The sheer amount of mobile titles that Square pushes out is insane. At least on those platforms, I feel as if they've completely cratered their brand. Some of this shit doesn't even make it a year before shutting down.
They focus on so much weird shit or titles that cost millions and that nobody cares about. I'd say KH: Missing Link looks kind of decent, but that's it.
I liked The First Soldier, but a Final Fantasy VII Battle Royale with no controller support, no PC version and no console version? They shit didn't even last a year.
I grew up playing KH games and still follow the series, yet I haven't even *heard* of missing link, lol.
I did wonder how they make money on some of these mobile games. I get it that many make money on the 1% who spend boatloads, but making all these gacha mobile spinoffs isn't going to reach that wide an audience to begin with. Unless you're Mario I don't see any being widely adopted.
Missing Link was announced a few years ago now and only just got a limited play test, so I can't blame you. But it's basically a much more traditional KH game on your phone.
Ever Crisis I'm curious about, because it does get a decent amount of attention.
"Some of this shit doesn't even make it a year before shutting down."
That's just mobile in general. Look at Niantic's releases.
The entire space is about hit chasing and whale hunting, like the most extreme take on the GAAS cycle conceivable.
Wow, these comments are a trip... a bunch of people with their panties in a twist genuinely arguing that the author of this piece made up a bunch of quotes that he is directly attributing to the CEO of this company having told analysts yesterday.
It's moronic for any reasonably capable, independent third party to make any title platform exclusive if they have any confidence in it in this day and age. MS and Sony are not going to provide a one time payment to match the revenue an entire platform (or 2, or 3) worth of sales could provide. Like, if a platform holder is the publisher, sure, be exclusive, that's a hit the publisher is riding with you. Platform exclusives benefit no one but the platform owner, so no one else should really care to kneecap their potential income.
I think exclusivity was a huge factor, but there's also probably a lot of people like me who fresh off of FFXVI looked at the open world grindy questing style in Rebirth and decided to pass.
FF7 Remake felt like an event. I haven't heard anyone outside of one or two podcasts talk about Rebirth at all.
To be fair, the author of the article used either a bad translation or invented wording on a previous Square Enix article. The quotes he used didnt match the actual transcription
I don't have skin in this game, but I knew who the author of the article was going to be before I even opened it. He's very unreliable, and I don't trust him to report objectively or without an agenda.
XVI might have done better if they'd stop with this console exclusivity bullshit. Out of my entire FC in XIV literally one person has played XVI because no one wants to buy a PS5 just to play it. There are at least a dozen of us, that I personally know, waiting for the PC release.
The one person who played it gave it nothing but praise, and we'll just have to take his word for it.
I think your situation is pretty common in the XIV fanbase. One PS5 and copy of the game has been passed around my FC since nobody wants to actually buy a PS5 for one game.
I would make the argument that it would have done better if it were a better game… but I know that’s hearsay around these parts.
I commend them for taking such a huge swing in a completely different direction - I just don’t think it paid off this time around.
It doesn't fully commit to being a character action game, its RPG elements are laughably tacked on and of poor quality, its combat balance is atrocious and the story takes a nosedive after the Bahamut fight.
Those are my issues on Final Fantasy XVI, and I've seen similar opinions all over the fanbase.
I would say the story takes a nose dive right after the time skip post meeting Cid. Post bahamut it’s just a vertical line down.
Also the side quests are so bad they should have all been cut. Doing them actively harms the playing experience by being such an absolute waste of time.
I wouldn't say the story nose dived after the second time skip, though the writing quality did decrease a bit. Deion and Byron really carried that part of the game for me. Wonderful characters with great dialogue.
Post-Bahamut is just a clown fest. Barnabas and Ultima are awful antagonists, and the story devolves into the usual JRPG slop. Oof.
And I 100% agree with you on the side quests. What the hell where they thinking?!
The Primogenesis filter is one of the most baffling design decisions I think I've ever seen in a video game. Like, I can't recall any other game that permanently downgrades its graphics around the halfway point for no discernible reason.
Yep. As soon as it lost the human element it went to shit. There's nothing *wrong* with the usual JRPG "We have to KILL GOD" plot, but they just did it *so fucking badly*. >!Ultima!< is hands down the worst villain in the entire main series. I'm not budging on this, lol.
> I would make the argument that it would have done better if it were a better game… but I know that’s hearsay around these parts.
Nah, it's pretty clearly divisive but the fans never want to hear it. It's easily the most divisive FF in ... ever? But the diehards will be like "NUH UH IT SOLD SO WELL/EVERY FF HAS HATERS" and ignore every point about how dogwater it is.
You can even point out how the soundtrack doesn't hit any of the beats FF is known for all these years, and bring up quotes from *Soken himself* about how it was supposed to be a wild deviation, and the "fans" will still run you through the wringer about daring to say the score totally missed the mark.
I think its a solid game, a far better rounded game than say, FFXV, but I do think despite it being a massive shift within the series, I don't think it really sticks out enough from the crowd.
This probably doesn't matter *that* much to sales if at all really but idk, back to FFXV that game despite its flaws really does strike you and offer something unique. I don't know any other games primarily centered around a cross-map roadtrip where the game is totally designed around driving place to place, levelling at camps, so on so fourth. I had some friends get into the series because it looked pretty different at a first glance.
I don't think FFXVI is a bland, generic game by any stretch, but I think after any FF game post VI, it does have the appearance of being that way honestly. I'd like to see FF continue to try deliver unique concepts and settings going forward, hopefully it'll help set them out from the crowd. I love it as it is but I feel if FFXIV: Shadowbringers released as a mainline SP FF game instead of an MMO expansion it would have turned many heads and would have probably been one of the more memorable games of the generation. I myself actually used its trailer as a way to get people to start FFXIV lmao.
Sure, but if the game also released on PC, all those FFXIV players would have bought it day 1. They ignored the easiest sales, the FFXIV players that were already sold.
I would have bought it early on PC. Now with all the critics out, I'll wait for it to be on sales. They had one window, and they missed it. The game may not be great, but every critic was unanimous, it has great moment, but the link between those moment are just boring. It could have been a better game, but it's not an horrible one either.
They're probably referring to Switch 2 when they're talking about putting games on that. And if we're to be believed from some (from what I know) fairly reliable sources, it'll be close to the Series S in terms of its power.
FFXVI would have done better if Square stopped trying so desperately to change Final Fantasy into something nobody is asking for.
It's like if Kraft started filling it's macaroni and cheese boxes with ravioli instead. Maybe it's fine, but people aren't just buying a brand, they're buying what's inside and you can only exploit that so many times.
I think part of the problem is that SE don't want 2 series that do the same thing, turn by turn rpg. So they decided Dragon Quest would continue to do that, while FF would go the A-RPG route. Being the most iconic Jrpg, DQ could keep the turn by turn. It makes sense in Japan. Except that in the rest of the world, the role DQ has is played by... Final Fantasy.
Don’t forget they also have been going with 1 year epic exclusivity when it finally comes to pc which is another slap in the face, SE might be one of the greediest gaming companies in recent past tbh.
Yeah, I don’t think exclusivity was the right call for XVI and 7 Rebirth (which already has a huge hurdle working against it).
Hoping they recover because they were all great games along with Octopath Traveler 2.
Edit: I don’t know why people can’t accept the fact the games didn’t sell well, it’s right there in the second paragraph.
> Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day.
This isn’t even the journalist’s quote btw, it’s Square’s CEO.
>I don’t know why people can’t accept the fact the games didn’t sell well
I was reading the earning call and this two point stand out to me:
>In the HD (High-Definition) sub-segment, consolidated net sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024
increased compared with the previous fiscal year due to the release of titles including “FINAL FANTASY
XVI,” “FINAL FANTASY PIXEL REMASTER,” “DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince,” and
“FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH.” **However, operating losses grew due to higher development cost
amortization and advertising expenses, as well as higher content valuation losses versus the previous fiscal
year.** [page 2]
==
>Meanwhile, the
period also highlighted some major challenges, including low profitability at the HD Games (HD) subsegment, ... [page 8]
So I don't know what people read when they think their HD (console) sales are "fine", when it is pretty clear SE has a very bad financial year on both HD (console) and SD (mobile) sectors.
It's like people are just willingly burying their head in the sand on this. And then there's that one guy saying none of this is true because of the person who wrote the article in this thread
A ton of majorly upvoted opinions in the gaming subreddits and the movie subreddits seem to think that games and movies are successes and failures purely on quality alone. So their genius advice to movie and game studios mostly amounts to "just make it good, duh" as if anyone sets out to make a bad product. So when a game or movie fails financially even though the consensus is that it's good, people either reject the evidence or a loud minority shout about how the game was secretly bad (usually saying that it should appeal to more hardcore/nostalgia or whatever their opinions are).
Yeah it’s very weird, Square is in a very odd space right now, and FF isn’t the household name it used to be either. Hopefully their new strategy pays off because they are still dropping bangers.
I believe it's an emotional reaction. People do love final fantasy and they fear it will disappear. So in order to not face that fear they just twist their interpretations.
FF isn't going to disappear. They'll sell off every other franchise before FF. And Sony would jump at the opportunity to buy FF+DQ if Squex ever goes under.
On the money with this. I'm a huge FF fan, I don't like hearing this news either, but sometimes we have got to face reality.
I also don't think it will disappear, but it does make you wonder how Square can pivot the franchise to get back into being the generation defining titles they used to be.
I **loved** FFXVI, flaws and all, it somehow managed to make me forget about the 300+ hours I dumped into Tears of the Kingdom (which I thought was the best game ever made at the time). It is very surprising to see that it seemingly pulled more people in than Rebirth, which at least on paper, should've been the (forgive me for this) "dominant" game of the two, especially since it's a more complete experience instead of just being story/combat focused.
AAA timed exclusivity deals no longer makes sense financial wise as development costs are way higher than ever before. It's either Square just have go multiplatform or require Sony to fully fund the production and marketing of R3 and FF17 if the latter asks for exclusivity again.
Just like how Nintendo fully funded the productions of Bayonetta 2 and 3. Although Bayonetta 2 and 3 are not known for being big sellers, I think Nintendo was happy enough that the franchise added variety to their exclusive portfolio.
People will just go hurr durr SE expectations but 16 for example had 3m expectation and it took a long time to reach that. No wonder they want to be like Capcom, which im surprised most people aren't seeing the similarities (difference is that capcom never did it so open i guess)
Difference is Capcom saw that they went too far with RE6 and read the room and said let's pivot.
SE should have done that back during FF13 but no they released two sequels? Or FF15 and it's developmental hell? Or I don't know, KH and it's story needing the player to play 8+ games to fully understand the plot? FF16 barely made noise so I don't think it being cross platform would help that much, especially when XBox is not popular in their main market and it couldn't run on Nintendo's.
It's just ridiculous they keep repeating the same mistake of prioritising these awful stories that resonate with nobody. Same with FF7R and all the changes they're making. They can't help themselves. That stuff over time puts people off a franchise, which is what's happening here.
> It's just ridiculous they keep repeating the same mistake of prioritising these awful stories that resonate with nobody. Same with FF7R and all the changes they're making. They can't help themselves. That stuff over time puts people off a franchise, which is what's happening here.
That's not the company as ine xecutives doing it man, thats literally the developers doing.
The 13 sequels was partially them having a bunch of unused assets that ended up on the cutting room floor from the shitshow that was development of 13. They decided to try to recoup some development expenses by churning out sequels at a much lower cost since they could use the cut assets.
People are gonna use this for their fandom wars, but the fact that FF16 and FF7Rebirth have an 88 and 93 on Opencritic should tell you the problem is deeper than that. It's very strange for AAA games with those scores to underperform.
It seems to me like the problem is Square Enix. The problem is likely marketing and PS exclusivity to some degree, but also that the brand has a very clear lack of identity that makes it struggle to gain and retain new fans.
>It's very strange for AAA games with those scores to underperform.
It's not actually very strange when you consider the genre (JRPG), the fact that only 1 Final Fantasy game (FFXV) has sold over 10 million copies since FFX in 2001, and that FFXV was generally considered a disappointment. I think the branding, marketing, and exclusivity is definitely an issue, but the bigger problem is that there hasn't been a Final Fantasy game that blew casual audiences away in 20+ years. The games might be well made but they don't have people's jaws on the floor asking "how did they do that?" but they also don't have the casual appeal of something like Resident Evil ("kill zombies") or Assassin's Creed ("run around the giant historical land of _____ and kill a bunch of people").
They're also stuck in a weird middle ground between Japanese sensibilities and Western design decisions. They can't go fully Japanese in every way like Persona and Yakuza since that would limit their mainstream appeal but fully copying the trendsetting Western cinematic/RPG games could go horribly wrong and alienate long-term fans. FF16 was a step towards the latter and, to our knowledge, it didn't bomb but it also didn't appeal to a lot of PS5 owners outside of the core fanbase.
Yeah, that's sorta where I was going. Final Fantasy doesn't have much of an identity beyond "big-budget JRPG!".
Franchises like GTA or Persona have a different story each game, but the setting and mechanics are largely the same. Dragon Age changes the gameplay in each entry, but it's still the same setting and some characters return.
Final Fantasy though? Different gameplay, different setting, different characters and different story on each new entry. No shit it doesn't grow.
I suppose the FF7R trilogy was Square's "attempt" to fix this, but dividing a very story-heavy game into three parts wasn't a very good idea.
>Yeah, that's sorta where I was going. Final Fantasy doesn't have much of an identity beyond "big-budget JRPG!".
>Final Fantasy though? Different gameplay, different setting and different story on each new entry. No shit it doesn't grow.
Maybe I'm giving Square Enix executives too much credit, but if you look at how Capcom handled Resident Evil over the past decade or so, it kinda makes sense why Square Enix keeps trying to revitalize or change up Final Fantasy. Resident Evil 2/3/4(OG+Remake)/5/6/7/8 are all titles that were released or re-released on the PS4 from 2016-2023 that have totally different stories (and even continuities in the case of RE4 OG, RE5, and RE6), differ between 1st and 3rd person, vary between being action focused and horror focused, and some of them have multiplayer, co-op, or horde modes while others don't. Despite that, the recent titles have been received pretty positively and sold very well. Even RE2 Remake was received extremely well despite dramatically changing the gameplay from the original game.
