Square Enix's Western studios were a "train wreck in slow motion"

Eidos Montreal founder Stephane D'Astous reflects on the issues he believes led to the studio's sale

[RaidenBlack]

wait, he has heard rumors that Sony is interested in acquiring Square Enix’s Japan business?

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

That feels like it’d be against their larger strategy: compete with M$ for grabbing of western audiences.

[CaptainHenry916]

I think Sony has no choice because they have been successful with SE. The Sony fans should be more concerned if Microsoft acquired Square Enix tbh

[IRetrouk]

Sony already does grab the western audiences though, it would be a good buy in my opinion

[Eonjay]

Square had revealed that the the actual earnings from the studios sold was actually super low or even losses.

From Game Industry BIZ
"Marvel's Avengers is the obvious one, a tie-in game for one of the hottest brands in entertainment that was hyped for years, only to post mixed reviews and disappointing sales off an estimated $190 million budget."

Square made no money off of this game or Tomb Raider. The issues as ever is that AAA game development has become so expensive that a lot of the AAA games need to sell millions in order to turn a profit. Lest they are pumped full of Microtransactions. One obvious fix for this was to increase game prices at retail. Hence Sony going from 60 to 70. And as you see with the exception of GT7 most of their games aren't MTX heavy.

By the same token publishers like Microsoft Studios will offset the cost of Retail with MTX and subscription fees. There offerings tend to be heavier in MTX but that is the reason why. If publishers ignore that they wont be able to keep pumping out games.

So in the case of Square, they actually got more money from selling them then they were able to get via game development. Its a shame put its real.

[anast]

Games have been and still are pumped full of MTs. Ubisoft games have been a $100 for the longest time and they still have MTs to an absurd degree.

What it is is that No one really wanted a live service Marvel game. This was their fault. You would think these smart grown people would have thought about that before dumping a bunch of money in a project that was going to fail. I'm not the brightest bulb and I knew it was going to flop. It's not that things are expensive, it's that companies want to gamble on the minimum effort live service train, and most of the time they lose.

I bet if they had made a solid Marvel experience, they would still be raking in the cash. Games like GoW, BotW,TLOU, Elden Ring, Spiderman and so on have shown making a solid game makes money. They would only need to offset cost when they make stuff that no one wants to play.

[-Foxtrot]

If Sony wanted them they should have gotten Square Enix when they still had Hitman, Deus Ex, Thief, Tomb Raider etc

[SonyStyled]

Star Ocean, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts aren’t exactly small names, and Sony used to own 10% of SE until the mid-late 2000’s. I don’t think Sony would benefit off of more western studios as you’ve listed

[-Foxtrot]

@SonyStyled

"I don’t think Sony would benefit off of more western studios as you’ve listed"

You're telling me Sony wouldn't have benefited from Tomb Raider?

REALLY?

If I think of old school PS1 games, Tomb Raider would always be mentioned.

[Eonjay]

@-Foxtrot

The point is that Square sold these studios and IP because they weren't making any money off of them. They actually numbers returns were horrendous with some actually making loses and one earnings like 1% ROI.

Tomb Raider was a failure financially for them and that reboot wasn't bad. Dues Ex was pretty good too. This underscores a real problem in the industry where they will on make games that are popular enough to warrant AAA development costs

We all have certain games we want to see brought back but companies are afraid that they won't sell.

I don't have the answer to this problem. Do you have any ideas or thoughts on this?

[Profchaos]

I agree but apparently the rumour said Sony wasn't interested in those franchises as they already had rival franchises

[Mr_Writer85]

@foxtrot

Whilst I agree, with more studios, comes more running costs, and the value of the company goes up.

If Square Enix want to be bought by Sony, but Sony don't really have the money to spend huge (especially if they want to buy other studios) what would you do?

You would cut your losses with the western studios, which then makes you more attractive.

It will be purely down to business. The IPs maybe valuable, but the staff and costs of developing those IPs probably wouldn't be worth it.

[SurgicalMenace]

Nope, Jim Ryan has made Sony the most profitable that they've been in years so it was a very smart move to have Square to sell of their western sectors before a purchase. Great business move no matter how the gamers feel about it; it's profit over preference, as it should be.

[SurgicalMenace]

That's exactly what SonyStyle is saying and it's a sound assessment given that Sony already has a more successful formula in Uncharted to have need of a Tomb Raider.

No one's thinking of PS1 anymore, clearly, so Sony is focused on the progression of their future goals.

[shinoff2183]

I think your right foxtrot. I still think itd be worth it but id still be cool with what square has. They have a ton of unused ip s.

[Jin_Sakai]

What games do Square Enix Japan make that Sony is apparently interested in acquiring?

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

^^this

[Gameseeker_Frampt]

Since Sony paid for Final Fantasy 7 remake timed exclusivity, I'm going to go with the crazy idea that Sony is interested in Final Fantasy.

[nommers]

FF, DQ, Nier, KH, all the smaller games they have, Life is Strange, and probably remakes of other series that have in the works like Tactics Ogre.

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

Yeah I think Avengers was an indicator that SE sucks right now. I’d rather see Sony find another dev to finish Kotor this gen than make a bunch of jrpgs exclusive.

[neutralgamer1992]

Raiden

It's only matter of time before Sony announces major acquisitions

What can 10+ billion buy you because that was their budget last year. And this year more money went into that pool. From what I understand Sony are waiting to announce major acquisitions at the right time that's why we have seen them announce buying smaller teams

This is my personal guess while doing research, looking at rumors and possible leaks:

Square enix is done. Will be announced this year

They are in talks with Capcom and Konami will sign multi year contracts with PlayStation and Xbox for different IP's(they may sell some IP's but very unlikely)

There are 2 things I can't figure out that puzzle me even after all the research

1. What's going on with Sega

2. And UBI needing a merger/acquisition soon because they are struggling really badly financially

[MadLad]

That's never going to happen.

