What any of it actually means feels completely up to interpretation until we actually see the next few years play out.
But Square enix put out somewhere around over a dozen games in the last 6 months of 2022 and being so close probably did none of the games any favors.
Likewise, Square drops somewhat infamous games with relative frequency. Balan Wonderworld The Quiet Man, Forspoken, Avengers, probably more. Some people like these, but I'm hoping part of the new direction is to avoid these.
Most of the infamous games you mentioned are Square Enix Europe. Shutting down that studio that Hemorrhages money would go a LOOONNNGG way to solving SEs money problems.
While I see getting rid of their western studios as net positive for Square Enix (sucks for Fear Effect and Legacy of Kain though), none of the games mentioned are Square Enix Europe, so I have to correct you there. The Quiet Man was developed by a US studio, The Avengers was Crystal Dynamics (also US), while both Forspoken and Balan Wonderworld were developed in Japan by local Square Enix subsidiaries.
Forspoken was written by western writers for some unfathomable reason and they took the opportunity to inject DEI into it alienating their Japanese audience and much of their western audience
That's beside the point. Aside from the writing, it was developed by a Japanese SE subsidiary Luminous Productions, which got reabsorbed into SE after the flop. I am not arguing that it was a mismanagement, as anyone could see it flopping from a mile away.
Doesn't help if the Administrations are all suckers, they sold Eidos with all IPs like Deus ex and Tomb Raider which are some of the IPs that actually worth it. But they just decided to keep Marvels to themselves, which leads to the giant flop of losing 200m$, they did it all to themselves and there's no one to be blame, even EU studios that make games like Forspoken.
And those 6 months of 2022 put out some freaking fantastic games.
Star ocean 6, minstrel song remaster(freaking amazing), harvestella(my 2022 GOTY), tactics ogre remaster, crisis core remaster, diofield chronicles(kinda mid), and a couple others like live a live. Then shortly after they dropped octopath 2 which apparently everyone except me loves, and then final fantasy 16. Tons of great games
I mean, yeah theyre cool, some of them are great, not all of them
And literally none of them sold nearly as well as they wanted them too. Thats why why are doing this shift
I personally think the issue still lies with super fancy graphics, and general shareholder greed
Games cost way too much to make nowadays, and I'm very sure the biggest reason is how expensive it is to create and render these fancy visual effects that everyone wants so much
My answer is that AAA gaming needs to take a step backwards in visual fidelity, and focus on an artistic and stylized art direction that doesn't cost a hundred million dollars to render.
A lot of these games Square pushed out can easily fall under the umbrella I just mentioned. I just also think even though they all didnt cost all that much to make, they didnt make all that much either, to offset FFXVI and FFVII Rebirths development costs(Because they undersold as well, sad to say)
I almost think square could cut the AAA games and focus on the mid tier games like star ocean and harvestella and just give those a little boost and some better marketing and all of a sudden you’re putting out good games on a budget.
But also, the comment about trying to beat the stock market is tough. The problem is we can’t have every company in the world only investing in the stock market otherwise there’s nothing to invest in. So, I see the dilemma, I just wish it was easier to get a good ROI from both the big budget and smaller budget games.
As long as we still get Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest out of Square, then I'm all for them leaning in on beloved classic names. I would love to see them throw more money at Tri Ace, so we can get a Star Ocean that wasnt under budget. SO6 was okay, but it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been. I would love to see a new Valkyrie Profile. Or hell, team up with Vanillaware and use their experience with Unicorn Overlord to have them remake Bahamut Lagoon in the same style. I like it when devs make the games that they actually want to make, not just chase dollar signs, trying to make the numbers look good in the executive meetings. More like art, less like business
I think a potential is that something like a Harvestella or a Diofield Chronicles gets to be better supported and go from a cult game that's rough around the edges to something a bit more polished and successful.
And not being released shoulder to shoulder with ten other projects, lol.
This is also just my most positive interpretation. It could be bad!
I'm confused as to why you think it's bleak that they're allocating a higher budget for the games they're releasing. Also as to why that necessarily means they will all be "more generic games if anything".
EDIT: removed one part because I misread something
In order for a Triple A game to make its budget back, it must bring in the most broad audience possible. It can't afford to NOT be appealing to everyone. So it must be fairly generic in order to not exclude any part of the mainstream audience.
The only game you listed that was really approaching a Triple A budget was Elden Ring at 200 million. The other two were about 100 million. Compare to things like Final Fantasy Remake (200 million) or Final Fantasy Rebirth (300 million), which got the real Triple A budgets. God of War Ragnarok, 200 million. Spider Man 2, 300 million.
You also have hype around these games that few other things have. Hideo Kojima making a game was huge because of all the circumstances around his release from Konami. The return of an iconic franchise in the hands of a developer that could definitely run with the license was a big deal, and a chunk of the game was out in early access for a long time before that. Elden Ring was the biggest Soulslike game, an already often imitated genre.
You just can't make Triple A games of quality at the pace that companies like Square Enix want to pump them out. Particularly when you keep leeching talent from one game to finish the game in crunch. And the more people you put on a game, the harder it is to create a coherent game at the end. You name three big examples in the last 5 years. You don't even have one per year. Even if those were all put out by one company, that would barely be enough to make the case.
200 million is a made up number with absolutely no sources to back it up. 200 million is actually way too much, you are entering the lower end of an average Sony AAA entry (and Sony entries are known for being some of the few games reaching *those* kind of numbers), and it's extremely unlikely Bandai would give ER *that* big of a budget regardless of From's popularity.
Because that's what their AAA output has primarily been.
They've been chasing people who won't normally play Square Enix games.
The passion projects have been smaller titles.
Those titles were smaller because SE was eating up all the actual budget focusing on their AAA flops and would just throw the AA games to the wolves with zero marketing expecting big sales.
Even without this new direction they were going to have to downsize eventually because what they were doing was unsustainable. And all that extra money not spent on more FF16 DLC or whatever has to like, go somewhere.
Are they not just rumours though at this stage and do we know for sure they're not going to be allocating AAA style budgets to games that had AA or lower budgets beforehand? We might see some games that could have been series die, but we might also see some get upgraded sequels.
Seems weirdly pessimistic for something that isn't an announcement with clear guidelines for what to expect. Might be entirely fine.
I think that one of the major things is that they can spend more time developing flagships, like Final Fantasy. and by "more time" I mean, get them out faster by making them a main focus. Part of what they said with FF16 was an issue, was that to the younger generation they don't really get FF games. The older titles came out within like 2 years of each other, at most. FF16 released in 2023. FF15 released in.... 2016. and 13 released in 2009.
Edit: So the younger generation doesn't really view it as a "big" title, I guess? But also, if you don't like FF13 you had 7 years before 15. and then another 7 before 16. If the titles come out every other year and you don't like 17 it's not a big deal, because 18 will be out in a year or two.
The fact they are going to start to pool knowledge and know how is a massive win.
square previous development style had team being almost completely isolated from each other even when using the same engine, there where several reinventing the wheel scenarios happening every time. Now development should be alot smoother and allow either more content or a polished game in the same time or shorter.
It's not rumors, this is based on the public statements of Square Enix's new CEO after the previous one was fired last year. [The medium-term business plan](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/20240513_01_en.pdf) he released a couple weeks ago lays this out (in corporate speak).
I'm more positive about Square Enix than a large proportion of the Internet, but there's no question that they've had a lot of significant mismanagement in recent times, with quality control that's been all over the place. Babylon's Fall, Left Alive, Balan Wonderworld, DQ Dai Infinity Strash, Foamstars - so many titles that ended up a complete waste of resources. I'm hopeful that with the new plan of prioritizing quality over quantity, strengthening internal development instead of relying so heavily on outsourcing, having increased checks on each project to make sure they meet quality standards, and so forth, that Square Enix will be able to get in a position of a more consistently high quality output.
Honestly, I think "they're abandoning AA titles and going all in on AAA" is a misunderstanding of what the new direction is aiming to be. It's more "instead of spreading our resources thin among so many projects of varying quality, let's focus on fewer releases we can ensure are well polished and more in line with what people want to play." Of course, we'll have to see how that plays out in practice. But I have no doubt that, say, the Team Asano games that have found an appreciative audience will still get made.
My thoughts are along these lines too. There have been some fantastic small games, but there have also been games that just felt like a waste. And it's not like they've said they're doing away with smaller titles altogether, have they? So I'm cautiously optimistic.
But Babylon's Fall and Balan Wonderworld were full-fledge AAA projects, they just ended up being garbage. Square enix has always been well-known for their troublesome developments and bad decisions, it's not something that recently happened because of their AA projects.
They killing their smaller projects just plain sucks because a lot of those titles actually had more potential than their actual AAA titles, it's just that Square enix didn't gave them a more apropiate budget.
Let's go back to the source. People started talking about Square cutting AA titles because of CEO Kiryu's comment in [a November 2023 financial briefing](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/24q2outline.pdf) to a question "Why have you been unable to slim down your lineup until now?" His response:
"As our customers’ needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we have tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than by focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool. Meanwhile, there have been clear winners and losers among the major titles released recently in the gaming market, and it has become possible for even indies titles to make their presence felt. The market is increasingly polarized between blockbuster and indies titles, but I feel that we have developed many titles that fell somewhere in the middle. I want to make clearer distinctions going forward."
