Square Enix General News

[Krandor]

It's been on PC for 3 years now, but no one cared because it was an Epic exclusive and had always online DRM

[Zealot]

Brave Exvius service will end and all accounts will be deleted on October 30th.

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[Gokulo]

A demo has been released for the Romancing Saga 2 remake, save data will be transferable to full game

[BWYuko]

SE released their fiscal year-end (Mar 2024) Financial Report where they confirm FF16 and Rebirth profits did not reach their expectations (page 2). It's an overall grim report, honestly.

[Anoat]

They do it every year and I stopped paying them any heed. Nothing ever meets sales expectations, even their smash hits like Hitman or Tomb Raider (when they had them), Life is Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, FFXV, VII Remake, etc.

Honestly the only thing they’ve said things positively about the last decade has been XIV.

[Byrthnoth]

If you consistently fail to meet revenue guidance, at some point it becomes an expectation problem.

[arus2001]

Perhaps it's time to fire the guy that sets expectations.

In all seriousness, SE has been shooting themselves in the foot with stuff like PS exclusivity or riding a bit too hard on the fickle gacha train. The latter might do better if they were actually willing to go "sexy" and pander to horny nerds, but you've gotta do more than Aerith or Tifa swimsuit costumes. Otherwise, willfully removing themselves from the other markets just means less sales when we're not exactly in a period of fiscal wellness for individuals to have multiple consoles and a PC. XIV may be their money printer, but with Dawntrail's perception being mixed, all it's really gonna take is another MMO to capitalize on people frustrated or bored and XIV's formulaic content schedule is kinda wearing people thin, too.

Far as VII goes, I think changing the formula too much bit them in the ass. I'd basically liken it to Blizzard's launch of Diablo III souring people, resulting in meh sales for Reaper of Souls. So, when you go into this splitting the game into 3 with combat on top and unfortunate Nomura-isms, it's not hard to see why sales dipped. Nostalgia simply can't overpower them making bad calls. And in 2 years when we get the final part, then some special edition a year or two after that, you can probably expect more dips. It's rather similar to how people are fatigued about television show seasons being years apart, too. It really should've been one big game without succumbing to mini-game hell or collector-rama padding.

[Salodin]

I believe wholeheartedly without minigame hell the final fantasy remake series could have been two game instead of three. I'm too tired to even beat rebirth right now. I for sure won't be buying the next one at launch and I'll wait for a sale cause why bother?

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[Byrthnoth]

The most baffling part about the FFVII remake is that people have done fucking multipart RPGs before and they don't work. That's why Xenosaga 3 and .hack//quarantine are hundreds of dollars. They sold a couple thousand copies because no one had beaten the previous ones. If most people don't play the games they buy (per steam library reports) and each game you release in a series soft-requires that people have beaten the previous game, then you are shooting yourself in the foot.

[Andalusian girls]

nah doggy Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, The Witcher, et al just got bigger and better selling as their trilogies went on. multi-part RPGs aren't inevitably doomed it just seems a lot of JRPG devs are bad at them (i love Xenosaga but it was a fuckin mess from the jump). i think Rebirth's biggest problem re sales is simply its install base. PS5 still only has a little more than half the PS4's install base, less when Rebirth dropped, and no PC or Xbox boost yet a la XV.

[Byrthnoth]

BG, Witcher, Mass Effect, etc. were functionally separate games. I played Witcher 3 with no knowledge of what happened in Witcher 1 or 2 and it felt like I wasn't missing anything meaningful. I haven't had time for it, but I am certain BG3 is the same (better be considering how many decades are between it and BG1, which I played and do not remember at all). Even something like Suikoden where having a previous game's 108 stars save file gave you some random crap was otherwise a nearly completely isolated game.

.hack games were uninterpretable unless played in order. They were continuations of each other's plots and didn't reintroduce characters game to game or anything. Episodes rather than separate games. Xenosaga was the same (and def a mess). FFVII (split into three parts) is three episodes of the same story and they are going to play them in order. It fits that episodic RPG mold instead of the "another story in the same universe and maybe you will understand five allusions" mold.

Kingdom Hearts is an interesting middle ground where there are connections between the different games in the series but a casual player who isn't going to break out the red string can still enjoy them (at least the ones that don't suck).

[Ayn]

You can play every Kingdom Hearts game and still have no idea what's going on.

