Current Events > Square Enix Loses Nearly $2 Billion in Value Since Final Fantasy 16

(+) Yeah! (+)

People act like the FF games are to blame, but there's been a slew of mediocre games and bad business decisions that are the main reason why they're struggling that hard.

If a smash hit game selling a few million doesn't break even with a company, then clearly something is incredibly wrong with the back-end and management.

voldothegr8 posted...

Not how it works, consumers don't buy directly from SE. $60 is MSRP but bought for less from retailers.

True, I definitely don't claim nor haven't claimed to be an economist. I am pulling numbers from other, usually more intelligent sources lol. In terms of raw unit sales though, Square Enix at least manages to push a lot of them.

It's just their expectations are so unrealistic. Especially when three of their highest pushing games have a lot of specific factors that make them so high up to begin with.

BombermanGold posted...

People act like the FF games are to blame, but there's been a slew of mediocre games and bad business decisions that are the main reason why they're struggling that hard.

If a smash hit game selling a few million doesn't break even with a company, then clearly something is incredibly wrong with the back-end and management.

Yeah. As someone else posted a little bit earlier, it really comes down to a few different factors that need to be addressed. Budget is probably one of them, Time is probably another, and their big projects need to stop trend chasing. Not just their FFs but things like Forespoken and Avengers too.

BombermanGold posted...

People act like the FF games are to blame, but there's been a slew of mediocre games and bad business decisions that are the main reason why they're struggling that hard.

If a smash hit game selling a few million doesn't break even with a company, then clearly something is incredibly wrong with the back-end and management.

Nah people just recognize this as the most recent bad decision. They basically put all their eggs in to one basket and then threw the basket at the wall hoping all of it stuck.

BombermanGold posted...

People act like the FF games are to blame, but there's been a slew of mediocre games and bad business decisions that are the main reason why they're struggling that hard.

If a smash hit game selling a few million doesn't break even with a company, then clearly something is incredibly wrong with the back-end and management.

That's the thing though. Nobody can blame them for expecting their world renowned flagship franchise to pull in big money, but we can blame them for depending too heavily on it's success while simultaneously setting it up to underperform.

It's only a matter of time before Sony tries to buy them out.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Sold 3 million first week and we haven't seen anything since, but SE has some terrible expectations and atrocious development processes.

R_Jackal posted...

Honestly SE has the answer staring them in the face but they desperately want to become a tech demo company.

Their big games under perform, their old remakes and smaller games perform better than expected. Answer to me seems to be to take a step back, maybe make a new significantly lower budget but classically styled RPG, and evaluate how to move forward with larger budget games while taking time to see what is expected of them versus just trend chasing and find a solid middle ground to move forward.

Or they can just Spirits Within their company again, which is probably what will happen.

Actually market the beloved remakes and well-made midtier RPGs instead of throwing it all at noticably undercooked tech demo trendchasing stuff and dead-on-arrival Live Service abominations? Never

So that's why they tried to get into nfts. They were desperate lol

This really sucks because SE has been killing it lately with their sprite based side games. Octopath 2 is probably my GOTY rn, and Live A Live, Tactics Ogre, and Triangle Strategy all got banger reviews and the Pixel Remasters are all well done.

It's their 3D AAA titles that are dragging them down. Forespoken, Valkyrie Elysium, Various Daylife etc.

I think 16's failure is more based on how criminally expensive it is to make big name games now. If a game sells like hotcakes, and you still lose money, then there's obviously something foul with the system.

Forspoken is egregious because by all objective metrics it should have been an AA experimental game. Not a premium-plus $70 flagship title like they were treating it as.

Like... it's very undercooked and takes no time in showing that it's undercooked. I wonder what got them hung up on it.

electricbugs2 posted...

This really sucks because SE has been killing it lately with their sprite based side games. Octopath 2 is probably my GOTY rn, and Live A Live, Tactics Ogre, and Triangle Strategy all got banger reviews and the Pixel Remasters are all well done.

It's their 3D AAA titles that are dragging them down. Forespoken, Valkyrie Elysium, Various Daylife etc.

I think 16's failure is more based on how criminally expensive it is to make big name games now. If a game sells like hotcakes, and you still lose money, then there's obviously something foul with the system.

Thats on SE though. They want to be a tech demo company, while as you pointed out, remakes and rereleases of their beloved stuff (and stuff in their style) sell very well while costing a pittance to produce.

Imagine if they actually properly marketed those remakes too.

Voidgolem posted...

Forspoken is egregious because by all objective metrics it should have been an AA experimental game. Not a premium-plus $70 flagship title like they were treating it as.

