New SE CEO wants to review the company.

[Lucavi]

I understand that for some people, looks trumph all. I get that. I get that a pretty character and flashy clothes and a cool setting drives home whatever feelings they have inside about their games or whatnot, but when I, personally, played the shit out of FF titles, it was back when "pretty" was a matter of not only pushing the hell out of an engine, but having quality design as well. FF4 was not only "pretty" for its time, but it had solid design. Chrono Trigger was both attractive and incredibly designed.

I cannot say the same for these modern FF titles. Yes, they look good, but either the soul isn't there or what I've wanted out of "soul" has been replaced with what I want out of gameplay. I've spent more time playing Skyrim and Mount and Blade over the last 2 years than I have with any modern SE product. Before that, I spent more time playing Dungeon Siege than FF 12, despite the fact that I enjoyed 12. Hell, I spent more time playing FFT:A2 than consoled versions of titled FFs.

I'll never get tired of swords and sorcery, but I suppose I can get tired of SE's modern way of depicting swords and sorcery. I'd love to see SE try an open-world game that resembled Mount and Blade: Warband. That game, at its core concept, is fucking brilliant. To have a quality budget behind it - to get the Tomb Raider level of effort put into it, would be absolutely amazing.

Ah well, though. I'm still appreciative of SE for giving me some of the best music I've ever heard, and some of the best years of my youth. Even if they fade away into obscurity, I'll still enjoy the time I spent with their products, its just a shame to see them looking this pitiful in terms of not getting it.

[AoE]

Thinking about it, a SE take on Dragon's Dogma would be pretty badass as long as they supported it with content.

[Kurokikaze]

http://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix...ing-bad-games/

Square Enix’s New Strategy to Stop Losing Money: Stop Making Bad Games
by JACK on MAY 13, 2013 · 3 COMMENTS · in NEWS
After posting extraordinary losses due to poor sales, Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda has come up with a plan to prevent more losses in the future. He has told all staff to stop making bad games.




When long-time CEO Yoichi Wada resigned earlier this year, immediately after taking the CEO position, Matsuda reviewed the entire company to see if there were any glaring issues with Square Enix. He held an internal staff meeting earlier today to discuss his new plan. A transcript was posted online by an alleged Square Enix employee before being taken down:

Listen up, I will only say this once. Get your asses in line and stop making bad games. I remember when I played Square games on the Super Famicom and Enix games on the PlayStation and was excited to play them. I still play those games today because they’re that good.

Ever since I got to this company, it’s been terrible decision after terrible decision. Every game that this company tries to make now is a copy of someone else’s game or some lousy mobile game. What happened? Where did all the imagination go?

Ouya? Whose idea was that? I will fire whoever suggested wasting our time on that. Every time we do something like this, we devalue our brands. Final Fantasy has already been hurt enough because of horrible games like Final Fantasy 13 or 14 or All the Bravest.

And whoever approved games like Lightning Returns should also be fired. But now that I think about it, that guy is already gone. It’s also a little too late to turn back on Versus as well. I already know about sunk costs so I don’t need a lecture from you guys.

Again, I will repeat my plan. Make good games and stop making bad ones. In fact, call this motivation. The first person to come up with a game concept that is novel, unique, and most of all fun will get a one hundred thousand yen bonus. Get to it.

Allegedly, game ideas that have been pitched to Matsuda include another Dragon Quest MMORPG, a Tomb Raider trilogy and Final Fantasy XIV-2.

Tagged with: Square Enix

This dude is SUPER SERIOUS! I would love for this letter to be real but I'm not sure... lol

Edit: Annnnnnd satire. ._.;; Sorry all.

[Bregor]

notsureifserious dot jpg

[Hyan]

lol what bs. All they've been doing this past gen is trying to be unique and novel all the time. Which is not the problem. The problem is that they should first catch up to genre standards and then try again.

[Exoduso]

Am I the only one that thinks Lightning Returns will be surprisingly good?

[Fievel]

Am I the only one that thinks Lightning Returns will be surprisingly good?

Nope, I expect to enjoy it as well. But then again, I loved 13-2 whereas most people did not.

[Tyrath]

It could go either way honestly. 13-2 was surprisingly good.

[Exoduso]

I enjoyed 13-2 a lot more than 13 that's for sure. The whole timeline thing got confusing at times, but overall I think they have a decent concept heading into the 3rd title with.
But yeah, it could obviously go either way... people seem to complain that Lightning will be the only controllable character, but are forgetting that 13-2 only had 2 and that worked out just fine.

[Bregor]

XIII-2 for me is best summed up by: gameplay was fun, time travel was sloppy, Caius was the absolute worst. Hoping Lightning Returns is better.

I was reading a Let's Play FFVII thread on SA and they talked about how much time was spent developing the plot in pre-production. There's just no way any SE game gets made like that anymore, and it makes me sad.

[Charismatic]

Am I the only one that thinks Lightning Returns will be surprisingly good?

Probably not here on BG, but I've noticed that many people on here have extremely low standards so it should be no surprise.

[Fievel]

Probably not here on BG, but I've noticed that many people on here have extremely low standards so it should be no surprise.

Not having the same taste in games as you = low standards. k

[Charismatic]

Yes, because that's exactly what I said.

[Mugmug]

I think Lightning Returns will be the best of the trilogy.

13-2 was decent, but not as good overall as 13. The story in 13-2 was pretty awful and it got carried by the gameplay.

