Their Plan Failed: Square Enix Is Abandoning Exclusivity
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ย. 2024
- Once more, Square Enix have failed to meet their own expectations.
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Harvestella is a great game and one of the few Switch games I've bought.
If you can sell millions of copies and still consider that a loss, if a game studio can release a smash like Hi-Fi Rush and still close, the games are not the problem, the industry is.
👏👏👏👏👏👏
You are assuming hi fi rush did well. MS could’ve only been expecting 100k but they sold 200k.
The amount of Microsoft simpery on display here is beautiful. Keep it going
@@Dank_Engine who is simping?
But Hifi rush would have sold well.... IF it wasn't on gamepass, that crap is just a losing prospect no matter which way you look at it, there's no way they can make it successful simply by virtue of Thier ridiculous expectations.
The best thing about Epic Exclusives is by the time the game releases on Steam I don’t even want to buy it anymore. Saves me so much money
Yeah, that shit just simply demotivates me. I haven't bought anything that came from the EGS, even when brought back to Steam. I know that I'm just being petty, but that just leave a really bad taste in my mouth.
More importantly we live in a world where are phones can emulate up to ps2 and 3DS games meaning the only game we can can't emulate is KH3 which kinda sucked/divided fan base as the first 2/3 was filler only.
So true, started with borderlands 3 for me when they announced their epic fail exclusivity fiasco, I had just finished BD2 and the presequel, was eager to buy, but they wasted my time so promised myself not to buy it until BD3 was on steam for at least 50% off, at the end of the day I forgot it existed at all and never bought it...
🤣
Another bright side is that if you buy them most of the bugs and glitches have been worked out by then.
Wait... So your telling me... limiting where you sell a product... lowers the amount of sales?
Holy sh*t Sherlock!
They got money for that.
@@TheOneGreat It can't have ever possibly been enough because then its a bad deal for the one they do the deal with
@@TheOneGreat Obviously not since they're reversing it. If a company gets $500 dollars for shooting themselves in the foot then they will mag dump until they physically can't.
Seems to work out fine for the majority of pc only games
How do you say "No shit, Sherlock" in Japanese?
When a game releases as an epic exclusive by the time it comes out on steam i forgot the game even existed
Not to mention, Steam users, like us, don't get to see bugs in the games as much as first day exclusive buyers.
We get the "clean" version.
The purpose of CEOs setting unrealistic expectations is to deny bonus' to staff. If staff are meeting expectations they'd have to payout, but it's free to set ridiculous expectations you know you won't meet. And hey, if you do end up meeting them? They've already earned you many times what you'd pay out in that blue sky scenario. And you better believe the target will get much more extreme the following year.
I like this conspiracy theory because it's probably actually true at least half the time.
20+ years working my way up the corporate ladder. This is 100% true. You get higher up, hear the discussions, read between the lines and see the patterns.
That's the big C for you. You're never good enough.
I don't think this is as true in Japan where labor laws are stricter than somewhere like the US. Bonuses are often written into your contract and guaranteed barring any delinquent activity. What they Japanese are more stingy about are raises, which are at a set, flat amount and given at yearly reviews.
For Japan, the issue is the relationships between companies, that are much more mafia-esque. They have symbiotic partnerships with "you scratch my back I scratch yours" and give each other deep discounts to use the other's products and services. Sony and SE had been in partnership for a very, very long time and no matter how damaging it was to their sales, SE was almost required to suck it up and take the hit so they didn't ruin the relationship. But they must have finally hit their threshold. I think it also helps that the new ceo is younger and not as ingrained into the old Japanese way of doing business, so perhaps he didn't feel as much pressure about making big changes.
Source: 6 yrs exp in Japan, 4 in a traditional Japanese company.
AA games recently : let's release this cool game at 30 bucks, 40 with cosmetic DLC.
Square & AAA publishers : pauper version 80 dollars! full version 150 dollars!
AA games recently : oh man WTF all those sales we are drowning in money, help.
Square & AAA publishers : sales fell short of expectations, we have no idea why.
what game is Square selling for 150?
I did not see anything like that from them, only Ubisoft and some others?!
@@work1309 Its called satire....you will understand when you grow up...
Yeah no, i don't see the correlation with square in that example, other publishers sure or should i say live service games but not single player games
Ubisoft reading your comment @@work1309
single-A games:
* Laughs in 30$ single-purchase that has more content than both combined *
They should have ditched exclusivity after the PS1 era, when hardware stopped being a limiting factor
Nope. They stayed with Sony because of familiarity
They were never really exclusive since the PS1. Only 3 or four games prior to 7R were exclusive at the time of release.
Nah, PS2 era was amazing. After that they fell off
@@fitz394 I would disagree with that because of 12
Thing is they were not Exclusive back on the PS1. A lot of Square PS1 Games also Came out on PC back then
I’m not surprised. Both recent FF games would’ve been a day 1 purchase for me but I’m not going to buy a PS5 just to play them
You can skip FFXVI.
