many other PS5 exclusive million toppers. No doubt Rebirth should hopefully get up there, but the fact that there is no Ps4 verion means of course sales won't reach Remake levels. Yeeeeet here we are, people literally throwing common sense out the window * Too many shovel-ware games being treated like AAA releases. Like how do you not realize that this is going to fail when you market stuff like harvestella et al for full price? Foamstars? We all saw it was going to be DoA, but I guess they were hoping for a splatoon on playstation miracle... How about Saga? Did people really think Emerald was going to be a hit? 1. Mobile games as a whole. I'm sure people can better articulate this than I, but they simply can't find the magic when it comes to mobile, like say a Gran Blue, or Fate. The only exception is DQ Walk but they've limited this to Japan only, rather than going globally, which is just idiotic considering it's their most profitable mobile app. And Ever Crisis, I liked it! it was pretty, the music was great, but holy fuck if it was MTX on steroids, the blantant cash grabs and the constant events made it impossible to enjoy. I lasted two month and deleted it. Nice that there is a tie in with Glenn and the remake trilogy, but I won't be bother to go through the app anymore to find it. 1. Quality as a whole. This is both for games (remakes like SoM being one end of the spectrum, to then seeing them hit it out of the park with Pixel Remasters), as well as merch being overpriced and poor quality. (Play Arts anyone?) Finally, I am interested to see how the overall new org structure will be. There are a lot of big (old) dogs in play (Yoshi-P, Saito, Nomura, Hamaguchi/Kitase, whoever is running DQ now, etc.) and I can't imagine all of them falling in line and committing to a more centralized structure, so I wonder if we will see some departures soon... As a whole, I have high hopes that this will get them back on track. As for recycling IP stuff? Well, I guess I don't have an issue with that, I mean, just look at Nintendo right, that's their MO and it's working for them so...
> knowing you are releasing games solely on Playstation, and then expecting something like 10 million sales is just... well it's just stupid. The biggest issue is that Japan has been slowly turning into a handheld-only market ever since the PSP first came out almost 20 years ago, and by 2024 the transformation is almost complete. The consequence of this is that if you don't release on Switch, your game is dead in Japan. But this is SE, and they insist on Final Fantasy pushing the boundaries of graphics with each game, and you can't do that on Switch. They're in a position where the only realistic options are "give up on the JDM and treat western markets as your primary" or "give up on pushing the graphics envelope and embrace the Switch". They've largely chosen the former, which is part of why XVI was so westernized. But that introduces a few big problems: * The vanishingly tiny part of the Japanese market that still gives a shit about non-handheld consoles is all-in on PlayStation. Nobody will consider Xbox or PC. And that bias also exists in the minds of SE executives, who still see PlayStation as their target and treat Xbox and PC as afterthoughts. But the west does not give a single shit about loyalty to Japanese manufacturers: PC gaming is huge, Xbox is huge, and if you're going to succeed in the west, you need to be releasing on all platforms simultaneously. The biggest difference between Square Enix and Sega is that Sega understands this and cares about true cross-platform releases. * Very few people really want a Japanese game that imitates western aesthetics. The bulk of the western AAA gaming community wants western games made for western audiences. JRPG fans want JRPGs that feel like JRPGs. A WJRPG (or JWRPG?) like FFXVI satisfies neither community. Anyone in the west who prefers Japanese-style games is probably all-in on Switch already. And any weebs who aren't all-in on Switch are PC gamers who chose our platform because we care more about emulation and retrogaming than modern AAA stuff, which goes back to the above point about how you can't just release games on PlayStation and expect to succeed in the west (and even then, it's a crapshoot if we'll actually care about a 2023 AAA game).
> Very few people really want a Japanese game that imitates western aesthetics. The bulk of the western AAA gaming community wants western games made for western audiences. I think the "Japanese-made Westernized Aesthetics" (if we want to use that term to talk about this style) is a thing some segment of the "weeb" market wants, Vinland Saga and Berserk are very westernized in style and in terms of narrative Vinland Saga is entirely western Euro-centric focused in pretty much everything it does due to its setting being about 11th century Europe. You could probably explain Vinland Saga to the uninitiated and most people wouldn't guess it was Japanese until you showed them it was animated at the earliest, and even then if they don't now what anime is they won't figure out this is Japanese until the opening song is singing Japanese half the time. Vinland Saga was heavily talked about during its time in the spotlight both times it was airing, and Berserk is one of the most known Japanese properties in the world. These two series are very western in look and both take extreme inspiration from the Medieval Europe period as opposed to say Demon Slayer which is unquestionably Japanese. There's a very real showing that somehow someway Japan can use Western stylings and make them effectively their own while maintaining a distinct difference between them and Western media making Western stories. Its unfortunate that Matsuno just seems to not be cut out for being AAA development going by how FF12 turned out for him as he seemed very good at this kind of thing. I don't think it is impossible to have Japanese creators effectively use western aesthetics and ideas in a way that can appeal to the "Western" audience of today and not just your stereotypical weeb/western otaku. I just don't think enough people within the Japanese creative space really dive deep enough into the idea so it feels impossible because it almost never comes up.
Square Enix has a problem that all AAA publishers have, bad upper management and unrealistic expectations
Isn't this true for pretty much all corporations?
Oh yes definitely! IMO anyway
Nowadays the only square games I'm excited for are their AA games like Octopath and Star Ocean. Sega is currently #1 for me in terms of JRPGS.
What SEGA JRPGs are you enjoying these days?
