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See for yourself.


Honestly, I saw this coming. They've been ticking their fans off so long, something like this was inevitable.

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"When we think there's no hope left, we keep looking until we find some!" - Claire Farron

Yeah, I was actually going to post about this in the news tidbits today, I guess you saved me a half hour.

I think you're being a bit short-sighted in saying "Oh, it's because they ticked off their fans! Their sales must be down!" Sure, there's a very real chance that's part of it, but it's never the whole story. Even the article you link yourself mentions that half a billion yen was lost to earthquake-related causes, and a full quarter of the loss numbers quoted in that article are due to one-time losses from canceling games that could have lost even more money if taken all the way to completion.

I'm not going to say that you're wrong, and that part of this financial loss isn't due to some poor choices, particularly in the flagship franchise. Heck, the very thing I point out above is a good indicator of that - they're canceling games in an effort to not make more poor choices. However, I think that just like with any corporation that posts losses, there's just as much reason to see it as a glass half full than half empty, and crowing about it like it's some great victory for Final Fantasy fans seems to me more like it's just trendy to bash the company than anything else.

The real story is how they handle it for the next fiscal year, and whether it turns out to be a Ford-style renaissance or just the beginning of what would be a pretty big blow to the industry. Definitely could go either way.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

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To be fair, this makes alot of sense. FF XIV isn't doing so well, Versus has spent years in development and there's still no sight of a release date, and Square Enix are refusing to do anything that would actually make them a ton of cash, remake FF6, FF7, Chrono Trigger and make a Chrono Trigger sequel. That easy, but they refuse to listen to the fans. Oh, and it's been five years, and there's still no sign of Kingdom Hearts 3 ?

They should fire Wada, because the last good and decent Final Fantasy, was IX. X- XIV have been rather crappy. Just leave Enix, and become a independent company again Square. You may of lost money due to a movie that didn't go as planned, but Final Fantasies I- IX, Chrono Trigger and Sword of Mana were JRPG gold.

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Currently playing Chrono Trigger !!
Currently looking forward to Don't Know.

Well, they had been throwing money around like candy to buy up properties, and what was their flagship release last year?

FF14.

Oh dear.

Poor games and poor sales make up the majority of the issue, but I don't imagine it's the fact they annoyed the fans per se, it's just they have had nothing to offer last year. FF13 was last year's success and the trouble was, even then if it wasn't for that and Arkham Asylum, Square would have had a terrible time last year IIRC. I think their best seller in that fiscal year would have been Dragon Quest 9's western release, no?

Presumably FF 13-2 might actually help a little, but given that about 40% of the people who bought that hated it, I'm not predicting a hugely happy ending on that one.

So, when Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 outsell you five to one, Square, it's time enough to try emulate that I think. It'll be five years behind the rest of the world. Right in your comfort zone

This post has been edited by Del S on 13th May 2011 13:02

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Quote (Del S @ 13th May 2011 13:02)

So, when Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 outsell you five to one, Square, it's time enough to try emulate that I think.

OH GOD. NO. HELL NO. JUST NO.

emulate that? make their own shooters? you didn't try out Kane and Lynch 2 I take it..
They're selling so well in comparison because they're immensely popular titles in the Western market, we have a huge appetite for that **** over here apparently.


I'm gonna have to agree with R51 on this

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The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Quote (ZidaneTribal @ 13th May 2011 13:01)

They should fire Wada, because the last good and decent Final Fantasy, was IX. X- XIV have been rather crappy. Final Fantasies I- IX, Chrono Trigger and Sword of Mana were JRPG gold.

I dont think I could have said this any better.

Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 13th May 2011 05:28)

OH GOD. NO. HELL NO. JUST NO.

emulate that? make their own shooters?