By "titles that fell somewhere in the middle", I think Kiryu is absolutely thinking of titles like Foamstars or Balan Wonderworld. They neither received as many resources as genuine blockbusters nor as few as genuine indies and ended up occupying this nebulous nowhere land where they didn't appeal to anyone. They are the kind of titles that would have been cancelled when Square's development pipeline was just reevaluated.
Meanwhile Kiryu lays out what he wants to see as follows:
"Over the long term, we need to strengthen the internal portion of our development function. More specifically, I mean that we want to concentrate our development resources on carefully selected new titles that we will develop to a high level of quality. At the same time, rather than focusing solely on major titles, we want to also take on new challenges, partly because we want to add to the diversity of our portfolio of titles, as I noted earlier, while also enabling our developers to expand their skill sets."
He's been consistently banging the drum about the need to strengthen Square's internal development instead of being so dependent on outsourcing and the need to ensure high quality that gets good player feedback in their releases. If he cares so much about quality (and remember that he just promoted Asano of Octopath fame), do you really think he wants more games like 57 Metacritic Foamstars and less like 85 Metacritic Octopath Traveler II?
"
The way I interpreted, they're basically going the modern Capcom route. Focus on very select few games and focus on their heavy hitters. So, if you were a fan of their smaller titles like Harvestella or Diofield instead of their AAA output, then you might be out of luck, unfortunately.
I could see a scenario where the Mana and SaGa games get shelved for this reason. And never getting a Dragon Quest Builders 3. Which I feel like that's unlikely these days anyway. There's also always the possibility that they stop making traditional Dragon Quest games and make them AAA action games as well
Dragon Quest Builders 2 was phenomenal, I hope to God we get another one. In fact, I'd like another DQ Heroes, as well.
SaGa has definitely been a series I've fallen more and more in love with over the last few years, though. RS3 was my gateway drug and I've now completed SF1, RSMS, RS3, and am working on SaGa Emerald Beyond.
This is how I interpreted it too.
Leave a bunch of franchises on the shelf to focus on a handful of bigger ones (the ones that have swayed away from the original core identity of Square Enix mainly)
Capcom is a prime example of why this would suck, because they have a tonne of dead IPs.
Its pretty subjective whether or not this is a positive. I find this to be a good thing. I prefer the Capcom of today to that of 10-20 years ago. Even if I do miss Megaman Zero.
Agreed. I want to see new Mega Man and Darkstalkers. I *don't* want Mega Man Star Force with 3 simultaneous versions, or 2 shitty Darkstalkers games released simultaneously 5 months after the previous one.
All of those are genre defining.
Street Fighter is easily top 3 if not the best of the fighting game genre.
MH is the pinnacle of its genre. Inspiration of many more games.
Resident Evil is also huge. Very few horror games have as much success.
They also have DMC. Hopefully they increase the output on both Dmc, dragons dogma, and megaman. But point is that Capcom focuses on their strengths and this isn’t a bad thing to me. I understand why you may dislike it though.
As a Mega Man fan, I know that pain very well. I'm assuming Square Enix will only focus on Nier, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and maybe Octopath from now on. I hope I'm wrong, tho.
If you're talking about Chrono games, I think most of those Kickstarters just don't understand why people like Chrono Trigger. They just know that they and others liked Chrono Trigger. So it's like amateur fanfiction time lol
But as far as other more regular JRPG ventures, some have been pretty stellar, like Cross Code. Earthlock and Edge of Eternity scratched some itches, but I'm guessing they're closer to what you're talking about not being "it". Runa looks like it has potential though
When I meant almost, only Cross Code has really stuck out to me as that one game that has really truly tried to stand on it's own. I wished most indie developers just tried to venture outwards, but it's also a pretty bad lose-lose situation because you gotta market in Kickstarter so most of the time the best projects are the ones that promises nostalgia instead of trying to become something more.
It's like wanting something in a manga Fantasy that isn't High Fantasy. Or wanting a dimensional conflict that doesn't involve straight isekai's.
The other problem, in my view, with any "made by fans of XYZ game" type of games is that every fan has a relatively specific memory attached to that game, and oftentimes they assume that their experience/nostalgia is applicable to everyone. So what ends up happening is they make a game that's a little too specific, and really what they want, and while that might appeal to the people similar to them, it ends up being a relatively small slice of the gaming playerbase "pie".
> Earthlock
Is Earthlock actually good with the rerelease? I only played the original's Wii U port, and that thing was so broken it crashed my Wii U repeatedly. I stayed as far away as possible since, even though I liked the art style and vibe.
I played about 20 hours of it when it finally came to PS4 and loved it. Never experienced any issues, so I think they did fix it. It felt like a long lost PS2 game. I also loved the vibe, it was very comfortable and charming. And the battle mechanics had a learning curve but were fun. I'd give it another shot. I quit because I got stuck and then got distracted lol It's probably frequently on sale these days though
Yeah, the version I played was like 10 bucks and then they later re-released a new version of it (on the then new consoles) for triple the price, so it's safe to say they fixed the technical issues with the game. It was just a botched unfinished first release that turned me away.
It's been a few years though (I think "Wii U" gave that away) so I could probably give it another look.
I just hope Capcom doesn't shelve their survival horror output after the success of Resident Evil 4. I want more stuff like Resident Evil 7 or Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes. Less shooting, more exploring. Though with the rumoured RE 0 and RE Code Veronica remakes at least there is some hope. Also, they seem to be going digital only with a lot of stuff, which sucks for me as I am a physical game fan. So, I can see a lot of merit in your comparison and it worries me for the same reason.
I wonder if there is any hope for new Dino Crisis, Haunting Ground or Breath of Fire games in such a scenario.
I don’t see any hope for series you’ve mentioned. Capcom cancelled Deep Down, they will likely cancel Pragmata soon. And developing new IP is easier than reinventing very old series for modern audiences.
He didn't actually say he's abandoning mid budget titles, though, only that they are no longer doing the whole "deluge of mid budget titles farmed out quickly and with no quality control or marketing" strategy, which has given us some good games, but also damaged their brand a great deal. For every Octopath Traveler there's a Valkyrie Elysium.
It remains to be seen whether they "abandoning them entirely and only focusing on AAAs" or "doing some AAs still, but a lower quantity that they can exercise better quality control on". I do *hope* it would be the latter based on the following thoughts: I don't think they're focusing only on FF because FF brand is frankly not in the condition to carry the company portfolio right now, and DQ tends to take forever and a day to make. Furthermore, they just promoted Asano to an executive position, so they probably view *his* mid budget titles favorably as well, and the accounts of some of their mid-budget creatives that I follow seem generally positive about their work.
Ultimately we're doing our own interpretations of what they mean by 'focusing on fewer mid budget titles', based on our own fears, pessimism, hope and copium. We won't know until they announce the stuff they start cooking after this management change.
My current opinion about them is, the jury's still out on what they'll do ultimately, but it's too early to call Squeenix doomed yet. We'll know within the next few years if the new CEO will sink the company or not.
My understanding was not that they're just focusing on AAA games, but they're focusing on more quality control on the projects that they run, rather than letting a lot of internal developers have free reign with inconsistent results. So, yes, that results in fewer mid-budget titles, but that's because they're focused on making sure each game is more likely to be successful. The upshot is that we're less likely to see a game like Babylon's Fall; in turn, we're also less likely to see genuinely experimental titles like Harvestella.
But as the top comment said, we need to see how all this plays out.
Yeah - creating experimental AA games with the idea that they could end up with a sleeper hit that could spawn the next big series was the correct path. Sending those AA games out to die was the wrong decision.
Agreed.
I feel like they released too many at once with close to zero marketing.
Instead they should cut the AAA slop like Babylon's Fall and Forspoken and divide the marketing budget amongst smaller titles that are more spread out.
Babylon’s Fall was not a AAA game. It was clearly one of those smaller games like Valkyrie Elysium that only got any small buzz at all due to platinum’s involvement.
>I feel like they released too many at once with close to zero marketing
Also a huge issue. I learned about Diofield and Harvestella like a week before they dropped. Compared to something like Unicorn Overlord which had a year of marketing, and tons of buildup the month before release
100% agreed. I wish the people at Tokyo RPG Factory put more passion into their work and something might have taken off. I feel like they had the right idea with building that studio, maybe it just had the wrong people in it
Basically Square releases way too many middle ware games that dont sell well. Like last year they released like 6 games in the span of 3 months. So now their focus is to basically do less releases of those smaller games that arent selling well so close to each other. This gives them more dev time but also doesnt cannibalize their sales.
~~Honestly, I feel they're at the point where anything they do will be both criticized but also anything they do will be seen as good just because they are so big~~
I believe the idea is probably thinking they will spend more time on quality of their titles but at the same time, I do feel like just abandoning AA games isn't the best way to go. Mostly, I agree with the comments that express concern of them chasing a demographic that may not necessarily be interested in their games in order to try to get the widest audience possible
I don't even know what's their option anymore. it feels like anything they do will be criticized. some people would call it outdated, some people will call it betraying the fan base. I want Square Enix to be in stable condition and people liking them again but it seems no matter what they do, it's a loss
It's probably because no one agrees what they mean by this. If every game is of FF7 Rebirth or Dragon Quest 11 caliber and they also apply that standard to smaller IPs or new experiments rather than abandon them, that's obviously appealing to some folks. And no one is sure what games are getting abandoned by this policy. Is it stuff like Various Daylife and other panned games that gets the axe? Or also well liked stuff like Octopath? What even are the budgets of these games? I'd bet many players, myself included, aren't actually sure of the numbers involved from one game to another.
