Check out the latest episode of the Black Oni podcast! In this episode, we talk about cultural differences, and how those change the way games are made.
After its latest games didn't meet sales targets, Square Enix is going multiplatform but the company's track record isn't convincing.
Square Enix been multiplatform for decades, a few exclusively-deals doesn't make them any less multiplatform.
Nor is selling their games on a console with only 25 million install base going to bring their sales to where they hope they will be... Unless they somehow manage to dumb down FF7 trilogy to work on switch, they aren't going to have much luck. They already released it on PC, after all.
It kind of does, giving preference to a certain platform by timed exclusivity. Console ports generally feel superior. Legend of mana PC port extremely broken
Sega
It doesn’t when square themselves didn’t want to fund the development of remake. It’s only after the success of the 1st they realized their mistake but now contract is signed. If it wasn’t for Sony there would be no FF7 remakes. Same goes for silent hill 2 with Konami. They don’t want to fund AAA budget. Companies like PlayStation and Nintendo get blamed when in reality they are saving some of these franchises
Remember sega didn’t want to fund bayonetta and epic games didn’t want to fund another gears of war. It’s easy to blame console makers but they are the ones taking the risk and paying huge upfront costs without seeing the final product. FF7 remake trilogy won’t be coming to Xbox now or in the future. PlayStation and PC is what square signed up for. Sony paid them more than they would make from Xbox sales.
I just wonder when everyone is going to demand that the Square Enix exclusives with Nintendo come to PS and Xbox. Or it's just the PS exclusives that matter lol
I'd love for the nintendo exclusives to come to pc or ps5. They'd actually be playable then.
Raven
Exactly and that’s where square enix does more exclusive than any other platform. Gaming is square has always been very unrealistic with their sales expectations. Remember when tomb raider reboot sold 7.5 million and square said it wasn’t enough. They need to spend less on development and have more realistic expectations from sales.
And those thinking games being not on Xbox makes a difference don’t understand we have a decade plus of data showing square enix games having less than 20% of their multiplatform sales on Xbox (final fantasy series) and Nintendo consoles aren’t strong enough to run any current games. Nintendo switch should be as strong as Xbox one x atleast but we all know that’s most likely won’t happen
@raven
thing is, as neutral said in their comm, the switch isn't strong enough to run flagship SE games
i think what SE does is, it makes unique games for switch only so that it has something for that console too. Thats where all the "underlined sans" rpgs go to mostly
maybe things will change when Swtich 2 drops cuz that's gonna be as strong as ps4 afaik from the rumors flying around
@Scissorman
Your point is valid enough but when the icon of this company is limited to one console in timed-exclusivity, it means the company has crossed the line. By some degree at least
All things aside, Square itself stated "aggressive multiplatform strategies" so we all know what it's talking about
Then the headline should read "Square To Drop Exclusively Deals in Pursuit of A Sweeping Multiplatform Strategy". I don't recall this argument when Square Enix released Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, and Triangle Strategy on one platform. And even if FF is the icon, not all of its titles have gone to one platform. We're talking about three games, one of which is already on PC. Did Square suddenly go 'multiplatform' after it released subsequent Tomb Raider sequels on more than just the Xbox? It's just a silly way of putting it.
SE needs to go all in optimization. Broken PC ports won't help its case, especially with big releases like mainline Final Fantasy
It's actually simple. What doesn't inspire confidence is Square allocating their budgets on the wrong projects such as Forspoken, Avengers, Babylons Fall and Foamstars.
Square has always been multiplatform since PS3/360 days which 80 % of their games are. People kick up a fuss over PS exclusivity but not Nintendo which has more exclusive projects console exclusive from Square.
FF16 has done ok but not enough to fix the blunders that the past mistakes Square has made with some of their projects. FF7 Rebirth is unclear we'll see a PC release for sure so it's hard to say so far not as good as they would of liked.
Then again unrealistic expectations. If it weren't for Sony these games would at least had another 2 years development time. So some people need to be realistic in that regard.
It's the blunders that set those expectations so high. If you remove those from the equation, I bet the sales numbers would be more than stellar. Square believes it's okay to release a pile of risky, middling, garbage because the big boys will ultimately subsidize the cost. Don't worry if Forspoken sells poorly, FF16 will surely sell 10 million copies to balance that right out. Oh wait, it only sold like 4 million. Well that's a disaster. Meanwhile games that sell 2 million units with comparable budgets are deemed successful.
I would also add that FFXVI, which I loved has a hint to one of their biggest problems: the number 16.