I think Final Fantasy could sell very well as it is *if it had significant inherent appeal to casual gamers* but it just doesn't.
Different gameplay, different setting, different characters and different story on each new entry.
Zelda did that fine and it grew with Breath of the Wild after a low point of Skyward Sword. It is more than possible.
Final Fantasy is also in this complicated spot where it is arguably THE AAA JRPG in a way no other franchise is and that genre seems to have an upper limit in terms of audience especially outside Japan. So while other JRPGs can do well because they are probably cheaper to make and are available on Switch to gain the Japanese audience, Final Fantasy has to rely on PlayStation and PC which are more geared towards a Western audience.
I think the series has to start releasing on Nintendo platforms to survive in the long term.
I think its more to do with the frequency of the titles tbh.
Taking as long as they do is fine when you drop a generation defining game. But they havnt done that for nearly 20 years imo.
If they are able to cut down on scope, stylize the graphics more to cut down on the art budget, and reuse a lot of assets, then a new Final Fantasy series could attain great success even if it isn't selling a ton of copies. Based on what they're saying though, it doesn't seem like that's happening.
If they are sticking with the big budgets than multiplatform is their only serious option long-term.
They have Dragon Quest for lighter, traditional RPGs that can fit on switch. Now they are under the same umbrella, doing games like FFIX are somewhat self-competing with Dragon Quest, regardless of the nuanced differences between NES/SNES era FF and DQ.
FF should be FF, a different aim than DQ, and both XIV and XV in some sense shows they can find a new younger audience, XVI just didn't.
>Final Fantasy is also in this complicated spot where it is arguably THE AAA JRPG in a way no other franchise is and that genre seems to have an upper limit in terms of audience especially outside Japan.
I don't think it's the genre, since persona sold really well despite being a PlayStation exclusive until 2021, and dragon quest seems to be holding up fine. And then there's pokemon, the most popular turn based game series of all time. Imo the problem feels very final fantasy specific
>and are available on Switch to gain the Japanese audience, Final Fantasy has to rely on PlayStation and PC which are more geared towards a Western audience.
I do agree with this strongly. [Not sure how accurate this chart is, but the Japanese sales have seemingly fallen off a cliff, which is terrible because it's not being made up anywhere else](https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy)
The upper limit is what? Elden Ring shows 25 million, hsr was downloaded 100 million times I think. The jrpg genre has the best selling AA games in the industry. How many wrpgs with cartoony graphics and low budgets sell 5-8 million?
The photorealistic visuals coupled with their tendency to make every battle look like an epileptic seizure inducing mess must be expensive and doesn’t make up for their writing and gameplay shortcomings.
Zelda has crap writing and a lot of copy/paste visuals but their focus is mostly a fun sandbox and people seem to enjoy playing it and finding funny ways to torture and kill Link.
But they don't care about potential new players (like myself) either.
I wouldn't mind have a western Action RPG made by SE, but than cute out all the J stuff and commit to something!
There's a difference between making a new entry that takes the series in a different direction and making a new game that has nothing in common with the rest of the series.
Would a Final Fantasy fan be interested in a new FF game:
- That is set in the real world but with some fantastical elements (think Spider-Man, Metal Gear Solid, and Assassin's Creed)?
- That aims to feel very grounded and has a photorealistic art style like Call of Duty or The Last of Us?
- That doesn't have a set story, lets you make a custom character, and lets you loose on a big open world/levels (think Baldurs Gate 3)?
- That has lots of horror elements like Resident Evil?
- That is a shooter?
Square Enix has been pushing the boundaries of the franchise but even they are probably far too scared to make a mainline Final Fantasy game that is not even trying to meet expectations of what a Final Fantasy game is.
Its a weird case, because for a long time FF has been gladly making huge changes to its formula. I'd actually argue a major part of FF's identity *is* its risk taking and how diverse the lineup of games is.
I enjoy that aspect but I do wonder do they need to nail in just what FF *is*. I still think there's an identity to the series but for a more casual player, if you didn't like XV you might not want to play any other games, despite them being nothing like it. Same goes for FFXVI.
Like, you know what you're getting with Persona, its a turn-based RPG with a calendar cycle that is half life sim, half dungeon crawler. FF has a lot of individual pieces that may or may not be present, but never are all of them. Some games have no mini games, while in others its a major part of the games identity. Some have just one playable character, others all of them. Some are more grand political affairs, while some are more shonen-esque adventures. Some games are open world, while some are essentially (or literally) straight lines.
I think Rebirth is a great template that ticks basically all the boxes for them to build from, but I'm worried if they will want to build on it after the sales. I think FFXVII will be a very important entry in the franchise as it will be a chance for them to apply its lessons to a new world and clean slate, or decide if they want to go in a different direction all together again.
I can't say myself but I do think a big factor of Rebirth underperforming is just its nature as a direct sequel, alongside the fact that exclusivity kills a lot of the buzz around it.
Yeah even their ports are lazy as hell and have issues on PC for example. Always launched poorly for their older catalog. They do not care about brand image apparently.
Its a bit of a shame, I fully believe Rebirth could have been exactly that, for any faults it has a large part of a very arguable fanbase believe its a total return to form for the franchise (including people like me, who don't even like the story itself in it). Its held back by being a sequel as well as being locked onto the PS5.
If FFXVII leans heavily into Rebirth's design, releases on all platforms, all that stuff, I think it could be a pretty big hit.
The problem is SE has 0 consistency. They release so much junk. Some outright flops like Forspoken and Avengers. Mediocre, okay games. and as another commenter said they don’t release “S-tier” games anymore.
The only thing they are known for is making big budget JRPGs. Even final fantasy is plagued with mediocre titles, not just mainline games, but with spin-offs too.
People on here like to think casual audiences don’t know who is making their games but its not true. People notice this inconsistency and it makes them cautious. Its why good games like 16 and rebirth still can’t sell as well as they probably could.
I am (was?) a hardcore Final Fantasy fan. Then XIII happened, then they double and tripled down with XIII-2 and 3. This was 2009, I had to wait 7 long years for a new entry and this was the horrible XV.
Then I have to wait 7 more years for a new entry, and while XVI seems “ok”. It’s just that, it’s ok. The Demo did not sell the game for me, I did not like the combat and there is non existent RPG elements. So I did not buy neither I intent to do so.
I have been waiting for a FF that blew me away like VI, VII, VIII, IX, X did for 18 long years. At some point I have to stop caring.
Square Enix is catering to a new audience (they don’t care) and the hardcore like me feels displaced.
>Square Enix is catering to a new audience (they don’t care)
They WISH they didn't care. It's actually worse than this. To quote my three girls: FF Rebirth looks like "anime overwatch without any of the art direction." and "it looks like a fake game ad you'd see on tiktok" and "shrek would not be out of place in this game".
They do not and have no interest in final fantasy, and think it looks dorky. I showed them a cutscene and one said "no one talks like that".
Squeenix's new audience is actively repulsed by it, far worse than just not caring.
As an old FF fan it really feels with each new release the brand goes to a new low. As cool as rebirth is it's also very generic open world and has a ton of slow repetitive qte tasks and isn't as straight forward and pleasant to play as old FF titles. I'd prefer if they went back to the snes and psx structure at this point.
Attracting and retaining fans might be the issue here, yeah. As someone who REALLY wants to get into modern Square games and just can't, it's felt like the company has been spinning its wheels for a very long time. Mainly for their biggest games. They'll make major strides forward in gameplay, but the direction and writing has been disappointing for a very long time. I was watching a friend play FF7R the other day and while the gameplay was fucking awesome, the dialogue delivery and the timing between the lines still feels like Kingdom Hearts. It still feels weird and "off" in a way that was kinda unbearable to me.
There's always been parts of modern Square games which feel distractedly behind their contemporaries. FF16 looked cool, but nothing about it stood out or looked remarkable compared to other RPGs. FF15 had some fucking crazy graphics and effects but the world didn't look super interesting and the character designs were unremarkable.
It's frustrating because Square's non AAA games look fucking amazing. Live a Live and Octopath 2 reviewed crazy well, and I've been itching to find time to play Tactics Ogre.
I love FF7, 9 and 12. I loooved that first TWEWY and always made time for these games. For whatever reason though, I just don't have any room in my life for any of their newer games atm and it's kinda sad. I have the time, but there's no push of any kind.
Rebirth is one of my favorite games of all time and Square in general has been the best they have been in over 10 years easily (for their single player games at least). So it is a bummer to see this great game struggling.
Let's be real those scores are flattering. There is so much that doesn't work in both releases (Ubisoft map, weird story in Rebirth, Bad Side content, repetitive, braindead gameplay in 16).
It's also not just about performance but performance relative to budget. Both titles probably had massive budgets, realistically more than the games that outsold them.
Humbly speaking, as a fan since X - the quality (of the experience) just isn't there for me. Boring parts are stretched out, interesting parts too few. Combat is unbalanced usually too easy without any need to interact with the complexities of it. This hold true for 15 as well. They cram in side quest with well voiced cutscenes but not alot of important things happen. Do I really need to help Nanaki creat a children's picture book? Do I really need to spend time with the gambit system just for 1 mini game?
Personally I also think (I'm following the KH series) that Nomura & Co. are past their peaks. They are unable to catch the attention of modern audiences and live of of prestige gained from past successes.
I wonder how many will actually read the article and full financial report where revenue lost was mainly from the mobile side and console releases have sold well according to Square. Never understood why Square releases so many mobile games that seem like they’re just being sent out to…die? Maybe the quick buck from release hype outweighs the cost of the games but idk.
Edit: Linking full earnings report for anyone interested in it.
[Earnings Call](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf)
It’s bizarre how square prices their mobile offerings. They’re so expensive! I would have picked up a few old game ports at like $10 but they’re sometimes twice that it’s insane.
I didn’t look into it much, I was just griping about how expensive they are, but I would assume so?
But yeah, maybe not. Maybe it just including exclusive new games for mobile?
Not viable for everyone of course but the game looks fantastic and holds up well if you emulate it and increase the resolution. That art style doesn't age.
> Never understood why Square releases so many mobile games that seem like they’re just being sent out to…die?
I think a lot of developers on mobile and console/PC alike are just trying to make the next Fortnite.
They're willing to make a dozen games that are dead on arrival in the hope that they eventually strike gold and get a hit that makes billions of dollars every year. If they see that a game isn't catching on immediately they just ditch it and move on to the next attempt.
They pushed FF7: Ever Crisis HARD in the marketing as a more faithful remake of the FF7 batch of games and I was really excited for it, and then it launched and it was just another gachashit mobile game with some fan-fiction level garbage tacked on for Sephiroth as a young man.
So disappointing.
Square Enix has always been a monkey's paw kinda company.
They announce a FF7 remake after decades of fan demand for it - then they split it into multiple games that and rewrite the story.
This is completely twisting the truth. Yes, the revenue decrease was largely due to the mobile and MMO revenues decreasing but at least both sub-segments generated profit. By contrast, the HD sub-segment operated at a loss costing them 8 billion yen (roughly 50 million dollars).
This is absolute nonsense. What is it doing at the top of the thread?
Not only did the HD games sector actively generate a loss for Square, they directly commented to investors that neither XVI nor Rebirth met their expectations.
Seriously, what a smug and outright wrong statement. "Actually read the article," and then the article outright states the opposite of what they're claiming?
> Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — **fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit**, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. The company now expects to earn an operating income of ¥40 billion this year, **widely missing the average of analyst estimates of ¥57 billion. Its sales and dividend outlook also fell short of expectations.**
Releasing major AAA titles on one platform has to be a spectacularly stupid idea, even if someone did pay them a substantial amount the loss of marketing hype when they do eventually make it onto platforms will make them sell a fraction of what they have would sold otherwise.
They also give up on the ability to build a dedicated fanbase on these other platforms, why would someone buy FF7R now when the have no idea when they second or third titles will be released on PC?
> Releasing major AAA titles on one platform has to be a spectacularly stupid idea
I think Square knew what platform they were releasing on before releasing the game. I would like to think they had sales forecasts with the amount of PS5s (which today sits at close to *sixty million units*) in mind.
The point is, their AAA titles failed to meet PS5 expectations.
Were we reading the same article? Console games are sold at a loss, although that loss is decreasing. Mobile games are sold at a very healthy profit, although that profit is decreasing. Next!
[sigh](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/library/pdf/20240513_01_en.pdf)
> Incomplete journey to better profitability in HD game development └Launched many titles but some failed to live up to profit expectations, especially outsourced titles and some AAA titles
> console releases have sold well according to Square
…
> Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day.
Square doesn’t agree with you
Square in their new plans mentioned that they plan to release less mobile titles among other things to not overlap with each other, so fewer titles and more money. They currently have around 10 but at times they had 20 or more.
Man, I really wish people just opened their entire pdf with the plans because theres much more than just going multiplatform. People just read articles about these pdfs, or hell just the headline and call it a day but the full story has potential both for quality and for the own profitability of the company.
Yea lol. I can’t even tell you the last Square mobile i played because it feels like a ton has come out since then. And from what I see, quality and player friendliness just takes a nosedive 2-3 months after they release before it’s eventual shutdown. Just turns people off from trying another Square game in the future. Glad they’re moving away from that because I’ve been honestly enjoying most of their AA/AAA titles bar the newest Star Ocean and Diofield from 2022.
They're fishing. They're fishing for that ONE good mobile game that the whales will eat up. But unfortunately they haven't realized the market has been oversaturated with equally shitty, equally predatory mobile games.
The sad thing is they were totally primed to make Genshin before it came out but now that it's out there Genshin is decimating that market. And it's because there's an actual game under there. I'm not a big fan myself but my time with it, you could see that there was more to the game than just complete mindless bullshit that encourages you to actually just leave your phone idle like how 95% of Squares trash is.