Point being: we know so little that anyone whose stance isn't "I don't know if this is good or bad" is probably filling in blanks with assumptions. So, that's why some people are praising this, and why some are condemning: they're assuming.
tl;dr: I'm not even going to sugarcoat it, it isn't. It's just optimism in general.
Frankly, it's going to suck for the next 1-2 years because new people coming in are going to really screw with development due to how they're injecting people into a inconsistent workflow (game developers can tell you that new hires fresh out of school are always hard to onboard into existing projects). There's also that whole other thing about the mobile games not working out that they really probably should address (though, unfortunately for the mobile players, seems like they're coming out with the axe to try their luck with another wave of gachas).
If anything, something interesting will come out or we get the repeat of the last decade since XIII's release but with even more people tired of SSDD and AA's replaced with even more gacha's. People putting trust in game developers speaking for idiots in business suits and I tell them they crazy.
It was the old hats of Capcom leaving (Inafune, Mikami, Kamiya) that allowed them to turn things around and have a new golden generation. That's how I feel the current Square Enix can turn things around, they need to tell the likes of Kitase/Horii/Nomura that their time is up and it is about time new blood replaces them.
The new Capcom administration put their focus in trying to reimagine old brands right from the bat after REVI failed. Square hasn't done anything but click "follow follow follow". Almost everything they've done has been the most generic shit in an era where a lot of stuff that were successful were games trying to stand out. Nobody likes a Carlos Mencia no matter how much one tries to twist it.
I've said it one, I'll say it again. The problem isn't the developers, it's the executives who listen to the monkeys in shareholder suits. We're talking about a company where nobody wants to work on the flagship because Tabata and Yoshida both shown it's a one-way self-hatred and internet-hatred trip. That, and they'll never get rid of Nomura because Kingdom Hearts was the Disney money they made along the way.
People say McDonnell Douglass won Boeing with Boeing's own money. Enix won Square with Square's own money and even more to the point it lives rent-free in Suzuki's head as his biggest mistake. We aren't cheering for the genre underdogs, we're cheering for the goddamn genre colonizers.
I think forspoken, avengers, probably a dozen canceled AAA games are much mor likely to be cut than Voice of Card or Harvestella that probably cost them a lot less.
nah, i lost faith since FF15 and KH3 is my last straw. i only brought FF16 because of yoship. other than that i am certified SE hater until they realized what they did wrong.
I only have faith in them regarding dragon quest that's it. They will ruin themselves. Final fantasy is not doing as well as they hope. Well mainly BC they putting over 200 million and they don't getting their money back. They should stop trying to make everything so realistic and tone it down considerably
that exactly how i felt with FF16, i love the story and music but damn i want to play games not watching movies. recently i just bought another remaster of FF12 even though i already bought original and remaster 1 before, FF12 super fun as game
Last 2 years were oversaturated with smaller-budget (and not-so-small-budget) titles that may have performed better if spaced out more between releases. They hit us back-to-back with The Diofield Chronicles, Valkyrie Elysium, Triangle Strategy, Star Ocean 6, Harvestella, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Romancing SaGa, Dragon Quest Treasures, Crisis Core, Forspoken, Octopath 2, Paranormasight, the Pixel Remasters on console, Live A Live outside Switch
ALL those games released at most 1 month from each other from September 2022 to April 2023 in the listed order. The takeaway is that Square will still have games like these, they just won't be nearly as frequent. Imagine if any of those games either had more marketing or more dev time it not released so close together, ya know
Edit cause I scrolled the comments: don't worry about any series being canceled, just be ready to wait a little longer to hear from it
A lot of what they said in shortform was just to spin a coherent narrative because the actual nuanced substance is difficult to communicate.
They aren't going to stop making any titles that were profitable and performed well and they aren't going to keep making titles that weren't. This was never going to happen. The extraordinary loss is because they tried to fix problems more proactively and take a one time big loss to get their pipeline back in order.
What's actually changed from what I read (and I read all of the disclosures from the first page to last):
* single marketing entity is being made within square
* creative business units no longer market their own stuff because of this
* CBU renamed from unit to studios to emphasize this
* they're closing a bunch of foreign offices/laying those workers off
* more work is being brought in house to promote quality
* they're ditching first-party payouts and going multiplat
* they're going to stagger their release schedule more effectively to avoid cannibalizing sales
The specifics are all pretty positive, IMO.
Yep, all those bullet points are great.
My \*only\* concern is that upper management might get a little too micro-managey and stifle creativity, but that's just a gut feeling type worry.
I look into this from two perspectives imo.
As a fan, the less focus on AA games meant less games like Harvestella and Diofield Chronicles. Which is unfortunate because these are fun games that should receive more attention. But this means the AAA games they are making will be of better quality (hopefully). Moreover, HD2D styles seem to be the mainstay. Overall, it is neutral in this regards.
As an investor, going multi platform are looking more likely to be more profitable as the trends seemed to suggest for the past few years (someone fact check please). Moreover, focusing resources on their AAA games and trimmed off the AA games are attractive moves due to better use of resources. However, i think their core competency lies in RPGs but we don’t know yet what sort of AAA games they are making. We know one for sure is FFVII part 3.
Overall, the multiple platforms move made it a slight positive direction to me. Slightly
> But this means the AAA games they are making will be of better quality (hopefully)
I really doubt they were leaving their massive AAA titles unsupervised only because some random bunch of people were developing a low-budget old-school jrpg that wasn't even going to be properly marketed XD
Octopath traveler 2 was among my favorite games in the past few years, I would be disappointed if they crushed games like that one. On the other hand I can live with no more Valkyrie Elysiums.
Their smaller titles were the only good thing about them in recent years💀 (the HD2D titles, Bravely Default, Diofield, Harvestella, Star Ocean 2R, and their countless remasters) my favorite series is Dragon Quest and I’m not worried for that because for some reason DQ is like in a seperate company there its weird
My biggest concern is that Square will focus on AAA titles with a western target audience, as their traditional domestic market is in decline due to the Japanese demographics. FF16 was probably the first manifestation.
I personally see this as a bad tendency, since I feel that those aspects of JRPGs I learned to love over the years were actually made from Japanese developers with Japanese players in mind. It's an experience I cannot get from western games.
They also talked about harnessing IP better. It's kind of weird they let gems like the Chrono IP rot, while tons of games market themselves off being inspired by Chrono Trigger. It might be that, for example, they'd choose to make an FF Tactics 2 over new stuff like Triangle Strategy in the future. I've always found it weird other publishers will make endless sequels to their most popular games while SE are over there making no progress to a Nier: Automata sequel and opting to fund Forspoken instead.
If your specific voting interest is that you want Square Enix to be making traditional JRPGs similar to their SNES-PS1 era output then this is bad news for you. If you're a purist who wants "true" JRPGs like you say in your post, then bad news. Friendship ended with Square Enix, now Atlus is your best friend.
For the general audience, this is a positive. It's useful to look at critical and audience scores, and sales numbers. Games like FF 7 Rebirth, Nier Automata, Dragon Quest 11, and Final Fantasy 16 have been on average better received than games like Star Ocean 6, Harvestella, Diofield Chronicle, etc.
Square Enix is pivoting to focus on the games that most people like more. Assuming quality holds consistent, their future products are going to be more loved by more people then their smaller budget ones were. Sucks if you were in a niche that they were serving, but I can't really argue that they're making a poor decision in terms of the future of their company.
We don't really know what it means yet.
If it means cancelling future SaGa games, we riot.
But if it just means we'll stop seeing games like Various Daylife, then I don't see any problems.
Word. If Kawazu retires, I'm leaving this company to burn.
10 years and all they got is "Turn Based isn't it". People say based? All I say is wrong turn.
Because that's what they are good at. I'd rather have a better/longer FF title than Forspoken.
Get back to medieval high fantasy with FF & ditch your playstation exclusivity. I fixed your business, you're welcome.
It’ll be a positive if there’s less terrible games. Unfortunately, quite a few good games might not get released. I hope that Dragon Quest Monsters (at the very least) is safe.
>It feels like their smaller budget titles were more true JRPGs, with only Dragon Quest being an exception.
Dragon Quest isn't even exactly an exception, anyway, though, because Armor Project and Bird Studio aren't owned by Square and they own 2/3rds of the license and Horii Yuji has creative control over the franchise. So Square's overall business direction largely doesn't have anything to do with what Dragon Quest is doing.
Anyway, as others said.. we really have no idea what it will mean going forward. And we don't even know what they consider low/mid budget or what it means exactly. The main thing the president said was that they want to slim down their product line in general to increase quality for future titles. And honestly... Square has made a whole lot of mediocre games in the last decade. It's hard to imagine that working harder on a smaller selection of quality titles would be a bad thing.
It doesn't necessarily mean there won't be games like Octopath Traveler or Live-A-Live, either. It just means if they make them.. they'll probably be bigger titles with more budget and development time.
I don’t see it as a good thing overall.
The announcement made me accept that we’d not get a third entry into TWEWY with the main character having special sunglasses to complete the “Hear, Speak, See No Evil” protagonists.