@@TheOneGreat i disagree. Im playing through XVI right now and loving it. Id have to go back and see peoples thoughts when it released. But personally i dont get why people dont like it. I also havent finished it yet though so theres that
@@SunzNbunzHonestly the game had a great start, but just got worse the more i played.
I did and not regret, im a Gamer and use all Hardware.
But can understand buying a console for only 1 game is useless.
Meh, every Square games ALWAYS failed to met expectations according to their CEO....
IMO, they just want excuse to add mtx, Battle Pass, NFT etc to every games from now on.
Square Enix games dont really have mtx though.
Nah it’s just that they can’t seem to make good FF games anymore and haven’t since Sakaguchi left.
@@kjh4496that's been my experience. Harveststella was the 1st game that made me look at square enix since dragon warrior 11 PS4 release. Before that was some ps3 game probably. FFs past 10 havefelt literally a bag of FF inspired games. Nothing but knock offs.
Its worth noting just how hard Squre went in on NFTs, and crypto and how little those games made, if they even ended up getting released at all.
Well i have to blame them for agreeing whatever exclusivity deal they did....they had to know making it ps5 only was going to limit sales if the money from sony could not offset then there was going to be issues
They, and Sony, seem to have thought it would sell faster. It didn't, pick your reason why between lack of big name exclusives, lack of avaliablity, cross-gen, money issues, etc etc.
Well in a way kinda glad cuz now we’ll get ‘em on Xbox too and whatever Nintendo calls their next thing
There’s also the lasting perception of a game not being worth it if it doesn’t sell well to begin with impacted by smaller audience pool. 16 and 7R do not deserve that perception. Damage has been done
Lord Gaben: "You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me."
to some degree it doesn't help that The PlayStation 5 was released worldwide on November 19, 2020, one week after its initial release in Australia, Japan, Korea, North America, and New Zealand on November 12, 2020. basically during the lockdowns with support chain issues and it took them a few years to finally catchup with the demand. meanwhile many gamers likely stayed with the older consoles or switched to pc.
People just don’t want to buy consoles anymore.
@@kjh4496 (Eyes the Nintendo Switch)
Yeah, no, that's not the problem. Its more about how the console generation launched.
there is also the issue with scalpers which made things harder, since they took a good portion of the consoles to satiate their greed
@@krspaceT1 the switch is a different type of console, and half the price.
@@kjh4496 Exactly, you can get a computer half the size of a PS5 not to mention faster for the same price you pay for a ps5 with a far bigger library.
they shouldve done that 10 years ago.
10 yrs ago they had a different president that was ruining the company
Hopefully this doesnt mean they stop making games like octopath and triangle strategy. Those were some of my favorite games of recent memory and i would love to see more "hd-2d" originals and remakes.
Harvestella was good too. Same as DioField Chronicle.
Exclusivity is the least of SE's issues.
Final Fantasy soon to live up to its original role as a swan song lmao
@@gigaslave well, i wouldn't be surprised if SE go bankrupt . ..
They should have continued to do what they were good at . . making games and stop giving a fuck about anythign else, and limiting nomura in his stupidity.
@@brotheralaric7177 Final Fantasy was meant to be the swan song of Squaresoft back in the NES days, but it was successful enough to save them.
If they continue down this path of unreasonable greed and excessively inflated development costs, they might have to make a Final Fantasy to herald their end. Again.
@@brotheralaric7177YES! Nomura ruined FF remake with Kingdom Hearts 3 multiple timeline bs!!
If it wasn't for the XIV/XVI crossover event, I'd have forgotten XVI came out. I only learned Rebirth came out a few weeks after the fact. In my social circle, I am not alone in this. Exclusivity just doesn't work for third party titles.
I had a job once where the management would hold catered meetings. After the meetings were done, they'd have people bring the half eaten leftovers to the breakroom. All the sad little half platters or boxes of food now cold.
This is what it feels like when exclusives get ported another platform as an afterthought once sales have stopped on its home platform. The hype has died, the taste has soured and the mood has changed in the interim anyhow. All I feel is a lot of nope.
whenever i hear or see creative unit business 3 i just think oh thats Yoshi p's studio
I didn't know Kingdom Hearts was an Epic exclusive. The EGS really is a marketing black hole.
That’s a good way to put it. You get a brief headline of “we went to this store. See you in X amount of time”.
And then you MAYBE one day see them pop up on Steam, because you didn’t have the opportunity to wishlist it.
They absolutely doom these games with exposure. I would've day 1 purchased the KH collection if I even knew it existed on PC, but I had no idea it was on EGS for like an entire year. Glad it's coming to Steam, and I'm glad I did my part in fighting back at Epic by not giving in. I have over a thousand games on Steam and I just don't want them split up
I envy you, when I saw the announcement I was furious. I figured it would be the usual one year wait, when it wasn’t, I resigned myself to it being permanent. Hearing the series is finally coming to Steam feels like nothing short of a miracle.
@@mrfoxly6833 it is a feeling of disbelief, isn’t it.
When you finally can say “oh wow, they finally pulled their head out of their ass so I can give them money?”
Only thing Epic has going for them is their game Engine outside that they should bow down to Steam.