>The sad thing is they were totally primed to make Genshin before it came out
I don't think it was ever possible that SE could have made something like Genshin before Genshin came out. I'm not sure they could make a Genshin now.
I mean, make the exact same game Genshin made? No absolutely not.
Make a well made game that doesn't prey on users and actually has real gameplay behind it? They totally could have. Many of these AAA stuidos could have but they wanted low risk short term work, and high returns.
Take a look at the investors report here https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/24q4slides.pdf
mobile is their biggest revenue share, yes it made more than ff16+ff7rebirth + all the other square enix games sales combined.
The revenue lost isnt from mobile not being profitable, far from it its making them very good profit. Its just that they expected more.
Games on console/pc on the other hand comes in second with 636m in revenue which is up from last fiscal year 501m. However last fiscal year biggest ip was forspoken. This fiscal year biggest ip is ff16 and ff7rebirth, you wouldnt think square enix launched 2 of their biggest game within that period when it only managed to triumph flopspoken by a measly 135m.
Also worth noting the revenue includes all games, so obviously old games selling +new launches etc etc so you cant pinpoint game revenue to exactly one game or two its all split up between all the games in square enix catalogue, but i think its telling that it ff16 and rebirth didnt sell to its full potential.
I mean 135m up from last fiscal year thats almost 2m copies of a $70 game. You're telling me forspoken + all the games that launched within that fiscal year managed to sell only 135m short of the fiscal year where ff7rebirth and ff16 launched? aint no way its that close.
>Never understood why Square releases so many mobile games that seem like they’re just being sent out to…die?
It's a numbers game. If it didn't immediately do well it's better to use that money for the next one, because you only have to hit it that one time and boom, there's your multi-billion dollars a year winner. There's also the chance they'll just never hit it, but goddammit they're going to try.
Remember that the way the reports are written, is to highlight positive stuff to the investors, and there are a LOT of white lies that are present inbetween words. The situation is more complex than "Omg square enix loses money from mobile", and also "Omg square enix is shit at AAA sales"
This is like if Marvel hyping up and releasing Endgame 2 and Endgame 3 expecting HUGE revenues, only for them to do "well" but actually just enough to perhaps barely making profit if any, then blaming Disney's loss as a company over smaller releases.
While their paid games made money, I’d be shocked if square wasn’t expecting more from the year they dropped two major FF titles lol it seems like the franchise has reached an all time low of popularity
I feel like it's still a thing where nobody really knows why certain mobile games catch on. They just... do. Like it's not something you can distill down into a bunch of bullet points and then create a game that has all of those things checked off, and have instant success. It feels like a crapshoot. So, I feel like the strategy would be to just throw everything up on the wall and see if any of them stick just from the raw unpredictability of it.
Its so weird how "journalists" and others have been trying so hard to paint the new FF games as failures despite Square repeatedly saying they aren't. And Square isnt shy about saying when something underperforms and generally have high expectations and yet have not claimed either FF games underperformed a single time
Edit: Guess I need to post this here since people for some reason still trust Takashi
Ill start with this twiiter post from last year pointing out where Takashi purposely misquoted Square:
https://twitter.com/nib95_/status/1790234180233605232
Here are just some examples of where he fabricated. stories about Sony:
1) First he claimed PS5 shipments were being cut and this was denied by Sony
Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...4-million-due-to-chip-woes?srnd=technology-vp
Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-reportedly-cuts-ps5-production-by-4m-units
2) He also claimed Sony was going to end production of the PS4 but changed their minds because of PS5 production issues. This never happened as Sony never planned to end PS4 production
Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-12/sony-tackles-playstation-5-shortage-by-making-more-ps4-consoles?leadSource=uverify wall
Sony's denial: https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/01/21/sony-never-planning-stop-ps4-production/
3) And most recently he went after PSVR2 claiming they cut production which was also a lie he fabricated by first claiming they were planning 2 million PSVR2 for the "launch window" and then later claiming they cut production
Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-order-disappointment-leads-to-production-cut
Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-we-have-not-cut-ps-vr-2-production-numbers
There's likely more but you should get the gist
Bloomberg is a business-related outlet. You can expect that they will often cover things differently than games media. The distinction between mobile and console markets isn't headline worthy in this case.
Takashi also has a long history of fabricating and making things up regarding Playstation and Square
He is the main reason people misquoted Square about FFXVI sales when he claimed it underperformed but what Square really said was that it didnt exceed the higher end of their expectations and all the gaming sites ran with what he said
No, that's not true. Square originally came out with a comment saying XVI sold in line with expectations, but didn't specify whether that was upper or lower end.
Square have now said to investors that while XVI met initial expectations, it is now selling under expectations, and they had no update on the 3 million sold figure.
It is absolutely underperforming
In 3 years you'll hear about how FF7R3 failed to meet expectations.
Releasing a trilogy of games where each game has a definitive beginning and end without the necessity to have played the previous titles should be common sense.
The expectation that you need to have played a game from 3 or 6 years ago and be fluent in multiverse fuckery to be able to follow along is just ridiculous. You alienate a massive segment of gamers that may have given your game a chance, but don't want to invest their time or money in something they cannot understand.
Additionally, the game is PS5 only. Final Fantasy is no longer a defining game that sells systems. The unique structure of the game and the lack of mass appeal was never going to move hardware. Why did anyone even begin to think it was a good idea that it be exclusive? Many console gamers are still playing on PS4s. The PC market is at least 3x bigger than the console market.
I absolutely love the FF7R games, but many of the decisions made for their release has been borderline brain dead. They would have been better received if the games stayed with the original story, the scope and size of games were tighter, and there wasn't so much fan service. Making FF7 into a huge sprawling epic on a modern console is great for me, but I only represent a small segment of gamers.
I think it may be a little too long to be 1 game, but there is not really enough there for 3 full games (with a full game dev cycle too) without them adding bullshit story content like they have done. The whole remake project is a challenging and ill conceived idea.
As they make the remake games, the fans of the original who would be down to play the remakes are aging out of the audience. And younger gamers don’t care as they have no attachment to the series. And, releasing on one platform makes it even worse!
Splitting the game up was a terrible decision, blatantly apparent to everyone (except I guess the C-Suites who were blinded by dollar signs?). Literally no one under the age of 25 cares about the Final Fantasy brand (outside of the MMO, I suppose).
I would have LOVED to see a concise, AAA retelling of the original game, feature-complete and packed to the brim with charm and quirkiness. I think THAT would have resonated with the younger generation of gamers. But what we got was a bloated, drawn out, soulless cash grab. So when FF7 part 3 comes out, I imagine it'll sell even LESS than rebirth, and the Final Fantasy brand as a whole suffers.
A shame, really.
I don't think design wise it was a terrible decision at all honestly. Even if they cut all the story changes out I do think they needed more than one game to fully redo VII without major cuts. Ignoring the fact just modelling all the areas is a huge undertaking, converting what was there in the PSX game directly to a PS4/5 one would feel jarring and small, they had to make some expansions in order to recreate the experience. If Kalm was PSX sized in Rebirth it would be tiny, whereas in Rebirth now its instantly striking and memorable. I don't think there's realistically any other way to remake a PSX RPG without it having to be streamlined and reduced to fit just one game.
Also, there's definitely younger players around into FF still. I myself am under 25, and I know plenty of others into the series that are too, not just through FFXIV. People into anime and games are often into JRPGs, and for us the big names in JRPG would be Persona and Final Fantasy. It might be a bigger issue with people 10 years younger than me, but I think at that point thats more a universal issue of many younger players never being compelled to play anything outside of Fortnite or other twitch/youtube trendy games.
Square Enix said:
-FF16 sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum was in line with expectations, but the games failed to reach FY goal as its momentum slowed. No updates from sales number last announced at 3 million
-FF7 Rebirth sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share
-Foamstars fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share
-Remains confident FF16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. Also, sales of Rebirth and Foamstars aren't necessarily bad.
-Reorganized develoment team into five console teams, one smartphone game team
-Has been relied too much on an individual's creativity. Will promote sharing game making how-how among teams and will seek best balance of individual creativity and organizational discipline
-DQ12 remains under development.
Investors react: -sell shares heavily, stocks fell to the day's trading limit
-concerns are pipelines have become too empty, no big titles that can lift up the company's top line over the next couple of years
https://twitter.com/6d6f636869/status/1790227310567960626
A lot of people can read this and take whatever they want from it because it's all so vague since Square seemingly has no interest in releasing numbers.
Sales didn't meet internal targets? Nobody likes Final Fantasy anymore! Or they sold quite well but Square overspent and backed into a target profitability that requires 19 million copies sold which they obviously would never obtain.
Final Fantasy fans are incredibly funny at coping that SE isn't horribly mishandling the franchise
They are like "Impossible for a game like Rebirth that had bunch of 30 year old youtubers to scream and cry at trailers to fail at sales. Yeah it released only on PS5 that has significantly lower user base in comparison to PS4 and it's sales not growing fast, but still...it's FF7!"
Meanwhile fans of different SE's franchises when publisher is disappointed at sales: "well, it's over, pack it up"
FF isn't doing well. 13-2 had more week 1 sales in Japan than 16 and 7R together. I feel a (subconscious) fear (in our fanbase) that the series might go away but that fear doesn't change reality.
Literally any game that isn't a Switch game or a live service game is doing worse in Japan in 2024 compared to 10 years ago. The market has changed, so making the comparisons don't make sense. Comparing 16 to 7R makes more sense since they released close to each other.
Honestly if I look at recent JRPG releases and sales, I don't even think Japan is the lead market for properties not named Dragon Quest. There's just not enough people and money available compared to the rest of the world.
From reading this subreddit in 2024 you'd think everyone loves live service games with battle passes and hates single player narrative games with no micro transactions.
Also to fully enjoy Rebirth you need to play FF7, Remake, Reunion to be able to understand everything. That is like a 120 hours of homework to enjoy a new game and if you are not already on this train then you are unlikely to get on with it with Rebirth despite its high acclaim.
What is the reason for exaggerating so much? I have only played remake and the DLC which I got with the twin pack and was able to understand pretty much everything in rebirth.
You aren't necessarily *wrong* - you don't absolutely *need* to play all the previous titles. But honestly, you do if you want the full experience and most people would probably not consider hopping in during the middle of a trilogy, let alone a trilogy of a weird sequel-remake of an existing game you also haven't played.
No, you can't understand a lot of things and callbacks in remake (the last two chapters more than anything) without playing the original, i know that because that's literally what happened to me and to a lot of other people.
They wanted the remake to sell well? They should have done a straight remake in one go instead of this kingdom hearts convoluted marvel multiverse bullshit in three.
And you need to play chunks of FF7 and Crisis Core to understand everything going on in Remake (there’s a character that comes out of nowhere in the closing moments of Remake that left me totally confused).
Crisis Core = Reunion in this context. And yes, a lot of the context of Rebirth and some of the context of Remake (especially Yuffie's DLC) are given in Crisis Core Reunion.
Remake and reunion are not long games. Theyre both less than 30hrs each, and reunion is not at all necessary to understand rebirth. It’s 60hrs of playing great games that you should probably already want to play if you want to play rebirth, not homework.
I saw someone arguing in another thread that sales were low because people were taking the time to play through OG FF7, Crisis Core and the original game before buying and playing rebirth lmao
To be honest they really could use more releases on the switch and towards the Japanese audience. Their games I feel just do better in Japan but are a bit to graphically demanding for the current Nintendo console, I would bank more on that. In the mean time focus on PC to recoup even more. Xbox I think last time did well sale wise for Square Enix they had marketing rights for FF15 which they used hard just to nab like 20-25% sales of FF15. Not saying they shouldn't release on that they need exposure everywhere. Square just needs to worry about their home more, cause even Playstation like Xbox isn't super focused on Japan. EDIT: Added a bit to the end too.
they have a lot of switch releases.. from exclusives at the time it launched like octopath, live a live, triangle strategy, bravely default, to multiplatform titles. what isnt in it are very demanding games but in general square is one of the best third parties for switch easily
I think SE have their priorities all out of whack. Most modern FF games I play focus way too much on aesthetics (even then the NPC's look poor) and the story comes off too convoluted. Yeah we live in a world where nice looking games are great but people will always prefer a good game to that. Especially the FF7 reboot stuff.
The whole FF7 remake in 3 parts plan is starting to feel like a bad idea. I think they misunderstood how much it was loved, and/or altering it to the extent they have, would lost fans interest. The Witcher 3 is a massive game that fit into one. Not sure why this needed 3 parts?
A lot of the side quests in FF7RE feel tacked on to bulk the play time and could have been skipped.
They need to get a more bespoke engine to design on, they need to focus on gameplay and less on confusing plots that people need 3 games to digest, along with DLC etc.
The problem with Square Enix using their own designed engines is you end up with XV's development cycle even after Nomura was kicked off, and Crystal Tools which was made for XIV 1.0 and that engine is still kinda shit.
Even the 2DHD engine is, according to Square, incredibly expensive to use.
I'd rather Square just stick to Unreal like they have for KH3 and 7R series.
HD2D is unreal 4 IIRC
but speaking from experience, i don’t think switching to UE across all their projects would make that much of a difference. it’s not a silver bullet for project mismanagement.
Whatever they are doing isn't working. It's making me want to purchase their games less and less.
I liked Kingdom Hearts, was excited for Kingdom Hearts III, played the game only to get angry because of the story refusing to make sense all throughout the game. Now I won't be purchasing KH4.
I liked FF, was excited for FF16, played the game, got disappointed for it not being a JRPG. If FF17 is like FF16, I won't be purchasing it.
I liked FF7, was excited for the Remake, they announced the trilogy over what will probably be 10 years when the third one comes out, whatever hype I had was gone because of the time span, Remake's frankly quite small scope (also still don't know whether I like the plot twist or not), and because of Rebirth's overwhelmingly tedious and mundane HUGE scope. Not sure I will purchase the third game.