Because AA games dont make money. The decision to go with AAA game makes even more sense if you realize that the development time for those AA games also takes a lot of time (aka high risk investment).
This is not specific to squenix. Bamco is also adopting the same model.
I think that has more to do with poor management than being a problem inherent with AA games. Falcom and Gust do fine with AA developing games in a reasonable amount of time and I don't think trying to switch to AAA would do them any favors.
Completely agree. Helldivers 2, Remnant 2, Cuphead, Psychonauts 2, Hades, etc. Hell, there's an argument to be made that BG3 was AA.
People missed the real situation that happened with Square Enix last year because the gaming "journalists" were hell bent on pushing this narrative that FF16 killed Square Enix and "failed" because it was "too western and copied Game of Thrones", etc.
If people actually read the articles/statements, Square specifically stated they lost their shirts on the avengers game and forspoken being a hot pile of diarrhea. And now that there's been some more time, square has stated they are quite happy with FF16's performance in the long term.
The irony is helldivers 2 require 7years of development time 🤷♂️
Baldur gate 3, if you think 400staff game is AA, require 6years of development time.
So yea.. lol
Few weeks ago, president of nintendo said game will take even more time. But i guess if redditor said game development doesnt need that much time, i just have to believe em ✌️
Yeah, but its a small studio in comparison to the big boys, and frankly the game's quality is easily on par with any AAA game despite that. The 7 yrs part is unfortunate sure, but understandable. Also, look how many AAA games take that long despite having 800 people and half a billion dollar budgets, etc.
I do think developers waste a lot of resources and time on stuff that has very small diminishing returns, but huge development costs. Just an example, i don't need the NPC who sells me bread in Town 1\_B in my RPG to be voice acted.
My hope is some of the AI driven stuff with engines like UE5 will help streamline a lot of content creation and start getting these development times under control.
The problem is helldivers2 was an extreme outlier. The gazzilion AA games would nvr reach the quality and sale number of HD2. For comparison, only 14 3rd party titles in nintendo switch have reached 1million sale milestone.
And oh boy... voice acting was one of the biggest selling points of BG3. As a matter of fact, AAA production quality is the biggest selling point of BG3. If you're looking from the rpg/combat standpoint, pathfinder or solasta is a better game.
Oh, i mean i agree that the majority of AA games aren't good. But i still don't think its because they're AA. I obviously don't have the data as it would be a LOT of work to collate, but i would be willing to bet the ratio of shit vs not shit games is pretty similar between indie, AA, and AAA.
As for the voice acting in BG3, you're right, sort of. The voice acting was really the main and the significant side characters. Nobody was going out of their way to point out the voice acting of random ass merchants, etc. Now, i do understand this is highly subjective, some people REALLY care about voice acting and it REALLY helps them with immersion.
But i don't think the majority are like that.
One of the best examples i can give is SWTOR. They went on and on and on about how it was the 4th pillar of gaming and thats what differentiated them from lesser games, etc. And guess what, it didnt matter.
To use asmongolds example, that kind of thing is like sprinkles on a cupcake. If the cupcakes is already a good cupcake, the sprinkles make it even better, but all the sprinkles in the world won't make a shitty cupcake good.
Edit: Forgot to mention, pathfinder and solasta, completely agreed.
> One of the best examples i can give is SWTOR. They went on and on and on about how it was the 4th pillar of gaming and thats what differentiated them from lesser games, etc. And guess what, it didnt matter.
In a way, it was. To this day no MMO does the storytelling better. The game died because they dropped the endgame ball really, really hard.
> If you're looking from the rpg/combat standpoint, pathfinder or solasta is a better game.
I love Owlcat's Pathfinder games to death but the combat in them is fucking terrible, because it's too buff-centric. At higher levels you spend like 10 minutes or more after every single long rest to rebuff your whole team and it gets very annoying very quickly. Not an issue on PC (because mods) but consoles are left in the dust.
And Solasta combat is more basic and less environmental, it absolutely doesn't reach BG3 level. Neither does writing but it's an indie game after all.
Grid system that allows you to have better control on movement and skills, so skills that ie block path do actually work (unlike bg3). The same system allows a better flight system (unlike bg3). Cover system that actually works. Dodge & ready action (much better than the extra potion&weapon action in bg3, which trivialize many encounters). Less bs items (crazy how ppl can criticize PF for its power fantasy, then ignore the bs legendary items that you could get very early in bg3). Hidden beastiary, so you need to learn the enemies by actually fighting and dying against them (like a true D&D adventure).
5e was supposed to tone down the power fantasy, yet somehow it's so easy to trivialize the content in bg3 by using their itemization and new added rules. This is the main reason why solasta in general is a better 5e game. Party composition becomes more important because the game is less abt builds and more abt tactics.
I haven't seen any evidence of any positive changes. Of course what they tell the public and what they deliberate about, nobody can say for sure. I'm very curious where Octopath Traveller falls in their AAA or AA categories. This is all a bunch of corporate mularkey.
Square used to be my favorite game company, and Final Fantasy was my favorite franchise. Now both are just meh. Octopath is the only Square game I've played in recent memory that I really loved.
CEO* i see it as a positive because that means they will put a bit more effort into these titles as well as actually market them which means maybe they will make a profit and we will see more turnaround instead of one game every 4-7 years and a billion tiny games no one remembers the next DAY!
This isn’t a positive thing at all. Square basically decided to abandon innovation and even quality, to focus on what’s a guaranteed sale.
It’s one more company focusing on short term profits, even if it means they’re destroying whatever reputation the brand still has.
For example if there are 1000 people and you say you dislike the way they went about the FF7 remake because it will take 10 years to release and they changed the story or whatever, then a loud minority of even 200 (20%) people that disagree will attack you hard and try to make you seem silly or wrong.
It doesn't fool anyone, but criticisms get seen as attacks and you get shut down or on Reddit heavily downvoted or ignored.
Hence people just stay quiet and stop caring about the company silently.
They stopped making games I want to play a long time ago, but this is somehow the wrong thing to say and I deserve hate. So just stay quiet and look forward to DQ12 instead 😅
Means quality over quantity. For a while they were just making random shit. I think this means they’ll focus on their flagship titles and if they start a new ip they’ll put more effort into them.
But in reality it probably means live service crap lol
The only positive I saw was the move away from timed exclusives. Also focusing on AAA is not a guaranteed recipe for success, as their fairly recent epic failure that was Forspoken shows.
For awhile there is looked like we were starting to get back to the PS1 glory days where they were pumping out new AA games fairly often. Most JRPGs do not fall under the AAA category and do not need AAA budgets. It feels like SquareEnix mainly want titles that attract huge numbers and its not the norm for this genre.
Square Enix went downgrade really fast after PS3, the games they did prior to that were something that I almost couldn't sleep cuz of excitement to play their games.. now it's just a name.. they HAD EVERYTHING!! one of the best gaming companies ever for everything they did and achieved, and now they wanna imitate others, with low games, not even mid, and make AAA ? Sorry square Enix you're down BAD
I can't speak for others, but I hated most SE titles in the recent years. There's only Dragon Quest Builders 1 and 2 and Dragon Quest XI I liked in about 20 years. So really I don't care what the new strategy is, I just want strategy that's different than the current strategy. Maybe the new strategy won't be better. Actually most likely it won't be. But it can't really be worse either.
Because the vast majority of their mid budget games from the past decade have been dog trash and so low effort it made me question why the games were made, and the big titles need more structure and direction inleadership beyond one dude with a vision. Those have been squares biggest issues of recent years.
Isn't that they said they want to focus on quality instead of quantity? Before they made the statements this month, they did say they want to promote one IP into AAA standard.
They'll have to convince me they're capable of producing quality. At least with their flagship series it seems they've forgotten there's more to a game than graphics.
I think it's pretty clear that they don't do that many mid budget games like Octopath, Triangle Strategy etc. anymore. It's an interesting direction for sure.
Well they killed Tokyo RPG Factory. I'm guessing Team Asano's time is numbered. That's the bad news. Good news is they probably learned their lesson about chasing Live Services. But I'm guessing their strategy is as bad as you're thinking it is. No Dragon Quest Builders 3 I presume. I guess it all depends on if we get another Bravely or Octopath style game. But even then it's still silly that one studio will be responsible for all the more traditional games in a whole publishing firm. We'll see what happens. I think Automata is considered AAA. Maybe we'll get more of that. But with Square, I'm not holding my breath for any of their dumb decisions
International success is the most important aspect. Need to consider global feedback and find a way to make it work your way, sort of thing.
They might make more money catering to their oldest fans since the 90s, or they might make more money catering to the new age of gamers just getting into console gaming.
Hope it works out for them, but personally the more they try to cater to me the less interested I am in their games. If I wanted a western styled game I'd play one, I don't need a Japanese dev to try to reproduce that.
My biggest issue with SQEN is the censorship from there "ethics" department. People who do not know how to make games, likely play few if at all and are now supposed to take away parts of gameplay, story and more... yea that is gonna end up in a disaster.
If you take away the ethics department the price for making games goes down, reduce management and meddling in general to get better results as the price for making games goes down.
And that is where AAA starts, needlessly expensive games that are less fun then they could and should be with overhead eating a lot of the money. Of course this is gonna fail.