The only way I would ever go back to playing it, is if they released an "Ultimate" edition with all the DLC, since I didn't buy any of it.

[6souls]

Trouble in Paradise

Mike Fischer, former president and CEO of Square Enix of America, quit the company this month, Polygon has learned.

Fischer, who took over leadership of Square Enix of America in July 2010, is now the vice president of digital Music and Video for Amazon in Japan.

He declined to discuss the details of his departure or the current state of the embattled company with Polygon, noting only that he left on good terms.

Square Enix officials confirmed Fischer's departure to Polygon and said Phil Rogers, current CEO of Square Enix in Europe, is taking over the job as President and CEO of Square Enix America. Rogers will now now oversee the business in the Americas and Europe.

Prior to his role at Square, Fischer worked at Namco, Sega and Microsoft.

Speaking with Polygon at E3 last year, Fischer said that his plans for Square Enix's North American efforts was to shift away from big title development to smaller, more experimental titles. Those efforts did not include Eidos Montreal, which reports to Square Enix Europe.

"I think we're probably seeing the end of games like Dungeon Siege 3, which is being developed here at Square Enix in America - it was a fine game, but it's not necessary for us to make games like this because I've got this incredible pipeline of product that's coming from Japan," he said at the time. "I've got these titles, many of which you see here, coming from Europe. I don't need to duplicate that."

The idea was for his group to explore new business models and take more risk with smaller projects. The first signs of those efforts was seen with Quantum Conundrum, a first-person puzzle action game designed by Kim Swift.

His plans included spending the company's money not on creating studios, but building up a core internal team of producers and engineers who would then support the independent studios that Square was publishing for.

The past year has been a tough one for Square Enix. Earlier this month, the company announced significant losses during their most recent fiscal quarter, blaming the shortfall on an "increasingly competitive and oligopolistic" console market. Officials with the company previously announced they were unhappy with the sales of their big three titles: Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution.

Fischer's departure comes in the wake of rumors that the company is trying to divest itself of its mobile gaming efforts in North America.

Update: Reached for comment today, a Square Enix representative confirmed Fischer's departure and said that "any rumors about shutting down North American or US operations are not accurate."

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/23/435...leaves-company

[Elcura]

Story in 13-2 was an abomination. It was convoluted, ill-planned, poorly paced and executed. Serah is the worst lead ever, I've never met someone so annoyingly clueless but prophetic at the same time. Noel is about as interesting as a cardboard box and his history and relationship with Caius/Yeul(?) was laughable at best. Caius also has some stupid weird motivation and Yeul tries so damn hard not to be a tragic figure but fails so hard at it, so it just comes off as needy and whiny. I just don't understand why.

The entire game flops and flounders around until you get to the end. Honestly I haven't seen the ending so I don't know if my feelings up until this point will change, but so far from what I've seen it's terrible. The ending will have to do a complete 180 to erase the shitty flavour in my mouth. The only joy I got from the story in 13-2 was making Serah answer with the most inappropriate option. I actually got a few laughs so I wish there had been more of that.

Exploration wise it was a lot better except for the retarded loading times, but in terms of battle system it still had similar problems to 13-2. Mostly that you couldn't even influence what direction you walked in and that paradigms couldn't be adjusted on the fly/during battle so there is some trial and error with encounters. The crystarium was interesting but ultimately daunting (despite not being overly complex, the game doesn't teach you how to even slightly take advantage of what you're doing) at first and was pretty much a task in trial and error again unless you knew EXACTLY what you were doing, which isn't that fun either. The pokemon system is a nice touch though compared to crystarium, they went the in opposite direction and made monster growth a straight line. There also wasn't a lot of customization going on, but I doubt the game even needed it considering what it was overall.

13-2 fixed arguably the biggest (or at least most complained about) problem that 13 had, which was linearity, but 13 had a lot of problems in terms of gameplay so they didn't really address those which made 13-2 a disappointment. I can look at stories freshly no matter what, but Jesus did 13-2 make me appreciate 13's story and characters more. Honestly, I don't know why people like 13-2 as much as they do. I feel like if you took the gameplay from 13-2 and the story from 13 you'd have a good game. 13-2 still does all the right things that FF does anyway, music, graphics, animation, presentation etc, but you can polish a turd all you like. It's still a turd.

13-3 will be SE's last chance to save the 13 trilogy from going down as one of the worst ever. 3 strikes and you're out.

[Fievel]

I loved 13-2's story, I loved the ending, I loved the gameplay to a point, was a bit too easy is all.

As I've said before though, my opinion on games is not of the majority. I loved 13-2, and hate games like Ni No Kuni which everybody in the world seems to love.

[Trigun]

SE will be fine, as far as video games go Japan is all about themselves this time around.
If SE wants more money from me though, they better capitalize on Parasite Eve 4 on the Playstation 4.

[Mugmug]

I loved 13-2's story, I loved the ending, I loved the gameplay to a point, was a bit too easy is all.

As I've said before though, my opinion on games is not of the majority. I loved 13-2, and hate games like Ni No Kuni which everybody in the world seems to love.

I respect your opinion, but am curious as to what makes you hate it so much?

While it didn't reinvent the genre, I found it to be a great adventure filled with likable characters, a solid battle system, beautiful graphics, and a wonderful soundtrack. It was just a well done world filled with a lot of personality (esp if you read the entire in game book/wizards compendium).

I really hope they make a sequel. It has a lot of potential as a franchise.

[Ratatapa]

Most people who didn't like Ni No Kuni, was the fact that the game looked too childish