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Post by Lizuka #BLM on Sept 15, 2023 0:47:54 GMT -5
www.ign.com/articles/square-enix-loses-nearly-2-billion-in-value-since-final-fantasy-16Long and short, shares have plummeted 30% since June - equivalent to almost $2 billion in value - because the company was banking on Final Fantasy 16 singlehandedly saving them from a bunch of money pits in recent years and it ended up badly underperforming. For his part the CEO Takashi Kiryu has indicated that the plan to combat this is to make less smaller scale, low budget games and focus on big projects, because apparently Square constantly chasing trends with NFTs and live service games and letting their giant series turn into decade long death spirals of development totally aren't what's causing them to hemorrhage money, Paranormasight and Live A Live are. I guess.
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Chiral
Salacious Crumb
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Post by Chiral on Sept 15, 2023 1:00:09 GMT -5
That IGN headline is so clickbaity lmao as if the entirety of SE's woes are FF16's fault and not the years and years of boneheaded business moves catching up to SE.
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Post by The Heartbreak TWERK on Sept 15, 2023 1:15:28 GMT -5
SE's wounds are self-inflicted, their tentpoles come out so slowly.
There's giving a team time to develop a sequel, and then there's actively not working on a popular property for no reason.
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Post by Lizuka #BLM on Sept 15, 2023 2:17:13 GMT -5
That IGN headline is so clickbaity lmao as if the entirety of SE's woes are FF16's fault and not the years and years of boneheaded business moves catching up to SE. Honestly I wanted to link to the Bloomberg article but it pesters you to sign up if you click on it so decided to go with IGN.
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Post by dirtyoldman on Sept 15, 2023 3:10:51 GMT -5
How the mighty have fallen. At one point I thought they could do no wrong.
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Fundertaker
Vegeta
Hideo Kojima should direct every ending ever!
Posts: 9,155
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Post by Fundertaker on Sept 15, 2023 3:28:19 GMT -5
That IGN headline is so clickbaity lmao as if the entirety of SE's woes are FF16's fault and not the years and years of boneheaded business moves catching up to SE. Honestly I wanted to link to the Bloomberg article but it pesters you to sign up if you click on it so decided to go with IGN. And it's not titled any better. TLDR: FF16 was to the expectation of sales for SE... but they needed it to exceed expectations to cover the various big time failures of the past few years which it didn't, thus in August shares dropped a great amount and now they're like this Probably also the reason why there's 4 (at least) Dragon Quest games (12, 3-HD-2D, Monsters and that action one) being worked on right now.
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BorneAgain
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Post by BorneAgain on Sept 15, 2023 4:59:31 GMT -5
The core issue with SE is that they chase certain trends which don't really play to their strengths on top of not pacing out their releases better. Capcom has big, expensive projects, but they're all with mega beloved franchises that do big numbers (Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, even Street Fighter which is doing consistently better again). Square Enix's original IP's and licensed stuff aren't really belonging to genres they're familiar with and the lack of success demonstrated as such. They purchased (and later sold) Western series that didn't live up to their huge expectations of sales to match their budgets. FFXIV is their shining jewel and even that had to be worked on for years after a disastrous launch.
Moreover, even their bread and butter of JRPG's has had inconsistent success because some of Square Enix's stuff doesn't always release on Switch, and in Japan (where such games have some of their best sales) anything that's not big AAA software dies a death now unless its on Nintendo systems. Stuff like the 2022 Star Ocean game and Valkyrie Elysium may not have been ideal do putting on weaker hardware, but both were doomed to undersell unless they got Switch ports. Putting so many games back to back in the market also had SE competing with itself which didn't really help.
Square in general feels like its the Japanese developer still stuck in the 7th gen era where Eastern studios went for ill fated attempts to appeal to Westerners and struggled with spiraling budgets. Compare them with the likes of Konami who (in spite of all their issues) have a steady stream of money via Yu-Gi-Oh, focus much of their internal work on modest games for the Japanese market, and are very money conscious with the IP's they've been letting smaller studios work on. Not a great company by any stretch, but they've avoided financial hardships with that (and not even thanks to pachinko despite the memes).
Mid-level games may not be the big money earners in short term; they can be the thing to soften the fall when big projects fail and Square would be better off going for that strategy.
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Post by xCompackx on Sept 15, 2023 6:46:38 GMT -5
Didn't Square Enix recently sell a bunch of studios/properties so they could invest in the blockchain? Step one could be to stop doing stuff like that...
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Sept 15, 2023 7:23:18 GMT -5
Didn't Square Enix recently sell a bunch of studios/properties so they could invest in the blockchain? Step one could be to stop doing stuff like that... They could also stop monetising midlevel titles like mobile freemium games. Does a game about chocobos running in circles aimed at younger players really need or justify a battle pass?
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Post by SneakMan on Sept 15, 2023 7:50:44 GMT -5
That IGN headline is so clickbaity lmao as if the entirety of SE's woes are FF16's fault and not the years and years of boneheaded business moves catching up to SE. You just know that gamers who are especially loud and stupid are gonna see this and be like “if FF16 had been turn-based, SE wouldn’t be in this mess.” That bullshit aside, yeah this is an entirely self-inflicted wound that’s been years in the making.