It's a great franchise, but that's all they've become known for. Dragon Quest is my favorite all time series but it's like they don't know what to do outside of those two IPs.
Valve never makes trilogies. The idea is that they don't want to become stagnant. Gabe Newell hates the number 3.
I can't imagine their talent wouldn't want to try a new RPG.
Square Enix just really need to revise its expectations. Maybe consider a change in strategy on dev end as well. Multiplat will help for sure but only good games that are marketed well will sell
its definitely not the exclusives deals they made, that put them in this situation.
this was an issue even before ff16 and 7remake.
Ubisoft says they are focusing on two "core verticals," and that's to return as a leader in the open world genre, and live service games.
Calling Ubisoft a leader in open world gaming at any point in time would be like calling Dollar General a leader in retail.
Well, to be fair, they did pump out good open world games before. It was used as a template so much that people now know what it means when you say it's like an Ubi open world collectahon.
What though? I can't think of one game they had where I liked anything about it. Atleast since the ps3/360 Gen
If they have never been the leader in open world gaming, then explain me this: why does almost every open world game follow the same tired old Ubisoft open world formula?
Follow the Leader.
I don't think they were ever the leader tbh. I've never really cared for any of their open world games. I do wanna try watch dogs 2 because it looks like it's set in San Fran. Looked interesting
Wanting to expand on the whole subscription model and not owning games is fascinating, not.
"The point is not to force users to go down one route or another," he explains. "We offer purchase, we offer subscription, and it's the gamer's preference that is important here. We are seeing some people who buy choosing to subscribe now, but it all works."
£60 (Base Game/Pre-order Bonus) £95 (Base Game/Pre-order Bonus/Seasons Pass/3 Day Early Access)
£115 (Base Game/Pre-order Bonus/Seasons Pass/3 Day Early Access/Ultimate Pack)
But for the Impressive lowballing cost of £15 monthly you get the entire £115 package, which is pretty fascinating, not.
Every company out In the freaking cosmos want recurring revenue, I very much doubt this game will be scoring 8+ on the tally sheet.
One can argue that R6 Siege, For Honor, etc. are proof that their business model work, no?
Yes but can one can argue those at least have quality if you say oh this has quality yes and no. Single player having always online doesn't need always online to have quality. It's a single player game.
It would be a cold day in hell that Ubisoft would risk launching a Watch Dogs 4 on the same day as GTA 6, or any other Rockstar game, this is all a bunch of PR speak they (probably) don't actually believe, like "AAAA".
Rockstar are boring as shit now too. Stop giving them a pass. I don’t know why people still wear rose-coloured glasses when talking about them. RDR2 is the only new game they’ve put out in the past decade because they live off microtransactions from GTA & Read Dead Online. They’re nowhere near as interesting or relevant as a developer and publisher as they were in the PS2 and PS360 eras as far as I’m concerned.
I'd agree, quality wise, and PS2 era was peak R* but without checking the. actual statistics, I'm comfortable believing R* are leaders in open world games in regards to sales, which is the only thing that truly matters to these companies.
@Skuletor Yes, I’m sure GTA6 will sell better than anything Ubisoft puts out. You’ll get no argument from me on that one.
And we’re in full agreement that the PS2 era was peak Rockstar. I loved what they did with Max Payne 3 as well, but that was the end of Rockstar as we knew them up until that point. I hope Dan Houser’s new studio can recapture some of that magic. He was the head writer after all.
Oh god no, we kinda started seeing tiny bit less Ubisoft copy paste games recently, don't want to go back to their time, one less Ubisoft like game is a improvement
They haven’t had any bangers since the ps3 generation imo. Some 8/10s maybe. Ghost recon wildlands was ok. But it was the 2010s where I thought Ubisoft was actually one of the greats. That reputation has dwindled lol
"Return to Leadership" on the same idea with Live Service Games and Open World Games... Yeah sure champ, go ahead.
The first games they made where great, but now everyone have to complete a "to do list" that make them mediocre and formulaic at best. Good luck old man.
Proof that Ubi-junk doesn't want to go back to their old ways. Open world games are dime a dozen and played out, whatever happened to the well crafted linear or chapter-based masterpieces like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory?
That era of Ubi-junk is long gone now, open world games are all they want to make because they can be monetized easier. Experience points, skill trees, resource hunting, treasure boxes, equipment upgrades, copy paste side quests. All these boring functions lend themselves well to open world games and micro-trash-actions, and less so for linear, or chapter-based games. This is why everything from Ubi-junk these days have to be open world. Not to make games better or more exciting, but in order to profit more off of them. They are rotten to their very core, they don't care about what gamers want, only how much money they can make off the fools that buy their trash.
