Square Enix Expects Loss Of $140 Million

Not sure why is that a bad thing tbh. If I want to make a GoT style story, the first thing I would do is watch real GoT and analyze what worked and what doesn't, then picked what worked and add things that I wanted in it and make my version of GoT.

Of course in the end it is going to feel slightly "wrong" to real Europeans, because it is Japanese pov of what an European fantasy is. But thats how creativity works most of the time: you see cool things or idea, got inspired and make your own version of it.


It is understandable, but "SE doesn't understand us British" was not the complaint, "SE was ashamed of their own culture" was the complaint from RA on this matter.

The former is valid and reasonable criticism, the latter is not. Why do people have to stuck making at "Japanese style games" if they are Japanese?

I don't like how people say creators from certain part of the world are only allowed to make games of their own culture. That is limiting creativity. It is better to tell creators to work harder to understand different cultures beyond surface level instead.

As someone who doesn't want to play the same ***over and over again, after 30 years of consuming large amount of anime and jrpg, I personally enjoyed seeing the new ideas in all of titles above. It is variety.

Why does every rpg need female playing characters? 4 bro is different and refreshing. It is different kind of team dynamic from a group with different genders. I don't like the empty dead open world in ff15, but 4 Bros worked perfectly fine in my eyes. I think ff15 would be so much better if it is a more linear tight adventure that focuses on story.

I also enjoyed seeing different kind of characters in forespoken etc.

I don't support the padding in FF7r and I really think the story pacing and structure is weakened by making 1 story into 3 big games. But I have np with story change, it gives the story extra layer of suspense for people who played the OG. Us old folks who played the OG wanted something new to talk about, and story change provided that.

Many complaints above are really just the burden of people expecting what FF should be, not criticism about quality. (Except the padding part)


Define fanbase...

Because I am clearly a FF fan, and yet what I like to see in FF is very different from you.

Your opinion doesn't represent "FF fanbase".

FF16 was a perfect retelling of Game of Thrones.

It spent the majority of the first half setting up the lore between the various nations, and then made it completely *** irrelevant at the end by ignoring it all for a nebulous big bad whose motivations are not fully explained, thus retroactively ruining all the build up in the first half.

I hope Yoshi never *** touches an FF game again.

Just get back to basics, which is what every big publisher seems to forget when chasing ever larger customer bases. Games are about experiences, what experiences does your customer base want and what experiences can you delivery high quality on? Each product should focus on a handful of experiences and maximize quality on each of them instead of trying to delivery a wide array of mediocre experiences.

Ah so the thing a CEO can't do without being replaced.

I think there is a correlation between what Disney did with Star Wars and what Square Enix has done with their brand.

Disney lowered the quality of the core products, pandered to a mass audience who don't really care about star wars to the determent of the enjoyment of those that do and they flooded the market to the point it's not special anymore.

When you used to see a Star Wars logo it was a big deal and people took notice and were excited, now it's lolstarwars and people barely even care or notice. o yet more storewors pap.

Mickey mouse ruined the brand completely.

Square Enix have done a lot of damage to their brand too. They need to rebuild that brand and make it prestigious again, that means trying to make great games they know their fans like as the primary goal and not trying to impress investors, if you make fans happy they will shill the games to others and grow the audience. The problem is that's going to mean they spend way more on making the game than they can make back from sales, and it's going to take a strong CEO to make investors accept that short term loss.

Also if they wanted to make lots of AA games, they should have made another brand for that exclusively. SE branding and logo should always be for the AAA titles they knew were going to be good and loved. They have lowered the prestige of the brand, which is why I think they are taking the action talked about in the article in the first post.

I mean they can, but they have to effectively be trusted by the major investors to take the short term loss to farm the long term win.

I am pretty sure they all know that, lol. Who doesn't, really?

Hence why I said opinions like "I don't like game of thrones" or "SE is stupid, CEO bad" doesn't help at all.

The kind of opinion that is useful on improving the execution is something closer to "too much padding in FF7r, please reduce side quests/Mini games or decrease mini game difficulty". That is a way more reasonable and concrete criticism than vague criticism like "SE is chasing money and ignoring the fans".

No worries, they will put FF11 at 80+ Euros/ month to get more butter in their rotten spinach.

S.E run by olds minds with no future !

They deserve everything … Wake up Japan, there is a World around you, the Shogun time is over long time ago.

Hmm I think I need to point something out, SquareEnix is a Japanese owned company and is largely owned by a handful of people (one family specifically).