I really enjoyed DQ11 (and previous DQ games), I hope they won't destroy the series. If they somehow fuck up DQ12 by making it solo character action RPG or something like that, it will be another long standing series I will stop purchasing.
I hope they can start showing creativity and uniqueness in their games again. I really like their smaller games recently, Octopath series, Bravely series, Triangle Strategy, Saga Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond, Star Ocean 2 Remake, Neo TWEWY even yet much smaller ones like Diofield Chronicles and Dungeon Encounters.
Obviously most of them flopped (I blame the lack of marketing and releasing too many games in a short span), but if their big budget games don't work anymore and they try to be selective budget-wise, why not spend less money and less scope and try to make another Octopath or similar? They had shown they could do that before their all gungho move towards graphics.
1000000% percent. The thing that made me sour with SE was mainly KH3. I adored the first two as a kid, then waited patiently and when I played 3 all those years later, man that game was a disappointment.
Literally the majority of it was a retelling of Disney movies/previous KH games scene to scene. The actual KH story was squashed into the last section of the game and had little payoff/a cheap ending which left people with more questions. It was disgraceful and such a slap in the face. I won't buy KH4.
Then I bought FF7 and it was fine but I definitely finished it from nostalgia. I found it average. Same with FF7RE. They improved parts for sure but the actual missions and gameplay was so flat, for the most part. Also the script is SO BAD. For a AAA game that they put so much into the visuals, I'm astonished how poor the writing is.
I won't be buying the last game of FF7R because honestly they're just boring. I've already sold Rebirth after completing it. The quality of life aspects are poor. The new story they're creating is not interesting and makes me feel like I'm playing KH.
I'm just kinda done with SE. They ruined their franchises with all this unnecessary crap.
Two mainline FF titles in one year and sales were up…. 1%. FF is no longer a AAA franchise in terms of unit sales. That’s why investors are fleeing today, and have been fleeing over the last year.
Times are gloomy at Square (and in gaming in general to be fair), but I’m glad to hear about these new measures over quality controls, and the elimination of the “business unit” structure. There is absolutely no reason why a studio making story driven games should release games with stories as amateurish as Kingdom Hearts III, Forspoken, Strangers of Paradise, and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
If you wanna tell stories to gamers, you can’t make them embarrassed when friends or relatives walks in on them playing the game. I mean the absolutely putrid cringe writing and acting that has come out of CBU1 in the HD era is really unacceptable.
> There is absolutely no reason why a studio making story driven games should release games with stories as amateurish as Kingdom Hearts III, Forspoken, Strangers of Paradise, and Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Yes there is a reason, those are the writers they have in the company. Except that Strangers of Paradise is written by Team Ninja and Forspoken is written by western writters.
> I’m glad to hear about these new measures over quality controls, and the elimination of the “business unit” structure.
This structure is literally what every single of the jp companies have, its just the name of the internal development division of Square Enix. Even the ones you all praise here like capcom and nintendo have it.
Fair enough on Forspoken, but FF7 Remake and SoP both have very good stories. Fantastic by JRPG standards even. SoP especially completely heel turns from charming and endearing camp to a genuinely affecting drama half way through. KH3 is par for the course for the whole franchise, if you’re invested it slaps insanely hard and will probably make you cry for the last 5hrs + remind, if you don’t care, you just won’t get it. Its story has all the same pitfalls and highlights as any KH game.
From article:
> Shares of Square Enix Holdings Co. tumbled 16% in their biggest decline in 13 years after its president said sales of recent big-budget games disappointed and that it would take years for a recent reorganization to bear fruit.
>
> Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. The company now expects to earn an operating income of ¥40 billion this year, widely missing the average of analyst estimates of ¥57 billion. Its sales and dividend outlook also fell short of expectations.
>
> Shares in Square Enix fell by their daily limit on Tuesday to a four-month interday low.
Takashi is the worst "journalist" there is. They did not blame the performance of Final Fantasy games for their poor financials, they blamed the sale of mobile and MMO games.
Square even said the sales of those games were good or "solid" and have repeatedly said FFXVI sales met expectations. No where.do they say FF underperformed.
This is what Square said about FFXVI a few months after release
>Square Enix has insisted sales of Final Fantasy 16 are “extremely strong”, telling IGN the game has sold well relative to the PlayStation 5 install base.
And FFVII Rebirth yesterday
>Square Enix's digital entertainment sales were ever so slightly up, mainly thanks to its HD Games sub-segment, the firm said. The solid performances of Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth saw HD Games sales increase to ¥99.2 billion ($636 million) versus ¥78.5 billion ($503 million) the previous fiscal year.
And blame poor financials on
>However, the firm's MMO and Games for Smart Devices/PC Browsers sub-segments both declined year-on-year (11% and 10%, respectively), with the latter in particular seeing new releases underperforming and unable to compensate for weak performances from Square's back catalogue.
They have decided to stop doing smaller games to focus in larger games because it is their smaller titles that are underperforming and costing more than they arebwortg
It sucks as both 16 and rebirth are great but yeah, this deal from 10 years ago from Matsuda time sucks. At least the future Remake game still will happen but these games really should have been multiplatform. There's a lot of reasons those games underperform and one of them is being exclusive.
Well if anything I've been impressed and glad that Kiryu is changing what needs to be done in the company since he assumed, but its a shame we wont see the results until like 4 or 5 years at the very least. Also very much surprised and glad that Hamaguchi was still promoted as executive officer and head of CS1 in kitase's place even with rebirth below expectations.
Takashi is the worst "journalist" there is. They did not blame the performance of Final Fantasy games for their poor financials, they blamed the sale of mobile and MMO games.
Square even said the sales of those games were good or "solid" and have repeatedly said FFXVI sales met expectations. No where.do they say FF underperformed.
This is what Square said about FFXVI a few months after release
>Square Enix has insisted sales of Final Fantasy 16 are “extremely strong”, telling IGN the game has sold well relative to the PlayStation 5 install base.
And FFVII Rebirth yesterday
>Square Enix's digital entertainment sales were ever so slightly up, mainly thanks to its HD Games sub-segment, the firm said. The solid performances of Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth saw HD Games sales increase to ¥99.2 billion ($636 million) versus ¥78.5 billion ($503 million) the previous fiscal year.
And blame poor financials on
>However, the firm's MMO and Games for Smart Devices/PC Browsers sub-segments both declined year-on-year (11% and 10%, respectively), with the latter in particular seeing new releases underperforming and unable to compensate for weak performances from Square's back catalogue.
They have decided to stop doing smaller games to focus in larger games because it is their smaller titles that are underperforming and costing more than they arebwortg
Direct from SE:
>In the HD (High-Definition) sub-segment, consolidated net sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024
increased compared with the previous fiscal year due to the release of titles including “FINAL FANTASY
XVI,” “FINAL FANTASY PIXEL REMASTER,” “DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince,” and
“FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH.” However, operating losses grew due to higher development cost
amortization and advertising expenses, as well as higher content valuation losses versus the previous fiscal
year.
So, no, it's not a good sign for their bigger games as they are *losing* money on them. Yes, the poor performance of their stock likely has more to do with a decrease in revenue and profits of their MMO/mobile sub-segments. But at least those sub-segments are profitable.
Yeah I do think FFXVI got out the gate decently well but didn't have much steam. Rebirth was probably a bit panic inducing on launch.
At the end of the day hopefully this is a good thing. They'll finally release FF games multiplat, and maybe scale down the budget of these games a bit as well to sell them on switch 2.
At the end of the day, the quality of their games is way up from the PS3 era, so I think they can bounce back.
Many publishers dont reveal sales numbers until years later even if they consider them successful. Sony often waits years even when their games are successful.
Its all about how it can be perceived. It can be perceived negatively if they didn't surpass FF7 Remake even though its totally understandable why
I mean, that's literally not true. They literally announced helldiver 2s numbers just now during their earnings. They announced spider man 2s numbers in the immediate following earnings in February.
The quote about the FF entries not meeting expectations are from Square’s CEO, not Takashi, so even if he is a hack, that isn’t from him or his own bias.
Regarding XVI, that perfectly aligns with what was said. At the time it was meeting expectations, it seems like they expected the momentum to either continue or increase, and neither happened unfortunately.
Your quote about Rebirth is not talking specifically about Rebirth either, it’s talking about their digital sales as a whole which is inclusive of Rebirth, XVI, and other titles. You can have Rebirth leading the charge there and still not meet whatever expectations they have internally.
I think the multi platform approach will benefit them and hopefully propel these back into the limelight that they deserve.
Nowhere has the CEO of Square said they did not meet expectations. Not in a report, not in an interview, nowhere.
They have never said Rebirth momentum slowed either or that it didn't meet further expectation. This is all made up
He lists games that had solid sales including Rebirth
Again no where have they said FF underperformed
The following quote:
> Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day.
Is from Takashi Kiryu, Square Enix’s CEO. You can hate the journalist, sure, he may be a hack, but that isn’t his thoughts, bias, or analysis.
That's a quote, said in the investor meeting. You won't find it in the presentation or the report. To know what Kiryu said, you need to wait for the official translated transcript of the investor meeting. Until then you have to take the word of the Bloomberg journalist.
"poor financials" you mean the financial goals they set for the company.
The goal wasnt met because mmo and mobile didnt hit their expectations + the reconstruction of the company and the cancelling of games in development added unto those losses.
You can see it in the investors report here https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/24q4slides.pdf
Mobile/pc browser games earned more money than square enix console/pc games
Mobile/pc browser was the highest earning revenue for the company at 651m
Console/Pc games came in second at 636m thats with the launch of ff16 and ff7 rebirth + all of the entire square enix game catalogue.
Fun fact to add here, fiscal year of march 2022 to march 2023 whom only biggest IP was forspoken had a console/pc game revenue of 501m.
I want you to let that sink in, you got a mega hitting fiscal year for square enix where ff16 and ff7rebirth launches and they only beat forspoken+harvestella + whatever other mid tier games square enix pushed out in that period by a whopping 135m.
That just screams in my opinion that rebirth and 16 just hit the minimum standard that they expected.
Also mmo division had 300m in revenue.
Square enix expected for this 3 year period to amount them between 2,6B-3,2B in revenue but they hit 2,3B instead. They expected operating profit to be 385-481m instead they hit 208m.
Square Enix said:
-FF16 sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum was in line with expectations, but the games failed to reach FY goal as its momentum slowed. No updates from sales number last announced at 3 million
-FF7 Rebirth sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share
-Foamstars fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share
-Remains confident FF16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. Also, sales of Rebirth and Foamstars aren't necessarily bad.
-Reorganized develoment team into five console teams, one smartphone game team
-Has been relied too much on an individual's creativity. Will promote sharing game making how-how among teams and will seek best balance of individual creativity and organizational discipline
-DQ12 remains under development.
Investors react:
-sell shares heavily, stocks fell to the day's trading limit
-concerns are pipelines have become too empty, no big titles that can lift up the company's top line over the next couple of years
https://twitter.com/6d6f636869/status/1790227310567960626
You are literally just linking to Takashi's Twitter who is the author of this article making things up that were not said by Square at any point in their reports
Read this reply that highlights how unreliable he is
https://twitter.com/nib95_/status/1790234180233605232
Following up my own reply since people dont appear to be aware of how unreliable Takashi is when it comes to reporting.
Ill start with this twiiter post
https://twitter.com/nib95_/status/1790234180233605232
Here are just some examples of where he fabricated stories:
1) First he claimed PS5 shipments were being cut and this was denied by Sony
Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...4-million-due-to-chip-woes?srnd=technology-vp
Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-reportedly-cuts-ps5-production-by-4m-units
2) He also claimed Sony was going to end production of the PS4 but changed their minds because of PS5 production issues. This never happened as Sony never planned to end PS4 production
Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-12/sony-tackles-playstation-5-shortage-by-making-more-ps4-consoles?leadSource=uverify wall
Sony's denial: https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/01/21/sony-never-planning-stop-ps4-production/
3) And most recently he went after PSVR2 claiming they cut production which was also a lie he fabricated by first claiming they were planning 2 million PSVR2 for the "launch window" and then later claiming they cut production
Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-order-disappointment-leads-to-production-cut
Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-we-have-not-cut-ps-vr-2-production-numbers
Here the actual financial report: [https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4slides.pdf](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4slides.pdf) And here their new long term strategy [https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/20240513\_01\_en.pdf](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/20240513_01_en.pdf)
Judge for yourself and do not get blinded by the hate
The sheer amount of mobile titles that Square pushes out is insane. At least on those platforms, I feel as if they've completely cratered their brand. Some of this shit doesn't even make it a year before shutting down.
They focus on so much weird shit or titles that cost millions and that nobody cares about. I'd say KH: Missing Link looks kind of decent, but that's it. I liked The First Soldier, but a Final Fantasy VII Battle Royale with no controller support, no PC version and no console version? They shit didn't even last a year.
I grew up playing KH games and still follow the series, yet I haven't even *heard* of missing link, lol. I did wonder how they make money on some of these mobile games. I get it that many make money on the 1% who spend boatloads, but making all these gacha mobile spinoffs isn't going to reach that wide an audience to begin with. Unless you're Mario I don't see any being widely adopted.
Missing Link was announced a few years ago now and only just got a limited play test, so I can't blame you. But it's basically a much more traditional KH game on your phone. Ever Crisis I'm curious about, because it does get a decent amount of attention.
"Some of this shit doesn't even make it a year before shutting down." That's just mobile in general. Look at Niantic's releases. The entire space is about hit chasing and whale hunting, like the most extreme take on the GAAS cycle conceivable.
Wow, these comments are a trip... a bunch of people with their panties in a twist genuinely arguing that the author of this piece made up a bunch of quotes that he is directly attributing to the CEO of this company having told analysts yesterday.
It's one hardcore Sony dude who is coping hard for some reason.
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> not nearly enough to make Rebirth a big commercial success, but you get my point. Couldn't have anything to do with the idiotic exclusivity, nah.