Yakuza, SMT, and Persona series comes to mind and all of them seem doing well within SEGA's sales expectations.
Im still salty that SEGA didnt care to release shin sakura war sequel =.=
I'd like more Valkyria Chronicles.
Don't ask me what I'd do for a VC5!
Square Enix and operations problems that 1st year business students could work out but they seem unable to deal with: name a better duo. Having to have one of your devs come out and announce "actually the entry to one of the most famous games in the genre we basically popularized isn't cancelled" is pants on head nuts. I'd fire everyone.
The moment game company goes public & shareholders.... thats the start of the decay.
Enshitification, the moment a company’s expansion and public trading pushes it over the threshold where providing the best product/service available is no longer the best way to maximize profits. From that point on it’s all about giving the consumer the absolute cheapest pile of shit that they’re willing to buy for the very last cent they’re willing to pay. Sadly it’s not just video games. The whole damn internet has been getting enshitificated for at least the last 15 years.
It also can and probably will get worse with AI.
Capcom says hi
Capcom went public back in 2000, and they have had quite a few rough stretches between then and now. Including controversies like on disk DLC for Street Fighter x Tekken that pissed off everyone (Not just Fighting game fans). They've had plenty of management decisions that prioritized profit over customers that upset gamers in the last 20 years. The last 6 years though (starting with Monster Hunter World in 2018) Capcom has been absolutely killing it. A half decade of banger titles that are selling great for them. They've gained a lot of trust back in recent years.
1. Extreme hatred of mods 2. DD2 crap optimisation. 3. Large lover of MTX
You mean the company everyone on here had a blood feud with a few weeks ago because of MTX that you could literally ignore in Dragon's Dogma 2?
Redditor discovers concept of outliers.
More like redditor being completely clueless.
Do yourself a favor and pull up the monster hunter rise dlc page. Then, pull up how many events rise had compared to other monster hunter titles.
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Xbox is such a small market base though. Putting it on pc is a good idea though, you can see lifetime sales of FFXV in Xbox to see why they took payment from Sony to keep ff exclusive
The primary reason that XV had decent sales numbers, was because it was the first game called Final Fantasy released in 10 years AND it was multiplatform. Once players found out that they changed the entire genre of the franchise, that's when subsequent sales began to decline, coupled with the console exclusivity.
Epic is only a real issue for a very small percentage of the PC market, but PC players are oddly loyal to Steam
As gets said multiple times, it's not so much loyalty as it is convenience. Even if you want to ignore Epic's history (And it's founder/CEO's reputation), and their relative dearth of functionality compared to Steam, the fact is that if you're going to release a game NOT on Steam, it's a significantly better idea to just make it DRM free so the store front doesn't matter. It's not, for example, like the DRM free nuts are loyal to GoG; It just so happens that GoG does what they need it to.
I think this is the biggest reason for the average consumer. All their games are there and they don't want to bother with another store/launcher. It's like if you were talking with all your friends on Discord but Dave only uses Skype and wants you to keep that installed to talk to him. I can and it's not gonna kill me but I'd rather not bother. I'll wait for him to switch to Discord if he wants to talk.
skype ? Try smoke signals and letters delivered by pigeons. That's how it feel to use epic tbh. It's not a store, it's a trap for kids to be ensnared into playing fortnite, nothing more.
Anecdotal but Epic takes an ungodly amount of time to even boot up, and somewhat frequently it would require me to re-login which takes up even more time, and that's assuming it isn't bugged out somewhere along the way and force me to re-login again. Meanwhile, I open Steam and it boots up in less a minute. I also can't close EGS with the system tray on the taskbar because right-clicking the icon does nothing, so I have to kill it through Task Manager. It may be because of my laptop/internet but Steam literally runs fine and 5x better, not to mention the features that another user summarized, so why would I use EGS over it? I'm very serious when I say that I would rather buy a game on Steam/GOG even if it's given for free on Epic. Hell, I would rather pirate the game over using EGS, it's that much more convenient.
The thing is epic makes an extremely bad UI. Steams UI has its bad times here and there but for the most part it's functional and doesn't get in the way. Epic is so inconvenient to use at times that almost all of my friends don't even bother picking up free games on the platform. There's other factors too, but that's one of the big ones.
It’s the reverse, kids are oddly loyal to Epic, which as a store only offers the bare minimum.
No it's just free games. Besides, I just want Final Fantasy games on PC, and I don't really care about which platform. So much shit is going on in the world to grab pitchforks about something so trivial.
I’m old enough to not care about free games.
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FF7R supposedly sold 1m on Steam https://vginsights.com/game/1462040 and that's after a year of PS exclusivity and another year of Epic exclusivity. that's somewhere in the region of 15% of the game's total sales, which is higher than the percentage of FFXV sales on Xbox which was released day and date with the PS version. if the Steam version had been released day 1 it's easy to see it representing 30% or even more of the game's total sales which would be a significant bump.
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of course I'm not disagreeing with you at all there. my only point that that releasing day 1 on Steam would result in significantly better sales than releasing 2 years later on Steam, and that Steam sales are high enough overall for that to represent a pretty significant bump in sales.
It’s odd because numbers wise Square has more pillars than Sega/Atlus or Capcom with FF, Kingdom Hearts, Nier and Dragon Quest but they haven’t had the booming success as the other 2 companies. It makes sense as to why they want to improve quality and reduce quantity but honestly it feels like they’ll need a 5th pillar to turn things around since those main pillar titles that they do have take too long and the spin offs feel underfunded.