Like... it's very undercooked and takes no time in showing that it's undercooked. I wonder what got them hung up on it.

Marvel-itis got them hung up on it. You could basically copy paste a lot of the dialogue straight in to one of the mid tier MCU movies and it wouldn't even seem out of place.

PraetorXyn posted...

Thats on SE though. They want to be a tech demo company, while as you pointed out, remakes and rereleases of their beloved stuff (and stuff in their style) sell very well while costing a pittance to produce.

Imagine if they actually properly marketed those remakes too.

Live a Live was the only one they put effort into marketing, and that was boosted by how many JRPG YouTubers were gushing over it.

Octopath II is the best game I've played in years, and yet I found out about it through CE rather then any marketing from Square.

Enix probably thinking of selling out the Square part than selling the whole company.
They were better financially without it, since they're not just a game company but ventured on other businesses too and they're not failing like the video game division.

GuerrillaSoldier posted...

fuck. this means they're gonna continue releasing a bunch of crap with ff7's name on it to get back on track. just keep whoring out their masterpiece to a bunch of cheap shit. disgusting.

They already are lol. They just made ANOTHER gacha game based on just Final Fantasy 7, has a bunch of fan service units like wet bikini Tifa or young Sephiroth

electricbugs2 posted...

Live a Live was the only one they put effort into marketing, and that was boosted by how many JRPG YouTubers were gushing over it.

Octopath II is the best game I've played in years, and yet I found out about it through CE rather then any marketing from Square.

Precisely.

AAA budgets will be the end of modern video gaming. Needing to sell over 10 million copies to break even is completely unsustainable and the dev times are ridiculously long, tying up devs while generating no ROI for years. That said, game companies have painted themselves into a corner and can't say "I'm glad you bought new consoles, now enjoy these PS3-era graphics for 3D games moving forward because modern graphics will put us out of business."

Mid-budget games like Octopath are the way forward, because they don't require insane sales to generate nice profits. I for one welcome our new 2D-HD overlords.

R_Jackal posted...

Marvel-itis got them hung up on it. You could basically copy paste a lot of the dialogue straight in to one of the mid tier MCU movies and it wouldn't even seem out of place.

I didn't mean the writing (though the writing was *bad*), I mean that when you actually get out in the game proper there's...not much there.

Oh, I know, there's miles and miles of map, of map marker open world Get The Thing, but aside from the parkour feeling good to do (mostly), there's no *game*. Exploring isn't interesting, the games Big Fancy Graphics Engine is wasted on sprawling brown landscape, and the combat introduces like ten mechanics it never builds on (three of which are fun)

I haven't played through all of it yet, mind, but like...if the chunk of it I've played is more of a "I enjoy lambasting this" instead of a "I enjoy playing this", it's not a great sign

Fortunately, Dragonquest is largely owned by Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, so it's safe when Squeenix inevitably implodes.

Voidgolem posted...

I haven't played through all of it yet, mind, but like...if the chunk of it I've played is more of a "I enjoy lambasting this" instead of a "I enjoy playing this", it's not a great sign

Blue Dragon is pretty great, tho, exactly because of that.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Fortunately, Dragonquest is largely owned by Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, so it's safe when Squeenix inevitably implodes.

Blue Dragon is pretty great, tho, exactly because of that.

Just Horii, not Toriyama

You're better off finding an old square game and playing that:

Bushido blade
Brave fencer musashi
Parasite eve
Final fantasy x-2
Tomb Raider (original, edios)

Go hit up some of the titles u missed!

I think the best comparison is to look at a company like From Software. They release a tent pole game almost every year, and each year it is getting them more and more fans and growing their sales. If you told me in 25 years Armored Core would have a great score and be a hit, I would have called you a liar. Last year they released Elden Ring and dominated the conversation and were blessed with sales. Then a year and a half later, here we are with another major release from them, without any word even on the Elden Ring DLC currently being done.

They have a good system going, and big companies like SE are just failing MISERABLY at being a real AAA studio.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Fortunately, Dragonquest is largely owned by Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, so it's safe when Squeenix inevitably implodes.

isnt horii the guy who does not want america to get the good dragon quest music so always has it altered for the wester release

AceMos posted...

isnt horii the guy who does not want america to get the good dragon quest music so always has it altered for the wester release

That's the composer Sugiyama, iirc. And he's died two years ago.

Robot2600 posted...

You're better off finding an old square game and playing that:

Or as has been discussed, buying something like Octopath or Triangle Strategy.

Actual solid games that are well worth the price of admission, and help out the small studios that help Squeenix with the development.

