From Eurogamer: "When Keiichiro Toyama, Kazunobu Sato, and Junya Okura announced Bokeh Game Studio last year, heads turned immediately in their direction. Here were three veterans of PlayStation Japan, responsible for developing Silent Hill, Siren, The Last Guardian, and Gravity Rush, to name but a few projects spearheaded by the trio, striding out on their own as newfound independent creators.
Bokeh Game Studio is preceded by its reputation. You don't get the creative director of Silent Hill, producer of The Last Guardian, and game director of Siren founding a new studio without questions and speculation immediately swirling. One obvious question lay outside the studio itself: why had all three experienced developers decided in unison to depart Sony Japan?"
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth publisher Square Enix has declared a $140m loss based on a shakeup of its internal development pipeline.
What are they doing over there? Sounds like they canceled something big. I read a rumor a while back about ff9 remake . Here "Final Fantasy IX has gone through a very challenging development, the game is still in progress but may undergo changes drastic enough that we won't hear about it for a couple of years."
This could be one of the reasons if the rumor is true. That was Silknight i don't know how credible he is but it's something and it would make sense.
I hope IX is still on the cards
Just a straight up remake which they expand a little bit nothing over ambitious
If IX dosent happen then VI and VIII will never be thought of.
What are they doing? Sales are falling and the costs are out of control. Big releases need to be absolute sales home runs now, and Final Fantasy sales have stagnated.
Now we know why Square didn’t fall over themselves to remake the original FF7 all these years ago. It certainly wasn’t a license to print money, at least not with what the expectations were. Each of these full on remakes drains an enormous amount of company resources for a razor thin profit margin.
I'm waiting for them to release the complete edition bundle, but it's definitely on my list.
Not rocket science. Compare sales numbers, development cycles, and budgets to the previous gens. We are all collectively burning up the industry from the inside out. Expectations are ludicrously high now for every release and sales are dropping for even the most prestigious of series.
We used to be satisfied paying $50-60 for a game that took 1/100th the budget and staff to make. Now gamers feel cheated if they have to pay the same for a game that took 100x the budget. We may be reaching the end of the line for this model of gaming.
Speaking to Square:
Turns out their mismanagement wasn't related to the western studios they dumped to Embracer, but their own fault.
With regards to Xbox - a good way to kill your brand is to pull support on high quality titles and only dump B and C-tier titles to it
With regards to PC - Epic Games Story exclusivity for any duration and piss-poor optimization will hurt you.
With regards to FF Pixel Remasters - y'all messed up by barely releasing them on physical, like wtf that was free money!
And lastly, you don't help a franchise by releasing a mainline title that undermines every title that came before it. FFXVI was a DMC-like with bottom-of-the-barrel side quests and I can't imagine that helping Rebirth at all considering its marketing is directly tied to how big that game is.
The industry implosion is continuing. Sky high budgets, prolonged development windows, stagnant sales numbers, and falling currency values (inflation) are wreaking havoc on the legacy industry. AAA games will slowly become the rarity.
Oh I’m with you. What’s worse is they can say, “Well we tried to make this amazing game and spend all this money on, but not enough people showed an interest. So no more of these since we can’t take a hit like that.”
The industry is going to take a dramatic shift. Mark my words on this.
I think there is quite a large portion of individuals like myself who held out on buying it on PS5 because I can get it on PC eventually. To be able to mod the game and also have custom graphical settings to my liking
Danish from eXputer: "The Witcher's upcoming sequel needs to overhaul the series' combat system if it wants to make a big splash among gamers."
after what we see ( 2015 - 2024 ) in dark souls 3, blood borne , sekiro , dragon's dogma 2 , rise of the Ronin combat they should really careful and bring very good combat in Witcher 4 this time
Saad from eXputer: "After suffering from massive financial hits, Square Enix & Bandai Namco appear to be turning over a new leaf but I'm still unconvinced."
I was talking about games with some Japanese guys here in Japan, and it seems like around here Bandai Namco has a fame of making low-quality games, with the occasional gem.
About Square Enix, I believe they lack the capacity to improve. They should learn with Capcom (although even Capcom still makes some bad mistakes), but I don't think they ever will. They keep chasing whatever is new at the time (blockchain, AI...) to say "we innovate", without considering the public perception and if these things actually improve the games or not. Them releasing too many small games with no advertising also shows a lack of trust in its own products. Even with their biggest games, like turning FF into an action game with XVI and the very divisive plot changes regarding whispers and timelines in VII Remake, shows them trying to attract a new generation of gamers without understanding what made the series so big in the first place.
I want a true ff7 remake. With thatcsaid I'm way happier with 7 remake then I was with ff16. I'd still prefer turn based but square keep chasing these Lil kids
Man, it is perfectly fine to prefer turn based. Turn based is amazing. But there's zero reason to call anyone who likes action games "lil kids". Liking one gameplay system over another does not make you more mature in any way.
People love the new FF's overall...the problem is the abundance of 7's they release that lose money or make very little like diofield, star ocean divine force, Valkyrie asylum, harvestella, foam stars, etc. Advertising wouldn't have saved those games. Apparently Forespoken had a big Advertising budget but we saw how that went.
Star ocean divine force actually sold well from what I've read not ff type numbers but well enough. Was a dope game to.
Bandai Namco is going to Bandai Namco, I do believe that Square Enix can't change without changing the entire management, they've had these issues for more than a decade and haven't learnt, I have very little faith they can course correct. I'll still buy their better remasters/remakes like Star Ocean 2 though (not FF7R).
Namco is just milking the same Sword Art Online with lack of budget as well as anime IPs that don't go to decent developers like Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Namco deserves their losses and no future Dot Hack or Xenosaga remaster :(.
Square allocated lot of their budget on Forspoken was a mistake. Square always had management issues. Star Ocean 2 was a great remake and I found their recent entries of FF(16 and Rebirth) better than 13 and 15.
I think they were better than 360/PS3 generation where Square went really downhill.
I don’t know why NOW they decide on this, but I guess later is better than never.
Sounds like their game of very very far away. I hope they create a good new Silent Hill experience.
PT.
This is a proper combo of devs
Siren was terrifying ... until you figure out you can actually kill those things. then it loses the horror ha.
I'll have to look into Siren sounds interesting