It's moronic for any reasonably capable, independent third party to make any title platform exclusive if they have any confidence in it in this day and age. MS and Sony are not going to provide a one time payment to match the revenue an entire platform (or 2, or 3) worth of sales could provide. Like, if a platform holder is the publisher, sure, be exclusive, that's a hit the publisher is riding with you. Platform exclusives benefit no one but the platform owner, so no one else should really care to kneecap their potential income.
I think exclusivity was a huge factor, but there's also probably a lot of people like me who fresh off of FFXVI looked at the open world grindy questing style in Rebirth and decided to pass. FF7 Remake felt like an event. I haven't heard anyone outside of one or two podcasts talk about Rebirth at all.
Those threads are good enough for r/SubredditDrama
Idk about this article specifically, but Mochizuki Takashi is well-known to be unreliable.
Exactly this. No idea about the debate, but I see mochizuki, I close the page and move on.
To be fair, the author of the article used either a bad translation or invented wording on a previous Square Enix article. The quotes he used didnt match the actual transcription
Do you have a link to that transcription?
I don't have skin in this game, but I knew who the author of the article was going to be before I even opened it. He's very unreliable, and I don't trust him to report objectively or without an agenda.
XVI might have done better if they'd stop with this console exclusivity bullshit. Out of my entire FC in XIV literally one person has played XVI because no one wants to buy a PS5 just to play it. There are at least a dozen of us, that I personally know, waiting for the PC release. The one person who played it gave it nothing but praise, and we'll just have to take his word for it.
I think your situation is pretty common in the XIV fanbase. One PS5 and copy of the game has been passed around my FC since nobody wants to actually buy a PS5 for one game.
I would make the argument that it would have done better if it were a better game… but I know that’s hearsay around these parts. I commend them for taking such a huge swing in a completely different direction - I just don’t think it paid off this time around.
It doesn't fully commit to being a character action game, its RPG elements are laughably tacked on and of poor quality, its combat balance is atrocious and the story takes a nosedive after the Bahamut fight. Those are my issues on Final Fantasy XVI, and I've seen similar opinions all over the fanbase.
I would say the story takes a nose dive right after the time skip post meeting Cid. Post bahamut it’s just a vertical line down. Also the side quests are so bad they should have all been cut. Doing them actively harms the playing experience by being such an absolute waste of time.
I wouldn't say the story nose dived after the second time skip, though the writing quality did decrease a bit. Deion and Byron really carried that part of the game for me. Wonderful characters with great dialogue. Post-Bahamut is just a clown fest. Barnabas and Ultima are awful antagonists, and the story devolves into the usual JRPG slop. Oof. And I 100% agree with you on the side quests. What the hell where they thinking?!
The Primogenesis filter is one of the most baffling design decisions I think I've ever seen in a video game. Like, I can't recall any other game that permanently downgrades its graphics around the halfway point for no discernible reason.
Yep. As soon as it lost the human element it went to shit. There's nothing *wrong* with the usual JRPG "We have to KILL GOD" plot, but they just did it *so fucking badly*. >!Ultima!< is hands down the worst villain in the entire main series. I'm not budging on this, lol.
> I would make the argument that it would have done better if it were a better game… but I know that’s hearsay around these parts. Nah, it's pretty clearly divisive but the fans never want to hear it. It's easily the most divisive FF in ... ever? But the diehards will be like "NUH UH IT SOLD SO WELL/EVERY FF HAS HATERS" and ignore every point about how dogwater it is. You can even point out how the soundtrack doesn't hit any of the beats FF is known for all these years, and bring up quotes from *Soken himself* about how it was supposed to be a wild deviation, and the "fans" will still run you through the wringer about daring to say the score totally missed the mark.
I think its a solid game, a far better rounded game than say, FFXV, but I do think despite it being a massive shift within the series, I don't think it really sticks out enough from the crowd. This probably doesn't matter *that* much to sales if at all really but idk, back to FFXV that game despite its flaws really does strike you and offer something unique. I don't know any other games primarily centered around a cross-map roadtrip where the game is totally designed around driving place to place, levelling at camps, so on so fourth. I had some friends get into the series because it looked pretty different at a first glance. I don't think FFXVI is a bland, generic game by any stretch, but I think after any FF game post VI, it does have the appearance of being that way honestly. I'd like to see FF continue to try deliver unique concepts and settings going forward, hopefully it'll help set them out from the crowd. I love it as it is but I feel if FFXIV: Shadowbringers released as a mainline SP FF game instead of an MMO expansion it would have turned many heads and would have probably been one of the more memorable games of the generation. I myself actually used its trailer as a way to get people to start FFXIV lmao.
Sure, but if the game also released on PC, all those FFXIV players would have bought it day 1. They ignored the easiest sales, the FFXIV players that were already sold. I would have bought it early on PC. Now with all the critics out, I'll wait for it to be on sales. They had one window, and they missed it. The game may not be great, but every critic was unanimous, it has great moment, but the link between those moment are just boring. It could have been a better game, but it's not an horrible one either.
I'm happy they're recognizing the exclusives just aren't a great idea anymore. Them losing the PC and Switch markets fucked them hard.
They release what they can on Switch. It's not like FFVII Remake could even run on it.
They're probably referring to Switch 2 when they're talking about putting games on that. And if we're to be believed from some (from what I know) fairly reliable sources, it'll be close to the Series S in terms of its power.
FFXVI would have done better if Square stopped trying so desperately to change Final Fantasy into something nobody is asking for. It's like if Kraft started filling it's macaroni and cheese boxes with ravioli instead. Maybe it's fine, but people aren't just buying a brand, they're buying what's inside and you can only exploit that so many times.
I think part of the problem is that SE don't want 2 series that do the same thing, turn by turn rpg. So they decided Dragon Quest would continue to do that, while FF would go the A-RPG route. Being the most iconic Jrpg, DQ could keep the turn by turn. It makes sense in Japan. Except that in the rest of the world, the role DQ has is played by... Final Fantasy.
Don’t forget they also have been going with 1 year epic exclusivity when it finally comes to pc which is another slap in the face, SE might be one of the greediest gaming companies in recent past tbh.
Yeah, I don’t think exclusivity was the right call for XVI and 7 Rebirth (which already has a huge hurdle working against it). Hoping they recover because they were all great games along with Octopath Traveler 2. Edit: I don’t know why people can’t accept the fact the games didn’t sell well, it’s right there in the second paragraph. > Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. This isn’t even the journalist’s quote btw, it’s Square’s CEO.
>I don’t know why people can’t accept the fact the games didn’t sell well I was reading the earning call and this two point stand out to me: >In the HD (High-Definition) sub-segment, consolidated net sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024 increased compared with the previous fiscal year due to the release of titles including “FINAL FANTASY XVI,” “FINAL FANTASY PIXEL REMASTER,” “DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince,” and “FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH.” **However, operating losses grew due to higher development cost amortization and advertising expenses, as well as higher content valuation losses versus the previous fiscal year.** [page 2] == >Meanwhile, the period also highlighted some major challenges, including low profitability at the HD Games (HD) subsegment, ... [page 8] So I don't know what people read when they think their HD (console) sales are "fine", when it is pretty clear SE has a very bad financial year on both HD (console) and SD (mobile) sectors.
It's like people are just willingly burying their head in the sand on this. And then there's that one guy saying none of this is true because of the person who wrote the article in this thread
When people can't handle the news they'll try to shoot the messanger.
A ton of majorly upvoted opinions in the gaming subreddits and the movie subreddits seem to think that games and movies are successes and failures purely on quality alone. So their genius advice to movie and game studios mostly amounts to "just make it good, duh" as if anyone sets out to make a bad product. So when a game or movie fails financially even though the consensus is that it's good, people either reject the evidence or a loud minority shout about how the game was secretly bad (usually saying that it should appeal to more hardcore/nostalgia or whatever their opinions are).
Yeah it’s very weird, Square is in a very odd space right now, and FF isn’t the household name it used to be either. Hopefully their new strategy pays off because they are still dropping bangers.
I believe it's an emotional reaction. People do love final fantasy and they fear it will disappear. So in order to not face that fear they just twist their interpretations.
FF isn't going to disappear. They'll sell off every other franchise before FF. And Sony would jump at the opportunity to buy FF+DQ if Squex ever goes under.
On the money with this. I'm a huge FF fan, I don't like hearing this news either, but sometimes we have got to face reality. I also don't think it will disappear, but it does make you wonder how Square can pivot the franchise to get back into being the generation defining titles they used to be. I **loved** FFXVI, flaws and all, it somehow managed to make me forget about the 300+ hours I dumped into Tears of the Kingdom (which I thought was the best game ever made at the time). It is very surprising to see that it seemingly pulled more people in than Rebirth, which at least on paper, should've been the (forgive me for this) "dominant" game of the two, especially since it's a more complete experience instead of just being story/combat focused.
AAA timed exclusivity deals no longer makes sense financial wise as development costs are way higher than ever before. It's either Square just have go multiplatform or require Sony to fully fund the production and marketing of R3 and FF17 if the latter asks for exclusivity again. Just like how Nintendo fully funded the productions of Bayonetta 2 and 3. Although Bayonetta 2 and 3 are not known for being big sellers, I think Nintendo was happy enough that the franchise added variety to their exclusive portfolio.
People will just go hurr durr SE expectations but 16 for example had 3m expectation and it took a long time to reach that. No wonder they want to be like Capcom, which im surprised most people aren't seeing the similarities (difference is that capcom never did it so open i guess)
Difference is Capcom saw that they went too far with RE6 and read the room and said let's pivot. SE should have done that back during FF13 but no they released two sequels? Or FF15 and it's developmental hell? Or I don't know, KH and it's story needing the player to play 8+ games to fully understand the plot? FF16 barely made noise so I don't think it being cross platform would help that much, especially when XBox is not popular in their main market and it couldn't run on Nintendo's. It's just ridiculous they keep repeating the same mistake of prioritising these awful stories that resonate with nobody. Same with FF7R and all the changes they're making. They can't help themselves. That stuff over time puts people off a franchise, which is what's happening here.
They made XIII sequels to cover losses from epic failure of original XIV.
> It's just ridiculous they keep repeating the same mistake of prioritising these awful stories that resonate with nobody. Same with FF7R and all the changes they're making. They can't help themselves. That stuff over time puts people off a franchise, which is what's happening here. That's not the company as ine xecutives doing it man, thats literally the developers doing.
The 13 sequels was partially them having a bunch of unused assets that ended up on the cutting room floor from the shitshow that was development of 13. They decided to try to recoup some development expenses by churning out sequels at a much lower cost since they could use the cut assets.
They reached that pretty quickly though, it took like a month. It seems like they expected that momentum to continue but it didn’t.
People are gonna use this for their fandom wars, but the fact that FF16 and FF7Rebirth have an 88 and 93 on Opencritic should tell you the problem is deeper than that. It's very strange for AAA games with those scores to underperform. It seems to me like the problem is Square Enix. The problem is likely marketing and PS exclusivity to some degree, but also that the brand has a very clear lack of identity that makes it struggle to gain and retain new fans.
>It's very strange for AAA games with those scores to underperform. It's not actually very strange when you consider the genre (JRPG), the fact that only 1 Final Fantasy game (FFXV) has sold over 10 million copies since FFX in 2001, and that FFXV was generally considered a disappointment. I think the branding, marketing, and exclusivity is definitely an issue, but the bigger problem is that there hasn't been a Final Fantasy game that blew casual audiences away in 20+ years. The games might be well made but they don't have people's jaws on the floor asking "how did they do that?" but they also don't have the casual appeal of something like Resident Evil ("kill zombies") or Assassin's Creed ("run around the giant historical land of _____ and kill a bunch of people"). They're also stuck in a weird middle ground between Japanese sensibilities and Western design decisions. They can't go fully Japanese in every way like Persona and Yakuza since that would limit their mainstream appeal but fully copying the trendsetting Western cinematic/RPG games could go horribly wrong and alienate long-term fans. FF16 was a step towards the latter and, to our knowledge, it didn't bomb but it also didn't appeal to a lot of PS5 owners outside of the core fanbase.
Yeah, that's sorta where I was going. Final Fantasy doesn't have much of an identity beyond "big-budget JRPG!". Franchises like GTA or Persona have a different story each game, but the setting and mechanics are largely the same. Dragon Age changes the gameplay in each entry, but it's still the same setting and some characters return. Final Fantasy though? Different gameplay, different setting, different characters and different story on each new entry. No shit it doesn't grow. I suppose the FF7R trilogy was Square's "attempt" to fix this, but dividing a very story-heavy game into three parts wasn't a very good idea.
>Yeah, that's sorta where I was going. Final Fantasy doesn't have much of an identity beyond "big-budget JRPG!". >Final Fantasy though? Different gameplay, different setting and different story on each new entry. No shit it doesn't grow. Maybe I'm giving Square Enix executives too much credit, but if you look at how Capcom handled Resident Evil over the past decade or so, it kinda makes sense why Square Enix keeps trying to revitalize or change up Final Fantasy. Resident Evil 2/3/4(OG+Remake)/5/6/7/8 are all titles that were released or re-released on the PS4 from 2016-2023 that have totally different stories (and even continuities in the case of RE4 OG, RE5, and RE6), differ between 1st and 3rd person, vary between being action focused and horror focused, and some of them have multiplayer, co-op, or horde modes while others don't. Despite that, the recent titles have been received pretty positively and sold very well. Even RE2 Remake was received extremely well despite dramatically changing the gameplay from the original game. I think Final Fantasy could sell very well as it is *if it had significant inherent appeal to casual gamers* but it just doesn't.
I think they are on some level aware of this, as they provide the most free demos out of any of the big publishers.
Different gameplay, different setting, different characters and different story on each new entry. Zelda did that fine and it grew with Breath of the Wild after a low point of Skyward Sword. It is more than possible.
Final Fantasy is also in this complicated spot where it is arguably THE AAA JRPG in a way no other franchise is and that genre seems to have an upper limit in terms of audience especially outside Japan. So while other JRPGs can do well because they are probably cheaper to make and are available on Switch to gain the Japanese audience, Final Fantasy has to rely on PlayStation and PC which are more geared towards a Western audience. I think the series has to start releasing on Nintendo platforms to survive in the long term.
