Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada resigns

[Pharaun]

Nobody wants a sequel to a game most people didn't enjoy playing, or didn't even finish. It really isn't a surprise then that X-2 didn't sell as good as XIII.

Apparently 3.2 million people wanted a sequel. But go ahead and insist that it's impossible for anyone to have enjoyed 13 and wanted to see the story expanded on.

[Pharaun]

Edit: Fucking double post, blarg.

[xopher]

I enjoyed Spirits Within.

[Spira]

it was a bold move but i thought they adopted too early and audiences weren't ready.

also uncanny valley.

[Correction]

Apparently 3.2 million people wanted a sequel. But go ahead and insist that it's impossible for anyone to have enjoyed 13 and wanted to see the story expanded on.

Where's this 3.2 million number coming from? If I look at japan alone it might have cracked a million worldwide, leaving the other 2/3 of that figure to come from NA/EU sales, which strikes me as unlikely.

[vrumpt]

Apparently 3.2 million people wanted a sequel. But go ahead and insist that it's impossible for anyone to have enjoyed 13 and wanted to see the story expanded on.

I can't argue with that. Poor choice of words on my part. My friends and I did not enjoy XIII as well and were pretty wtf'd when they announced the sequel.

I do think it was a bold move though on SE's part to make a sequel to XIII. I know they wanted to redeem themselves, but doing it somewhere other than the XIII brand may have worked out better. I'm assuming though that they didn't have the funds to create a new world for another FF.

[Tyrath]

Where's this 3.2 million number coming from? If I look at japan alone it might have cracked a million worldwide, leaving the other 2/3 of that figure to come from NA/EU sales, which strikes me as unlikely.

It's 2.94mil

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name...fantasy+XIII-2

[The Blackrose]

the shareholders are the ones who decide who to put in charge of the company. they had no faith in Sakaguchi, as he was too much of a risktaker.

Agreed that the shareholders lost faith.

However, ultimately it was not the shareholders that burned Sakaguchi. It was actually Wada, who was scared for his own hide. He cut further projects and reduced Sakaguchi's role in FF to practically nothing. This was while he was consolidating power under himself by blowing up Suzuki over the Enix merger proceedings.

Kind of funny when you consider Suzuki was the one that leveraged Sony's relationship with Square to provide the capital to keep it afloat, no?

[Correction]

It's 2.94mil

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name...fantasy+XIII-2

vgchartz is full of shit I thought everybody knew this by now.

[samalis]

vgchartz

[Tyrath]

Fine, then you'll have to go by SE's word.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/artic...d-game-in-a-se

“The combined total units shipped for the two titles was recorded to be 9.7 million units,” Kitase said. It's rare to see such explicit numbers; when Sony reported sales of the Vita, for example, it lumped the struggling system's numbers with the PSP. Here, however, Kitase's graph broke down sales and showed that, to date, Final Fantasy XIII has sold approximately 6.6 million units. While that game's numbers were the only ones shown, it's pretty easy to subtract 6.6 million from 9.7 million to find out sales for Final Fantasy XIII-2: 3.1 million.

[Correction]

Shipped is not the same as sold through.

Here's the .jp numbers for XIII-2 btw

As of the end of 2011: Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Sony PS3): 697,146

Those numbers come from Famitsu.

Add that to the Media Create totals for the first 3 weeks of 2012, after which the title stopped charting (i.e < 3k units/week): 697,146 + 58,438 = 755,584

FFXIII-2 did not fucking sell 3 million worldwide. If it did, it was in the $20 bargain bin and didn't make anything worth recording on SE's balance sheet.

[Melena]

vgchartz is full of shit I thought everybody knew this by now.

Taken from Wikipedia

During its first week of release in Japan, Final Fantasy XIII-2 sold 524,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 version was the highest-selling game for the system. The Xbox 360 version only reached 48th, primarily because there were few Xbox 360 customers in Japan. Although high, initial sales were notably lower than what they were for the game's predecessor, which sold 1.5 million units in its first week.[55] By the end of the year, the game had sold over 697,000 units, and was the fifth-best selling 2011 game in Japan. It was just below four handheld video games, making it the highest-selling home console game in Japan that year.[56] By the beginning of March 2012, the game had sold 811,000 copies in Japan, with 798,000 of those for the PS3 and 13,000 for the Xbox 360. In the United States, the game placed as the second-best selling game of February 2012, just below Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.[57] In the United Kingdom, Final Fantasy XIII-2 was the best-selling game of February 2012.[58] By January 2013, Final Fantasy XIII-2 had shipped 3.1 million copies worldwide.[59]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_F...II-2#Reception

[Spira]

Agreed that the shareholders lost faith.