Hahaha, FF13-2 now needs to be a first-person shooter where you play as Sazh to complete some ridiculous task, like rescuing the hair-chocobo.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Quote (ZidaneTribal @ 13th May 2011 08:01)

To be fair, this makes alot of sense. FF XIV isn't doing so well, Versus has spent years in development and there's still no sight of a release date, and Square Enix are refusing to do anything that would actually make them a ton of cash, remake FF6, FF7, Chrono Trigger and make a Chrono Trigger sequel. That easy, but they refuse to listen to the fans. Oh, and it's been five years, and there's still no sign of Kingdom Hearts 3 ?

They should fire Wada, because the last good and decent Final Fantasy, was IX. X- XIV have been rather crappy. Just leave Enix, and become a independent company again Square. You may of lost money due to a movie that didn't go as planned, but Final Fantasies I- IX, Chrono Trigger and Sword of Mana were JRPG gold.

See, this is the kind of thing I don't get. People assume that just because they want a game means that it's going to be the game that sells twenty million copies, and that just doesn't seem likely at all.

I will grant Final Fantasy VII. A remake there would probably sell very well indeed, but I wouldn't imagine that it would sell any more copies than the original, if it even got to that level, because the original was really the result of a perfect storm - it was among the first, if not the very first, killer apps for an up and coming gaming system and, indeed, gaming company. It also had a marketing juggernaut behind it that no Squenix game before or after could match.

1997 is a very, very different place than 2011, and with the massive expense that would be required to get a Final Fantasy VII remake off the ground, it would have to sell Mario-level quantities to right the ship in the way your post suggests, and that would be immensely difficult given the more fragmented market and the general downturn in JRPG sales in the West.

You can like or dislike Squenix' newer games all you like, but relying solely on remakes and ports isn't going to save the company (if indeed you believe it needs saving, which I don't). The most recent release of Chrono Trigger sold under a million copies worldwide with Final Fantasy IV DS doing much less, while Dragon Quest IX sold over five million on the same handheld - but yet there are still people who claim that it's Enix ruining Square, and not Square doing it to themselves?

I'm certainly no Square Enix fanboy posting this - I didn't play a "new" game from the company between 2001 and just this year, when I started both Final Fantasy XIII and Crisis Core (haven't finished either one, yet, either). For my money, though, the problem isn't solely that they're turning away their fans - they can't be losing too many of them given that their core-franchise sales numbers are still respectable given their niche market - but more that the industry has changed significantly and they have a hard time adapting those franchises to meet it.

Bottom line for the tl;dr crowd is that while I appreciate the passion of the fans, since it keeps my site running as well as produces sales for the company that made my site possible, fan fervor doesn't make nearly as much money as people might think, and running a business to cater simply to the most core contingent doesn't make for a business that is going to stay around forever. You may not like that Squenix doesn't give you your wishlist of games, but you definitely won't get them if the company simply folds. To avoid that fold, they simply must continue to branch out, even if some of us don't personally like those branches.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote

I will grant Final Fantasy VII. A remake there would probably sell very well indeed, but I wouldn't imagine that it would sell any more copies than the original, if it even got to that level, because the original was really the result of a perfect storm - it was among the first, if not the very first, killer apps for an up and coming gaming system and, indeed, gaming company. It also had a marketing juggernaut behind it that no Squenix game before or after could match.

1997 is a very, very different place than 2011, and with the massive expense that would be required to get a Final Fantasy VII remake off the ground, it would have to sell Mario-level quantities to right the ship in the way your post suggests, and that would be immensely difficult given the more fragmented market and the general downturn in JRPG sales in the West.

I can't agree with this more.

Quote

So, when Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 outsell you five to one, Square, it's time enough to try emulate that I think.

While FFVII once had all the chips in its favor, these are the sorts of games that currently do. I can't stress enough, however, the fact that you don't need to sell super-massive quantities of games just to be successful. SE was successul with their sales of FFXIII; yes, it was completely outdone by a couple shooters, but it still sold quite well. Just because what a company does isn't the center of the market doesn't mean it should jump ship. (I recognize that Del is being a bit snarky here for the fun of it, but I think my point is still worth mentioning.)