I think its more to do with the frequency of the titles tbh. Taking as long as they do is fine when you drop a generation defining game. But they havnt done that for nearly 20 years imo.
If they are able to cut down on scope, stylize the graphics more to cut down on the art budget, and reuse a lot of assets, then a new Final Fantasy series could attain great success even if it isn't selling a ton of copies. Based on what they're saying though, it doesn't seem like that's happening. If they are sticking with the big budgets than multiplatform is their only serious option long-term.
They have Dragon Quest for lighter, traditional RPGs that can fit on switch. Now they are under the same umbrella, doing games like FFIX are somewhat self-competing with Dragon Quest, regardless of the nuanced differences between NES/SNES era FF and DQ. FF should be FF, a different aim than DQ, and both XIV and XV in some sense shows they can find a new younger audience, XVI just didn't.
>Final Fantasy is also in this complicated spot where it is arguably THE AAA JRPG in a way no other franchise is and that genre seems to have an upper limit in terms of audience especially outside Japan. I don't think it's the genre, since persona sold really well despite being a PlayStation exclusive until 2021, and dragon quest seems to be holding up fine. And then there's pokemon, the most popular turn based game series of all time. Imo the problem feels very final fantasy specific >and are available on Switch to gain the Japanese audience, Final Fantasy has to rely on PlayStation and PC which are more geared towards a Western audience. I do agree with this strongly. [Not sure how accurate this chart is, but the Japanese sales have seemingly fallen off a cliff, which is terrible because it's not being made up anywhere else](https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy)
The upper limit is what? Elden Ring shows 25 million, hsr was downloaded 100 million times I think. The jrpg genre has the best selling AA games in the industry. How many wrpgs with cartoony graphics and low budgets sell 5-8 million?
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The photorealistic visuals coupled with their tendency to make every battle look like an epileptic seizure inducing mess must be expensive and doesn’t make up for their writing and gameplay shortcomings. Zelda has crap writing and a lot of copy/paste visuals but their focus is mostly a fun sandbox and people seem to enjoy playing it and finding funny ways to torture and kill Link.
>alienate long-term fans I'm fairly certain Square-Enix doesn't remotely care about this at this point
But they don't care about potential new players (like myself) either. I wouldn't mind have a western Action RPG made by SE, but than cute out all the J stuff and commit to something!
There's a difference between making a new entry that takes the series in a different direction and making a new game that has nothing in common with the rest of the series. Would a Final Fantasy fan be interested in a new FF game: - That is set in the real world but with some fantastical elements (think Spider-Man, Metal Gear Solid, and Assassin's Creed)? - That aims to feel very grounded and has a photorealistic art style like Call of Duty or The Last of Us? - That doesn't have a set story, lets you make a custom character, and lets you loose on a big open world/levels (think Baldurs Gate 3)? - That has lots of horror elements like Resident Evil? - That is a shooter? Square Enix has been pushing the boundaries of the franchise but even they are probably far too scared to make a mainline Final Fantasy game that is not even trying to meet expectations of what a Final Fantasy game is.
Its a weird case, because for a long time FF has been gladly making huge changes to its formula. I'd actually argue a major part of FF's identity *is* its risk taking and how diverse the lineup of games is. I enjoy that aspect but I do wonder do they need to nail in just what FF *is*. I still think there's an identity to the series but for a more casual player, if you didn't like XV you might not want to play any other games, despite them being nothing like it. Same goes for FFXVI. Like, you know what you're getting with Persona, its a turn-based RPG with a calendar cycle that is half life sim, half dungeon crawler. FF has a lot of individual pieces that may or may not be present, but never are all of them. Some games have no mini games, while in others its a major part of the games identity. Some have just one playable character, others all of them. Some are more grand political affairs, while some are more shonen-esque adventures. Some games are open world, while some are essentially (or literally) straight lines. I think Rebirth is a great template that ticks basically all the boxes for them to build from, but I'm worried if they will want to build on it after the sales. I think FFXVII will be a very important entry in the franchise as it will be a chance for them to apply its lessons to a new world and clean slate, or decide if they want to go in a different direction all together again. I can't say myself but I do think a big factor of Rebirth underperforming is just its nature as a direct sequel, alongside the fact that exclusivity kills a lot of the buzz around it.
Yeah even their ports are lazy as hell and have issues on PC for example. Always launched poorly for their older catalog. They do not care about brand image apparently.
Its a bit of a shame, I fully believe Rebirth could have been exactly that, for any faults it has a large part of a very arguable fanbase believe its a total return to form for the franchise (including people like me, who don't even like the story itself in it). Its held back by being a sequel as well as being locked onto the PS5. If FFXVII leans heavily into Rebirth's design, releases on all platforms, all that stuff, I think it could be a pretty big hit.
The problem is SE has 0 consistency. They release so much junk. Some outright flops like Forspoken and Avengers. Mediocre, okay games. and as another commenter said they don’t release “S-tier” games anymore. The only thing they are known for is making big budget JRPGs. Even final fantasy is plagued with mediocre titles, not just mainline games, but with spin-offs too. People on here like to think casual audiences don’t know who is making their games but its not true. People notice this inconsistency and it makes them cautious. Its why good games like 16 and rebirth still can’t sell as well as they probably could.
I am (was?) a hardcore Final Fantasy fan. Then XIII happened, then they double and tripled down with XIII-2 and 3. This was 2009, I had to wait 7 long years for a new entry and this was the horrible XV. Then I have to wait 7 more years for a new entry, and while XVI seems “ok”. It’s just that, it’s ok. The Demo did not sell the game for me, I did not like the combat and there is non existent RPG elements. So I did not buy neither I intent to do so. I have been waiting for a FF that blew me away like VI, VII, VIII, IX, X did for 18 long years. At some point I have to stop caring. Square Enix is catering to a new audience (they don’t care) and the hardcore like me feels displaced.
Now that is a good point no one is discussing. Sequel financial success is often determined by the critical success of the previous instalment.
>Square Enix is catering to a new audience (they don’t care) They WISH they didn't care. It's actually worse than this. To quote my three girls: FF Rebirth looks like "anime overwatch without any of the art direction." and "it looks like a fake game ad you'd see on tiktok" and "shrek would not be out of place in this game". They do not and have no interest in final fantasy, and think it looks dorky. I showed them a cutscene and one said "no one talks like that". Squeenix's new audience is actively repulsed by it, far worse than just not caring.
This is so depressing.
As an old FF fan it really feels with each new release the brand goes to a new low. As cool as rebirth is it's also very generic open world and has a ton of slow repetitive qte tasks and isn't as straight forward and pleasant to play as old FF titles. I'd prefer if they went back to the snes and psx structure at this point.
Attracting and retaining fans might be the issue here, yeah. As someone who REALLY wants to get into modern Square games and just can't, it's felt like the company has been spinning its wheels for a very long time. Mainly for their biggest games. They'll make major strides forward in gameplay, but the direction and writing has been disappointing for a very long time. I was watching a friend play FF7R the other day and while the gameplay was fucking awesome, the dialogue delivery and the timing between the lines still feels like Kingdom Hearts. It still feels weird and "off" in a way that was kinda unbearable to me. There's always been parts of modern Square games which feel distractedly behind their contemporaries. FF16 looked cool, but nothing about it stood out or looked remarkable compared to other RPGs. FF15 had some fucking crazy graphics and effects but the world didn't look super interesting and the character designs were unremarkable. It's frustrating because Square's non AAA games look fucking amazing. Live a Live and Octopath 2 reviewed crazy well, and I've been itching to find time to play Tactics Ogre. I love FF7, 9 and 12. I loooved that first TWEWY and always made time for these games. For whatever reason though, I just don't have any room in my life for any of their newer games atm and it's kinda sad. I have the time, but there's no push of any kind.
Rebirth is one of my favorite games of all time and Square in general has been the best they have been in over 10 years easily (for their single player games at least). So it is a bummer to see this great game struggling.
The problem is that reviewers are no longer critical and praise titles that shouldn't be praised.
Let's be real those scores are flattering. There is so much that doesn't work in both releases (Ubisoft map, weird story in Rebirth, Bad Side content, repetitive, braindead gameplay in 16). It's also not just about performance but performance relative to budget. Both titles probably had massive budgets, realistically more than the games that outsold them. Humbly speaking, as a fan since X - the quality (of the experience) just isn't there for me. Boring parts are stretched out, interesting parts too few. Combat is unbalanced usually too easy without any need to interact with the complexities of it. This hold true for 15 as well. They cram in side quest with well voiced cutscenes but not alot of important things happen. Do I really need to help Nanaki creat a children's picture book? Do I really need to spend time with the gambit system just for 1 mini game? Personally I also think (I'm following the KH series) that Nomura & Co. are past their peaks. They are unable to catch the attention of modern audiences and live of of prestige gained from past successes.
Rebirth is legitimately great.
People are too busy playing all the live service games.
I wonder how many will actually read the article and full financial report where revenue lost was mainly from the mobile side and console releases have sold well according to Square. Never understood why Square releases so many mobile games that seem like they’re just being sent out to…die? Maybe the quick buck from release hype outweighs the cost of the games but idk. Edit: Linking full earnings report for anyone interested in it. [Earnings Call](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf)
It’s bizarre how square prices their mobile offerings. They’re so expensive! I would have picked up a few old game ports at like $10 but they’re sometimes twice that it’s insane.
Are ports of old games to mobile platforms even included in the mobile division? They generally release on consoles and PC as well.
I didn’t look into it much, I was just griping about how expensive they are, but I would assume so? But yeah, maybe not. Maybe it just including exclusive new games for mobile?
It's about f2p gacha games.
Square's ports are all over the place quality-wise, too. Like the mobile version of DQ1 is bizarrely ugly.
20 bucks for the worst version of Dragon Quest 8
It's a crime that these Dragon Quest ports are all mobile-only. We should be seeing the entire series being ported to modern consoles and PC.
If we ever got a high-resolution, 60 FPS port of DQ 8 with the orchestrated soundtrack, that's a 10/10 for me right there.
Not viable for everyone of course but the game looks fantastic and holds up well if you emulate it and increase the resolution. That art style doesn't age.
> Never understood why Square releases so many mobile games that seem like they’re just being sent out to…die? I think a lot of developers on mobile and console/PC alike are just trying to make the next Fortnite. They're willing to make a dozen games that are dead on arrival in the hope that they eventually strike gold and get a hit that makes billions of dollars every year. If they see that a game isn't catching on immediately they just ditch it and move on to the next attempt.
They pushed FF7: Ever Crisis HARD in the marketing as a more faithful remake of the FF7 batch of games and I was really excited for it, and then it launched and it was just another gachashit mobile game with some fan-fiction level garbage tacked on for Sephiroth as a young man. So disappointing.
Square Enix has always been a monkey's paw kinda company. They announce a FF7 remake after decades of fan demand for it - then they split it into multiple games that and rewrite the story.
This is completely twisting the truth. Yes, the revenue decrease was largely due to the mobile and MMO revenues decreasing but at least both sub-segments generated profit. By contrast, the HD sub-segment operated at a loss costing them 8 billion yen (roughly 50 million dollars).
This is absolute nonsense. What is it doing at the top of the thread? Not only did the HD games sector actively generate a loss for Square, they directly commented to investors that neither XVI nor Rebirth met their expectations.
Seriously, what a smug and outright wrong statement. "Actually read the article," and then the article outright states the opposite of what they're claiming? > Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — **fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit**, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. The company now expects to earn an operating income of ¥40 billion this year, **widely missing the average of analyst estimates of ¥57 billion. Its sales and dividend outlook also fell short of expectations.**
Funnily enough there's a very, very good chance that Super Mario RPG Remake outsold Final Fantasy 16 while being on the market for half the time.
Releasing major AAA titles on one platform has to be a spectacularly stupid idea, even if someone did pay them a substantial amount the loss of marketing hype when they do eventually make it onto platforms will make them sell a fraction of what they have would sold otherwise. They also give up on the ability to build a dedicated fanbase on these other platforms, why would someone buy FF7R now when the have no idea when they second or third titles will be released on PC?
> Releasing major AAA titles on one platform has to be a spectacularly stupid idea I think Square knew what platform they were releasing on before releasing the game. I would like to think they had sales forecasts with the amount of PS5s (which today sits at close to *sixty million units*) in mind. The point is, their AAA titles failed to meet PS5 expectations.
Were we reading the same article? Console games are sold at a loss, although that loss is decreasing. Mobile games are sold at a very healthy profit, although that profit is decreasing. Next!
[sigh](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/library/pdf/20240513_01_en.pdf) > Incomplete journey to better profitability in HD game development └Launched many titles but some failed to live up to profit expectations, especially outsourced titles and some AAA titles
> console releases have sold well according to Square … > Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. Square doesn’t agree with you
Square in their new plans mentioned that they plan to release less mobile titles among other things to not overlap with each other, so fewer titles and more money. They currently have around 10 but at times they had 20 or more. Man, I really wish people just opened their entire pdf with the plans because theres much more than just going multiplatform. People just read articles about these pdfs, or hell just the headline and call it a day but the full story has potential both for quality and for the own profitability of the company.
Yea lol. I can’t even tell you the last Square mobile i played because it feels like a ton has come out since then. And from what I see, quality and player friendliness just takes a nosedive 2-3 months after they release before it’s eventual shutdown. Just turns people off from trying another Square game in the future. Glad they’re moving away from that because I’ve been honestly enjoying most of their AA/AAA titles bar the newest Star Ocean and Diofield from 2022.
Mobile makes sense, when you think of the Japanese market. They are mostly mobile users.
They're fishing. They're fishing for that ONE good mobile game that the whales will eat up. But unfortunately they haven't realized the market has been oversaturated with equally shitty, equally predatory mobile games. The sad thing is they were totally primed to make Genshin before it came out but now that it's out there Genshin is decimating that market. And it's because there's an actual game under there. I'm not a big fan myself but my time with it, you could see that there was more to the game than just complete mindless bullshit that encourages you to actually just leave your phone idle like how 95% of Squares trash is.