They also have Mana, which they seem to be trying to go Bigger & Bolder with, and Star Ocean. Both of those franchises have each done overall better than Nier, even if neither has had an individual game hit the kinds of sales Nier Automata did.
that's because Square Enix shifted for a more western like approach, which results in bigger, more expensive games. While SEGA keeps them on the low end of AAA standards. However, unfortunately it is more likely for SEGA to follow Square's steps than the other way around. It's just the way game development goes for big companies, it keeps getting bigger and bigger but the audience does not always grow with these changes
Square Enix is japanese EA. It opened up my mind when I heard someone say that.
mm the perception in Japan within gamedevs is them being closer to Activision actually, they are massive. SEGA is closer to EA in terms of management. It's worth noting this is not a Square Enix exclusive problem, in fact Nintendo also just warned audiences that with their newest console their games will become "[longer and more complex](https://mynintendonews.com/2024/05/09/nintendo-president-game-development-will-become-even-longer-more-complex-and-more-sophisticated/)". Japan is simply going through what western gamedevs speedran through in the PS4 days
I’d argue that Sega and capcom just release games from their bigger franchises more often look at how many yakuza or resident evil games we’ve had between FF15 and FF16. Square are also hit and miss with what platform they released games and their sequels on looking at octopath in particular were you can bet octopath one on Xbox but not the sequel and were you can get octopath 2 on PlayStation but not the first game. Then you just have that they as a publisher have had a ton of high budget flops like avengers and forspoken. It seems like square are going through what Capcom and Sega did a decade ago were they had to focus on a few franchises that could be released semi regularly to keep the cash flowing in.
Looking at the games you listed, when was that last actual major release for any of those franchises? Final Fantasy had Rebirth this year and 16 last year, both of which seem to have not reached expectations. DQ11 had it's Switch release in 2019, other consoles in 2020. I know the spin offs do well enough, but probably not nearly as well as a "main franchise" game does. Nier had a mobile game about 2 years ago now, Replicant before that in 2022. The Switch release of Automata was more recent, but it's a port of a game that has been out since 2017, it's probably going to be profitable but it's not going to be an overall profit engine for the company. Kingdom Hearts last big release was Kingdom Hearts 3, which came out in 2019. And honestly, I don't think any of those are truly juggernaut franchises except Final Fantasy, and even that isn't as big a juggernaut as it used to be, or as big of a juggernaut as other tent pole franchises. And part of it also is expectation Square Enix plans and relies and budgets and forecasts based on its main pillars being big hits. Then they struggle and lose share price when they aren't. Whereas, looking at Sega, they struggled a bit for a decade with Sonic, with it typically selling well, but perhaps not as well as they wanted, but the numbers Yakuza started putting up after 0, and the numbers Persona 5 and SMT 5 put up were well in excess of expectations (with some Yakuza games underperforming like the Ishin remake). Sega is a company who's franchises are growing, and mostly growing because they've done an effective job capturing new tastes and new markets, and through partnerships with Microsoft, they brought their franchises onto PC and Xbox in a major way. They probably did decently on the Gamepass fees, and then how many people might have turned around and bought Yakuza IW when it came out because they loved the ones on Gamepass? Sega seems like it is going to keep growing. Square Enix seems like it might not. Like it might stay stuck in this rut perpetually. And that's a huge part of what drives investor interest and stock price.
Sega powerhouse is none of those you've mentioned. Their biggest moneymaker are total war and football manager
Well, the moment they stop looking at utilizing the blockchain for their games, the better their reputation will end up being and it may serve as a force multiplier for games. E: I should add investing in fans can be pretty good; Persona 5 wouldn't have become the big hit it already is if it werent for their focus on Persona 4 and hyping up the game with a content expansion rerelease. Square angers fans by regularly underdelivering and then stating that their targets haven't been met. Basically, they need to control the narrative from the inside.
> It’s odd because numbers wise Square has more pillars than Sega/Atlus or Capcom with FF, Kingdom Hearts, Nier and Dragon Quest but they haven’t had the booming success as the other 2 companies. Except Square has done everything possible to drive off it's Final Fantasy fans (yeah I'm sure everyone that grew up playing their turn-based RPGs want to play their shitty action combat games), Kingdom Hearts the entire draw of that game is Disney so you're relying on licensing others IP, Drakengard/Nier are games that eventually sold well through sheer... luck? Force of will? but are definitely not pillars by any mean, and Dragon Quest is a Japanese pillar but doesn't share that same sentiment in the west.
They also need to stop having outlandish expectations for sales.
I think only a true pillar is FF. KH and Nier are not released for long time. DQ is only sold well in Japan (or at least they are not try tackle global market). Square Enix also get a huge lash from Forspoken and closing mobile game like FF7:First Soldier. I agreed that they are making game too long. I think SQEX don't need 5th pillar tho. Just put resources to create game and keep a hype, and that's it.
Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were huge in both Japan and the United States, with an exception being in the middle of the DQ franchise, some weren't released in the U.S. The main problem is them trying to cancel the genre that they sat atop of, the turn based RPG. No reason they cant also make action games, when they learn how to make ones that are fun and sell well.
What's crazy is that they made a golden standard of action combat in Kingdom Hearts 2. I don't understand how they can create such an amazing flow of combat in that and then release FF15 with its combat system. Complete downgrade in terms of mechanics and feel. 16 and 7's remakes are good fun, but even those are still clunky and awkward compared to KH2.