I recall looking up Square's dev groups a few years ago and there was like 15+ Creative Business Units. They've been releasing a massive quantity of games that were just not selling, either because of poor marketing or middling performance. While downsizing some clearly capable employees always sucks this could be the path to a stronger company in the years to come.
Most people I know that wanted to play FF16 and 7 rebirth oddly don't have PS5, either they've kept their ps4 or play on pc.
Same thing that frustrated me the most was when 7 went on pc it was epic exclusive with a crappy port
Yep that's me!
I refuse to buy a PS5 and sadly many of the games that interest me the most are timed-exclusive to it.
Finally have access to Ghost of Tsushima, FF16 will come eventually, and waiting on FF7 Rebirth.
Sadly the Demon's Souls remake will likely never come to PC, just like Bloodborne :(
I hate console exclusivity so much.
I sure as hell wanted to play FF16 and 7 remakes...but I sure as hell ain't buying a PS5 for it that I won't use over the PC that I build to get the best performances on everything and being able to just Alt+tab to do other stuff. Not to mention I don't want to pay Sony extra subscriptions on their network stuff either with a PS5.
And for exclusives, I ain't buying anything from Epic soo they literally made all the bad decisions, Square Enix did. You have actually sit down and plan to be this bad at making business decisions.
Who wants to buy a 600dollar gkmped PC with expensive games and a subscription fee to play online? Definitely not me
@Someone-lg6di what if I told that ff7 was released on PS1 and pc simultaneously....
honestly i was sad with kh3, removing all the ff characters kinda killed it for me
Especially considering the black hole into which Disney seems to be falling nowadays.
Just like how Disney removed X-men and left MCU characters only in marvel vs capcom
_"...That's why Halo can still make me sad."_
By Sithis, ain't that the truth! Seeing what Halo has become is like somebody brutalising my inner child, that deep core of spotty nerd that adored playing Halo with my friends.
Frankly, I think the next console generation should probably be pushed off for a good long while too. The systems are plenty powerful enough to realize any gameplay visions a designer may have in mind. The only thing holding developers back is their own desires to layer on far too many details.
Make the games "uglier". Well, that's a strong way to put it, but what I mean is, not going for photo-realism. Go for a less detailed less realistic artistic style that requires less development costs and time to make. The best games I've played in the past few years are minimalist in that regard, like Obsidian's RPGs, or even Squeenix's oddities.
But, wouldn't it be the mother of all loads if the third part of the FF7 remake was delayed indefinitely just like Half-Life 2 Episode 3?
I came here to say pretty much this. I feel that games are going too far into trying to make reality look like PS1 era visuals in comparison.
This costs so much more to produce than what was the standard not so long ago and brings so little to the experience. I love eye candy, but I'd rather have a solid core gameplay loop that keeps me engaged. Videogames are supposed to be about fun, not just look like movies.
@@avrax3497 Heck I absolutely adored the updated Dead Space. The changes to gameplay and the story were all in all improvements to the experience across the board. But, all those graphical details (which don't misunderstand, I do think it's a beautiful looking game, or being a horror game, hideous in a good way) made it so expensive and likely resulted in a lot of developer crunch. What do we have to show for it? EA has now confined this poor company to the Battlefield mines, and we're not getting a Dead Space 2 remake, or the reimagining of Dead Space 3 it so desperately needs, and certainly no Dead Space 4. Granted, the "cliffhanger" ending of DS3 works just as great as a haunting Lovecraftian nightmare of an ending, but it's still notable. Heck, in all their focus on amazing new details, Isaac's own animations are rather lacking compared to the original (no idle animations, no "injured movement" animations), so corners clearly needed to be cut even with the budget they were given.
And then we have what really happened to Half Life 2 Episode 3. They couldn't think of any new amazing tech to push forward in that chapter, so they delayed it and delayed it. It's alright not to push forward new tech. Well, at least for us older gamers who can look back and realize the difference between good graphics and good visual design. I honestly think if major companies reduced the number of these gigantic expensive "blockbuster" games down to like... one a year or even one every couple of years, they'd do well. The crazy success even with younger gamers of games with VERY simple graphics like Mine's Craft or Harvest Moon Indie Edition or Pacifist Earthbound (and I'm having fun here, but I like all of these games myself) should be enough...
But, when they're intentionally killing off mod support and LAN play in a lot of new games... Well clearly they have different ideas of what makes a game profitable now.
Alot of the time the art direction in new games is so crap too because they just add a bunch of default engine shaders to everything with no tact or artistry to it. Its just like alot of those really rough early Xbox 360 games with ugly plasticy looking textures and way too much bloom.
Also it seems like nobody knows how to make good antialiasing anymore, and perhaps this industry push towards making everything 4k 8k is some attempt to "distract you from the crunchy pixels" by just making the resolution bigger.
@@Coconut-219 Tell me about it... And then you have remasters that change color filters and lighting effects and even replace a bunch of special effects with no holistic thinking about how well that meshes with the original world all those effects are being jammed in. I'm thinking of things like the Doom 3 BFG or Dark Souls Remastered versions that end up needing to be patched backwards to get the art looking right.