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/stock/shareholder.html

Yasuhiro Fukushima 19.73%
The Master Trust Bank of Japan, Ltd. (Trust Account) 15.62%
Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. (Trust Account) 6.02%
Fukushima Planning Co., Ltd. 5.64%
Michiko Fukushima 1.03

That is almost half the company owned by the same family with 25% being directly owned by one dude, the founder of Enix Fukushima. The rest is in a Trust for his family that he is the executor of. This guy was the Chairman on the Board of Directors for a very long time and is now listed as "honorary chairman".

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/company/officer.html

The last decade of crap from SE is direct result of restructuring they did back in 2013 where they brought in western leadership Phil Rogers to increase sales of "western games". SE really wanted to grow their western franchise sales with all the crap that has since happened. Most of their sales are in Japan and they really wanted to branch out more, the result is the "all things lightning" and watered down Devil May Cry stuff we've got since.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/SQUARE-ENIX-HOLDINGS-CO-L-6494078/company/

SE is not a western investor company, they are a Japanese family owned company that made some product placement mistakes in the last decade.

I failed to see how lightning and DMC battle system has anything to do with Western audience, lol. Both are fairly Japanese style decisions. I also don't see why those are a "mistakes".

forspoken is what I would call more of a westernized game, since the writers are westerners. To my knowledge DMC battle system and lightning is not designed by Westerners....

You people just keep bashing on random things that you don't like, without being pinpoint exactly what the mistake is....

The mistake is boomeritis. Keep letting 80 year olds make things they think 20 year olds want instead of making things 40 year olds actually want. Their actual audience.

And chasing the tail of trends. Taking 10 years to bake some left over turds people stopped wanting 5 years ago.

The company's internal structure is all wrong. Producers have complete control over a whole project without having any idea how the process works. They just barge in and tell everyone to scrap months of work so they can retool their whole engine so they can make a side character's hair flow more realistically.

We can only see the result of bad PM from the final product. I do agree that FF15 had management problems. This game was stuck in development hell for 10 years as Nomura keep changing things and get nothing done - until he was kicked out from that position and moved to FF7r team.

I think the management problems improved in FF16 though, that game was done on time(half an year before final release even), bug free, and the features were delivered exactly what was advertised.

From that perspective, using Yoshi P for FF16 isn't that much of a mistake because at least this dude gets ***done on time, which was what SE needed at that time. He may not be the most creative producer ever but he is really good at PM.

Maybe moving forward it is better to find another producer with a different strength, but Yoshi-P's management ability was needed after FF15 disaster IMO.


Welcome to games, when people scrap months if not years of work for perfection. Sometimes it leads to good results then people praise it, call it a good example of good game takes time. Sometimes it leads to bad results then people call it a mistake.

Except, it is hard to tell if this is a good decision or a bad one until the decisions is made.

DMC definitely has a western audience and was notable because Capcom made both major markets happy at the same time. Presumably that's the goal of them continuing to try new things with FF flagship titles.

I'm not even going to pretend to understand any FF past XII. I haven't enjoyed them or in XVI case, did not buy a PS5 for it. Their plots used to be more fun and FANTASY that I enjoyed as escapism. 4 dudes in a car and post apocalypse scenarios that feel more like satire isn't the whimsy I'm looking for. FFXIV does nothing for me when I've played and still enjoy FFXI.

"I'm old, they aren't catering to me!" is what some people are saying. It sucks to feel like you're not important enough as a demographic that they aren't making games aimed at you anymore AND they aren't making things that are particularly well received at the same time. Selfish mentality makes you think that if it was going to suck anyways, why not at least try to give me what I wanted out of the equation? Crystal ball hindsight and whatnot.

I actually agree that they should be trying new things because change is necessary to avoid stagnation. They just should be doing a much better job at it. And as you've pointed out, that's really not criticism, it's commentary. A dissociated fan base can't really give useful criticism because they aren't engaging with the products to begin with when the products aren't actually aimed at them. I don't think that will change your mind, I just figured I'd share mine.

I personally don't care what they do with FF main titles anymore. I'll probably be super pissed if they mess up the new Mana game. That's where my interests clearly align.

FFXII is the last game I will play too.

Rather than play XIII/XIV/XV/XVI I've played Octopath Traveller, Triangle Strategy, BoTW+ToTK, Bravely Default (all 4 including the prequel), etc.

They are living in a fake world where Square Enix is struggling to make ends meet and all of their games are bad. When here in the real world, FF16 and FF7 Rebirth both succeeded and we are now two months away from Dawntrail. It's an expansion year for FF14. Servers are full, there is a queue for paid subs to get in during peak traffic times. That's a lot of sub fees going into Square's coffers. The biggest beneficiary of the Activision Blizzard scandal was Square Enix.