[neutralgamer1992]

Mad

What will never happen?

[glennhkboy]

Sony was once the biggest minority share holder of SE. If Sony wanted to buy SE, it should have done this long time ago.

[Mr_Writer85]

@Glennhkboy

I believe (you may have to Google this) that the share holder thing was a gentlemans sort of agreement at the time.

It was after the FF movie bombed and Square asked Sony to invest to help save them. On the condition they didn't try and takeover, and Sony stuck to it.

This might be why now, SE are trimming the fat so to speak, and selling to Sony.

[franwex]

Basically they placed a very heavy bet on that Avengers game and failed and it sunk the studio.
Hopefully we will get a future Deus Ex game, but most likely we won't. So it goes.

[Germaximus]

They shouldn't have treated Avengers like it's a mobile game. lol The campaign is excellent but as a game it's a mess similar to Destiny.

[Eonjay]

Another problem is that Avengers cost 190million to make meaning that there is like no room for failure in today's AAA development

[VenomCarnage89]

They shouldn't have put so much money into a game that's clearly half a step above an on-rails kindergarten adventure that should cost $10 brand new. If I were on the team that was forced to make that game, I'd have felt like killing myself anytime a higher up expressed any satisfaction with the project whatsoever

[CrimsonWing69]

"Maybe at the time [the deal was signed] the superhero thing was a big thing. It still is, but there is some fatigue with superheroes. And especially in games -- very few manage to be successful with superheroes. There's always Batman [from] the guys at Rocksteady. There was Spider-Man. But out of the people that have done it, the success rate of superhero games is not good."

Right, let's blame Avenger's failure on superhero fatigue and not the fact that it was an anemic, shallow, repetitive GaaS game.

[shinoff2183]

Theres plenty of superhero games that sell well. I think avengers failed due to it being a gaas game. Some of us dont wont it. I didnt play it for free when i had or maybe still have the chance.

[CrimsonWing69]

I’ll be a buck fitty with ya, I totally agree.

When I first played Avengers it felt like a totally different game in the beginning portion. Very cinematic with unique environments and scenarios. It feels like at one point they wanted it to be a traditional game, but then the publisher asked them to make it into a GaaS game. Because once you hit the desert area and you’re doing the same objectives in the exact same environments over and over and then seeing the same bosses in different environments… it just feels half-assed.

We, as consumers, can spot these kind of things. Had this game been like Guardians of the Galaxy with that passion and a love letter to Marvel fans I guarantee you this game could’ve been a hit. It starts off fantastic, I’ll give it that.

But yea, I have yet to find a GaaS game I enjoy. I get it, Fortnite is the bomb digging, but I’m more of an old-fashioned kind of gamer.

[-Foxtrot]

Superhero fatigue?

Is he serious? The game sucks man, lets just call it how it is.

Guardians was a failure in Square Enix eyes because people were totally off put thanks to the Avengers, there was still some who believed it was going to be another Avengers even near to launch.

[MadLad]

Exactly.

Avengers soured people's expectations of what Guardians actually ended up being.

Don't take a dev who excels at immersive sims and then force them to make a GaaS title.

[VenomCarnage89]

Can't lie at all after looking at the on rails experience for 5 year olds that avengers was from the moment they revealed it, I had difficulty imagining square being competent enough to do better with guardians. I knew they weren't smart enough to know why avengers failed, so I figured how could they be smart enough to make guardians any different

[shinoff2183]

I havent played it yet but ive heard nothing but good things about gotg

[MrChow666]

I tend to prefer japanese games

[Gardenia]

Square-Enix should go back to being Squaresoft, back when they had vision and creativity.

[TheColbertinator]

Those days are becoming distant memories now.

[MrChow666]

that's right, they should stick to what they do best and not try to westernize the company.

[BrainSyphoned]

When they released the first trailer they should have canceled the game. Kinda like Gollum.

[anast]

Excitement died when they live serviced the game.

[Tzuno]

SE is a wreck train in motion trying to westernize the core of their games

[MadLad]

Won't be surprised when they thrive not being under Square's management.

[Kaze88]

pfff they were doing fine, their expectation of selling 7 millions of every game were absurd.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

This was definetly a big factor for the failure of Guardians of the Galaxy and TWEWY Neo, both games sold okay, but Square-Enix wasn't happy (to be fair, they didn't really spend any money on marketing TWEWY though).

[MadLad]

Square was never happy with anything that ever happened with any of their western companies.

[Pyrofire95]

Wow. I think this a a very important article.
Not only is it a massive expose on how disappointed this key developer felt and the studios as a whole but also a confirmation, with high levels of authority, that Square Enix is terrible at managing their studios.
They are wildly out of touch with the west especially but their local studio have their share of management issues.
I really love some of the stuff they put out but the games are obviously heavily being held back.
That's why I have a good amount of faith in FFXVI funny enough.
Naoki Yoshida revived FFXIV and is a board member. He has much more pull in the company and I think that will show greatly with FFXVI which he's producing and very involved in.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

Square-Enix just seems to have terrible management overall, blown out time frames, blown out budgets, sky high expectations, questions game mechanic decisions... They don't even seem to know what to do with FF games anymore, hence all the sequels and side games, plus I feel like this is why we ended up with another FF7 compilation.

[Profchaos]

Remember sh** runs downhill

[Terry_B]

a train wreck in slow motion sounds like a good definition for the development circles of Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III actually.