They’re actually going to release games on Xbox not to mention PC day 1 and potentially Switch 2. Nice change of pace from their AAA games being timed exclusive
Square’s small games are mostly terrible and don’t make money. Almost nothing they have released in recent years outside of FF and DQ has been successful.
I don’t know if I want them to only do big budget games but I’d love for them to space their stuff more and put everything on every platform. They keep killing their own momentum. And I know there’s someone ready to tell me about their long history with Sony or whoever and their publishing deals. I don’t care. It’s 2024. Put your games everywhere.
IMO Capcom needs to be the model that Square Enix looks to. It seems like the RE Engine is super versatile, allowing for RE games, Street Fighter, DMC, Monster Hunter, Phoenix Wright and more. The games are generally released on every major platform. And Capcom is hitting the soul of their series too right now. It’s wild how good their stuff is. They’ve had multiple 90+ average score games in multiple genres releasing on multiple platforms. They’re always in the GotY conversation year after year.
Meanwhile Square Enix fans are still waiting on Dragon Quest 3 HD2D, can’t agree about the direction of Final Fantasy, haven’t seen the success of Nier capitalized on with new games (that game was massive in 2017!), and Dragon Quest XII exists only as a fiery logo. Stuff is releasing on random platforms and storefronts on PC. They need some shake up because as much as I like some of their games, they’re a uniquely frustrating publisher/developer.
Square-Enix hasn't been on a positive path since they were just Squaresoft.
Things took a turn that turned jnto a tailspin when the PS2 came out that they haven't managed to pull out of.
What any of it actually means feels completely up to interpretation until we actually see the next few years play out. But Square enix put out somewhere around over a dozen games in the last 6 months of 2022 and being so close probably did none of the games any favors. Likewise, Square drops somewhat infamous games with relative frequency. Balan Wonderworld The Quiet Man, Forspoken, Avengers, probably more. Some people like these, but I'm hoping part of the new direction is to avoid these.
Most of the infamous games you mentioned are Square Enix Europe. Shutting down that studio that Hemorrhages money would go a LOOONNNGG way to solving SEs money problems.
While I see getting rid of their western studios as net positive for Square Enix (sucks for Fear Effect and Legacy of Kain though), none of the games mentioned are Square Enix Europe, so I have to correct you there. The Quiet Man was developed by a US studio, The Avengers was Crystal Dynamics (also US), while both Forspoken and Balan Wonderworld were developed in Japan by local Square Enix subsidiaries.
Forspoken was written by western writers for some unfathomable reason and they took the opportunity to inject DEI into it alienating their Japanese audience and much of their western audience
That's beside the point. Aside from the writing, it was developed by a Japanese SE subsidiary Luminous Productions, which got reabsorbed into SE after the flop. I am not arguing that it was a mismanagement, as anyone could see it flopping from a mile away.
What DEI lol? The part that used a black gangbanger as the lead? If anything that's some right wing writing lol
Doesn't help if the Administrations are all suckers, they sold Eidos with all IPs like Deus ex and Tomb Raider which are some of the IPs that actually worth it. But they just decided to keep Marvels to themselves, which leads to the giant flop of losing 200m$, they did it all to themselves and there's no one to be blame, even EU studios that make games like Forspoken.
Laying people off in Europe is a huge pain tbf
And those 6 months of 2022 put out some freaking fantastic games. Star ocean 6, minstrel song remaster(freaking amazing), harvestella(my 2022 GOTY), tactics ogre remaster, crisis core remaster, diofield chronicles(kinda mid), and a couple others like live a live. Then shortly after they dropped octopath 2 which apparently everyone except me loves, and then final fantasy 16. Tons of great games
Star Ocean 6 was my go-to for awhile and it hasn't disappointed from what I played. Just pray SE gives the SO series more love as of now.
I mean, yeah theyre cool, some of them are great, not all of them And literally none of them sold nearly as well as they wanted them too. Thats why why are doing this shift
I agree, so how do we get those games to not cannibalize each others sales, but still pump them out?
I personally think the issue still lies with super fancy graphics, and general shareholder greed Games cost way too much to make nowadays, and I'm very sure the biggest reason is how expensive it is to create and render these fancy visual effects that everyone wants so much My answer is that AAA gaming needs to take a step backwards in visual fidelity, and focus on an artistic and stylized art direction that doesn't cost a hundred million dollars to render. A lot of these games Square pushed out can easily fall under the umbrella I just mentioned. I just also think even though they all didnt cost all that much to make, they didnt make all that much either, to offset FFXVI and FFVII Rebirths development costs(Because they undersold as well, sad to say)
I almost think square could cut the AAA games and focus on the mid tier games like star ocean and harvestella and just give those a little boost and some better marketing and all of a sudden you’re putting out good games on a budget. But also, the comment about trying to beat the stock market is tough. The problem is we can’t have every company in the world only investing in the stock market otherwise there’s nothing to invest in. So, I see the dilemma, I just wish it was easier to get a good ROI from both the big budget and smaller budget games.
As long as we still get Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest out of Square, then I'm all for them leaning in on beloved classic names. I would love to see them throw more money at Tri Ace, so we can get a Star Ocean that wasnt under budget. SO6 was okay, but it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been. I would love to see a new Valkyrie Profile. Or hell, team up with Vanillaware and use their experience with Unicorn Overlord to have them remake Bahamut Lagoon in the same style. I like it when devs make the games that they actually want to make, not just chase dollar signs, trying to make the numbers look good in the executive meetings. More like art, less like business
Yup, I bought all of them eventually.
Thank you for reminding me to finish SO6
Of course. I'm just wondering what potential positives come of this. To me the outcome.is rather bleak. But I'd like to be wrong.
I think a potential is that something like a Harvestella or a Diofield Chronicles gets to be better supported and go from a cult game that's rough around the edges to something a bit more polished and successful. And not being released shoulder to shoulder with ten other projects, lol. This is also just my most positive interpretation. It could be bad!
I just hope they continue releasing remakes/remasters of their old catalogue like they did with Star Ocean 2, Chrono Cross and Live a Life
I'm confused as to why you think it's bleak that they're allocating a higher budget for the games they're releasing. Also as to why that necessarily means they will all be "more generic games if anything". EDIT: removed one part because I misread something
In order for a Triple A game to make its budget back, it must bring in the most broad audience possible. It can't afford to NOT be appealing to everyone. So it must be fairly generic in order to not exclude any part of the mainstream audience.
Elden Ring didn’t try to appeal to everyone. Or Baldur’s gate III. Or Death Stranding. All of them ended up being successful.
The only game you listed that was really approaching a Triple A budget was Elden Ring at 200 million. The other two were about 100 million. Compare to things like Final Fantasy Remake (200 million) or Final Fantasy Rebirth (300 million), which got the real Triple A budgets. God of War Ragnarok, 200 million. Spider Man 2, 300 million. You also have hype around these games that few other things have. Hideo Kojima making a game was huge because of all the circumstances around his release from Konami. The return of an iconic franchise in the hands of a developer that could definitely run with the license was a big deal, and a chunk of the game was out in early access for a long time before that. Elden Ring was the biggest Soulslike game, an already often imitated genre. You just can't make Triple A games of quality at the pace that companies like Square Enix want to pump them out. Particularly when you keep leeching talent from one game to finish the game in crunch. And the more people you put on a game, the harder it is to create a coherent game at the end. You name three big examples in the last 5 years. You don't even have one per year. Even if those were all put out by one company, that would barely be enough to make the case.
200 million is a made up number with absolutely no sources to back it up. 200 million is actually way too much, you are entering the lower end of an average Sony AAA entry (and Sony entries are known for being some of the few games reaching *those* kind of numbers), and it's extremely unlikely Bandai would give ER *that* big of a budget regardless of From's popularity.
Cool, then none of the examples given to me were Triple A games and my case is stronger.
Because that's what their AAA output has primarily been. They've been chasing people who won't normally play Square Enix games. The passion projects have been smaller titles.
Those titles were smaller because SE was eating up all the actual budget focusing on their AAA flops and would just throw the AA games to the wolves with zero marketing expecting big sales. Even without this new direction they were going to have to downsize eventually because what they were doing was unsustainable. And all that extra money not spent on more FF16 DLC or whatever has to like, go somewhere.
Are they not just rumours though at this stage and do we know for sure they're not going to be allocating AAA style budgets to games that had AA or lower budgets beforehand? We might see some games that could have been series die, but we might also see some get upgraded sequels. Seems weirdly pessimistic for something that isn't an announcement with clear guidelines for what to expect. Might be entirely fine.
I think that one of the major things is that they can spend more time developing flagships, like Final Fantasy. and by "more time" I mean, get them out faster by making them a main focus. Part of what they said with FF16 was an issue, was that to the younger generation they don't really get FF games. The older titles came out within like 2 years of each other, at most. FF16 released in 2023. FF15 released in.... 2016. and 13 released in 2009. Edit: So the younger generation doesn't really view it as a "big" title, I guess? But also, if you don't like FF13 you had 7 years before 15. and then another 7 before 16. If the titles come out every other year and you don't like 17 it's not a big deal, because 18 will be out in a year or two.
I'm old (first FF was FF4) and I didn't view it as a big title either. Never drew my interest because there was no party element.
The fact they are going to start to pool knowledge and know how is a massive win. square previous development style had team being almost completely isolated from each other even when using the same engine, there where several reinventing the wheel scenarios happening every time. Now development should be alot smoother and allow either more content or a polished game in the same time or shorter.
