Square Enix Plans To Move Away From Fully Owning Studios Because Of Rising Development Costs

New games cost more money to make, and Square Enix wants to lower the risks of its investments.

[Abracadabra]

... and yet Square Enix continue making exclusive games for certain platforms, instead of releasing their games on all platforms to make more money.
The higher-ups at Square Enix deserve a medal for being so smart.

[Sonyslave3]

I know right this shit make no sense .

[SurgicalMenace]

Makes a lot of sense when the platform you're developing for doesn't have a community willing spend like the other ones do. They're unwilling because they're not getting a return on their investments. No one should give what takes time, money, and effort away for free. If you want to see it on your preferred platform show that services like GP aren't needed to thrive by paying full retail like Nintendo and Sony supporters do. Simple....

[Elda]

Preach!

[darthv72]

So who is giving stuff for free? Certainly not MS. Every gamepass member is paying something. And MS pays for every game in the service. Even ones they own.

[SurgicalMenace]

Only children expect to receive for pennies or are cool with someone else paying their way. Simple; what pays developers more, GP or full retail? MS has to foot the bill because you're not adult enough to pay your own way. You get what you pay for, why even get upset if you didn't pay for the results you're hoping for? What makes it worse is that it's grown-ups advocating and celebrating being supported when they have every opportunity to work for what they want.

[gangsta_red]

Don't know how GP is the problem considering that Sqaure has mentioned that most of their games have failed to hit their targets sales in retail, this includes all platforms.

Just recently Guardians of the Galaxy failed in retail. And they ended up putting their game on GP later on. Obviously a deal was made that benefited Sqaure and had to have recouped some losses from GoG in retail.

They also at one time put multiple FFs on GP, now unless you have documentation showing that Sqaure put those games on GP for free, then it was obvious another lucrative deal was made that benefited them as well as MS.

FF may not have sold as much on Xbox as it did PS but it sold enough to where Square was releasing their FF games on Xbox, it wasn't until recently that Sony started to money hat FF games just to keep it off Xbox, and by recent info, Sony is probably paying Square extra to not only keep games off of Xbox but off of GP as well.

"Simple; what pays developers more, GP or full retail?"

Super strawman. Can you guarantee a game will sell and become a hit being full retail? Because we have seen many devs shut their doors or get bought by bigger publishers and even Sqaure here is telling you it's not that simple.

Here's another simple question, what pays developers more, taking a gamble in retail against established IPs or a guaranteed money deal that covers development costs in exchange for being on a service for a set amount of time?

[crazyCoconuts]

I doubt anything related to making a AAA game is simple, including cost and sales predictions. Whether the fee you charge for exclusivity/subscription service adequately offsets the consequential loss in sales depends on a lot of unknowns that need to be modeled. Not simple.

[OneLove]

If it helps you sleep at night to believe that. Even if that were the case, they would've did it to themselves considering they were mainly exclusive to Playstation in the beginning.

[Bobertt]

Devs get paid when they make games exclusive too so depending on how much they get paid and expect to sell on other consoles it might be better than spending more money to make a game multi platform. Most of their games are geared to Japanese audiences anyway where PS5 is way ahead of Xbox. As of June it was reported PS5 had sold 1.69 million units to 232k units for the Xbox in Japan.

[phoenixwing]

There's also the point of time wasted. The time to localize it to Xbox may equal a whole other game or part of one time wise that could have gone to consoles that make bigger returns. I'm sure there's an accounting team over there that made that call awhile ago.

[crazyCoconuts]

I suspect if a cross platform engine was used like unreal, the platform specific part of the work is a tiny fraction of the overall effort.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

Why would companies like SE invest in a platform that doesn't buy the genre of games they make?

You can get their stuff on PC, PS4/5, and Switch. Simple as that.

[Magic_Spatula]

Don't forget their heavy investments into NFTs.

[Knightofelemia]

I have a feeling Square is doing all this just to get bought out by a bigger company.

[porkChop]

Oh jesus, here we go again. Explain to me how that makes any sense.

They're diluting the ownership of their studios between a bunch of investment companies and other publishers. That makes it *less* likely that anyone would buy them out. They'd have to somehow buy out the portions owned by 3rd parties, but those 3rd parties wouldn't want to sell. This makes a buyout far more expensive and far more difficult to pull off. It isn't happening.

[Mobis-New-Nest]

Hurry up and get bought out by Microsoft already, I want all your games on GamePass sooner rather than later SquareSoft.

[blue88]

You mean Sony 😂.

[SurgicalMenace]

Exactly. Another GP dependent wishful thinking again. Waiting on all your games to hit GP is likened to waiting for welfare to make you rich.

[LordoftheCritics]

If MS buys out everything, get ready for drip feed level of content.

[SurgicalMenace]

MS isn't able to purchase Square, Capcom, or otherwise since the government regulates foreign acquisitions to less than 10% without investigation.

[tay8701]

keep dreaming, never going to happen

[porkChop]

They aren't getting bought out by anyone.

[crazyCoconuts]

So you envision a world where MS keeps forking over billions to eat up all the publishers while continuing to take all of these assets and putting them on GamePass without charging the customer more money? History and economics have both shown that one company acting as a monopoly will NOT be good for customers. Doesn't matter if it's MS, Sony, Amazon, etc

[TheColbertinator]

Square Enix is lost in the abyss

[autobotdan]

Square Enix should purchase 343 studios