There aren't any concerns about the company's future as long as 14 continues to thrive the way it is. There hasn't been any damage to the brand. They can cancel a couple of unannounced games that no one cares about because no one even knows what got cancelled. They can have a couple of low profile busts and not blink an eye from all the money 14 is making them.

Visions of Mana is coming out this year. First Mana game in over ten years. Why is SE deciding to make this game now? Because the profits of 14 are paying for it. We got Star Ocean: Divine Force a few years back. After we thought the franchise was dead after the disaster of Integrity and Faithlessness (WHAT KIND OF NAME IS THAT). Why did we get this game? Cuz 14 paid for it.

it must be awkward to like one game so much and criticize everything else they do so much that you can't enjoy anything else.

We're gonna build a wall, and 14 is gonna pay for it

Especially when you don't even play the games.

I was pointing out those sets of titles because of how popular they were in both Japan and North America / Europe. It's why I provided the link to SE's revenue by region, to show how much is centered on Japan and why they would want to attempt to expand in markets many times the size of their entire nation. The reasoning for their actions is solid reasoning.


They failed in the execution. It's an age old trap, trying to cram too many things together causes them all to be mediocre. Instead they needed to focus on only a few aspects of each product, but make those aspects amazing. I use DMC as a good example of this, DMC's story is .. not exactly something it's praised on. It's gameplay and experience is amazing though, and it was successful because of it's gameplay. Older Final Fantasies didn't exactly have great gameplay, but the story, atmosphere and immersion was awesome so we loved it for that.

to this day, blizzard still has no *** idea who ff14 is.

there is no dethroning WoW. recent sub numbers that got released indicate that even at ff14s peak and WoW in it's trough, it wasn't even close. in fact WoW still D O U B L E D ff14

other than that, go off king. i love delusion

Never said Blizzard cared about 14. SE didn't care about dethroning WoW, they just happily accepted all the subs from the WoW people that were going on strike. Even if those people eventually all went back, SE pocketed their money without having to do a single thing to earn it other than exist. Was funny though.

Congratulations

An exaggeration. Blizzard very well knows who their competition is, and even tries to aim release dates around said competition's release dates.

WoW has tenure and no failed state. It has decades of addiction and investment going in for a lot of its players (and its sub counts).

And even with that, though, they aren't above trying out other MMOs. Chiefly FFXIV.

Most of FFXIV's playerbase is from WoW and concurrently plays or goes back to WoW. You go to the FFXIV official forum, and it's a bunch of folks talking about how FFXIV doesn't need to turn into WoW or needs to address issues that are making it progress down similar paths as WoW. While all the rest beg for it to adopt systems from WoW directly, like Mythic+ dungeons and other ***.

SE never really releases official sub numbers either, so finding out that number is pretty hard. It's lower than WoW's, sure, but none of us actually know if WoW is doubling it. It could be tripling it. SE is not transparent with subscriber counts. They like to talk in, "active player count" which XIV has around 54 million. But that's a vague metric that WoW also takes advantage of, and WoW claims to have something like 180 million or some ***.

WoW's supremacy doesn't change the fact that XIV brings in money hand over fist, especially since it milks its players with its whale baiting cosmetics cash shop. Fifth biggest MMO is still billions of dollars (or however big XIV is now, it's somewhere behind Runescape still I think? idk).

The major difference between the two is that WoW got too big to fail. No scandal or boycotts of Blizzard can get enough traction to fell that behemoth. They are good for the competition though.

FFXIV on the other hand could very well turn into a ghost town if it had a similar scandal. The majority of its community are non-committal folks who unsubscribe (or at least don't login) between major patches, as evidenced by how there are never really queues except for on major patch weeks. Never mind that SE's corporate branch is not intelligent(never has been) and they are trying to shave down its development team to makes it operational cost low low low (literally believing modern players will lap up ***continuously no matter what and be content with less etc. i.e. that XIV's modern playerbase will be like XI's dedicated autists).

You're right and it's a massive safety net they have enjoyed for a long time. They can pretty much do anything they want, fail as much as they want, the stock price can nosedive and never be at risk of being bought out by another company in this situation. There is no amount of money Microsoft could give to him to get his shares.

However the seem to be worried still, he is nearly 80 afterall and when he passes there is going to be chaos no doubt.

Low stock price at a critical point = high chance of mega corp buying out a controlling amount of shares from whoever inherits them.

Don't worry. If there is a mega corp buying SE, I think that mega Corp is far more likely to be Sony than MS :p.

Japanese people really don't like to sell their business to foreigners, unless they have very close relationship from the past. MS doesn't have such relationship and they are not Japanese. The chance of MS getting SE is quite low atm.

based