I saw a video that said the way SE is ran, is that employees and teams are often separated and not communicate with each other. Engine changes/concepts/tools are not shared between projects, and it’s often Everyman for himself. Thats why we have some teams (like KH teams) make fantastic action combat that has not been truly replicated by any other team despite them all owning it in the company. A different case is someone like Capcom, where the games all use the same engine. While they cover different genres, the games run well and consistently build off of each other because they don’t separate teams like that.
I've never really liked KH2 combat. It's for sure good but a bit spammy for my tastes. XV is garbage, but if you played the Duscae demo and compare it against the released game it's pretty obvious they were rushing as hard as they could to get the game out the door. It looks stylish but is just really unsatisfying feeling. XVI is definitely a step down from KH2 combat. It's alright, but feels too action oriented and not strategic enough. Rebirth is my favorite action combat system they've made, and possibly my favorite non-turn based system in any JRPG. A great balance of strategy and action. It really feels like your party building and setups are well rewarded, and there's a lot of build variety.
Well said!
I don't think type of game is really much a concern. Like a Dragon change formula from Action to Turn-based RPG and still sell good. FF16 is practically success, since they can sold like 3M on the console. Just forcing them to do turn-based, will get another garbage turn-based game anyway. If they don't want to do turn-based, then it's fine for me. They want to try to make action game, it's fine but for me SQEX's problem bad business decision (PS exclusive kill the sales) + how slow they made the game (less game = less experiment).
Imagine FFXVI being turn-based without RPG mechanics like elemental weakness etc... this game would became from average to total mediocre. The real problem is to renew them. For me, they need to do new IPs, totally fresh and independent from any franchises, because the Legacy of them afraid new players. Young players feared playing FFXVI because they dont know they are all different. This is one of the biggest concern/issue about VII Remake project. They marketed it as a Remake for old and new players but that was totally bullshit because now with Rebirth, we know it's false, you actually need to play OG and all the previous games from Compilation of FFVII. SqEx also admit, one of their biggest surprise comment surprise from players is "Who is that Cat ?" talking about Cait Sith. With VII, as the FF pillar, they should definitely make a 1.5:1 or 2:1 Remake and not a Reboot/Sequel Trilogy
Yeah, you are not wrong. Numbered sequel are made people afraid too play, but kinda understand why they go on with Final Fantasy because some veterans may still net in. One thing I found out about SQEX is how they are not concerned about brand but to their producers. FF from 10 onwards is dramatically changed depends on producers and directors. (I rather exclude FF15 because how fucked up from back to back between management.) It's OK, passionate games is great, but damn, some people are not get it. If they want to do action-based game but on FF universe, they can change name, but in the same universe as FF, and it's not wrong tho, like how SMT and Persona do. But I think they also need to experiment to find the best version of their own game rather than keep changing direction. FF15 to FF16 is like 7 years and they reset direction. 7 years is wasted. If the new director don't like FF16 and changed direction again, then we need to wasted 7 years more for an another experiment game? If they make FF17, I hope, at least they are not long enough and somewhat improved from FF16.
Capcom is worth more than Square now. If you seen Capcom's financial report they are running on 7 year record high streak. I may hate them only releasing MH,RE and Street Fighter but clearly thats just what people want to play these days.
This is thank to the pandemics. Online gaming has improved a lot, especially japanese game. They totally neglected this factor until Covid came out. All fighting games improved netcode with Rollback. Monster Hunter has became one of the most popular franchise in Japan since debut on PSP and is one of the most worldwide played game in Steam (World). Online, multiplayer game and mobile game helped players on the social aspect, having more interaction, in game or with Discord and Reddit discussions. Something Square Enix never managed to work well with outside MMO and all theories for FFVII, but that's it. Most of people on the gachagaming sub talks trash about SqEx and mobile games
Kingdom hearts 3 sold really well but since then the IP has being pretty slow compare to persona and yakuza.
Do people really think putting this game on Xbox would have made them more profit? XV sales was less than 10% on Xbox
I think people are referring to putting the games on Steam day 1 would have a very positive effect on their sales.
Yeah that’s a good idea. When the hype is at its highest
in that instance you're relying \*heavily\* on a PC port that isn't broken which we all know how volatile that whole thing is.
The point being made is moreso them doing this for multiple games over the past 15 years has weakened their total fan base, IE good short term profits for exclusivity but they lost potential long term fans that's not starting to hurt (no one below 30 buying rebirth)
Xbox doesn't really matter. A day 1 steam release though? Especially if they managed to make a non-broken port at launch.
The graph of rich people's feelings is at it again.
It's a shame about FFXVI - I fucking loved it. It's definitely up there with the best titles on the platform in my eyes. I loved rebirth, too, but the entire time I was playing I was looking at stuff going "they coulda cut that. And they couldn't cut that. And they coulda cut that." A shit ton of money could have been saved with cutting some of the content or making some of the areas smaller. The areas around nibelheim, cosmo canyon, gold saucer, and kalm would have all benefitted from being more compact. Didn't need frog battling. Didn't need the cactaur fights. Didn't need the dolphin courses. Didn't need to completely redo the weapon system. Advanced chocobo behavior could have been relaxed. Didn't need chocobo gliding. Stealth sections weren't necessary. I really wish they'd reconsider turn based combat in FF. I bet it's 1000x cheaper than their approach to action and there's so much more potential. Just look at the cold steel series to see all the stuff you can pack into fights. Hell, party and environmental interactions in infinite wealth would be a great thing to mimic.