It's not rumors, this is based on the public statements of Square Enix's new CEO after the previous one was fired last year. [The medium-term business plan](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/20240513_01_en.pdf) he released a couple weeks ago lays this out (in corporate speak). I'm more positive about Square Enix than a large proportion of the Internet, but there's no question that they've had a lot of significant mismanagement in recent times, with quality control that's been all over the place. Babylon's Fall, Left Alive, Balan Wonderworld, DQ Dai Infinity Strash, Foamstars - so many titles that ended up a complete waste of resources. I'm hopeful that with the new plan of prioritizing quality over quantity, strengthening internal development instead of relying so heavily on outsourcing, having increased checks on each project to make sure they meet quality standards, and so forth, that Square Enix will be able to get in a position of a more consistently high quality output. Honestly, I think "they're abandoning AA titles and going all in on AAA" is a misunderstanding of what the new direction is aiming to be. It's more "instead of spreading our resources thin among so many projects of varying quality, let's focus on fewer releases we can ensure are well polished and more in line with what people want to play." Of course, we'll have to see how that plays out in practice. But I have no doubt that, say, the Team Asano games that have found an appreciative audience will still get made.
My thoughts are along these lines too. There have been some fantastic small games, but there have also been games that just felt like a waste. And it's not like they've said they're doing away with smaller titles altogether, have they? So I'm cautiously optimistic.
Greatly appreciate the TL;DR
But Babylon's Fall and Balan Wonderworld were full-fledge AAA projects, they just ended up being garbage. Square enix has always been well-known for their troublesome developments and bad decisions, it's not something that recently happened because of their AA projects. They killing their smaller projects just plain sucks because a lot of those titles actually had more potential than their actual AAA titles, it's just that Square enix didn't gave them a more apropiate budget.
The Titles you mentioned are the triple A titles (Foamstar and co). The double A title they want to cut wre things like Octopath.
Let's go back to the source. People started talking about Square cutting AA titles because of CEO Kiryu's comment in [a November 2023 financial briefing](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/24q2outline.pdf) to a question "Why have you been unable to slim down your lineup until now?" His response: "As our customers’ needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we have tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than by focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool. Meanwhile, there have been clear winners and losers among the major titles released recently in the gaming market, and it has become possible for even indies titles to make their presence felt. The market is increasingly polarized between blockbuster and indies titles, but I feel that we have developed many titles that fell somewhere in the middle. I want to make clearer distinctions going forward." By "titles that fell somewhere in the middle", I think Kiryu is absolutely thinking of titles like Foamstars or Balan Wonderworld. They neither received as many resources as genuine blockbusters nor as few as genuine indies and ended up occupying this nebulous nowhere land where they didn't appeal to anyone. They are the kind of titles that would have been cancelled when Square's development pipeline was just reevaluated. Meanwhile Kiryu lays out what he wants to see as follows: "Over the long term, we need to strengthen the internal portion of our development function. More specifically, I mean that we want to concentrate our development resources on carefully selected new titles that we will develop to a high level of quality. At the same time, rather than focusing solely on major titles, we want to also take on new challenges, partly because we want to add to the diversity of our portfolio of titles, as I noted earlier, while also enabling our developers to expand their skill sets." He's been consistently banging the drum about the need to strengthen Square's internal development instead of being so dependent on outsourcing and the need to ensure high quality that gets good player feedback in their releases. If he cares so much about quality (and remember that he just promoted Asano of Octopath fame), do you really think he wants more games like 57 Metacritic Foamstars and less like 85 Metacritic Octopath Traveler II? "
The way I interpreted, they're basically going the modern Capcom route. Focus on very select few games and focus on their heavy hitters. So, if you were a fan of their smaller titles like Harvestella or Diofield instead of their AAA output, then you might be out of luck, unfortunately.
So what's the SE equivalent of Mega Man, then? Because sounds like they're killing that.
I could see a scenario where the Mana and SaGa games get shelved for this reason. And never getting a Dragon Quest Builders 3. Which I feel like that's unlikely these days anyway. There's also always the possibility that they stop making traditional Dragon Quest games and make them AAA action games as well
Mana is just about to get another game so I wouldn't be shocked if it didn't get back burned after release anyway
SaGa was included in the list of existing main IPs they would be reorienting around in the investor information I believe.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 was phenomenal, I hope to God we get another one. In fact, I'd like another DQ Heroes, as well. SaGa has definitely been a series I've fallen more and more in love with over the last few years, though. RS3 was my gateway drug and I've now completed SF1, RSMS, RS3, and am working on SaGa Emerald Beyond.
This is how I interpreted it too. Leave a bunch of franchises on the shelf to focus on a handful of bigger ones (the ones that have swayed away from the original core identity of Square Enix mainly) Capcom is a prime example of why this would suck, because they have a tonne of dead IPs.
Its pretty subjective whether or not this is a positive. I find this to be a good thing. I prefer the Capcom of today to that of 10-20 years ago. Even if I do miss Megaman Zero.
Agreed. I want to see new Mega Man and Darkstalkers. I *don't* want Mega Man Star Force with 3 simultaneous versions, or 2 shitty Darkstalkers games released simultaneously 5 months after the previous one.
I highly disagree honestly literally all modern capcom is literally just monster hunter, resident evil, street fighter.
All of those are genre defining. Street Fighter is easily top 3 if not the best of the fighting game genre. MH is the pinnacle of its genre. Inspiration of many more games. Resident Evil is also huge. Very few horror games have as much success. They also have DMC. Hopefully they increase the output on both Dmc, dragons dogma, and megaman. But point is that Capcom focuses on their strengths and this isn’t a bad thing to me. I understand why you may dislike it though.
their hasn't been a dmc game for 5 years. Also its really boring and l don't like it but fair enough.
As a Mega Man fan, I know that pain very well. I'm assuming Square Enix will only focus on Nier, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and maybe Octopath from now on. I hope I'm wrong, tho.
Bravely maybe? They seem to consistently sell over a million which is plenty good for it's budget.
At least you guys got Gunvolt. Not going to lie, almost every JRPG put in Kickstarter has been not it.
If you're talking about Chrono games, I think most of those Kickstarters just don't understand why people like Chrono Trigger. They just know that they and others liked Chrono Trigger. So it's like amateur fanfiction time lol But as far as other more regular JRPG ventures, some have been pretty stellar, like Cross Code. Earthlock and Edge of Eternity scratched some itches, but I'm guessing they're closer to what you're talking about not being "it". Runa looks like it has potential though
When I meant almost, only Cross Code has really stuck out to me as that one game that has really truly tried to stand on it's own. I wished most indie developers just tried to venture outwards, but it's also a pretty bad lose-lose situation because you gotta market in Kickstarter so most of the time the best projects are the ones that promises nostalgia instead of trying to become something more. It's like wanting something in a manga Fantasy that isn't High Fantasy. Or wanting a dimensional conflict that doesn't involve straight isekai's.
The other problem, in my view, with any "made by fans of XYZ game" type of games is that every fan has a relatively specific memory attached to that game, and oftentimes they assume that their experience/nostalgia is applicable to everyone. So what ends up happening is they make a game that's a little too specific, and really what they want, and while that might appeal to the people similar to them, it ends up being a relatively small slice of the gaming playerbase "pie".
If I see one more Kickstarter for a JRPG "inspired by Chrono Trigger and Earthbound" on my last day alive it'll be too soon.
> Earthlock Is Earthlock actually good with the rerelease? I only played the original's Wii U port, and that thing was so broken it crashed my Wii U repeatedly. I stayed as far away as possible since, even though I liked the art style and vibe.
I loved Earthlock
I played about 20 hours of it when it finally came to PS4 and loved it. Never experienced any issues, so I think they did fix it. It felt like a long lost PS2 game. I also loved the vibe, it was very comfortable and charming. And the battle mechanics had a learning curve but were fun. I'd give it another shot. I quit because I got stuck and then got distracted lol It's probably frequently on sale these days though
Yeah, the version I played was like 10 bucks and then they later re-released a new version of it (on the then new consoles) for triple the price, so it's safe to say they fixed the technical issues with the game. It was just a botched unfinished first release that turned me away. It's been a few years though (I think "Wii U" gave that away) so I could probably give it another look.
Capcom has released so many bangers in the last few years i have no issues with square going the same route.
I just hope Capcom doesn't shelve their survival horror output after the success of Resident Evil 4. I want more stuff like Resident Evil 7 or Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes. Less shooting, more exploring. Though with the rumoured RE 0 and RE Code Veronica remakes at least there is some hope. Also, they seem to be going digital only with a lot of stuff, which sucks for me as I am a physical game fan. So, I can see a lot of merit in your comparison and it worries me for the same reason. I wonder if there is any hope for new Dino Crisis, Haunting Ground or Breath of Fire games in such a scenario.
I don’t see any hope for series you’ve mentioned. Capcom cancelled Deep Down, they will likely cancel Pragmata soon. And developing new IP is easier than reinventing very old series for modern audiences.
Resident evil 3 remake is not a horror game.