Thing is they have some great ideas and settings but always manage to make really stupid decisions.
Yep, I miss the times when they were producing games like Skyrim, GTA, RDR, Witcher ... Good days.
Again companies focus on the same old AAA formula of yearly releases because despite the usual complaints of not again the same trash, a boring open world made with reused assets does sell, just like Call of duty sells, EA sports games sell, etc.
If games like Mario+Rabbids or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown were selling then we would have a different story but they failed despite great reviews.
They still make enjoyable games but that's just bout what they aim for they never really drop some shhi that'll have us in some sort of shock, great graphics, smooth animations/gameplay, quality story like when we saw Ghost Of Tsushima for the first time
People will complain about the LS factor and yet people will buy it regardless, if people weren't buying those types of games than they would stop making them becasue they never sell, unfortunately the consumer trend doesn't match the vocal disdain.
They are making live service game out of single player adventure while costing $140?
Good luck, will avoid anything you do Ubisoft.
In a town hall that took place on Monday, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu reportedly confirmed imminent layoffs in the U.S. and Europe.
@Outside_ofthe_Box,
So that Microsoft can close down the studio after doing nothing with them? Right...
Sad but true. It's the consequence of a shift in player habits, massive overhead, and out of control budgets across the industry.
What did NA and EU did anyways? Just translate or something? I would say it might help them get back to there roots but DK.
Actually, you are correct they play a hand in localization especially in Europe with the many languages. That and marketing.
They should of never of made those exclusive deals with Sony. If SE made FFXVI/FFVIIRemake/Rebirth available on PS/PC/Xbox/Switch Day 1 they would of sold 20/30 million copies of each game and would mostly likely would not of lead to layoffs.
Exclusive games to any platform is not only anti gamer but they are toxic to the gaming industry. All games made by Sony and other companies should be made multi platform.
20-30 million. Right. SE must be sleeping on Japanese CoD right here.
Battle
lol are you serious? Let’s see
First game is on PC and so will the rest
Switch can’t run FF remakes
Xbox again I ask are you serious? Xbox game sales accounts for such little piece of the pie in overall gaming that there are publishers doubting if they could recover their development and porting costs for Xbox versions
The real issue here is square enix just can’t stop releasing 1-2 really bad AAA games on year basis
Babylon's Fall
Left alive
Marvel avengers
For spoken
Lol I love how the "Publishers can sell tons of copies of JRPGs on Xbox" myth won't die. The failure of exclusive JRPGs on 360 (by far the most popular Xbox) couldn't kill it. The low Xbox sales of FF games that launched on Xbox and PlayStation at the same time couldn't kill it. The fact that Gamepass has the few players on Xbox who actually play JRPGs conditioned to expect them for free can't kill it.
Publishers aren't selling millions of anything on Xbox the fanbase has adopted the I'll wait for gamepass mentality so publishers are actually starting to skip the platform unless it's a garunteed hit like GTA
Are you insane? Final Fantasy has historically not really sold close to those numbers, those are God of War and Spider-Man numbers dude. Final Fantasy 15 sold 5 million at launch, on both PS4 and Xbox One and had the benefit of releasing three years into the console lifecycle with no cross gen releases slowing the adoption rates. It sold a lifetime of ten million copies. Yet, 80% of sales were on PS4 and only 20% on Xbox One.
Are you going to seriously sit there and tell us the Game Pass crowd are going to double the sales of these games?
Put your mind onto the real problems. It isn't exclusivity. It's out of control budgets, over estimated and unrealistic sales expectations, bloated game development and poor management.
The budgets for Final Fantasy 16 and Remake and Rebirth far exceed Final Fantasy 15, exponentially so, yet did the audience grow exponentially? No.
Don't make this about something it's not, and don't fall for the crap from publishers that triple A games are unsustainable. The next stop on the station is games need to be more expensive and we need more monetisation methods like adverts in games. The problem is with publishers, not us.
It's like everyone just wants to hate on it. Fact of the matter is the install base for ps5 just isn't that big compared to ps4. Right now. I've read double packs weren't counted(remake, rebirth pack) I'm not sure if it's true, and then some are just waiting for the whole trilogy to be done. I know someone doing that.
"If SE made FFXVI/FFVIIRemake/Rebirth available on PS/PC/Xbox/Switch Day 1 they would of sold 20/30 million copies of each game"
Lmao.