If Square-Enix is going under and FF as a franchise may end, I actually hope they're able to complete the FFVII Remake project at the very least because that's practically the only thing I'm looking forward to from them. XVI was pretty good but it felt lacking in a lot of areas.

Ricemills posted...

That's the composer Sugiyama, iirc. And he's died two years ago.

oh ok my mistake

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I mean, we already saw Squaresoft in a brink of bankruptcy back in 2000 before Enix bailed them out.

Ricemills posted...

I mean, we already saw Squaresoft in a brink of bankruptcy back in 2000 before Enix bailed them out.

And now Square gets to drag Enix down with it this time, doing more or less the exact same fucking thing it did before.

Ricemills posted...

I mean, we already saw Squaresoft in a brink of bankruptcy back in 2000 before Enix bailed them out.

Late 80's too.

I don't think this is the end of Squeenix like the news says, but they need to seriously restructure how they work on the big titles.

As I said, all their 2.5 D and remake games are Gucci. No changes needed there (Aside from better marketing), they're absolutely hitting home runs with them.

But the AAA stinkers need to stop, and even their good AAA games need a budget restructuring.

electricbugs2 posted...

Late 80's too.

I don't think this is the end of Squeenix like the news says, but they need to seriously restructure how they work on the big titles.

As I said, all their 2.5 D and remake games are Gucci. No changes needed there (Aside from better marketing), they're absolutely hitting home runs with them.

But the AAA stinkers need to stop, and even their good AAA games need a budget restructuring.

Pretty recently they were saying they wanted to double down on the tech demo stuff though.
https://tinyurl.com/2te56pzm

PraetorXyn posted...

Pretty recently they were saying they wanted to double down on the tech demo stuff though.
https://tinyurl.com/2te56pzm

Which is unfortunate, because it definitely is not helping them much lol. At least not with where they expect to be.

PraetorXyn posted...

Pretty recently they were saying they wanted to double down on the tech demo stuff though.
https://tinyurl.com/2te56pzm

Honestly even scuzz tier Japan developers like Capcom and Konami have made better choices recently. No reason Squeenix can't go back on it either.

konami is a slot machine company, they dont make games

Robot2600 posted...

konami is a slot machine company, they dont make games

They literally dropped a Bomberman game today.

Robot2600 posted...

konami is a slot machine company, they dont make games

They label themselves a digital entertainment company and make both.

electricbugs2 posted...

They literally dropped a Bomberman game today.

Konami finally gets it.
They can make a 100-million-dollar AAA game that everyone shits on, or Bomberman.

just b/c they wrangled up a few grad students to shit out a bomberman game doesn't make them a game company

they split ffvii into 3 games to pull them out of this hole. And the ffx remake will further do that.

Robot2600 posted...

just b/c they wrangled up a few grad students to shit out a bomberman game doesn't make them a game company

See above, they're not a video game company. They're a digital entertainment company. That encompasses a wide variety of digital offerings including video games.

electricbugs2 posted...

They literally dropped a Bomberman game today.

wait they did?

AceMos posted...

wait they did?

Yup. Reviews are lukewarm, but still.

electricbugs2 posted...

Reviews are lukewarm, but still.

It's Bomberman. It'll never be a critics' darling.

Why would investors invest in Square-Enix? Where's the growth? Everything is either selling to their same audience or trending down.

Their biggest fuck up was selling Eidos. They basically admitted they don't know how to sell to the Western market and said they will use that sale to focus on their Japanese studios and blockchain instead. So here we are and absolutely nothing about their situation has changed outside of having even less variety of games being released.

The most hilarious thing is seeing Capcom in comparison watching the money roll in because they have the crazy tactic of just releasing games as often as possible on as many platforms as possible and they brag to investors that most of their sales every year is from their back catalogue.

Squeenix needs to sell Squaresoft, and just be Enix again.
Maybe Sakaguchi has a pile of money laying around from that one Apple-exclusivity deal.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Squeenix needs to sell Squaresoft, and just be Enix again.
Maybe Sakaguchi has a pile of money laying around from that one Apple-exclusivity deal.

I don't think making FF 9 over and over is the best solution either.

SE issue is it takes them so god damn long to make their games. They have a huge back catalogue of amazing games. They should utilise it more frequently. How difficult would it be for them to release 2.5d remakes of their OG games 1-6 and CT? I feel like any other big studio could pump out one every 12-18 months. Thats guaranteed good money for relatively little work.

Hell just fucking port FF legends 1-3. They are already remade in Japanese and just need localising.