Quote

Presumably FF 13-2 might actually help a little, but given that about 40% of the people who bought that hated it, I'm not predicting a hugely happy ending on that one.

I'm rather interested to see how this works out. I think that a more open game in the FFXIII universe with more options available to the player (aka a bit more of the traditional JRPG feel as opposed to the very linear, streamlined FFXIII) could be potentially very successful. SE could be able to satisfy the fans of FFXIII, who would gladly return for more of the story, as well as some of those who had been critical, who would (ideally, mind you) be comforted by a more familiar style. Now this sort of success is far from a foregone conclusion, but I think it is certainly within the realm of possibility.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

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I agree for the most part with most of the stuff that has been posted here. Though, to point out, these losses are inflated by the crisis, so it's to be expected that all Japanese businesses are at a loss. Wavelike business cycles are commonplace, but this at the moment appears to be an anomaly.

It has yet to reveal some major problem, unless it continues on through the next fiscal year. People claim that perhaps they're ticking off their fans. It could be possible, but their finances before this anomaly do not reflect that. They're making major deals buying properties and that major spending of capital coinciding with the Earthquake have most likely led to this. But this doesn't mean that Square's "gettin' what they deserve by not making FFVII, etc."

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Praise Be To Helix!

And if you're wondering how Square Enix is planning to return to prosperity, here you go:

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/05/1..._enix_more_ips/

High level, it boils down to a few points:

• Keep up with growth in mobile platforms, particularly smartphones. We'll be seeing more ports to iOS in particular, and probably a couple small new IPs, I'd guess.
• Roll out some big AAA titles in the next FY. They're planning releases for Deus Ex, Dungeon Siege 3 and FF13-2 worldwide, as well as a lot of stuff we already know about for Japan. They're quite careful to point out that their list is only stuff announced in the last FY or before, so there could be other things coming out that haven't been yet announced.
• New IPs, which is a bit of marketing BS. It's great to say that there will be new ideas that will make tons of money, and to even say that almost every branch of the company will have at least one, but that's kind of like saying "we'll make more money because we'll find a grove of money trees!"

Slide nine is the best, though, and it is right in line with Del's jokey comment. The company is planning to make strides in genres that for them are non-traditional, and they're planning on building a more stable base on the back of new-game DLC and microtransactions, in re-establishing FF14 as a player in the MMO space, and in continuing to re-release the back catalog over download services like the Virtual Console and PSN.

Again, if all you want is a FF7 remake, I wouldn't hold my breath. But frankly, their plan for next year is about exactly what I would suggest if I were giving Square Enix a presentation about such things. Take from that whatever you will.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 13th May 2011 17:02

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Interesting image on how SE views it's studios and strong IPs. The source is in a story here.



This seems like a hefty amount of original IPs, especially for a SE who doesn't have a really big history of taking risks with new properties.

Edit

duuurrrrrr that image is right in the story R51 linked. this is what I get for not reading the topic beforehand

This post has been edited by FallingHeart on 13th May 2011 22:26

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

Let's see... FFX was the last new game of theirs I bought. Since then, the only thing I've purchased has been the DS version of FFIV. So maybe not getting any of my money caught up with them finally. Anyway, I'm sure they'll be fine. I think a decent (or better) FFVII remake would bring in boatloads of cash, since it appears to be all anyone asks of Squeenix nowadays. Another Chrono game (remember Chrono Break?) would be awesome, but it sounds like a complete fantasy to me.

I would really love to see what they come up with for the new franchises, and I agree that branching out is the only sensible move. Also they will be fine.

I really love small(ish) communities like this. When you see posters with medals for things like "has been here for ten-effing-years" you assume they know what they're talking about.