I like how a lot of people are blaming the Sony exclusive deals. Yet in the last 4 years they have released about 50 games. 70% of them being multiplatform, 20% being Nintendo Exclusives and about 10% PlayStation Exclusives yet lets all blame the Sony deals lol.
Exactly. Where my dragon quest spinoff that only Nintendo do keeps getting. Stop crying about Sony. Hey Xbox players. Remember last remnant, squares exclusive Xbox 360 game Ms paid for, you guys were sht at supporting that. Same with lost odyssey, blue dragon, and infinite undiscovery. That's why Japanese devs don't wanna develop for it.
You mean pc
Wouldn't have sold sht on Xbox, and the switch couldn't hang
Xbox accounted for 9 percent of ff15 sales. Lol. Xbox ain't doing sht
To put it into perspective, take a studio like Black Box who went through a spell of churning out half decent Need for Speed games annually.
Need for Speed: Underground - 15 million+
Need for Speed: Underground 2 - 11 million+
Need for Speed: Most Wanted - 17.8 million
Need for Speed: Carbon - 15.6 million
Need for Speed: ProStreet - 10.9 million
Need for Speed: Undercover - 8.9 million
This was the norm for the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era.
A Need for Speed game now requires more employees, considerably more time than one year to develop and absolutely a whole load more capital to fund development, let alone the extra costs of developing Frostbite and adapting it to a racing game (if that's still a thing). And at the end of it, it will likely never sell anywhere near even the worst game in that list above.
In that same era, Rockstar Games (albeit, various Rockstar studios) released GTA3, GTA VC, GTA SA, State of Emergency, Manhunt, The Warriors, Red Dead Revolver, three Midnight Club games and Bully. We're lucky if we even see a single game from them this generation.
In summary, committing to making a big AAA game now is barely worth it. Unless you are lucky enough to be sat on a mega IP like CoD or GTA, it's a huge gamble. Games simply take too long, require too many employees and cost too much. Unless AI or Unreal Engine can fix this and QUICK, the industry is going to be reduced to mobile-like experiences.
That era is one of my favourites but let's face it games were different back then at the time underground felt like a revolution so did the GTA trilogy and even shooters like halo changed the way we play.
I honestly believe that generation laid the template for how most of our modern games worked but development times were like 12 months for a decent project the budgets were far lower and publishers could freely experiment.
Since that generation we are playing mostly the same ips and most have anywhere between 5 to 10 sequaks since that point so many of these IPS are classics but are getting stale who even cared the nfs heat came out. Halo 2 was a mega event and a global phenomenon but haloe infinite got a decent amount of buzz but was gone off the radar in a month.
The gaming industry needs to learn just like Hollywood. You cannot sustain "more, more, more" indefinitely if your sales are not increasing in line with your costs. But no, every sequel needs to be three times the size of its predecessor, have twice as many staff, have monetisation systems and 100 hours of padded content and six year development cycles. But are these sequels ever twice as good?
Godzilla Minus One, on a poultry budget of $15 million, blew anything Disney has done out of the water since 2021 in terms of visual effects and created the best monster movie I've seen in my life.
Asobo made A Plague Tale Requiem for $25 million and its visuals, writing and quality rival games with ten times its budget.
Am I against big production values? No, God of War, The Last of Us, and so on justify their budgets and sell ridiculously well. But I am against unrealistic excess. If a game sells two million copies, tripling its budget isn't going to get you six million copies.
Square Enix is facing the reality that Final Fantasy sales are in decline and have been since FF15, yet they seem to be ramping up their development costs exponentially. It's hard to find facts but word seems to be FF15 had a budget of $50 to $100 million and FF16 had a budget of like $250 million plus. Same goes for FF7 remakes.
Yet other factors affected their market potential, like years of cross-gen releases slowing the PS5 adoption rate.
These lay offs will keep happening until publishers make their costs sustainable and stop trying to make it seem like triple A development is impossible or that we need more monetisation and higher priced games to account for their hubris.
Talk about a sound explanation instead of it didn't sell well because it releases at the same time as X game or it's because it's only digital.
I've been saying this for a long time, game budgets have ballooned out of control. We don't need better graphics, we need FUN GAMES that feel complete and satisfying to play. But publishers have a one-track mind, they've all been convinced that better graphics and bigger and more detailed worlds are required or people will pass on their games. This logic obviously doesn't apply to Nintendo which sells games in excess of 15 million copies, with out-dated visuals.