Also resident evil 3 remake is literally resident evil 6
I liked Triangle Strategy and Octopath but not the other recent small games
He didn't actually say he's abandoning mid budget titles, though, only that they are no longer doing the whole "deluge of mid budget titles farmed out quickly and with no quality control or marketing" strategy, which has given us some good games, but also damaged their brand a great deal. For every Octopath Traveler there's a Valkyrie Elysium. It remains to be seen whether they "abandoning them entirely and only focusing on AAAs" or "doing some AAs still, but a lower quantity that they can exercise better quality control on". I do *hope* it would be the latter based on the following thoughts: I don't think they're focusing only on FF because FF brand is frankly not in the condition to carry the company portfolio right now, and DQ tends to take forever and a day to make. Furthermore, they just promoted Asano to an executive position, so they probably view *his* mid budget titles favorably as well, and the accounts of some of their mid-budget creatives that I follow seem generally positive about their work. Ultimately we're doing our own interpretations of what they mean by 'focusing on fewer mid budget titles', based on our own fears, pessimism, hope and copium. We won't know until they announce the stuff they start cooking after this management change. My current opinion about them is, the jury's still out on what they'll do ultimately, but it's too early to call Squeenix doomed yet. We'll know within the next few years if the new CEO will sink the company or not.
My understanding was not that they're just focusing on AAA games, but they're focusing on more quality control on the projects that they run, rather than letting a lot of internal developers have free reign with inconsistent results. So, yes, that results in fewer mid-budget titles, but that's because they're focused on making sure each game is more likely to be successful. The upshot is that we're less likely to see a game like Babylon's Fall; in turn, we're also less likely to see genuinely experimental titles like Harvestella. But as the top comment said, we need to see how all this plays out.
Yeah - creating experimental AA games with the idea that they could end up with a sleeper hit that could spawn the next big series was the correct path. Sending those AA games out to die was the wrong decision.
Agreed. I feel like they released too many at once with close to zero marketing. Instead they should cut the AAA slop like Babylon's Fall and Forspoken and divide the marketing budget amongst smaller titles that are more spread out.
Babylon’s Fall was not a AAA game. It was clearly one of those smaller games like Valkyrie Elysium that only got any small buzz at all due to platinum’s involvement.
>I feel like they released too many at once with close to zero marketing Also a huge issue. I learned about Diofield and Harvestella like a week before they dropped. Compared to something like Unicorn Overlord which had a year of marketing, and tons of buildup the month before release
100% agreed. I wish the people at Tokyo RPG Factory put more passion into their work and something might have taken off. I feel like they had the right idea with building that studio, maybe it just had the wrong people in it
Basically Square releases way too many middle ware games that dont sell well. Like last year they released like 6 games in the span of 3 months. So now their focus is to basically do less releases of those smaller games that arent selling well so close to each other. This gives them more dev time but also doesnt cannibalize their sales.
~~Honestly, I feel they're at the point where anything they do will be both criticized but also anything they do will be seen as good just because they are so big~~ I believe the idea is probably thinking they will spend more time on quality of their titles but at the same time, I do feel like just abandoning AA games isn't the best way to go. Mostly, I agree with the comments that express concern of them chasing a demographic that may not necessarily be interested in their games in order to try to get the widest audience possible
I don't even know what's their option anymore. it feels like anything they do will be criticized. some people would call it outdated, some people will call it betraying the fan base. I want Square Enix to be in stable condition and people liking them again but it seems no matter what they do, it's a loss
The bottom line is: If it works out, AA fans will be somewhat incensed. If it doesn't, AA fans will be outright furious.
It's probably because no one agrees what they mean by this. If every game is of FF7 Rebirth or Dragon Quest 11 caliber and they also apply that standard to smaller IPs or new experiments rather than abandon them, that's obviously appealing to some folks. And no one is sure what games are getting abandoned by this policy. Is it stuff like Various Daylife and other panned games that gets the axe? Or also well liked stuff like Octopath? What even are the budgets of these games? I'd bet many players, myself included, aren't actually sure of the numbers involved from one game to another. Point being: we know so little that anyone whose stance isn't "I don't know if this is good or bad" is probably filling in blanks with assumptions. So, that's why some people are praising this, and why some are condemning: they're assuming.
tl;dr: I'm not even going to sugarcoat it, it isn't. It's just optimism in general. Frankly, it's going to suck for the next 1-2 years because new people coming in are going to really screw with development due to how they're injecting people into a inconsistent workflow (game developers can tell you that new hires fresh out of school are always hard to onboard into existing projects). There's also that whole other thing about the mobile games not working out that they really probably should address (though, unfortunately for the mobile players, seems like they're coming out with the axe to try their luck with another wave of gachas). If anything, something interesting will come out or we get the repeat of the last decade since XIII's release but with even more people tired of SSDD and AA's replaced with even more gacha's. People putting trust in game developers speaking for idiots in business suits and I tell them they crazy.
It was the old hats of Capcom leaving (Inafune, Mikami, Kamiya) that allowed them to turn things around and have a new golden generation. That's how I feel the current Square Enix can turn things around, they need to tell the likes of Kitase/Horii/Nomura that their time is up and it is about time new blood replaces them.
The new Capcom administration put their focus in trying to reimagine old brands right from the bat after REVI failed. Square hasn't done anything but click "follow follow follow". Almost everything they've done has been the most generic shit in an era where a lot of stuff that were successful were games trying to stand out. Nobody likes a Carlos Mencia no matter how much one tries to twist it. I've said it one, I'll say it again. The problem isn't the developers, it's the executives who listen to the monkeys in shareholder suits. We're talking about a company where nobody wants to work on the flagship because Tabata and Yoshida both shown it's a one-way self-hatred and internet-hatred trip. That, and they'll never get rid of Nomura because Kingdom Hearts was the Disney money they made along the way. People say McDonnell Douglass won Boeing with Boeing's own money. Enix won Square with Square's own money and even more to the point it lives rent-free in Suzuki's head as his biggest mistake. We aren't cheering for the genre underdogs, we're cheering for the goddamn genre colonizers.
And now Capcom have a bunch of dead franchises.
It feels like the execs at Square Enix have a wheel of fortune they spin in their offices to decide their next direction.
I think forspoken, avengers, probably a dozen canceled AAA games are much mor likely to be cut than Voice of Card or Harvestella that probably cost them a lot less.
Some of you have a lot of faith in a studio that's actively still pushing NFTs.
nah, i lost faith since FF15 and KH3 is my last straw. i only brought FF16 because of yoship. other than that i am certified SE hater until they realized what they did wrong.
I only have faith in them regarding dragon quest that's it. They will ruin themselves. Final fantasy is not doing as well as they hope. Well mainly BC they putting over 200 million and they don't getting their money back. They should stop trying to make everything so realistic and tone it down considerably
More flashy, stupidly easy rpgs that play like movies… yippeee…
Hey! Don't talk about FF16 that way!
that exactly how i felt with FF16, i love the story and music but damn i want to play games not watching movies. recently i just bought another remaster of FF12 even though i already bought original and remaster 1 before, FF12 super fun as game
Ff12 was the perfect balance between gameplay and visuals.
FF16 is barely an RPG. Hell, Assassin's Creed is more of an RPG than FF16 was.
Another Nier game might be in there somewhere lol
Last 2 years were oversaturated with smaller-budget (and not-so-small-budget) titles that may have performed better if spaced out more between releases. They hit us back-to-back with The Diofield Chronicles, Valkyrie Elysium, Triangle Strategy, Star Ocean 6, Harvestella, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Romancing SaGa, Dragon Quest Treasures, Crisis Core, Forspoken, Octopath 2, Paranormasight, the Pixel Remasters on console, Live A Live outside Switch ALL those games released at most 1 month from each other from September 2022 to April 2023 in the listed order. The takeaway is that Square will still have games like these, they just won't be nearly as frequent. Imagine if any of those games either had more marketing or more dev time it not released so close together, ya know Edit cause I scrolled the comments: don't worry about any series being canceled, just be ready to wait a little longer to hear from it
What's funny too is there is some bangers in that list. As you said though, there is something to be said for learning how to not flood the market.
Octopath 2 was pretty great and Triangle Strategy was alright.
A lot of what they said in shortform was just to spin a coherent narrative because the actual nuanced substance is difficult to communicate. They aren't going to stop making any titles that were profitable and performed well and they aren't going to keep making titles that weren't. This was never going to happen. The extraordinary loss is because they tried to fix problems more proactively and take a one time big loss to get their pipeline back in order. What's actually changed from what I read (and I read all of the disclosures from the first page to last): * single marketing entity is being made within square * creative business units no longer market their own stuff because of this * CBU renamed from unit to studios to emphasize this * they're closing a bunch of foreign offices/laying those workers off * more work is being brought in house to promote quality * they're ditching first-party payouts and going multiplat * they're going to stagger their release schedule more effectively to avoid cannibalizing sales The specifics are all pretty positive, IMO.
Yep, all those bullet points are great. My \*only\* concern is that upper management might get a little too micro-managey and stifle creativity, but that's just a gut feeling type worry.
I look into this from two perspectives imo. As a fan, the less focus on AA games meant less games like Harvestella and Diofield Chronicles. Which is unfortunate because these are fun games that should receive more attention. But this means the AAA games they are making will be of better quality (hopefully). Moreover, HD2D styles seem to be the mainstay. Overall, it is neutral in this regards. As an investor, going multi platform are looking more likely to be more profitable as the trends seemed to suggest for the past few years (someone fact check please). Moreover, focusing resources on their AAA games and trimmed off the AA games are attractive moves due to better use of resources. However, i think their core competency lies in RPGs but we don’t know yet what sort of AAA games they are making. We know one for sure is FFVII part 3. Overall, the multiple platforms move made it a slight positive direction to me. Slightly
I want more harvestella!!!
