Square Enix Declares $140m Loss Amid Game Pipeline Shakeup

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth publisher Square Enix has declared a $140m loss based on a shakeup of its internal development pipeline.

[Furesis]

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.

[-Foxtrot]

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.

[Kakashi Hatake]

6 and 8 were way more p popular games despite today's cult following of 9.

[blackbeld]

I want my FF8 remake! Can't believe they cancelled it.

[TiredGamer]

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.

[TwoPicklesGood]

Breaking the game up into multiple parts was a mistake IMO.

[blackblades]

The loses came from cancelling games nothing else.

[Tapani]

They lost the magic in the remakes. And the story is incomplete. The original FF7 is still way better. The Remake / Rebirth are just fan service. Like an Anime/Manga with "optional" filler content. FF7 had pretty much zero filler, it was paced extremely well, and still today flows much better than the grindy story and spongey enemy battles in the remakes.

[babadivad]

If they released it at once on all platforms, they would have made all of their money back. Could have been on to an FF8 or 9 remake. Ready to cash in again on nostalgia like Capcom. This is their fault for trying to milk the title.

Once I head they were breaking it up into parts, I lost all interest.

[neutralgamer1992]

I hope people understand usually when a loss is declared it means a game which had been in development got cancelled. For example Sony Santa Monica before GOW-PS4 had cancelled a project which Sony had spent 7 figures on

As far as square is concerned they release a bad game once a year. Forspoken anyone?

For those making comments on remake not selling well, I hope y’all realize that Sony is the only reason this remake is happening. If Sony didn’t fund it the remake wouldn’t be happening. Just like Konami didn’t want to remake SH2 because development costs of 100 plus million

[shadowT]

Do not miss Final Fantasy 16. Great game!

[raWfodog]

I'm waiting for them to release the complete edition bundle, but it's definitely on my list.

[PhillyDonJawn]

Wth is going on with the gaming industry?

[mandf]

Corporate investors taking everything

[TiredGamer]

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.

[wiz7191]

@tiredgamer I think your point is one that ppl don’t understand and you hit it on the nose .. some gamers don’t want to take accountability but it’s some of the gamers fault the industry is where it’s at .. we as gamers set the standards for the industry not the shareholders , ppl forget that the shareholders and the industry want and need OUR Money. Both the Xbox and PlayStation are seeing a drop in hardware , the industry is very stagnant right now.

[Tacoboto]

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.

[PhillyDonJawn]

What about regarding Sony?

[Tacoboto]

Sony is getting their best titles and with the most polish, so what about it? Nintendo gets their top properties too, for titles that can run on Switch hardware.

It's the other fanbases that get the second- and third-class treatment from Square. If that's due to agreements with Sony, that's not a Sony issue but a Square one for accepting those terms. Sony is doing its best to look out for Sony.

[wesnytsfs]

sales and stupid practices like exclusives.

[TiredGamer]

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.

[CS7]

Sad. Rebirth was one of my favorite games in a long time. Should have sold more.

[CrimsonWing69]

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.

[rpvenom]

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

[gold_drake]

same

but im not sure if it matters at all. im sure they made sony pay a hefty sum for the 3parter to come on ps5 exclusively. so watever they made in sales, might have come bk in profits for square, but i dont know
and we dont know what "underperformed" even means for square.

[RhinoGamer88]

How about an Executive shakeup in Japan? Their Marvel mistake alone is worth a firing or two...

[ZeekQuattro]

People at the top needed to be fired for that screw up. The MCU was at the height of its popularity so an Avengers game should of been a easy home run. Instead they bungled it.

[franwex]

I wonder if it’s related to the NFT business they were trying to get into?

[TheColbertinator]

They released some great flops lately. Avengers, Forspoken, Guardians and Outriders all sold nowhere near their expectations

[TwoPicklesGood]

Ouch, even with FFVII Rebirth too. They need to get their stuff together and fast.

[Tzuno]

They are literally standing on good games and do nothing about it, their downfall

[OneLove]

Interesting. This could just be the end of the life span of the final fantasy series. How long can certain series even stand the test of time. For any game to get sequels and be popular enough to keep getting more sequels while selling a lot every time is already an amazing feat. You have to wonder how long it can last.

[WolfSeed]

E3 will definitely attract gains for this company. Applause for the boldness in bringing it back.

[FlameWater]

Imagine having Sleeping Dogs in your arsenal but never use it

[GrimyShoot9r]

They are releasing to many FF games and are diluting the IP. They should put FF on ice for for 10 years and try to evolve some of their lesser known ips

[gold_drake]

square is such a mess of a conpany, has been for a while now.

i hope that kh4 and ff9 remake are still happening.

[EternalTitan]

Make good games Square.

[gold_drake]

i wonder what games that were in developed they chopped.

[coolbeans]

No Western devs to blame this time. lol

[repsahj]

They release tons of games; what do you expect? FF16 and FF7Rebirth both have decent sales; the losses came from other game releases.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

So is the Sony exclusivity helping or hurting?

[shadowfax33]

they should release their big games like rebirth and 16 Simultaneous with PC, also perhaps don't ignore the Xbox user base.......but instead they took the exclusivity deal.
i just hope this doesn't affect ff7 part 3 whatsoever.

[wesnytsfs]

They need to release their games to all platforms. I hope they learned this from the sales of ff16 and ff7 remake part 2. I do not want to hear companies whine about AAA game prices when they are unwilling or staggering their releases on platforms.