Not all are like this. The remasters of Kingdom Hearts look better, but mainly because they literally just up-ressed the textures and rendering resolution and didn't touch anything else. Fuller graphical remakes can also suffer if the art design isn't really thought through. For every Dead Space or Paper Mario TYD or Super Mario RPG remake that looks absolutely stunning, there's a Demon's Souls remake that reimagines the art design to such an extent it introduces major plotholes, or just loses a lot by making all the new interpretations grosser with no element of the original dignity those entities once possessed.
With the departure of Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Atlus's Persona, I've no reason to own a playstation (and hell, persona hopped ship all the way over to game pass). Very pleased with that.
I remember hearing the story that Final Fantasy 1 was named as such because it was their last attempt to make a game before the company went under.. Well, on the opposite end of the financial spectrum, I'm glad to see they're reembracing their roots and seeking to deliver stories and creative experiences again instead of gimicy and cheap attempts to follow trends.
Bad news for the CEO that got money under the table from Epic. There's no sane reason for limiting yourself to a dead storefront like that, except for behind the scenes bonuses for the leaders paid from Timmy Tencent.
I mean, I'm happy for Epic to pay for the porting of Kingdom Hearts for me to give no money to Epic because I have patience and despise Chinese spyware.
Epic help/pay also porting PS game to PC
Steam wouldn't do that
Square Enix on the verge of Bankruptcy: "No! No, I don't believe it!"
The FF XIV Warrior of Light standing between them and the bank while wearing a dress and an angry look on their face: *Nods no*
WITH ME BROTHERS AND SISTERS!
TO ME WARRIORS OF LIGHT! I AM SALVATION GIVEN FORM. . . MANKIND FIRST HERO AND HIS LAST HOPE!
Suffering from success
And the deluded Cult of FFXIV goes on, living in their own little bubble.....
Square-Enix have said, in their Financial Report, that their MMO division is doing POORLY right now, while games like FF7 Rebirth are the ones bringing the actual money.
Cope.
@@Ukaran Because they haven't released an expansion in a few years. The game is still a massive success.
It's weird how you're so passionately upset about it.
2:57 As someone that loved Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2 as a kid and always wanted to play the whole franchise through, I indeed had no clue Kingdom Hearts was ported to PC.
As a regular FF14 player on PC, I was bummed that 16 was only coming out on PS5. Not only that, but so were nearly ALL my FC mates. Very few of us have a PS5, and can't justify the purchase. We're all eagerly awaiting 16's PC release and will definitely be playing it when it finally is out.
I don't own a PS5 and have no plans to ever buy one. I am really eager to play both FF7 Rebirth & FF16.
SQEX: "The sales did not meet our expectations" Me: And water is wet.
At least they seem to have reduced their business units and create a more consolidated structure from the previous 12 BU?! But naming is still very creative like the mmo unit was
Business Unit 05, changed to Creative Business Unit 3 and now Creative Studio 3
Water is not in fact wet. Water can make things wet, but is not itself wet.
It's weird to think about, but water is dry.
I’ve not played FFXVI, but I do plan on buying FFXVI on Steam.
One-time payment isn't profitable for the company versus long-term growth. Exclusivity is a never good approach, unless you're Nintendo that has their very own ecosystem, which Square doesn't have.
It's own ecosystem ,its own fanbase, its own niches, generally agreed on quality, and a budget set up to exist in that ecosystem. That last one is why Sony struggles, its not budgeting for that.
That’s funny… I literally had no idea kingdom hearts was on pc. I just borrowed the disks from a friend for my PlayStation lmaoo
As long as they mingle between studios and shoot the shit sometimes. I don't want the next Star Ocean game to be made by the same people. That also kind of goes for DQ. A bold take on DQ would be so refreshing.
I saw a video recently that actually looked into the math behind SE's expectations for AAA titles tho, and it makes sense. Once you remove the 35% cut of sales from major retailers other than Epic Games, selling 3 million copies on a mainline FF game _doesn't_ make back the development cost, because development costs nowadays are just insane.
Exclusivity deals can in some cases help pay for development costs, and make games less risky because said platform will just take all the revenue until the cost is paid back, meaning they don't really _lose_ money at least. So it makes _sense_ . Really even just a few Epic sales over Steam help them quite a bit, but tbh in the long term they'd end up making far more from Steam sales 'cause it's just a larger audience. I feel like when they do Epic exclusivity deals, by the time games make it to Steam, the hype is dead so they lose a lot of sales they'd otherwise have gotten
I actually LOVED Harvestella. It felt like I just picked up an old PS2 game I forgot to play way back in the day. Was it insanely innovative? No. Was it just a fun little jrpg romp? Yeah. While it was short is Was pretty enjoyable and it even had 3 different endings and a hidden real final boss in the hidden ending! I'd say it felt like when I played Radiata Stories on PS2. Which if you never heard of or played Radiata Stories grab an emu and play it. For real.
Not just the platform exclusivity is the problem. Also involvment of some unnecessary consultation groups did a huge part of the downfall.
Another problem is that epic either shut down or not having server for some region.