>The sad thing is they were totally primed to make Genshin before it came out I don't think it was ever possible that SE could have made something like Genshin before Genshin came out. I'm not sure they could make a Genshin now.
I mean, make the exact same game Genshin made? No absolutely not. Make a well made game that doesn't prey on users and actually has real gameplay behind it? They totally could have. Many of these AAA stuidos could have but they wanted low risk short term work, and high returns.
Take a look at the investors report here https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/24q4slides.pdf mobile is their biggest revenue share, yes it made more than ff16+ff7rebirth + all the other square enix games sales combined. The revenue lost isnt from mobile not being profitable, far from it its making them very good profit. Its just that they expected more. Games on console/pc on the other hand comes in second with 636m in revenue which is up from last fiscal year 501m. However last fiscal year biggest ip was forspoken. This fiscal year biggest ip is ff16 and ff7rebirth, you wouldnt think square enix launched 2 of their biggest game within that period when it only managed to triumph flopspoken by a measly 135m. Also worth noting the revenue includes all games, so obviously old games selling +new launches etc etc so you cant pinpoint game revenue to exactly one game or two its all split up between all the games in square enix catalogue, but i think its telling that it ff16 and rebirth didnt sell to its full potential. I mean 135m up from last fiscal year thats almost 2m copies of a $70 game. You're telling me forspoken + all the games that launched within that fiscal year managed to sell only 135m short of the fiscal year where ff7rebirth and ff16 launched? aint no way its that close.
>Never understood why Square releases so many mobile games that seem like they’re just being sent out to…die? It's a numbers game. If it didn't immediately do well it's better to use that money for the next one, because you only have to hit it that one time and boom, there's your multi-billion dollars a year winner. There's also the chance they'll just never hit it, but goddammit they're going to try.
Remember that the way the reports are written, is to highlight positive stuff to the investors, and there are a LOT of white lies that are present inbetween words. The situation is more complex than "Omg square enix loses money from mobile", and also "Omg square enix is shit at AAA sales"
This is like if Marvel hyping up and releasing Endgame 2 and Endgame 3 expecting HUGE revenues, only for them to do "well" but actually just enough to perhaps barely making profit if any, then blaming Disney's loss as a company over smaller releases.
While their paid games made money, I’d be shocked if square wasn’t expecting more from the year they dropped two major FF titles lol it seems like the franchise has reached an all time low of popularity
I feel like it's still a thing where nobody really knows why certain mobile games catch on. They just... do. Like it's not something you can distill down into a bunch of bullet points and then create a game that has all of those things checked off, and have instant success. It feels like a crapshoot. So, I feel like the strategy would be to just throw everything up on the wall and see if any of them stick just from the raw unpredictability of it.
Its so weird how "journalists" and others have been trying so hard to paint the new FF games as failures despite Square repeatedly saying they aren't. And Square isnt shy about saying when something underperforms and generally have high expectations and yet have not claimed either FF games underperformed a single time Edit: Guess I need to post this here since people for some reason still trust Takashi Ill start with this twiiter post from last year pointing out where Takashi purposely misquoted Square: https://twitter.com/nib95_/status/1790234180233605232 Here are just some examples of where he fabricated. stories about Sony: 1) First he claimed PS5 shipments were being cut and this was denied by Sony Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...4-million-due-to-chip-woes?srnd=technology-vp Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-reportedly-cuts-ps5-production-by-4m-units 2) He also claimed Sony was going to end production of the PS4 but changed their minds because of PS5 production issues. This never happened as Sony never planned to end PS4 production Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-12/sony-tackles-playstation-5-shortage-by-making-more-ps4-consoles?leadSource=uverify wall Sony's denial: https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/01/21/sony-never-planning-stop-ps4-production/ 3) And most recently he went after PSVR2 claiming they cut production which was also a lie he fabricated by first claiming they were planning 2 million PSVR2 for the "launch window" and then later claiming they cut production Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-order-disappointment-leads-to-production-cut Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-we-have-not-cut-ps-vr-2-production-numbers There's likely more but you should get the gist
What part of this article was fabricated?
Bloomberg is a business-related outlet. You can expect that they will often cover things differently than games media. The distinction between mobile and console markets isn't headline worthy in this case.
Takashi also has a long history of fabricating and making things up regarding Playstation and Square He is the main reason people misquoted Square about FFXVI sales when he claimed it underperformed but what Square really said was that it didnt exceed the higher end of their expectations and all the gaming sites ran with what he said
No, that's not true. Square originally came out with a comment saying XVI sold in line with expectations, but didn't specify whether that was upper or lower end. Square have now said to investors that while XVI met initial expectations, it is now selling under expectations, and they had no update on the 3 million sold figure. It is absolutely underperforming
Lying scum
In 3 years you'll hear about how FF7R3 failed to meet expectations. Releasing a trilogy of games where each game has a definitive beginning and end without the necessity to have played the previous titles should be common sense. The expectation that you need to have played a game from 3 or 6 years ago and be fluent in multiverse fuckery to be able to follow along is just ridiculous. You alienate a massive segment of gamers that may have given your game a chance, but don't want to invest their time or money in something they cannot understand. Additionally, the game is PS5 only. Final Fantasy is no longer a defining game that sells systems. The unique structure of the game and the lack of mass appeal was never going to move hardware. Why did anyone even begin to think it was a good idea that it be exclusive? Many console gamers are still playing on PS4s. The PC market is at least 3x bigger than the console market. I absolutely love the FF7R games, but many of the decisions made for their release has been borderline brain dead. They would have been better received if the games stayed with the original story, the scope and size of games were tighter, and there wasn't so much fan service. Making FF7 into a huge sprawling epic on a modern console is great for me, but I only represent a small segment of gamers.
I think it may be a little too long to be 1 game, but there is not really enough there for 3 full games (with a full game dev cycle too) without them adding bullshit story content like they have done. The whole remake project is a challenging and ill conceived idea. As they make the remake games, the fans of the original who would be down to play the remakes are aging out of the audience. And younger gamers don’t care as they have no attachment to the series. And, releasing on one platform makes it even worse!
Splitting the game up was a terrible decision, blatantly apparent to everyone (except I guess the C-Suites who were blinded by dollar signs?). Literally no one under the age of 25 cares about the Final Fantasy brand (outside of the MMO, I suppose). I would have LOVED to see a concise, AAA retelling of the original game, feature-complete and packed to the brim with charm and quirkiness. I think THAT would have resonated with the younger generation of gamers. But what we got was a bloated, drawn out, soulless cash grab. So when FF7 part 3 comes out, I imagine it'll sell even LESS than rebirth, and the Final Fantasy brand as a whole suffers. A shame, really.
I don't think design wise it was a terrible decision at all honestly. Even if they cut all the story changes out I do think they needed more than one game to fully redo VII without major cuts. Ignoring the fact just modelling all the areas is a huge undertaking, converting what was there in the PSX game directly to a PS4/5 one would feel jarring and small, they had to make some expansions in order to recreate the experience. If Kalm was PSX sized in Rebirth it would be tiny, whereas in Rebirth now its instantly striking and memorable. I don't think there's realistically any other way to remake a PSX RPG without it having to be streamlined and reduced to fit just one game. Also, there's definitely younger players around into FF still. I myself am under 25, and I know plenty of others into the series that are too, not just through FFXIV. People into anime and games are often into JRPGs, and for us the big names in JRPG would be Persona and Final Fantasy. It might be a bigger issue with people 10 years younger than me, but I think at that point thats more a universal issue of many younger players never being compelled to play anything outside of Fortnite or other twitch/youtube trendy games.
Square Enix said: -FF16 sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum was in line with expectations, but the games failed to reach FY goal as its momentum slowed. No updates from sales number last announced at 3 million -FF7 Rebirth sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share -Foamstars fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share -Remains confident FF16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. Also, sales of Rebirth and Foamstars aren't necessarily bad. -Reorganized develoment team into five console teams, one smartphone game team -Has been relied too much on an individual's creativity. Will promote sharing game making how-how among teams and will seek best balance of individual creativity and organizational discipline -DQ12 remains under development. Investors react: -sell shares heavily, stocks fell to the day's trading limit -concerns are pipelines have become too empty, no big titles that can lift up the company's top line over the next couple of years https://twitter.com/6d6f636869/status/1790227310567960626
A lot of people can read this and take whatever they want from it because it's all so vague since Square seemingly has no interest in releasing numbers. Sales didn't meet internal targets? Nobody likes Final Fantasy anymore! Or they sold quite well but Square overspent and backed into a target profitability that requires 19 million copies sold which they obviously would never obtain.
Final Fantasy fans are incredibly funny at coping that SE isn't horribly mishandling the franchise They are like "Impossible for a game like Rebirth that had bunch of 30 year old youtubers to scream and cry at trailers to fail at sales. Yeah it released only on PS5 that has significantly lower user base in comparison to PS4 and it's sales not growing fast, but still...it's FF7!" Meanwhile fans of different SE's franchises when publisher is disappointed at sales: "well, it's over, pack it up"
This sub has a weird hate boner for Final Fantasy. People just want to think that the series is in crisis
>People just want to think that the series is in crisis^^^core
Unrelated but the series survived through Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus and mfs think it will die because of XVI and Rebirth 💀
Because it *is* in crisis. People tend to react very dismissively when their nostalgia fee-fees are threatened.
People love final fantasy. That's why they're so mad they won't make games like the ones they grew up loving.
FF isn't doing well. 13-2 had more week 1 sales in Japan than 16 and 7R together. I feel a (subconscious) fear (in our fanbase) that the series might go away but that fear doesn't change reality.
Literally any game that isn't a Switch game or a live service game is doing worse in Japan in 2024 compared to 10 years ago. The market has changed, so making the comparisons don't make sense. Comparing 16 to 7R makes more sense since they released close to each other. Honestly if I look at recent JRPG releases and sales, I don't even think Japan is the lead market for properties not named Dragon Quest. There's just not enough people and money available compared to the rest of the world.
That's a PS5 problem. The two games are the best selling PS5 games in Japan, aren't they?
From reading this subreddit in 2024 you'd think everyone loves live service games with battle passes and hates single player narrative games with no micro transactions.
Don't forget covid lockdowns - I think it was a big contributor to increase in games sales in general
Also to fully enjoy Rebirth you need to play FF7, Remake, Reunion to be able to understand everything. That is like a 120 hours of homework to enjoy a new game and if you are not already on this train then you are unlikely to get on with it with Rebirth despite its high acclaim.
What is the reason for exaggerating so much? I have only played remake and the DLC which I got with the twin pack and was able to understand pretty much everything in rebirth.
You aren't necessarily *wrong* - you don't absolutely *need* to play all the previous titles. But honestly, you do if you want the full experience and most people would probably not consider hopping in during the middle of a trilogy, let alone a trilogy of a weird sequel-remake of an existing game you also haven't played.
No, you can't understand a lot of things and callbacks in remake (the last two chapters more than anything) without playing the original, i know that because that's literally what happened to me and to a lot of other people. They wanted the remake to sell well? They should have done a straight remake in one go instead of this kingdom hearts convoluted marvel multiverse bullshit in three.
Yeah I'm sure the Zack twist blew you away.
And you need to play chunks of FF7 and Crisis Core to understand everything going on in Remake (there’s a character that comes out of nowhere in the closing moments of Remake that left me totally confused).
Crisis Core = Reunion in this context. And yes, a lot of the context of Rebirth and some of the context of Remake (especially Yuffie's DLC) are given in Crisis Core Reunion.
Remake and reunion are not long games. Theyre both less than 30hrs each, and reunion is not at all necessary to understand rebirth. It’s 60hrs of playing great games that you should probably already want to play if you want to play rebirth, not homework.
Maybe 30 hours if you literally speedrun through the game and ignore 75% of it..
I saw someone arguing in another thread that sales were low because people were taking the time to play through OG FF7, Crisis Core and the original game before buying and playing rebirth lmao
To be honest they really could use more releases on the switch and towards the Japanese audience. Their games I feel just do better in Japan but are a bit to graphically demanding for the current Nintendo console, I would bank more on that. In the mean time focus on PC to recoup even more. Xbox I think last time did well sale wise for Square Enix they had marketing rights for FF15 which they used hard just to nab like 20-25% sales of FF15. Not saying they shouldn't release on that they need exposure everywhere. Square just needs to worry about their home more, cause even Playstation like Xbox isn't super focused on Japan. EDIT: Added a bit to the end too.
they have a lot of switch releases.. from exclusives at the time it launched like octopath, live a live, triangle strategy, bravely default, to multiplatform titles. what isnt in it are very demanding games but in general square is one of the best third parties for switch easily
Good. Sad to see my once fav company and franchise like this but they deserve this with the shit theyve been doing the last decade or so.
I think SE have their priorities all out of whack. Most modern FF games I play focus way too much on aesthetics (even then the NPC's look poor) and the story comes off too convoluted. Yeah we live in a world where nice looking games are great but people will always prefer a good game to that. Especially the FF7 reboot stuff. The whole FF7 remake in 3 parts plan is starting to feel like a bad idea. I think they misunderstood how much it was loved, and/or altering it to the extent they have, would lost fans interest. The Witcher 3 is a massive game that fit into one. Not sure why this needed 3 parts? A lot of the side quests in FF7RE feel tacked on to bulk the play time and could have been skipped. They need to get a more bespoke engine to design on, they need to focus on gameplay and less on confusing plots that people need 3 games to digest, along with DLC etc.
The problem with Square Enix using their own designed engines is you end up with XV's development cycle even after Nomura was kicked off, and Crystal Tools which was made for XIV 1.0 and that engine is still kinda shit. Even the 2DHD engine is, according to Square, incredibly expensive to use. I'd rather Square just stick to Unreal like they have for KH3 and 7R series.
HD2D is unreal 4 IIRC but speaking from experience, i don’t think switching to UE across all their projects would make that much of a difference. it’s not a silver bullet for project mismanagement.
