Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - What in The Fresh Hell is Going On With Square-Enix?
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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SE says they cannot afford to make single player flops, then they revive Front Mission 2089 and botch it by not only making it F2P in a prequel series that was never free to play on phones nor the DS, but giving what is the third game in what is now the prequel trilogy a worldwide release. What a mismanaged company overall.
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pikabot
Posts: 171 |
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It really feels like the only people at Squeenix who remember how to make a video game are all concentrated in Creative Business Unit 3.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4633 Location: New York |
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I love that this all happened the same week that the NFT market very publicly cratered. Best laid plans and all that.
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1254 |
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It's interesting to see how Square-Enix operates these days, despite the successes of games like FF XIV, FFVIIR, NieR and KH 3 they had a lot of failures like NEO TWEWY, Chocobo Racing GP, Strangers of Paradise and Babylon's Fall. It seems like they are concentrating primarily in AAA titiles. Final Fantasy XVI is rumored to come out this year, but I don't know if is going to meet their expectations especially considering that despite the record breaking sales of the PS5 the console is still facing shortages and that in Japan the PS5 is not doing as well as their other consoles, it could be a repeat of FFXIII, where the game sold millions but it was considered a financial dissapointment. On the other, it seems like DQXII still has a long time in development, perhaps this time SE will try to push the game more to the west than previous titles, despite its legacy DQ never had a huge impact in the West, the Hero's reception in Smash was kind of telling, DQXI was overshadowed by other RPGs like that came around the same time like Persona 5 and NieR Automata, so aside from the Japanese fans and some harcore fans in the West it didn't had that much of an impact. SE must give DQXII a lot of marketing so that it can be the equivalent to what FFVII did for the Final Fantasy series.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6364 |
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Wasn’t the original version of FFXIV a game with broad appeal and even XV? |
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Dark Mac
Posts: 323 |
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Surprised you didn't comment on the positives of this sale for Square Enix. Selling off Eidos means they'll be able to concentrate more on managing/marketing their own games, so this should be a perk for their Japanese studios as well. Also, I wouldn't really say they're focusing on AAA output, considering how many small games they're putting out. You didn't even mention Triangle strategy, which came out a bit over a month ago and seems to be a big success.
The other interesting part is that they probably shopped Eidos around, but no one was willing to pay more than $300M for it. It's interesting that nobody thinks Eidos is worth much. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 500 |
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I hate that I think this is a good thing. I still remember when I thought Squaresoft (at the time,) could do no wrong by me. SNES-PS1 eras, primarily. But those days have been gone for quite a bit, and they never seem to be sure how to set realistic expectations for a lot of their projects, doubly true for their Western-studio developed ones.
Hopefully the money from the sale will be re-allocated to things they do well. Pessimistically...it'll probably go into the development of some blockchain/nft project. May gamer gods help us all. |
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Theozilla
 Posts: 150 Location: Oakland, California |
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I largely agree I think SE separating from its western studios is more likely to be a net positive for both parties than not, especially if the consensus is that two parties never really meshed well.
Since the actual major works SE we know that SE is tangibly working on seem to be in good hands and have good development going on largely, the question of as to whether or not I am worried about SE's current direction I think that largely depends on if the comments the executives have been making about stuff like NFTs, blockchains, play-to-earn, live-service games, etc. are actually sincere and not just lip-service type of talk. |
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FunkyDude88
 Posts: 108 |
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Heidi might be interested to know Naoki Yoshida has expressed interest and support for NFTs. He even called out the English Twitch chat during a live-letter for complaining about them and called them ignorant on the subject.
The company is barely profitable if you go off the earning reports. Crystal Dynamics had a profit margin of 3.6% while Eidos Montreal had a profit margin of 0.65% in 2021. Lara Croft has not been an industry icon since the 90s and Crystal Dynamics is even on record stating they hate classic Lara and think she's a much better character now. Whatever status these characters companies had in the 90s is no longer relevant. It's weird to see people are trying to frame this like Square-Enix is selling off a priceless heirloom for pocket change to fuel some drug habit rather than them selling a beat up old car in their driveway for a few hundred bucks to get rid of it after years of collecting rust and doing nothing. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2700 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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And, to add one more minor but nice thing, as long as Square-Enix allows Akitoshi Kawazu (who at this point is pretty much the sole "OG" Square staff member, i.e. he dates back to pre-Final Fantasy, left in the company) to occasionally produce the games that he wants to produce, they're doing at least two things right. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1606 |
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The problem is that SE just labels nearly any single player game a "flop" these days, even if it sells tens of millions of copies, because they want every game to sell huge AND generate constant live service revenue on top of that. But that's simply not realistic, and it's not what most people play single player games for. Basically, FF14 has made them greedy and they can't seem to accept that not every product they release is going to be a money machine the way that game is. Last edited by Wyvern on Fri May 06, 2022 2:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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UpToFourPlayers
Posts: 6 |
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What's interesting to me is they didn't sell off all of their western-focused studios as they still are holding onto the Life is Strange IP. I don't know if that's good or bad really, just interesting as a fan of the series.
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2359 |
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Truth be told, I'm surprised Eidos wasn't folded a long time ago. By the time SqEx bought them the whole company was on shaky ground and most of their IPs were on ice. Hopefully they can bring back some old stuff but I'm not holding my breath.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4671 |
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The seemingly cheap price starts to make more sense when you see things like how Crystal Dynamics barely turned a profit, despite the recent Tomb Raider games selling well. Embracer Group is probably savvy enough at this point to not overvalue things like Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. One thing that seems to be a big stumbling point for purchases involving existing IP is the buyer overestimates the sales that the name gets them, pays too much for it, and then wants unrealistic sales to make it profitable right way.
The stuff about SE wanting to use that money to invest in stuff like NFTs isn't encouraging, but it's also possible that it sounded better to tell investors that, as opposed to saying that SE wanted to dump 1,100 employees that it didn't care to manage anymore. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6364 |
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You’re basing this off of what exactly? them having other things to look over is not why the FFXIII stuff was messy (and people were comparing about FF in general long before 2009), why Kingdom Hearts 3 took so long to come out, nor why you have titles that are still waiting on newer entries like Musashi, Vagrant Story, or Bushido Blade or why some games were never localized outside of Japan like the 3DS version of Dragonquest XI.
Probably be mentioned more if it weren’t a switch exclusive or had more fanfare surrounding it. |
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