Publishers need to lower the budgets, and stop killing themselves off, its pure insanity.
I actually don't think it's because they're pushing graphics, I mean, these massive budget titles are not actually that much greater visually or technically than smaller games these days. The talent of the graphics artists matters an enormous amount. Take the movie scene with Disney, their budgets are twenty times that of smaller films like Godzilla Minus One or Monkey Man, and more than double larger productions like 1917, yet they're outclassed by these lesser movies.
The reasons for the development costs ballooning in my opinion, is far too many staff working on projects leading to inefficient production (i.e like what we heard about Starfield), forced monetisation systems which eat up development time and resources and push for engagement in the hope of an uptake with in-game purchases, bloated game design and world building which increases time required to playtest and code all the filler content, prolonged development periods and repeated delays where the quality doesn't come close to the time spent (see Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League), mismanagement, excessive spend on advertising beyond what the title is reasonably expected to sell, lack of focus in game development.
Dead Space remains the best example I can ever use. The original sold a million copies and was a breakout success. Dead Space sold two million copies but EA was disappointed in its performance. They then lost their minds and ramped up again for Dead Space 3, with an unrealistic sales target of like 5 million to breakeven. Of course, it crashed and burned, because they forgot their original audience was between one and two million. Exponentially increased their budget, unrealistically increased their sales expectations, kept adding more and more costs and unnecessary excess until it became completely unsustainable.
No way FFXV had a budget to 80 to 100 million...that was probably it's marketing budget. FFXV has 3 versions. Versus 13, Nomura directed XV and after taking nomura off the project the rushed and downdraded final version of XV.
Those numbers come from a random message board.
https://www.ffxivpro.com/fo...
Here's a message board speculating it had a budget of 600 million based on financial statements if this is the kind of accuracy were going for.
https://www.ffxivpro.com/fo...
It's the implosion I keep talking about. Expectations and reality in the industry are no longer aligned. This will continue until some sort of market equilibrium is reached.
Agreed, this cannot continue and something has got to give. I miss the old days where development costs and time were managable and SquareSoft released hit after hit. Vagrant Story, Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7 to 9 released ONE year apart and all of them were critically acclaimed.
The facts are the time and money needed to make games has gone through the roof and we as gamers just aren't buying enough. These games are costing 100 of millions to make and even games rated highly are doing good to get 3 or 4 million in sales. Something has to give.
Raising prices has failed. Seeing games go from $89 CAD to $94 in some cases. I’m just not buying those games.
We all can see the days of square enix being 3rd party are coming to an end which is really sad because they have so many valuable IP’s only if they manage them properly.
Like I said before, it's not just Microsoft laying people off. It's happening throughout the industry.
Ms has come under fire because they have recently dropped so much money on studios and publishers. That's people's issue. That and the highest rated game they've released in years seeing its studio closed. That's why there's a difference.
Are we sure, and I mean super sure, fanboyism aside and the like that maybe Final Fantasy XVI and especially VII Rebirths sales weren’t at least a tad disappointing for them?
We keep fighting about it but if freaking VII, Square Enix’s Golden boy and it’s hype of us begging for a remake for almost 15-20 years didn’t set the world on fire like Square Enix wanted then what else can they give us product wise at this point high expectations and all.
I’m not saying it would have stopped this and everything would have fixed its self if they launched on more platforms since the industry seems like it’s imploding within itself at the minute but it could have given them a little leg room.
Maybe it’s time to admit, regarding your feelings on the games, and this has NO impact on the quality of the games, that XVI could have felt more FF like being more that a simplistic hack and slash game and VII’s remake should have just been a single, less ambitious game just telling the original story over reimagining it?
Even Kingdom Hearts III felt shallow, look at how convoluted it’s become and they are still doing that with all the Missing Link / Union X shit before Kingdom Hearts IV even comes out.
What’s new? The whole industry is in an upheaval and this isn’t the end of it. I really think the pandemic poisoned the industry as a whole. Big profits, everyone playing games during the pandemic. Now it’s back to normal and they’re trying to regain those pandemic numbers numbers. Our hobby hijacked by a bunch suits.
Fking word. It's fk up how they just raised the middle finger to ps4 players. I'm still peeved about this
This is not limited to any one company, the industry is in a major change, for better or worse. Game budget and time for development have skyrocketed, and the industry is trying to find it's balance again, it will level out, it's just a matter of when.
Restructuring come with layoff 90% of the time.
OK it's time we get parasite eve 1 & 2 remake , Vagrant story remake OR Sequel for them