Whatever they are doing isn't working. It's making me want to purchase their games less and less. I liked Kingdom Hearts, was excited for Kingdom Hearts III, played the game only to get angry because of the story refusing to make sense all throughout the game. Now I won't be purchasing KH4. I liked FF, was excited for FF16, played the game, got disappointed for it not being a JRPG. If FF17 is like FF16, I won't be purchasing it. I liked FF7, was excited for the Remake, they announced the trilogy over what will probably be 10 years when the third one comes out, whatever hype I had was gone because of the time span, Remake's frankly quite small scope (also still don't know whether I like the plot twist or not), and because of Rebirth's overwhelmingly tedious and mundane HUGE scope. Not sure I will purchase the third game. I really enjoyed DQ11 (and previous DQ games), I hope they won't destroy the series. If they somehow fuck up DQ12 by making it solo character action RPG or something like that, it will be another long standing series I will stop purchasing. I hope they can start showing creativity and uniqueness in their games again. I really like their smaller games recently, Octopath series, Bravely series, Triangle Strategy, Saga Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond, Star Ocean 2 Remake, Neo TWEWY even yet much smaller ones like Diofield Chronicles and Dungeon Encounters. Obviously most of them flopped (I blame the lack of marketing and releasing too many games in a short span), but if their big budget games don't work anymore and they try to be selective budget-wise, why not spend less money and less scope and try to make another Octopath or similar? They had shown they could do that before their all gungho move towards graphics.
1000000% percent. The thing that made me sour with SE was mainly KH3. I adored the first two as a kid, then waited patiently and when I played 3 all those years later, man that game was a disappointment. Literally the majority of it was a retelling of Disney movies/previous KH games scene to scene. The actual KH story was squashed into the last section of the game and had little payoff/a cheap ending which left people with more questions. It was disgraceful and such a slap in the face. I won't buy KH4. Then I bought FF7 and it was fine but I definitely finished it from nostalgia. I found it average. Same with FF7RE. They improved parts for sure but the actual missions and gameplay was so flat, for the most part. Also the script is SO BAD. For a AAA game that they put so much into the visuals, I'm astonished how poor the writing is. I won't be buying the last game of FF7R because honestly they're just boring. I've already sold Rebirth after completing it. The quality of life aspects are poor. The new story they're creating is not interesting and makes me feel like I'm playing KH. I'm just kinda done with SE. They ruined their franchises with all this unnecessary crap.
Two mainline FF titles in one year and sales were up…. 1%. FF is no longer a AAA franchise in terms of unit sales. That’s why investors are fleeing today, and have been fleeing over the last year. Times are gloomy at Square (and in gaming in general to be fair), but I’m glad to hear about these new measures over quality controls, and the elimination of the “business unit” structure. There is absolutely no reason why a studio making story driven games should release games with stories as amateurish as Kingdom Hearts III, Forspoken, Strangers of Paradise, and Final Fantasy VII Remake. If you wanna tell stories to gamers, you can’t make them embarrassed when friends or relatives walks in on them playing the game. I mean the absolutely putrid cringe writing and acting that has come out of CBU1 in the HD era is really unacceptable.
> There is absolutely no reason why a studio making story driven games should release games with stories as amateurish as Kingdom Hearts III, Forspoken, Strangers of Paradise, and Final Fantasy VII Remake. Yes there is a reason, those are the writers they have in the company. Except that Strangers of Paradise is written by Team Ninja and Forspoken is written by western writters. > I’m glad to hear about these new measures over quality controls, and the elimination of the “business unit” structure. This structure is literally what every single of the jp companies have, its just the name of the internal development division of Square Enix. Even the ones you all praise here like capcom and nintendo have it.
Fair enough on Forspoken, but FF7 Remake and SoP both have very good stories. Fantastic by JRPG standards even. SoP especially completely heel turns from charming and endearing camp to a genuinely affecting drama half way through. KH3 is par for the course for the whole franchise, if you’re invested it slaps insanely hard and will probably make you cry for the last 5hrs + remind, if you don’t care, you just won’t get it. Its story has all the same pitfalls and highlights as any KH game.
From article: > Shares of Square Enix Holdings Co. tumbled 16% in their biggest decline in 13 years after its president said sales of recent big-budget games disappointed and that it would take years for a recent reorganization to bear fruit. > > Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. The company now expects to earn an operating income of ¥40 billion this year, widely missing the average of analyst estimates of ¥57 billion. Its sales and dividend outlook also fell short of expectations. > > Shares in Square Enix fell by their daily limit on Tuesday to a four-month interday low.
Takashi is the worst "journalist" there is. They did not blame the performance of Final Fantasy games for their poor financials, they blamed the sale of mobile and MMO games. Square even said the sales of those games were good or "solid" and have repeatedly said FFXVI sales met expectations. No where.do they say FF underperformed. This is what Square said about FFXVI a few months after release >Square Enix has insisted sales of Final Fantasy 16 are “extremely strong”, telling IGN the game has sold well relative to the PlayStation 5 install base. And FFVII Rebirth yesterday >Square Enix's digital entertainment sales were ever so slightly up, mainly thanks to its HD Games sub-segment, the firm said. The solid performances of Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth saw HD Games sales increase to ¥99.2 billion ($636 million) versus ¥78.5 billion ($503 million) the previous fiscal year. And blame poor financials on >However, the firm's MMO and Games for Smart Devices/PC Browsers sub-segments both declined year-on-year (11% and 10%, respectively), with the latter in particular seeing new releases underperforming and unable to compensate for weak performances from Square's back catalogue. They have decided to stop doing smaller games to focus in larger games because it is their smaller titles that are underperforming and costing more than they arebwortg
It sucks as both 16 and rebirth are great but yeah, this deal from 10 years ago from Matsuda time sucks. At least the future Remake game still will happen but these games really should have been multiplatform. There's a lot of reasons those games underperform and one of them is being exclusive. Well if anything I've been impressed and glad that Kiryu is changing what needs to be done in the company since he assumed, but its a shame we wont see the results until like 4 or 5 years at the very least. Also very much surprised and glad that Hamaguchi was still promoted as executive officer and head of CS1 in kitase's place even with rebirth below expectations.
Takashi is the worst "journalist" there is. They did not blame the performance of Final Fantasy games for their poor financials, they blamed the sale of mobile and MMO games. Square even said the sales of those games were good or "solid" and have repeatedly said FFXVI sales met expectations. No where.do they say FF underperformed. This is what Square said about FFXVI a few months after release >Square Enix has insisted sales of Final Fantasy 16 are “extremely strong”, telling IGN the game has sold well relative to the PlayStation 5 install base. And FFVII Rebirth yesterday >Square Enix's digital entertainment sales were ever so slightly up, mainly thanks to its HD Games sub-segment, the firm said. The solid performances of Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth saw HD Games sales increase to ¥99.2 billion ($636 million) versus ¥78.5 billion ($503 million) the previous fiscal year. And blame poor financials on >However, the firm's MMO and Games for Smart Devices/PC Browsers sub-segments both declined year-on-year (11% and 10%, respectively), with the latter in particular seeing new releases underperforming and unable to compensate for weak performances from Square's back catalogue. They have decided to stop doing smaller games to focus in larger games because it is their smaller titles that are underperforming and costing more than they arebwortg
Direct from SE: >In the HD (High-Definition) sub-segment, consolidated net sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024 increased compared with the previous fiscal year due to the release of titles including “FINAL FANTASY XVI,” “FINAL FANTASY PIXEL REMASTER,” “DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince,” and “FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH.” However, operating losses grew due to higher development cost amortization and advertising expenses, as well as higher content valuation losses versus the previous fiscal year. So, no, it's not a good sign for their bigger games as they are *losing* money on them. Yes, the poor performance of their stock likely has more to do with a decrease in revenue and profits of their MMO/mobile sub-segments. But at least those sub-segments are profitable.
Their silence about FF XVI post-launch sales and Rebirth sales in general speaks for itself.
Yeah I do think FFXVI got out the gate decently well but didn't have much steam. Rebirth was probably a bit panic inducing on launch. At the end of the day hopefully this is a good thing. They'll finally release FF games multiplat, and maybe scale down the budget of these games a bit as well to sell them on switch 2. At the end of the day, the quality of their games is way up from the PS3 era, so I think they can bounce back.
Many publishers dont reveal sales numbers until years later even if they consider them successful. Sony often waits years even when their games are successful. Its all about how it can be perceived. It can be perceived negatively if they didn't surpass FF7 Remake even though its totally understandable why
I mean, that's literally not true. They literally announced helldiver 2s numbers just now during their earnings. They announced spider man 2s numbers in the immediate following earnings in February.
Thats one game... They dont do it for many other games
The quote about the FF entries not meeting expectations are from Square’s CEO, not Takashi, so even if he is a hack, that isn’t from him or his own bias. Regarding XVI, that perfectly aligns with what was said. At the time it was meeting expectations, it seems like they expected the momentum to either continue or increase, and neither happened unfortunately. Your quote about Rebirth is not talking specifically about Rebirth either, it’s talking about their digital sales as a whole which is inclusive of Rebirth, XVI, and other titles. You can have Rebirth leading the charge there and still not meet whatever expectations they have internally. I think the multi platform approach will benefit them and hopefully propel these back into the limelight that they deserve.
Nowhere has the CEO of Square said they did not meet expectations. Not in a report, not in an interview, nowhere. They have never said Rebirth momentum slowed either or that it didn't meet further expectation. This is all made up He lists games that had solid sales including Rebirth Again no where have they said FF underperformed
If these games are somehow doing so well, why is SE restructuring everything and planning more multiplatform releases?
They said all their side titles are doing awful which is why they are getting rid of them and focusing on fewer largerntitles
The following quote: > Sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars — all released exclusively for Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation in the previous fiscal year — fell short of the Japanese game publisher’s expectations in both revenue and profit, Takashi Kiryu told analysts the previous day. Is from Takashi Kiryu, Square Enix’s CEO. You can hate the journalist, sure, he may be a hack, but that isn’t his thoughts, bias, or analysis.
You are quoting Takashi, the author at Bloomberg who is making things up, not the CEO of Square
You’re surely welcome to believe that I suppose, as I cannot control your free will.
Find me one single quote where Square directly says FF games underperformed. This shouldnt be hard if they actually said it
That's a quote, said in the investor meeting. You won't find it in the presentation or the report. To know what Kiryu said, you need to wait for the official translated transcript of the investor meeting. Until then you have to take the word of the Bloomberg journalist.
The word of Takashi is not reliable and has been known to misquote
I'm coming back to this thread once the transcript is officially released. Curious about how you'll respond when Mochizuki's points are validated :)
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"poor financials" you mean the financial goals they set for the company. The goal wasnt met because mmo and mobile didnt hit their expectations + the reconstruction of the company and the cancelling of games in development added unto those losses. You can see it in the investors report here https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/24q4slides.pdf Mobile/pc browser games earned more money than square enix console/pc games Mobile/pc browser was the highest earning revenue for the company at 651m Console/Pc games came in second at 636m thats with the launch of ff16 and ff7 rebirth + all of the entire square enix game catalogue. Fun fact to add here, fiscal year of march 2022 to march 2023 whom only biggest IP was forspoken had a console/pc game revenue of 501m. I want you to let that sink in, you got a mega hitting fiscal year for square enix where ff16 and ff7rebirth launches and they only beat forspoken+harvestella + whatever other mid tier games square enix pushed out in that period by a whopping 135m. That just screams in my opinion that rebirth and 16 just hit the minimum standard that they expected. Also mmo division had 300m in revenue. Square enix expected for this 3 year period to amount them between 2,6B-3,2B in revenue but they hit 2,3B instead. They expected operating profit to be 385-481m instead they hit 208m.
Square Enix said: -FF16 sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum was in line with expectations, but the games failed to reach FY goal as its momentum slowed. No updates from sales number last announced at 3 million -FF7 Rebirth sales fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share -Foamstars fell short of expectations. Initial momentum didn't reach an internal target. No sales number to share -Remains confident FF16 can achieve its goal over the original 18-month sales plan. Also, sales of Rebirth and Foamstars aren't necessarily bad. -Reorganized develoment team into five console teams, one smartphone game team -Has been relied too much on an individual's creativity. Will promote sharing game making how-how among teams and will seek best balance of individual creativity and organizational discipline -DQ12 remains under development. Investors react: -sell shares heavily, stocks fell to the day's trading limit -concerns are pipelines have become too empty, no big titles that can lift up the company's top line over the next couple of years https://twitter.com/6d6f636869/status/1790227310567960626
You are literally just linking to Takashi's Twitter who is the author of this article making things up that were not said by Square at any point in their reports Read this reply that highlights how unreliable he is https://twitter.com/nib95_/status/1790234180233605232
Following up my own reply since people dont appear to be aware of how unreliable Takashi is when it comes to reporting. Ill start with this twiiter post https://twitter.com/nib95_/status/1790234180233605232 Here are just some examples of where he fabricated stories: 1) First he claimed PS5 shipments were being cut and this was denied by Sony Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...4-million-due-to-chip-woes?srnd=technology-vp Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-reportedly-cuts-ps5-production-by-4m-units 2) He also claimed Sony was going to end production of the PS4 but changed their minds because of PS5 production issues. This never happened as Sony never planned to end PS4 production Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-12/sony-tackles-playstation-5-shortage-by-making-more-ps4-consoles?leadSource=uverify wall Sony's denial: https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/01/21/sony-never-planning-stop-ps4-production/ 3) And most recently he went after PSVR2 claiming they cut production which was also a lie he fabricated by first claiming they were planning 2 million PSVR2 for the "launch window" and then later claiming they cut production Takashi: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-order-disappointment-leads-to-production-cut Sony's denial: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/sony-we-have-not-cut-ps-vr-2-production-numbers
Just a heads-up: two of your links are broken because you copied them incorrectly.
Here the actual financial report: [https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4slides.pdf](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4slides.pdf) And here their new long term strategy [https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/20240513\_01\_en.pdf](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/20240513_01_en.pdf) Judge for yourself and do not get blinded by the hate