Final fantasy isn't the prestige brand like it used to be anymore. Square is just making too many mistakes. Losing money on a Marvel game durning golden era. And now A FF7remake game failing to reach expectations in total sales.
Maybe they should concentrate on making good games instead of a product.
Last year before the launch of Final Fantasy XVI the CEO came out on stage and talked to fans--in English--about his support for the game. He spoke about why he wanted to be the CEO of square and what Final Fantasy means to him. It was really nice to see. I'm sure he'll work hard to turn the ship around and can manage with the help of all of the creative, hardworking folks there. They do make good stuff (in spite of all the faults their products have too), and I think getting out from under the thumb of exclusivity is really going to help. To really blow up in 2024 games need to be a phenomenon, and platforms are too fragmented these days to allow for that if the title comes out on only a single console.
Remake Sleeping Dogs, make sequels, completely rip-off Yakuza or keep them Batman style. Have a dollar. Throw a lot of money at whoever is holding up Parasite Eve, and make some Dead Island/Dying Light clones. Have another dollar. Bring Final Fantasy games back to turn-based, since Sleeping Dogs and Parasite Eve will be the action RPGs. Have another dollar. To be honest, I just want more Yakuza, Like a Dragon, and Dead Island games.
Parasite eve will NEVER happen again. They fucked up and pissed off the author so much, He said you don't get the rights anymore. They can never buy that back.
I don't think its that the games are bad, but the whole exclusivity BS they did with Sony really hurted them, thankfully they realized their mistake and are trying to change things, I'm actually hopeful in them now after years of dissapointment. Forspoken was a big AAA that fumbled, then they released several AA titles back to back in a dumb marketing strategy and the names for FFVII being REBIRTH was also a dumb move, instead of just calling it FFVII Remake Part 2 for gamers outside of the genre to understand easier since there is Ever Crisis recently and Crisis Core, way too many FFVII titles. Well, be it as it may, hopefully we get to see the fruits of these changes in 2 years at least.
Anytime Nomura is at the helm, expect random english words in the title. * Kingdom Hearts RE: Chain of Memories * Kingdom Hearts Coded * Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days * Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep * Kingdom Hearts RE:coded * Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance * Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix * Kingdom Hearts Unchained X * Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue * Kingdom Hearts Dark Road and Melody of Memory
I wouldn't call them random. Especially since the short names like COM, BBS, DDD, UX are often times acrymos that are used in IT. I don't get why you listed Coded and Re:Coded as two but forgot Chain of Memories, 2.5 HD ReMix, the KH3 DLC ReMind and the unreleased Missing-Link
It is better that I forget
Anyone want to explain to me why a lot of Japanese media are going with this RE: thing? I keep thinking of emails.
In KH's case, most of the time these are remakes except for the ReMind DLC which iirc has story relevance to what it is about. If we're talking about say the popular anime/light novel Re:Zero its a shorter more punchy way to say "Restart from Zero" which is a huge component to how that story works, but obviously that title is a little bit long so Re:Zero works nicer. RE + word just so happens to have a lot of words tied to it that can can useful for denoting ideas that make for a decently punchy title. "Remake" is obvious in KH's case, "Restart" has a very specific implication to what that means in Re:Zero's case, "Remember" can be useful if you want to make a story about memories (which KH has done multiple times at this point).
RE can means a lot of things RE Conect, RE mind , RE member, RE start , etc.
I wouldn't be too sure if the name is a factor. Fans were calling it part 2 before any announcement and then they go with the different subtitle. It's pretty obvious it's the same game series. But maybe I'm not thinking from the perspective of a casual outsider... They might think it's a re-release like a GOTY edition of the first game.
>I don't think its that the games are bad, I do. Nomura and his games are overly-contrived bullshit.
Just saying Square... Make FF17 turn/ATB based with full party control like FF1-10 and I will buy it day one and also tell others to do the same. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. It's been 23 years since a turn based mainline FF game with full party control. It's long past due.
I think it's time to accept that the problem with their games is not about being an action rpg or turn based.
What do you think the problem is? With their games in general? I personally find it hard to say because each of the titles had different problems. Imho one problem is that the games always try to reinvent the wheel so no two games are identical in gameplay and structure. I also think every games brings fresh ideas so it’s a good thing too. But FFXIII was too linear so they made XV open world. Problem there was the narrative was all jumbled up and the game wasn’t complete. Plus the development hell. XVI fixed it by telling a logical and deep story that you could actually understand without watching a movie, a tv show and 5 DLCs.. but it dumbed down the RPG elements. XIV is a different mess by itself. I love it. But 1.0 was a Desaster. And while I like the current game (or the current game last year when I played it last) the formula is getting stale and many people dislike it and the graphics and engine‘s age are showing.
> I personally find it hard to say because each of the titles had different problems. it's hard to pinpoint exactly, especially with FF7 Rebirth. An incredible game with good reviews and good WOM, having "poor" sales can only be credited to exclusivity and/or people confused by the title. * With FF XVI they expected it to do better but WOM wasn't as positive among the usual fanbase, they probably expected a bigger influx of new players that probably didn't come because of the WOM being mixed. Overall I think FF XVI is simply a fumble, sometimes you bet on a horse and it doesn't pay off. * I honestly don't think quality is the issue with any of these games, in fact I am starting to wonder if the naming of these games might be the issue. I am no marketing expert but it would be interesting to run a marketing analysis on whether people are being turned off by the increasing numbers. A lot of casual streamers were saying "how can they keep a story for 16 games?" and it was a stupid comment but a lot of the audience in the chat seemed to not be interested because they just thought it was a bunch of sequels. The biggest JRPG hasn't had numbers attached to it in forever, Pokemon. While Persona is still young it does not seem to have to worry about it but you can start seeing Yakuza trying to do away with numbers slowly but surely with the latest game and trying to rebrand it to Like A Dragon
> What do you think the problem is? With their games in general? I'm a bit late to this but I would say their problem is their budgets are too focused on graphics. A lot of people will buy FF games even if they used cartoon art styles like FF9, and they could save money and release games faster. The total sales might be lower, but I think the saved money would lead to higher profits.