So people in those region would rather wait for steam than buying it from epic.
I have a bit of a hypothesis when it comes to what's going on with them right now. It's not only the money and financial management I think it's also the direction of the games. Don't get me wrong they have well dedicated fans and I think that's really good. But going into the future as their fan base are getting older and different games are coming out that cater to different audiences people who may not follow the traditional route of fantasy that they their cells have established it does become more harder to get hype or want to buy a game that really isn't going to allow you to be yourself or live your fancy in a way you want to in the game. And the reason why I say this is look how big their MMO is doing. Going through all the different servers even the different data centers has shown me there is multiple different types of players in tone people role-playing their fantasy. And before anyone goes if you see some of the role playing worlds in ffxix you would understand.
And this is not me saying that they make s***** games they make really good games, it's just sometimes some of the stories the characters the archetypes that they use feel a bit dated. And I mean I was just looking at the new Monster Hunter Wilds trailer and I can't help but notice how excited everyone is Don't get me wrong You have some people who don't like that the characters look more modern or that it looks a bit different than how it usually is. But it's good that they're expanding on their world and adding some new features and and some different archetypes. I think that's very important as a times change you have to evolve with it that doesn't mean you have to get rid of everything that made you unique and forms of your games but there should be a level of progression I shouldn't pick up a game and it feels like I'm playing something from 2017 or 2012. With prettier graphic they should be a bit more bolder and not be afraid of changing starting a new chapter in their gaming series. I think something refreshing but something more advanced taking elements from other games that they have seen do popular within their company might be one of the best things for the franchises.
I don't want to see them think I don't want to see no become a legacy company not able to keep up with today's ever-changing gaming scene. But that's what it feels like sometimes, I enjoy playing the games but you can't say that they don't follow a set formula at times. They do they always have The stories are beautiful the graphics are beautiful, the characters are often beautiful but at the end of the day we usually know what we're getting when we pick up a final fantasy game.
Hopefully we'll see something that they feel comfortable with releasing and that's a bit different that makes not only the old fan base want to come back and play it but new people as well some that have never thought about picking up a final fantasy game.
8:00 Thank you for catching yourself. Yes, it should be customers. One of the reasons why stuff in a state as it is in my opinion is the change in noun used. This lead to people internalizing the consuming part of their part of the equation and not demanding quality as a customer should.
As far as the call to action questions: No and no.
🧡💛🧡
Harvestella's biggest issue is the price tag
Like what in the world?
Correct they totally didn't read the room. It's a good game like harvest moon to a degree however the price point was a miss for sure.
Remember the days of FF13 trilogy and failed launch of FF14 1.0? It’s all relative - I think Square Enix has delivered some excellent games last couple of years! Wish them all the best and that multi platform works out good for them
Glad to see companies stepping away from exclusivity.
I've been pc only since about 2 years into the life cycle of the Xbox 360.
I despise consoles and exclusivity deals.
To the point I've refused to buy the games of any company that participates in any form of exclusivity.
Now if only streaming services could get their shit together and actually compete thru services rather than show exclusivity. Their ruining the whole concept of why streaming services worked in the first place.
This brings to mind the sales flop known as NEO The World Ends With You.
They had the balls to say the sales are not satisfactory when in fact the reason was it got shunted to the EGS, did they not learn the meme "oh EGS exclusive? That means 1 year delay"
Did you Talk about Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default or May other Games that we don't know so far. Why are you so focused on Tomb Raider and the other Big FF? I'm thrilled to see whats next especially for old school JRPGs.
Their failure is catching up, and now, they need to distribute their slop on all platforms to survive. But it will still be slop because they are physically unable to learn anything and to listen to the voices of consumers.
I have been telling my friends I think we are on the cusp of a renaissance in gaming. They kind of doubt it. BUT, things like square pulling their heads out of their nugget holes, people being fed up with the uglification of gaming art and story, and the simple fact that AAA gaming is too dense to see that gaming is not failing, but they in fact are failing by not making good engaging stories, I think are going to lead us out of the dreary garbage we have been seeing.
"We developed our game for a single console, locking it out from over 2/3 of possible sales because we were told exclusivity is good" -no smart developer ever.
I love FF but will not buy a PS5 purely for it. Gonna wait for PC version of pretty much all SE games.
(Harvestella is pretty fun btw, yall should play it)
Literally the WoL from 14 has been single-handidly stopping them from bankruptcy. It is almost as if it a calamity in game, the Wol does what they do best and save the day. If that doesn''t speak about the powerhouse of 14, the fact that it was SO SUCESSFUL that they had to stop selling it, nothing else does. I would have loved to have 16 on pc before the x-over on 14 but I am still happy KH is finally coming to steam.
And the deluded Cult of FFXIV goes on, living in their own little bubble.....
Square-Enix have said, in their Financial Report, that their MMO division is doing POORLY right now, while games like FF7 Rebirth are the ones bringing the actual money.
Cope.
@Ukaran your so happy with that reply you made it twice, wow, your really sour on 14, chill out my man
@@MLF4468
I'm sour on your deluded and fanatical cult, who TRASHES ON everybody working at Square-Enix, just to promote the image of your god and savior.