[Gokulo]

The most baffling part about the FFVII remake is that people have done fucking multipart RPGs before and they don't work. That's why Xenosaga 3 and .hack//quarantine are hundreds of dollars. They sold a couple thousand copies because no one had beaten the previous ones. If most people don't play the games they buy (per steam library reports) and each game you release in a series soft-requires that people have beaten the previous game, then you are shooting yourself in the foot.

Let's be honest, I liked both series (huge Xeno fan especially), but neither were good enough to get great decent numbers. Saga was plagued by development problems and had ambitions Namco wasn't ready to commit to, while .hack was really just for the fans of the anime/IP, they were too mid to be enjoyable to a wider audience. I'm pretty sure them being multipart wasn't their main issue.

Also, look at the Trails series, while it's not doing some crazy AAA numbers, the series is just growing in numbers with every entry. Sure, the narrative is created in a way that you could theoretically jump in at the start of each new arc, but to fully grasp and enjoy the story you need to play all of them and time and again I can see people start at a random part just to go back and play everything before just because they enjoyed the experience so much.

[Andalusian girls]

BG, Witcher, Mass Effect, etc. were functionally separate games. I played Witcher 3 with no knowledge of what happened in Witcher 1 or 2 and it felt like I wasn't missing anything meaningful. I haven't had time for it, but I am certain BG3 is the same (better be considering how many decades are between it and BG1, which I played and do not remember at all). Even something like Suikoden where having a previous game's 108 stars save file gave you some random crap was otherwise a nearly completely isolated game.

.hack games were uninterpretable unless played in order. They were continuations of each other's plots and didn't reintroduce characters game to game or anything. Episodes rather than separate games. Xenosaga was the same (and def a mess). FFVII (split into three parts) is three episodes of the same story and they are going to play them in order. It fits that episodic RPG mold instead of the "another story in the same universe and maybe you will understand five allusions" mold.

Kingdom Hearts is an interesting middle ground where there are connections between the different games in the series but a casual player who isn't going to break out the red string can still enjoy them (at least the ones that don't suck).

5 allusions is a leetle beet silly re the discussed serieseses and i assume you did not play any of them all the way through. Mass Effect is one coherent, unified story, as is BG1 --> Throne of Bhaal (BG3 does its own thing). Witcher is more like Kingdom Hearts in being the middle ground, you miss an enormous amount not playing the first 2 games (or reading the books tbh) but as you say 3 is perfectly playable on its own and was designed that way for most would be new to the series. Dragon Age is more what you are describing in being seperate narratives connected only by lore world and some characters.

but that's kinda what i mean, and i gather what you meant, and we're talking past each other a bit. in multipart RPG series these Western devs do a much better job at making each entry feel like a complete game with beginning middle and end (even for a series that is a single story like Mass Effect), whereas some of the JRPG multi-game series feel more like single stories chopped into semi-fulfilling poorly paced parts. but i believe that is more execution than structure.

[arus2001]

Frankly, people hating JRPGs because they're JRPGs is a factor when it comes to western sales, too. I wish it wasn't, but I've had to butt heads with too many people at other places just to get them to try things (and most probably didn't) because of irrational stereotypes or a bit too much fellatio on Skyrim and such.

[Athas]

JRPS do adhere pretty rabidly to stereotypes, it's hardly a new or unearned criticism of the genre.

[Lucavi]

Skyrim lets you do what you want (run to Nexus to fix the game). JRPGs have Yoshi P demanding people not mod the game, lol.

[Gokulo]

Skyrim lets you do what you want (run to Nexus to fix the game). JRPGs have Yoshi P demanding people not mod the game, lol.

Are you Kotaku? Because that's some crazy clickbaity writing.

All he did was request people don't do anything inappropriate. Sure, it's a lost battle from the get go, but that's another matter.

Here, lemme throw in a real quote from one of his interviews for comparison:
https://kristenforourkids.com/final-...ed-pc-release/

Naoki Yoshida: “There are many players within the FFXVI development team who love mods, including myself. However, as we are transitioning to other projects, we have no official plans to provide tools to the mod development community. With that said, we welcome fans to create their mods and play with them, as long as they are not offensive or inappropriate! ”

[Lucavi]

Its called hyperbole, big guy.

"As long as they are not offensive or inappropriate!”

I remember the last time I heard that from Bioshock. We all know how that went.

[Kaslo]

lol its like you don't realize developers HAVE to say that.