From what I threw together after some number crunching, which I am usually rather good at, I worked out a few eensy ways for Sqeenix to handle this terrible, actually I prefer the OP's use of the word; horrid fiscal year, and the only one I can really be bothered talking about is the over-talked-about FFVII remake.

Now as an avid fan of FFVII and FF in general I'd love to see a remake of what I consider to be the joint best game of all time, along with MGS4 and Tetris. A lot of this is pure guess work and assumption, so if you have any suggestions I'd love to consider alternatives. I'm working from figures across different generations of games so I need to make the best comparisons possiblea and that's really hard when you don't get JRPG's of similar era with vastly different amounts of gameplay time and extra stuff(which is the rudementary way I'm evaluating production cost). Here we go.

Final Fantasy VII was developed and marketed between 1994 and 1997, with a break in late '94 to work on Chrono Trigger. Now, if you consider this to be really only about a year and a half of full production, since pretty much everything put into FFVII in '94 was scrapped or used in other games(and indeed some of it is apparently still being kept for games to come) so production really started in '95 and ended in what I assume was mid '96 due to its early Q1 '97 release. According to 1UP.com(sadly the only source I could find) production of the game cost in the region of $45million, which was mostly due to the fact the game had ridiculous CGI for its time. $45million in late 1990's money roughly translates to $66million in today's money.

Here's where it starts to get really, really estimate-y and guess work...-y

Now considering the production costs of FFVIII and FFIX are rumoured to be in the region of $50million(sources, please?) then we can assume that the cost of producing a game with about ~80 hours average completion time, including story with state of the art graphics(since it's only the machines that designers work with that inhibits them, not the skill of the designer) then we can assume that a game such as FFXIII, which is at best a 35 hour average completion time game, should have a production cost of ~$40million, right? No, that's stupid, FFXIII is rumoured to have a production cost of over $70million, which is understandable considering how much advertising and PR goes into games nowadays. This is also because of voice acting in games too, which adds on a fair chunk. With all that terrible assuptiom comes a little more which actually adds to the inaccuracy, we can assume the cost of advertising and voice acting a game like FFVII would be in the region of $25-30mil, I'm not actually sure if that's a lot but it certainly seems like it. Basically it would be everywhere right before it came out and it would be the word on a couple of million peoples lips for the 5 or so years it would take to produce, just like GT5.

So basically, if you put everything in to new money and add on money for advertising you end up with a figure around $90mil. This seems like a lot of money, and it is. This seems like a bit less money when you take the fact that FFVII has sold over 10 million copies world-wide to date. If you take the number of people that bought the original game within three days of release in Japan and multiply that by the average cost of a video game(which I'm taking at (USD59.99) then you get a turnover of just under $120million, which then turns profit of $30million. So the game must sell 2 million copies in a year, not hard considering the game's legacy. I'd honestly say a low figure for this game would be 5 million in the first six months, making ridiculous profit.

^ Wow, really interesting analysis.

Remaking FFVII could bring in a good amount of revenue, though now that you've looked at the development process, that gives a better idea of how well stuff has to sell to actually make profits.

As for the Chrono Trigger sequel idea, fans have already been burned by one bad sequel, and I STRONGLY suspect that company insiders have been blocking this for artistic reasons. This is probably not a great idea anyway since it will probably further break the fanbase.

On the other hand, Squenix could try reviving some very odd and mostly unused IPs. Such as Einhander--which recently got slated to be featured by Smithsonian!

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

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Don't Squenix (via Crystal Dynamics & Eidos) own the IP to Legacy of Kain?

That would be a very welcome return...

Not that I hold out much hope.

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I never quite lose hope for more Legacy of Kain... You might remember a few months back Eidos had a little public poll regarding DLC character packs for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - which would you like to see first, Kane and Lynch or Kain and Raizel? By all accounts Kain and Raziel won by a landslide.

But the Kane and Lynch pack still came out first. Talk about mixed blessings.

TT_TT

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