You respect no one.
Meanwhile, Hamaguchi's FF7 Rebirth is shitting all over Yoshida's mid FF16. Meanwhile, the MMO division(Yoshida's division) is doing poorly.
@Ukaran when did I do anything like that? Time to calm down a little my friend, you seem to be way too upset about this
@@MLF4468
The Cult of FFXIV does.
Their PC releases NEED to be legit PC versions with all the expected PC settings natively in the game! The options in 7R were abysmal. Which is crazy given that 15 actually did a good job in that department
Square Enix are so damn busy chasing trends and playing aimless catch up all the time that they almost have no identity anymore.
Disappointed with the first instalment remake of FF7. Not interested in playing a 3 part $300 game. Sorry Square, but it's a hard no for me.
Many people feel the same.
1. It’s not a remake
2. It’s split into 3 part
3. Not buying a PS5 for 1 game
after their little DEI stunt, I find it hard to care about all future installments - even as someone who liked part1 despite it's flaws and was cautiously optimistic.
They do things that are baffling to me. They used to be the studio that did their own thing better than anyone else with turn based, amazing looking RPGs with very strong stories and design, then they started chasing trends trying to appeal to the West when the West was already playing FF and loving it. So many throw away games, the horrible NFT stuff, and now FF16(I will die on the hill that FF should have stayed turn based and they should have made a related spin off series for action instead of splitting the player base every entry), and FF7 honestly got screwed by exclusivity. I and most of my friend group, don't have PS5s, it was basically a unobtainable myth for years and then inflation hit so it seemed like such an obvious bad choice to lock it to PS5 users if they wanted those sales numbers. It's so obvious that it's baffling.
FF7 Rebirth just feels bad, if their most beloved title getting a modern remake doesn't hit sales targets then you know your business strategy isn't working.
Its a shame because honestly its one of the most feature complete games to be released in a long time. No microtransactions, with a pretty solid 100+ hour playthrough. Definitely a GOTY contender
Rebirth sold well.
It's one of their "financial highlights", according to their Financial Report.
@@Ukaranit sold one of their best out of their current lineup...but still below what previous title sold and declining growth which is what these psychophant public companies dont want to get their bonus stock options approved .
Honestly the main bad thing of part1 (and part2 from what I hear) is it's kind of padded. It makes sense they had to do this since it costs so much to remake in full-definition 3D what was just one prerendered screen that you'd see for like 15 seconds in the original game so they had to justify stretching out the content, but it's not great for the pacing. Midgar is actually a surprisingly short section of the beginning of the game when you go back and play the original, it's just very memorable so it feels longer.
Where are people getting this false information about rebirth not selling. It sold just fine.
It sold just fine dude. Not sure where you are getting that info.
every time these days corpo puts out a mission statement it usually means they have no clue what they are doing. 'mission' usually is not set up internally with procedures and a clear understanding of what to do to achieve what was in the nice power point slides for bosses and investors. im not holding my breath.
i didnt know kingdom hearts was on pc until the steam announcement. it was stuck in the egs store for 3 years wtf?
Crazy. They must think it's still the 90s if they believed that these games would somehow get GTA level of sales! The Final Fantasy series at its peak had little competition compared to the gaming industry today. What this tells me is that Final Fantasy was never that good, because it's only when you have some competition that the true value of your product can be revealed.
I put in about 80 hours into my playthrough of XVI including all side quests hunts and dlc, but haven't gone through final fantasy mode or a ng+ playthrough at all yet. I can't wait to get it on pc and do it again, I usually consider the pc version my go-to once it's launched for these kinds of releases.
Honestly for the last couple years only PC and the Switch have done very well with exclusivity, but this isn't the age of exclusivity anymore. We're in the age of multi/all/cross platform. The sooner companies really understand this the sooner your gonna see a new golden age in games.
Square Enix is so frustrating. They immediately set a ceiling for sales by limiting where a title is sold... and the back catalog??? Who here would gladly pay for a re-issue(on modern hardware) of Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Parasite Eve, and countless other titles?
Harvestella is such a bizarre case, you would think a big jrpg dev making their own rune factory would be a slam dunk, but instead nobody remembers it...
I use the youtube app, watch your channel regularly, and never see ads. Same with many other channels. I usually only see ads while listening to music.
The thing about what a game needs to earn to be a success financially is that you can just think about it versus how much they would have made if they had just tossed all that money in the stock market. At 6 mill, assuming 30 dollars of profit on average, it commes to 180 mill. That number is meaningless without a point of reference. Assume a budget of 100 mill for the sake of argument and that they would have doubled that over the same period in the stock market to 200 million... suddenly they've actually lost 20 million dollars. THAT is the difference between personal finances and a publicly traded business. You can think of it like getting an 8% raise when inflation has made everything 10% more expensive.
Gee, who knew that a Japanese company hitching the exclusively wagon to a console that stopped caring about the Japanese market a decade ago would lead to underwhelming sales?