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Allie Kitsune
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Sept 15, 2023 8:20:15 GMT -5
You never should have bailed Square out during the 6th gen, Enix.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Sept 15, 2023 9:13:18 GMT -5
Didn't Square Enix recently sell a bunch of studios/properties so they could invest in the blockchain? Step one could be to stop doing stuff like that... They could also stop monetising midlevel titles like mobile freemium games. Does a game about chocobos running in circles aimed at younger players really need or justify a battle pass? Especially when I know I, and many others, would have probably bought it if it was just a Game and not a bullshit service. It's not like Mario Kart 8 isn't one of the most popular games of all time or anything, people want kart racers.
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Post by The Dark Order Inferno on Sept 15, 2023 9:44:40 GMT -5
They could also stop monetising midlevel titles like mobile freemium games. Does a game about chocobos running in circles aimed at younger players really need or justify a battle pass? Especially when I know I, and many others, would have probably bought it if it was just a Game and not a bullshit service. It's not like Mario Kart 8 isn't one of the most popular games of all time or anything, people want kart racers. And Mario kart is a complete experience without the DLC, the DLC stuff is sprinkles atop an already satisfying dessert. You never feel like 30% of the game has been carved out to sell seperately and the game has been ensloggified to make people want to buy shortcuts to finish a full price game.
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Post by The Legend of Groose on Sept 15, 2023 10:48:01 GMT -5
They never fully recovered from the Avengers game.
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Post by The Heartbreak TWERK on Sept 15, 2023 12:35:55 GMT -5
Quick bros, we gotta churn out some Kingdom Hearts spinoffs!
Uhhh
Kingdom Hearts 3.14 Max Goof saves the Marvel Multiverse
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Dr. T is an alien
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I've been found out!
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Post by Dr. T is an alien on Sept 15, 2023 13:49:11 GMT -5
Honestly, I had forgotten FF16 was even a thing. I ignored it for a bit as I know most AAA games are just messes out of the gate and let them have time to patch the game a bit, but totally forgot about it. It's like their Week 1 projections were not matched and they stopped advertising for it.
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Post by zrowsdower on Sept 15, 2023 13:58:47 GMT -5
I miss Square's mid to late 90's era. Always something good would come out for sure.
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Post by Mike Strike on Sept 15, 2023 13:58:59 GMT -5
Quick bros, we gotta churn out some Kingdom Hearts spinoffs! Uhhh Kingdom Hearts 3.14 Max Goof saves the Marvel Multiverse I could go for some new spin-offs right about now quite frankly. KH4 is years away & IDGAF about yet another mobile gatcha release (which also seems to never be coming out anyway). Plus Switch got screwed when it comes to KH, a rhythm game & cloud versions of 20 year old games. Yeah, I would very much like a KH that's an actual action RPG actually running on the actual hardware, actually.
Additionally, after KH3 it's pretty obvious that the mainline games are gonna favor "big brand" Disney worlds (note how every new Disney world in KH3 had a new film or D+ show within 2 years of the game's release) & thus there's a lot of older and/or lesser Disney properties that'll never get their shot unless we get some new side games where smaller IPs are fitting.
Give us a Kairi game where she's finally the star. Or hell, a musou game based around the Keyblade War.
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Post by Hurbster on Sept 15, 2023 14:02:52 GMT -5
FF16 was console-exclusive and the pc version isn't out yet, I believe. That can't have helped.
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Post by Lizuka #BLM on Sept 15, 2023 14:37:55 GMT -5
The core issue with SE is that they chase certain trends which don't really play to their strengths on top of not pacing out their releases better. Capcom has big, expensive projects, but they're all with mega beloved franchises that do big numbers (Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, even Street Fighter which is doing consistently better again). Square Enix's original IP's and licensed stuff aren't really belonging to genres they're familiar with and the lack of success demonstrated as such. They purchased (and later sold) Western series that didn't live up to their huge expectations of sales to match their budgets. FFXIV is their shining jewel and even that had to be worked on for years after a disastrous launch. Moreover, even their bread and butter of JRPG's has had inconsistent success because some of Square Enix's stuff doesn't always release on Switch, and in Japan (where such games have some of their best sales) anything that's not big AAA software dies a death now unless its on Nintendo systems. Stuff like the 2022 Star Ocean game and Valkyrie Elysium may not have been ideal do putting on weaker hardware, but both were doomed to undersell unless they got Switch ports. Putting so many games back to back in the market also had SE competing with itself which didn't really help. Square in general feels like its the Japanese developer still stuck in the 7th gen era where Eastern studios went for ill fated attempts to appeal to Westerners and struggled with spiraling budgets. Compare them with the likes of Konami who (in spite of all their issues) have a steady stream of money via Yu-Gi-Oh, focus much of their internal work on modest games for the Japanese market, and are very money conscious with the IP's they've been letting smaller studios work on. Not a great company by any stretch, but they've avoided financial hardships with that (and not even thanks to pachinko despite the memes). Mid-level games may not be the big money earners in short term; they can be the thing to soften the fall when big projects fail and Square would be better off going for that strategy. More companies should really pattern themselves after the model Capcom has going. Consistently spaced out big releases to their core series, occasional lower-scale spinoffs within those series, and every now and then you break it up with something like an Ace Attorney or a Ghosts 'N' Goblins to keep things interesting and throw a bone to others who might not be into Monster Hunter or something, with pretty solid advertising for them and seemingly realistic sales projections from them. Capcom probably also benefits from the fact that their big series - like let's say Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, and Street Fighter - are wildly different from each other and thus pull from different audiences. Square does some of that, but it feels like they space out their big releases way too often while banking way too much on get rich quick monetization schemes instead of focusing on getting people to actually buy their games to begin with.
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