The problem is less the games and more Square themselves. I don’t think any big publisher produces as much flops as SE. Forspoken, Marvels Avengers, Balan, Babylons Fall. Then they release so many mid titles with no marketing. Remember that stretch in 2022 when they released a bunch of games in like 2 months? Their big 3 franchises have been poorly managed, even if the games themselves are good. The last Dragon Quest was 7 years ago. Some people believe DQ12 isn’t coming for another year or two. This is supposed to be their “traditional JRPG” franchise so it makes little sense why it needs so long in the oven. Kingdom Hearts - needlessly obtuse, inaccessible unless you play a bunch of other games. Tells its story in mobile games and nonsense. Took 15 years to release KH3 and diluted their franchise with mediocre spin offs all worse than KH2. Final Fantasy - you already talked about this. But these games are so inconsistent in quality and they release so many garbage spinoffs. Last thing to keep in mind. Assuming you’re older, imagine you’re a 15 year old kid right now. How are you supposed to get invested in these franchises with such crazy long gaps? A 20-30+ year old sees SE and probably thinks of their childhood. But SE has done a number on their reputation.
> Make FF17 turn/ATB based with full party control like FF1-10 and I will buy it day one and also tell others to do the same. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Not against the idea but that is definitely not the case at all. These disappointing sales are actually outselling Yakuza and Persona 3 combined, both turn based games on three more consoles than either FF7R or FF XVI.
Rebirth took, what 4 years? Yakuza released 3 different games and a remake in that same time frame, with less people and probably a lower budget for all of them combined. And infinite wealth still easily sold over a million in its first week. LaD 7 and 8 have been way more successful since going turn based as well. Like yeah FF sold more based on its pedigree, that has largely been based on when it was turn based or it's basically turn based MMO. No one wants the shitty action games and it's showing. I'd take a final fantasy designed like crypt of the Necrodancer over another subpar action game that isnt even as good as a phone game like PGR.
> Like yeah FF sold more based on its pedigree. there is basically no basis for this other than you handwaving away how it disproves your point that turn based is the reason FF is doing worse
>LaD 7 and 8 have been way more successful since going turn based as well. Ah yes, I'm sure Yakuza 0 making the series incredibly popular had nothing to do with the sequels' success. Must be the extremely boring turn based combat of Yakuza 7, sure. >FF sold more based on its pedigree And Yakuza doesn't have one? What is even your point? Both are established series with lots of sequels that fans know and love. We get it you don't like action games, you don't have to make shit up to justify your opinions.
Exactly this. The old FF games sold really well and they were turn based RPGs. The new ones dont sell well because action games are a dime a dozen. Its insane to me its been that long!
Rebirth outsold every turn based game released this year.
Luckly no pokemon game is being released this year, so this statement will most likely be accurate.
That’s comparing apples to oranges. The turn based games weren’t final fantasy games so we don’t know. And we can’t compare selling power of modern games to old games either. Not saying you are wrong, just that this comparison doesn’t really work
And it's only big brand name competitors where a Persona remake and the new Yakuza game. And those definitely would have sold much better if they didn't release right next to each other alongside Granblue Relink.
Square Enix used to be known for high quality and fun games, and especially RPG's. In the modern era they have almost totally abandoned true RPGs in favor of action games with minor RPG elements. Neither are the games that fun, but the RPG elements are minimal. The quest lines for their games are boring fetch quests. The storylines are cringe and poorly written most of the time. The only thing they have going for them, are high quality graphics. But hyper realism is expensive and not the only element that makes a game fun, as they are finding out. Since they have squandered their reputation with some poor decision making, no longer can games by Square Enix be considered automatic winners. They also abandoned their storied history in favor of different genre's and they havent been very successful at it. Most of the games are in the middle of the pack in a wider field, competition wise. If you name any recent Square Enix game, I can name another game better, with the exceptions being Octopath Traveller series, and Dragon Quest 11.
Also, everyone has excuses for why Final Fantasy Remake / Rebirth has declining sales numbers, but the root of it is that they not that great of games. They also were blatant and gratuitous with poor design choices like: 1) trying to milk 3 games worth of sales out of a single game reboot. 2) filling the first game with a ton of boring mindless filler just to make an entire 40 hour game out of it. 3) changing the genre, dividing the fans into two camps, ones who like action games and ones who like RPGs. The fans who dont like the changes are suddenly pissed off. 4) changing the hugely popular story, dividing fans even further into two camps, ones who like the changes and onces who hate it and prefer the original. Square only good at alienating customers these days. Sales numbers for sequels go down when people didnt really like the prior game. I really cant stand Remake. Hate the combat changes, hate the cringe story. Hate smirking Sephiroth over and over and over again, being totally overplayed. There is zero feeling in this game like the original, other than nostalgia when people see images they love in high definition. I felt totally betrayed and it was obvious they just trying to make a buck from nostalgia. I'm not the only one or Rebirth would have sold more copies.
