Square-Enix: What is its future?

[SpoonyRedMage]

Nice little blog post there. I agree for more or less everything. Square Enix themselves said about the PS3 that they don't want it to be the overwhelming winner or loser(they didn't expect the Wii to shoot ahead).

They know the PS3 sells more as well, that's why they shipped such little numbers of Star Ocean. It's also the reason they're not even bothering putting FFXIII on the 360 in Japan.

The reason the Mistwalker games were 360 exclusives is obvious though, MS payed for them to get started and signed up for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey as exclusives.

I'll say it again as well, nice blog post. I think I may track you if you don't mind?

[kwicksandz]

"raising the question as to why they suddenly turned on Sony, who has brought them enormous profits for two generations"

Square go where the money is, be it nintendo, MS or sony. And they have published many games this gen on 360, wii and DS so i dont get where your going with calling their multi platform strategy lies. Unless you mean games on ps3, where you should direct your anger toward sony for making a difficult machine to program for and the many blunders they made in the early years of ps3 life cycle establishing itself as the 3rd place console.

[SpoonyRedMage]

Do you mean Lucreto's blog or my comment?

Because I'm not saying their multiplatform strategy's a lie, it's obviously not. They didn't betray Sony either, especially considering Sony still make a tidy profit off them.

All I'm saying is they're not backing the 360 in Japan as much as people think because they shipped relatively low numbers for Star Ocean, they didn't expect to sell as much as it did.

[Valdestine]

SE need to stop playing at console warz because they're well on the road to becoming the "Overwhelming loser" of this gen. They were already in a terrible foinancial situation last year and SO4 has failed beyond all expectations

[Spike47]

And right now, Sony doesn't need many JRPGS for sales, they actually just need more marketing for their top notch games.

[Lucreto]

I see no evidence of payment. If they were paid the directors would have not received a pay cut. SE want to be like EA and they need 360 to do well in Japan to do that and JRPG's are the only way really for them to do it.

[Spike47]

SE is retarded for thinking that JRPGS will seel on the xbox360 in Japan.

[pixelsword]

...SE will release PS3 games after FFXIII and Versus are completed; all of their PS3 DEV resources seem to be focused on those games. I don't think they are capable of putting out a good PS3 game with these big games on their plate.
W
hen they do, they won't be big games like FFXIII or Versus; they'll likely be rebuilds or fixes of the games released for the 360.

[Gue1]

If the bribe of MS to S-E it's true then S-E could be losing money from the games they are releasing exclusively on the 360box but they are probably gaining a lot more from MS's paychecks. ;-D

I'm not saying that this it's true but if it actually were as the sonyboys say...

[SpoonyRedMage]

...Which is exactly the reason I don't believe they were "payed off".

Why would their motivation for putting games on the 360 be financial if they're actually losing money because of it? It's nonsensical.

Of course if we're having theories with no backing I could easily say that Sony tried to act like they owned Square Enix and it's annoyed Wada and the other shareholders. Of course the chance of that being true is really, really low but there's nothing that puts the theory they were payed by MS over this. Again, I'm not saying it is the case, it's not(as far as we know) but there's the same amount of evidence: zero.

[Reibooi]

The Xbox 360 with Squares help or without will never get anywhere near the Wii or PS3 in Japan. I doubt the next Xbox will either. A single company releasing a genre of games popular in Japan will not save a console that people do not like.

We have heard countless times from Sakaguchi-san that MS does not know how to market the 360 to Japanese tastes and that's just one of the problems. The console still has horrible hardware and no one in Japan sees any need to support a new console manufacturer when they have supported Sony and Nintendo and to a lesser extent Sega back in the 90's. MS has alot to prove to the Japanese people and they are doing almost nothing right outside of buying exclusive games left and right and no I'm not talking about squares games they are buying I'm talking about Bioshock and GTA DLC and many more examples that I am sure people are aware of.