Has any square Enix game in the past 5 years met their expectations?
This is usually the problem with them. They have great selling games, that always fall short of their “expectations”. I’m wondering if their expectations might be wrong.
Bad expectations and probably a lack of understanding of how launching expensive games as platform exclusives can hurt sales numbers. They were likely expecting the kind of numbers a game can only get from launching on the big 3.
I believe I read that, in other for them to consider a game successful, it has to generate more profits than if they had just invested all funds spent on the project.
That should be true for any company’s projects though. That’s just saying that the net present value needs to be positive. There’s no way most of their projects have been negative NPV.
I wonder if they’re comparing FFVII rebirth sales to the gains that they would have made in the stock market specifically from when they started development until release I.e. the post COVID stock boom. That would be truly difficult to materialise, as sales would have to be ridiculously large.
Sales expectations here don’t mean “we think this game is so good it will move x million units,” that thinking doesn’t exist anymore. It starts from the money they put in it, and they deduce “we’ll need to sell x million copies to get the money back with the profit we want.” There have been a few interviews specifically about these two games saying that.
It’s the same old idea that AAA products (movies, games, same excuse) cost more to make than they bring money back - although we never know exactly how much of that is actually “investors expect an x% return by week y” where x is just too high and y too short and they never want to think longer term, and we never know how far an investment actually goes. Especially in the case of the Remake trilogy where keeping the same engine and world is supposed to drastically reduce the cost of the last game compared to if they had started a new game from scratch with the same content - except part 3 is unlikely to sell more than part 2 given that it’s a sequel.
At any rate, we all know it’s true that development time and costs keep going up exponentially, and no one likes it (and yet everyone wants 4k 60fps somehow).
Wait, purposely excluding sizable segments of the market led to less sales? No way. Someone should note this down.
I would like to help them out with that. Unfortunately it seems like Rebirth is only on PS5 and XVI has Denuvo, so my hands are tied.
They might have had more sales for Rebirth if they, you know, released it on everything and not just 1 system.
I know I ain’t getting it until I can get it on PC where I have the first one and can continue my fuckin’ save.
Continuing save does practically nothing btw
Wait, what? Now I’m interested in them even less.
It would be hard to balance a game if some people have 100 hours of gameplay as a starting point and some people have none
Yeah, it makes sense from that perspective, but for someone who played the original, where it was all one game, it really kills the continuity.
should have just released to pc as well. back in the day games were released to every platform within days of each other at worst. No idea what the pc sales for ff7r were like but wait too long and enough people that would have bought the sequel will have forgotten and lost interest to affect sales numbers.
How about they stop making the franchise a real-time action RPG.
Wish granted, next iteration will be battle royale
STOP GIVING THEM IDEAS
They sold Eidos to invest into NFTs and AI, they literally can’t do any worse if they tried
Probably would’ve done better if they hadn’t charged such insane prices for them.
Especially FF7 rebirth lmao - a decades old game, made pretty, but still a decades old game -
ff7 rebirth 1.3x MORE EXPENSIVE than Baldurs Gate 3 at normal prices. Out of touch motherfuckers…
Genuinely was interested in getting ff7 until I saw the price tag, then immediately said nah fuck that and noped out for good
Especially FF7 rebirth lmao - a decades old game, made pretty, but still a decades old game -
It’s so vastly different from the original game. Not just in how it looks but also the story and gameplay. It is entirely new in almost every respect outside of the basic plot premise.
In a good or bad way? Not that I’m getting it till the price drops to a reasonable level
I think it’s good. The changes to the plot are seemingly about an alternative timeline and the more the story deviates from the original, the more weird monsters show up to try and “keep things going the way they’re supposed to.” I only have the first one, though, so I’m left on a cliff hanger and can only guess what that stuff is really all about. :/
The changes to combat are alright. Like it’s not blowing my mind but it’s also not the same boring turn-based menu system. You move and fight real time and it feels a bit like a mixture of Dark Souls and Devil May Cry.
7 Remake is currently 50% off on Steam, which means it’s about the price I would accept when not on sale. Square only needs to cut another 25% or so and they’ll make a customer of me.
yarrr
Before they sold Eidos, it was all the western studios’ fault. Now this. Seems like the wrong people are in charge.
Well, you did change the story of ff7 a ton, which nobody asked for. I purposely bought the game from gamestop so Square Enix wouldn’t get my money for the game. ff16 on the other I bought on my ps5, and I thought it was great.
No lie, when I saw the ghosts in FF7: Remake or whatever … I forced myself to finish the game and there’s no way I’m likely to play any of the sequels.
Also, like, this is just me but I got into PlayStation games fairly late. I got a PS5 and I played God of War 4 and was gobsmacked about how good that game played and looked. When I played FF7: Remake, the game itself looked amazing and a younger me would have loved seeing those graphics. However, I felt the cinematics and storyline were SO lackluster. I think after seeing God of War 4 cinematics, the FF7: Remake ones felt so dated …
Btw, I actually enjoyed FF15, I know it’s like unfinished with drama and all that but I really did like playing that game.
Nothing wrong with liking 15… we just grieve what might have been.
And XIV foots the bill 😔
They could literally sell a quadrillion copies of Final Fantasy 43 and it would still not meet their expectations.
My thoughts on the franchise conflict
if there’s 16 games then I would want to start at the beginning
7? That game is too old for me to play
Each iteration is its own thing; sharing only the themes.
Then it hardly needs to be in the same IP so I would call it a marketing error
Sony exclusive marketing black hole,
Epic exclusive marketing black hole…
SQ: “uhm… I wonder why Final Fantasy IP isn’t memorable anymore”.
Maybe a reality check around the fixed PlayStation platform being third place below to PC (Steam, not Epic) and Mobile?
There are other publisher that stick with Sony this much? 'Cus Capcom isn’t, and their IP aren’t just great… people actually pressure for more forgotten IP from them! (Dino Crisis, MegaMan etc.)
These midtier titles could literally make all the money on the world and it would still not be enough
Pretty sure Squenix’s expectations for any game is $1 trilliondy-biliondy-milliondy dollars.
Here’s a thought … CHANGE YOUR EXPECTATIONS!