I'd love it if there was a super close up on the faces of, say, PalWorld, Helldivers, Baldur's Gate 3, Balatro... Basically just a bunch of fun games...
Less likely people didn’t know and more of I don’t wanna engage the epic platform for whatever reasons.
I wouldn't buy any previous exclusive game unless it was heavily discounted on launch. At least 80%. It's years old game anyway.
And since I wasn't able to play it for years since the launch, it doesn't really matter if I could ever play it or not.
I don't think Square Enix's exclusivity is the problem. PS5 is selling just fine. The problem is the games.
FF16 looks like another angsty insufferable protagonist, with 'yet another hack and slash' gameplay. It doesn't MATTER if that's not the case, people bother with a game based on impressions, not reality.
FF7 Remake had interesting bits interrupted by incredibly long, monotonous slogs. I found myself skipping anything I could by the end, because what was there wasn't interesting enough for the time it was going to take to do it. So am I going to buy the sequel? What do you think?
I think they'll be shocked by how little of a difference this decision is going to make unless they go back to making wacky, interesting games, and PLEASE can we stop with the angst?
I won't give squeenix my money anymore after being treated as a peasant only because I didn't own a PS5. After being happy for years of taking sony money now they suddenly realize the PC market is viable.
Screw you SE!!
Their discounts are crap too.
I've been waiting for XVI to come out on PC. I don't own a PS5 and given that they still have a monthly subscription model for even getting online, I have no desire to purchase one.
Its a good thing. Exclusivity is anti-consumer. Maybe they'll remake FF9 as a nine part series over the next 30 years.
But at the same time everyone makes fun of the PS5 because it has no exclusives
The thing with Square Enix is that they can easily port the back catalog of a good chunk of their games. IIRC, they develop them on PC. So it's just a matter of compiling and packaging them. And they're sitting on a lot of titles. Like Dragon Quest IX is available on Steam, but what about VIII? What about doing the early ones like they did for Final Fantasy I-VI?
and if I heard correctly they use Unreal Engine nowadays, which on standard can ship games on Windows for example, the only extra work would be, adding more settings for PC players + adding Keyboard/mouse Inputs etc.
If we can get the Dragon Quest back catalog on Steam, I'd be all for it. Aggravating playing through the series and having to jump through consoles just to play the entire series. Not to mention give us 10 already you got an offline version, translate it and release it. Would make a good stopgap to keep western fans happy till 12 comes out.
square-enix doesn't even own the rights to Kingdom hearts, Disney does, so it was obviously Disney's decision for Kingdom hearts to be multi-platform, the only things in Kingdom hearts that square-enix owns are the characters from Final fantasy and the world ends with you, everything else is owned by Disney, including all original characters made for Kingdom hearts, including sora
If FF16 is able to release a solid PC version, I think we could see a huge resurgence of the game. It has the potential to be one of the best looking games out there and has the most appeal of any FF game for non-FF fans.
@user-wt7rm1ze3i Until, that is, a funny robot and a plumber in red and blue saved the industry.
I heard a lot of bad things about FFXVI so probably won't be wanting to buy it just to figure out I'm not going to enjoy the world enough to invest the time into it. FFVII Rebirth was really good though, but I can certainly see it not getting as much attention as when everybody was up in arms over the new direction the Remake took.
2:10 Very brief note - its been shown that a lot of the textures have been touched up and made higher resolution as well in the steam port coming - they had not done this for the previous HD rereleases, not even the Ps4 version - so I suspect to get Next Gen Kingdom Hearts All in one package, with all the bells and whistles and HD texture upgrades for next Gen consoles (Ps5/ XBX/ PC / Switch 2) to probably release shortly before we start to hear more and more KH4 news, I feel like they are gonna try to get the entire series on next gen hardware, like they did with the PS4.
With the exception of FF VII Remake, i don't buy games that were exclusive on Epic Store, and this is not to be petty or anything.
Is just that you have that moment of hype and then "just on epic", when I just bought a Steam Deck to play while I have free time during work, and have most games on Steam (only Fortnite with friends o Epic).
And well the hype dies off when more things come out, i don't even know how many sales have passed and games like borderlands keep popping up but I'm already busy with other games.
I honestly never knew it was on Epic, but i DID hear about it coming to Steam!! They have GOT to learn to Advertise their GOOD games better!!
Here is a hot take: I would have already bought final fantasy 16 if Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's endgame wasn't utterly frustrating and borderline impossible. I was so excited for Rebirth, I put 200 hours into expecting to platinum like I do all big games. Well it's just about the most frustrating endgame I've ever experienced. The mini games are good, but require impossible reflexes in order to master and gain the trophies related to them. I love the combat of FF7R but they took the mini games too far, especially considering many of them did not get properly tested and just plain don't work. The sit up mini game gives you a tutorial, but the actual situp challenges controls are different, confusing, and buggy. I feel like a giant hole in my experience for the endgame. Also they need to add a "retry battle" feature to the combat simulations, as in the rest of the game has it. I don't understand why it doesn't have it. You can go 9 rounds and lose on the 10th Everytime, but now you have to repeat those 9 rounds instead of just starting at round 10. I just feel like the endgame is the devs intentionally wasting my time in a way they didn't do with the rest of the game. Left me such a sour taste I dont plan on buying the the final FF7R game or FF16. I just feel abused by the game, it's not fun challenging, it's frustrating challenging
I'm so shocked that limiting the amount of people that can buy your product would have a negative impact on sales. Who knew?
any other fan hearing their favorite gaming company in trouble with money and that deeply worries them. For me a SE fan, I hear that and just think "Oh must be Tuesday."