However, ultimately it was not the shareholders that burned Sakaguchi. It was actually Wada, who was scared for his own hide. He cut further projects and reduced Sakaguchi's role in FF to practically nothing. This was while he was consolidating power under himself by blowing up Suzuki over the Enix merger proceedings.

Kind of funny when you consider Suzuki was the one that leveraged Sony's relationship with Square to provide the capital to keep it afloat, no?

well.. its an indirect effect. i'd think shareholders woulda seen Wada as a lesser evil, as far as profits were concerned. it isn't uncommon for a CEO to reform the company in such a drastic way that it loses its original form.. but thats what its like when you're public. maybe Wada had a personal agenda that went along with what he did.

granted Sakaguchi was the founding father of FF, its possible his vision for the series wasn't seen as progressive for the company and thus they didn't want him around.

edit: XIII-2 did well. its just that relative to XIII, its numbers are small.. but it was already expected for a sequel. X-2 sold a lot less than X as well.
also to put things in perspective, being the top-selling console game in 2011 in Japan when it was released on Dec 15 does say a lot. basically you're only counting pre-orders + opening week, and 1 week more.

[Lucavi]

Does this mean they'll finally release a proper prequel or sequel to Tactics?

Who the fuck am I kidding? Let this company burn.

[Dmitry]

Tactics doesn't need a sequel or prequel, you're as bad as the FF7 remake supporters.

[Tyrath]

I still think what we need is a new Chrono game. I will never understand why they dropped that franchise.

[The Blackrose]

i'd think shareholders woulda seen Wada as a lesser evil, as far as profits were concerned. it isn't uncommon for a CEO to reform the company in such a drastic way that it loses its original form.. but thats what its like when you're public. maybe Wada had a personal agenda that went along with what he did.

At that point, agreed regarding them transitioning. And they did - Wada decided that he wanted the whole share of the cross-publishing deal between Square and EA (which was lucrative for both sides). He wrecked that and decided that Square-Enix needed to become an international third party publisher with a reduced in-house development presence. Only problem is S-E kept tripping over themselves.

The Enix merger? That was primarily to acquire the Dragon Quest brand and consolidate JP market share so that they could acquire more outside developers. From there, the intent was to leverage the Final Fantasy/Square brand and make DQ a success in NA/EU. Except that thus far, DQ has not made a substantial impact on NA/EU.

Following the merger were the acquisitions of Quest and Taito. Neither are a blip on the radar at this point.

The Eidos acquisition was good timing. They were able to capitalize off a number of Eidos' releases, but now we're finding out that it wasn't as good as everyone thought it was.

SE also tried their hand at F2P development and publishing. Now they're selling off the entire portfolio.

While SE was trying it's hand at international publishing, the Final Fantasy brand was stagnating. FFXIII and FFXIII-2 sold well, but also came with some backlash. FFXIV was a disaster that has led to a complete overhaul. Even the overhaul is not guaranteed to succeed. All The Bravest was another debacle. Versus is stuck in development hell. Other IPs either are stuck in limbo (ex. Chrono) or had new releases that got slaughtered (ex. 3rd Birthday). Games that are in demand to NA/EU audiences and potentially lead to strong sales (Type-0, Bravely Default) are stuck in Japan.

This is why I scoff at Wada having it out for Sakaguchi, while Sakaguchi was being ousted for being a risktaker. Wada has been taking his own risks for 10 years and has crap to show for it.

[Correction]

Tactics doesn't need a sequel or prequel, you're as bad as the FF7 remake supporters.

Considering the success Nintendo enjoyed with Fire Emblem I think the demand for another Square SRPG is understated here. It doesn't have to be named Final Fantasy Tactics but it's not as if the Tactics brand is sour the way the core brand is.

[Brill Weave]

Maybe I'm missing something. FFXIV was a colossal train wreck that really hurt the company's name. But prior to that the other entries into the FF series were profitable. I don't understand how XIII and XIII-2 even enter into the conversation with being a potential reason for the company's issues. Those games made money. The next entry will as well. The company is floundering because of shit games like fucking Mind Jack etc. Sleeping Dogs was decent but underperformed financially. The same can be said for Hitman. SE started branching off too much and got too ambitious when they should have been focusing on their bread and butter. They have some really good intellectual properties that can be profitable in the future. They need to trim the fat and start cutting some of the garbage side projects(like the aforementioned Mind Jack) and return to making quality games.