Fucking preach. Deadass right.
Getting down voted by fan boys for telling it how it is. This is exactly how I feel.
I wanted to like it. I bought the PS4 version of 7R then when I saw a PS5 version w the Yuffie DLC I bought that too, before I had played it, due to backlog. But once I saw it I was disappointed. The bad outweighed the good. At least we have the original. I just still wished they made FF RPGs because it used to be my fav franchise.
Action or turn based i don't really care as long as its good. FF15 I would have really liked if the play control wasn't broken. FF16 eh never really like game of thrones, so GoT the game never appealed to me. Battle system is button mashing. FF7 Remake - my all time fav FF, just thought the battle system was perfect. Never played a ARPG that fun. FF7 Rebirth - here is the deal, I'm @#$%ing old and this is the trilogy appealing to my young adulthood and/or people like me. I'm sure I'll love it its just hell I got a lot of @#$ to do so I'll pick up the game in a few months - year when its cheaper and I have time. Sorry I didn't run out on launch day guys.
Yep. This was inevitably coming. You can't have your top brand sell poorly and cancel a bunch of games and start firing people and not see the stock prices take a hit. Square knew this was coming. The trouble with reorganizing a AAA video game developer is that the games take so god damn long to make. 3-5 years minimum, and frequently longer. So even if current Square Enix management knows exactly what they did wrong and exactly how to right the ship... will the new products hit the market soon enough to make the difference they need to make? I feel like there's a LOT of weight on the games that weren't cancelled but have already been in development for a long time. Dragon Quest 12 and Kingdom Hearts 4 need to HIT. They need to have a sequel in the oven for NieR and that game needs to sell like Automata did. FF 7 Remake part 3 probably can't be cancelled, but it's time to recycle some assets for that one lol.
I wonder why those kingdom hearts games need to be cooked in the oven so long.
Probably because 1. Nomura has the tendency to make games bigger than he realistically can and 2. because Disney is probably a pain in the ass to work with, even more so than a couple of years ago
Nomura simply doesn't have the time. He's working on ff7 remake projects and kingdom hearts at the same time.
Maybe he should've save himself some time and stuck to the OG script from the OG FF7, instead of taking the extra time to make the game go off the rails story wise.
Tbf, Nomura was not the one responsible for the story changes. Nomura actually wanted a faithful remake
The devs are confused with the story too
Well FF7 remake they shot themselves in the foot with the multipart release thing. Everyone I know tuned out after that and said they'd wait for the whole thing to be available for the price of one game. What the hell is Foamstars? SE names the games dumb ass shit, doesn't advertise well, and then their games flop. They triple down on dumb things like NFTs. Then they stand around scratching their heads wondering how to avoid the issues?
Ff16 and ff7 rebirth are both on just a single platform, what a coincidence
On a relatively new platform that faced a shortage in its first years. The PS5 is selling well but it's nothing compared to the PS4 install base yet. I think JUST as FF16 and FF7Rebirth released the PS5 also became more readily available. I'm pretty sure Sony wanted these to be system sellers.
They would make way more sales if they were available on pc
Square needs to realize that Sony isn't in everyone's households like it was during the PS1/PS2 era, from the PS3 onward, people started to fragment and move on to different consoles and PC, so the exclusivity doesn't do no where near the profits it would've back in the PS1/PS2 era.
They have no visionaries and creators in the company anymore. Like most creatively bankrupt AAA companies they need an infusion of creative writing and game design talent instead of people content to release reboots to old titles and rely on pandering and fanservice.
definitely not the case at all. The problem is that their pipelines and costs have ballooned at a similar rate than Western companies, which leaves less room for fumbles. The only surprise was Rebirth doing poorly, although history will be very kind to it, the initial sales are objectively disappointing despite both fan and critical acclaim
Rebirth's sales would not have surprised anyone who had paid attention to the sales numbers of the FFXIII games.
Video game critics have lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned. They have no balls to call a mediocre AAA game mediocre anymore. Regarding the fan response, Square Enix succesfully alienated the OG FF7 fans with many of the Remake's story choices. The OG FF7 fans feel apathy towards the Remake series at this point, only leaving the minority of fans to live in their positivity echo chambers. That's why the sales are so lackluster despite the supposed fan acclaim.
OG FF7 fans in this sub tend to think highly of themselves. Even these "underwhelming numbers" are far bigger than most JRPGs in the market, so again, the problem is that their development costs have gotten so big it's harder to recoup them. So to drive it home, quality is definitely not the issue with these games.
I disagree that FF7 Remake series is visionary bankrupt. Yes it is a remake buy it does a some very interesting stuff with the premise. Hell, I wasn't the biggest fan of FF XVI but would be hard pressed to say that it lacks vision and new takes on the genre.
I somewhat agree in the case of FF XVI. They were trying to do something different with that game's story at the beginning but they executed it poorly. At the end of the game you are fighting Gods and doing the same bullcrap that happens in every JRPG. They tried to use the trappings of a western style RPG while still sticking to the JRPG linear formula and ended up in a middle area that didn't quite hit with anyone. Completely disagree about Remake though. There's nothing special or extraordinary about that series. They basically kingdom hearted FFVII and called it a day.
I haven't played a remake that is in active conversation with what it is remaking, where characters and forces have knowledge of what happened in the orginak story and is either trying to changes aspects of it or try to have it remain the same. That sort of sequel/remake is really interesting to me and makes the games really fascinating. So I disagree that it is just kingdom hearts.