I was on PS4 but scalpers, duel shock 4 problems and console limitations brought me to PC with FF14, I want to play FF16, I want to play FF7 remake and rebirth, just not on console anymore and surely I'm not the only one feeling this way and thats one of the reasons why.
May 27th is Dragon Quest Day in Japan and most folks were relieved that SE didn't announce a half-baked App game under its title. They really didn't announce much other than letting folks know DQXII was still under development. All of this comes after they announced the end of service for a bunch of App titles that also didn't meet their expectations, including some Dragon Quest ones.
Not something that gets noticed outside Japan, but SE has been notorious for releasing a slurry of half-baked App games, and shutting them down within 2 years. I do hope they stop with this, because whenever a gem does in fact get made, (folks have been rather disappointed that Towa Tsugai is getting shut down because it actually was decent) it still ends up getting the axe anyway.
The time of traditional console is dead and gone..... people need to understand and see that. PC has fully taken over. Even handheld are just portable pcs now
@pffboahkeineahnung Mobile is not a console and just proves my point.... and console? what console? Xbox/PS5? EA sales? .... so you mean sports games? where do people play sports games? obv consoles- but as more and more games just get ported and younger and younger kids get used to PC gaming- mobile phones or mobile PC gaming or a desktop- its obv the future. Sports games won't keep these companies making these paper weights
I’m not sure I will buy FF16 on Steam, but it’s the only place I WOULD buy it.
Its the only place I CAN buy it. Maybe one day there'll be a sale or something. I use my PC for tons of things, getting a console to take up space seems absurd these days.
I didn't know Kingdom Hearts was brought to PC lol I seriously thought "about time" only to be "wait , what?"
Not just that, but all the Kingdom Hearts games on the Epic store have already seen 60% off sales there. Given how rare it's for Square to go over 50% in a sale, I take that to mean it wasn't selling well.
I now expect a 60% off sale for its Steam release (and if it doesn't get one I'm likely to skip the game, at least until such a sale comes by; I don't think any game that was ever exclusive to Epic deserves even half the retail price).
@@FabioCapela Nah, those Square-wide sales come and go all the time, on all platforms.
@@StarseekerAtlas A square-wide sale, yes.
A 60% discount, no. Most Square games have their highest discount capped at 50%. I should know, as I'm waiting for a 60% discount to buy a few Square games that I want to play but originally came with Denuvo (as I will never, ever, purchase a game that formerly had Denuvo without a discount of at least 60%, similar to how I handle games that had exclusivity deals).
The future is creative indie games.
That being said, lets not kid ourselves thinking Square is ever going to die. The problem isn't even that their games are doing poorly, just less well than they had hoped.
"FF16 sales fell short of expectation"
I'm a lifelong gamer, played every single Final Fantasy game from 1-15 tactics, racing games, etc. I had no idea until very recently that 16 existed, where the hell was the marketing?
I will never buy a game thats gone/been epic exclusive. They didnt need my money then they dont need it now since epic paid upfront for it. This reminds me of when the witcher writer took the money upfront which was less then what he would have made in royalties. Always good to see companies suffer for their short sightedness.
Having bought a PS5 specifically for FF16 and 7 Rebirth, I’ll be overjoyed when both come to Steam, and especially if FF7R Part 3 gets a day and date release on Steam alongside the PS5.
I’ll probably still buy a PS5 collectors edition, just to add it to my physical FF collection, but I always prefer playing games on PC.
I wonder. While everyone is screaming “OBVIOUS”. Why don’t we question reality a bit.
FF7 Reunion was a multiplatform game, EVEN CAME TO SWITCH!
Yet I doubt that game sold more than FF16.
Hard to sell a remastered PSP prequel to a 1997 masterpiece.
The big telling moment for me will be if we see Kingdom Hearts 4 on the Switch successor. That's the only way I can really see this boosting them, especially by getting back their Japanese base. Do we really think being on Xbox at launch will help? Especially with now poor stand alone game sales are there?
once again, finance bros ruins everything.
Creative business unit III, Creative studio III. Doesn't matter what the name is they have the best employees there.
I work remotely and have ever since 2020. Lugging around a hefty console just isn't an option for me overseas, so every game I play is on a laptop (no taste for mobile). I'm willing to bet making FF16 console only cut out a huge chunk of the potential player base for this reason alone. That said, I'll be buying the PC release as soon as it comes out, and it's still one of my most highly anticipated games.
I can't remember the SE subsidiary that makes them, but I do quite enjoy their 2.5HD titles like Octopath and Triangle Strategy. Hope to see more of those in the future, with less awful names.