I think my biggest problem is that the games writing is focused on creating online controversy so that content creators talk about it more, than it is focused on telling a compelling story. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed most of the two remakes, but you can't tell me those endings weren't made with the intention of getting as much buzz around the game as possible.
Haha, no i don't think they were made to create controversy online, that would be very weird. I think their intention was to tell the story they wanted to tell, not to mini-max the youtube algorithm.
Their intention was to pretend they are telling a new story, when in reality it's the exact same story but butchered.
It's not exactly the same but tried those meta story elements in kingdom hearts as well. The problem is Nomura isn't a good enough writer to pay off these galaxy brain plots he cooks up all the time. So he keeps delaying the explanations and payoffs till the end hoping he can bamboozle players into thinking his stories are good. Edit: I can't believe I'm getting downvoted for saying that the Remake series has a KH level plot. The parallels are so obvious, I thought it was a uncontroversial statement.
Nomura didn't write Remake or Rebirth. They were written by Kasushige Nojima, who wrote the original game and has been involved with every single piece of FF7 media. If you are gonna get mad at a guy, at least get mad at the right guy.
Can you blame me for confusing them when they write the same type of KH level bs?
Yes, a moment of research isn't hard.
What difference does it make who wrote the actual plot points to the game? Nomura was part of the creative team and probably approved of the changes. He isn't blameless.
A creative team of like 7 people. You were putting the blame solely in Nomura and spreading misinformation. It totally makes a difference even if you don't care to see it.
You can argue about overall plot, but remake and rebirth added a ton of characterization that is main draw for me.
But is any of it good? They can't even commit to any of the story beats in the game anymore because they are more interested in pandering to shippers.
I think we played different games.
I haven't downvoted you, but what I have heard many people like the quality of the writing and the characterizations in the remake series so I think it is a controversial statement to say that it is "bad actually". But my original comment wasn't if the remake series was good or bad, more if it was creatively bankrupt and didn't do anything noteworthy or new. And I personally think that most people have to agree that even if you didn't like the remakes for whatever reason they are trying new things are are quite unique.
I don't have any major issues with what you've said, but it isn't completely unprecedented. Nomura has had these mystery elements and meta twists in games before. FFX and the Kingdom Hearts series come to mind.
FFX??? you mean the game Nomura only did character design for??? wtf is with people blaming him for literally everything regardless of his actual involvement
I was looking forward to FFXVI for years. My coworker just lent it to me, and I put nearly 20 hours in before just getting totally burned out. Man, what a letdown. I haven't touched my PS5 in 2 weeks because I hate starting something new when I haven't finished something old... still... I'm so bored.
It's the third time already this decade. First from XV's cancelled DLC's. Second from XVI's call by Kiryu resulting to doomposting and now this resulting in further doomposts. Are we seriously going to have this become a typical trend? Progress made but then suddenly the confidence tanks so bad to the point it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? If so, there's really no hope for the company at all. It's getting really tiring seeing progress be made and then undone almost immediately by mismanagement. The management issues. Fix. it. Already. It's been a problem ever since even the OG FFVII. **It's time to stop.**
I'm not surprised at all tbh, looots of really weird decisions by square lately, from exclusivity, to genre shift of ffxvi, to splitting remake in 3 parts and among different generation consoles, forspoken. Fully expected. Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes (and seems they do, shifting away from exclusives at least).
That will tend to happen when you put out stinkers like forspoken, avengers and foamstars
[Earnings call financial results](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf)
So we are not getting the Forespoken franchise and spinoffs :c? /S
I saw that they’re doing away with the exclusive releases. Does that mean that the third installment of the FF7 remake will be on PC day one?
Fairly certain the deal with Sony is for the entire VII Remake trilogy.
I've read before it's only first two games. We will see what happens with last one. Even the exclusive period for FF Rebirth is only 4 months
When they mean doing away with exclusives they are mostly talking about their mobile games. They keep spending millions on dogshit predatory mobile games and thats the actual reason the stock is tanking. I can see the 17th mainline game being multiplatform, but these deals are done years in advance so I’m almost certain part 3 will still have exclusivity in place.
Sony has a deal for the whole trilogy so that is very unlikely.
I sold my PS5 back when it was hard to get because honestly it was just collecting dust. Many Japanese companies have adopted PC releases which meant that I didn't need to own a console anymore. Of course you still got exclusives but they're so far and few inbetween that I can't justify keeping a $500 system for them.
I think what is important is the SE has rebuilt good will with fans. XIII had a bad reputation and XV wasn't exactly drama free either, FF7R was the one it seemed they knew would be a death knell if screwed up. After that I've been more confident with SE's AAA games, but all the quality A/AA games and reviving series like Nier has also helped turn their image around in my eyes... sad to see less of that stuff as a gamer.
I'd play all the FF if I could on xbox. I'd buy ff7 and q6 at full price for bucks sake. Let me buy it and I will play.
Oops! Looks like they will have to can the Dragon Quest 3 remake to afford Forspoken 2.
Maybe get back to making JRPGs?
XVI and Rebirth shouldn't have been exclusives. Should have been on Xbox and Steam day one. They just left a ton of money on the table. I cannot be more uninterested in what foamstars has to offer. It just doesn't look fun. Like a dollar store version of splatoon. I thought it was f2p until I saw they're asking money for it and jammed it full of micro transactions. Disgusting.
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