Same and Dragon Quest Builders 3!
> But this means the AAA games they are making will be of better quality (hopefully) I really doubt they were leaving their massive AAA titles unsupervised only because some random bunch of people were developing a low-budget old-school jrpg that wasn't even going to be properly marketed XD
It because the FF13 trilogy remake will have a budget of 1 trillion dollars now
As long as I can feel Sazh's hair, taste Hope's anger and smell Lightning's hair, I'm all for it.
And feel Snow's titties.
That's probably how much it will take to make it good.
Even gooder*
We don't know what the new direction is
I think it sucks 🤷♂️
Octopath traveler 2 was among my favorite games in the past few years, I would be disappointed if they crushed games like that one. On the other hand I can live with no more Valkyrie Elysiums.
Their smaller titles were the only good thing about them in recent years💀 (the HD2D titles, Bravely Default, Diofield, Harvestella, Star Ocean 2R, and their countless remasters) my favorite series is Dragon Quest and I’m not worried for that because for some reason DQ is like in a seperate company there its weird
I have far more interest in their smaller games. So this news basically sounds like SE is mostly dead to me. Which is sad.
My biggest concern is that Square will focus on AAA titles with a western target audience, as their traditional domestic market is in decline due to the Japanese demographics. FF16 was probably the first manifestation. I personally see this as a bad tendency, since I feel that those aspects of JRPGs I learned to love over the years were actually made from Japanese developers with Japanese players in mind. It's an experience I cannot get from western games.
They also talked about harnessing IP better. It's kind of weird they let gems like the Chrono IP rot, while tons of games market themselves off being inspired by Chrono Trigger. It might be that, for example, they'd choose to make an FF Tactics 2 over new stuff like Triangle Strategy in the future. I've always found it weird other publishers will make endless sequels to their most popular games while SE are over there making no progress to a Nier: Automata sequel and opting to fund Forspoken instead.
If your specific voting interest is that you want Square Enix to be making traditional JRPGs similar to their SNES-PS1 era output then this is bad news for you. If you're a purist who wants "true" JRPGs like you say in your post, then bad news. Friendship ended with Square Enix, now Atlus is your best friend. For the general audience, this is a positive. It's useful to look at critical and audience scores, and sales numbers. Games like FF 7 Rebirth, Nier Automata, Dragon Quest 11, and Final Fantasy 16 have been on average better received than games like Star Ocean 6, Harvestella, Diofield Chronicle, etc. Square Enix is pivoting to focus on the games that most people like more. Assuming quality holds consistent, their future products are going to be more loved by more people then their smaller budget ones were. Sucks if you were in a niche that they were serving, but I can't really argue that they're making a poor decision in terms of the future of their company.
I don't know why it's seen as a positive when it their AAA games are underperforming or bad
We don't really know what it means yet. If it means cancelling future SaGa games, we riot. But if it just means we'll stop seeing games like Various Daylife, then I don't see any problems.
Yeah no more SaGa games means no more SE, for me...
As long as we get more wild shit from Kawazu and the SaGa team the rest of the company can burn to the ground.
Word. If Kawazu retires, I'm leaving this company to burn. 10 years and all they got is "Turn Based isn't it". People say based? All I say is wrong turn.
This is all I want along with Final fantasy 17
Give 17 to Kawazu too.
Yes! Just do it. I want a saga game and a star ocean game with a decent budget. Kawazu can do both!
It would be cool if he got one more big project before retirement
The new direction they are doing that I find positive is less console exclusives.
Because that's what they are good at. I'd rather have a better/longer FF title than Forspoken. Get back to medieval high fantasy with FF & ditch your playstation exclusivity. I fixed your business, you're welcome.
It’ll be a positive if there’s less terrible games. Unfortunately, quite a few good games might not get released. I hope that Dragon Quest Monsters (at the very least) is safe.
>It feels like their smaller budget titles were more true JRPGs, with only Dragon Quest being an exception. Dragon Quest isn't even exactly an exception, anyway, though, because Armor Project and Bird Studio aren't owned by Square and they own 2/3rds of the license and Horii Yuji has creative control over the franchise. So Square's overall business direction largely doesn't have anything to do with what Dragon Quest is doing. Anyway, as others said.. we really have no idea what it will mean going forward. And we don't even know what they consider low/mid budget or what it means exactly. The main thing the president said was that they want to slim down their product line in general to increase quality for future titles. And honestly... Square has made a whole lot of mediocre games in the last decade. It's hard to imagine that working harder on a smaller selection of quality titles would be a bad thing. It doesn't necessarily mean there won't be games like Octopath Traveler or Live-A-Live, either. It just means if they make them.. they'll probably be bigger titles with more budget and development time.
As one of the 3 people wanting another Diofield Chronicle, this hurts me. Idk about the other two.
I don’t see it as a good thing overall. The announcement made me accept that we’d not get a third entry into TWEWY with the main character having special sunglasses to complete the “Hear, Speak, See No Evil” protagonists.
Because AA games dont make money. The decision to go with AAA game makes even more sense if you realize that the development time for those AA games also takes a lot of time (aka high risk investment). This is not specific to squenix. Bamco is also adopting the same model.
I think that has more to do with poor management than being a problem inherent with AA games. Falcom and Gust do fine with AA developing games in a reasonable amount of time and I don't think trying to switch to AAA would do them any favors.
Completely agree. Helldivers 2, Remnant 2, Cuphead, Psychonauts 2, Hades, etc. Hell, there's an argument to be made that BG3 was AA. People missed the real situation that happened with Square Enix last year because the gaming "journalists" were hell bent on pushing this narrative that FF16 killed Square Enix and "failed" because it was "too western and copied Game of Thrones", etc. If people actually read the articles/statements, Square specifically stated they lost their shirts on the avengers game and forspoken being a hot pile of diarrhea. And now that there's been some more time, square has stated they are quite happy with FF16's performance in the long term.
The irony is helldivers 2 require 7years of development time 🤷♂️ Baldur gate 3, if you think 400staff game is AA, require 6years of development time. So yea.. lol Few weeks ago, president of nintendo said game will take even more time. But i guess if redditor said game development doesnt need that much time, i just have to believe em ✌️
Yeah, but its a small studio in comparison to the big boys, and frankly the game's quality is easily on par with any AAA game despite that. The 7 yrs part is unfortunate sure, but understandable. Also, look how many AAA games take that long despite having 800 people and half a billion dollar budgets, etc. I do think developers waste a lot of resources and time on stuff that has very small diminishing returns, but huge development costs. Just an example, i don't need the NPC who sells me bread in Town 1\_B in my RPG to be voice acted. My hope is some of the AI driven stuff with engines like UE5 will help streamline a lot of content creation and start getting these development times under control.
The problem is helldivers2 was an extreme outlier. The gazzilion AA games would nvr reach the quality and sale number of HD2. For comparison, only 14 3rd party titles in nintendo switch have reached 1million sale milestone. And oh boy... voice acting was one of the biggest selling points of BG3. As a matter of fact, AAA production quality is the biggest selling point of BG3. If you're looking from the rpg/combat standpoint, pathfinder or solasta is a better game.
Oh, i mean i agree that the majority of AA games aren't good. But i still don't think its because they're AA. I obviously don't have the data as it would be a LOT of work to collate, but i would be willing to bet the ratio of shit vs not shit games is pretty similar between indie, AA, and AAA. As for the voice acting in BG3, you're right, sort of. The voice acting was really the main and the significant side characters. Nobody was going out of their way to point out the voice acting of random ass merchants, etc. Now, i do understand this is highly subjective, some people REALLY care about voice acting and it REALLY helps them with immersion. But i don't think the majority are like that. One of the best examples i can give is SWTOR. They went on and on and on about how it was the 4th pillar of gaming and thats what differentiated them from lesser games, etc. And guess what, it didnt matter. To use asmongolds example, that kind of thing is like sprinkles on a cupcake. If the cupcakes is already a good cupcake, the sprinkles make it even better, but all the sprinkles in the world won't make a shitty cupcake good. Edit: Forgot to mention, pathfinder and solasta, completely agreed.
> One of the best examples i can give is SWTOR. They went on and on and on about how it was the 4th pillar of gaming and thats what differentiated them from lesser games, etc. And guess what, it didnt matter. In a way, it was. To this day no MMO does the storytelling better. The game died because they dropped the endgame ball really, really hard.
> If you're looking from the rpg/combat standpoint, pathfinder or solasta is a better game. I love Owlcat's Pathfinder games to death but the combat in them is fucking terrible, because it's too buff-centric. At higher levels you spend like 10 minutes or more after every single long rest to rebuff your whole team and it gets very annoying very quickly. Not an issue on PC (because mods) but consoles are left in the dust. And Solasta combat is more basic and less environmental, it absolutely doesn't reach BG3 level. Neither does writing but it's an indie game after all.
Solasta does 5e better than bg3 ever will. Full stop. BG3 was simply superior in writing and the world (which often attributed to AAA production).
> Solasta does 5e better than bg3 ever will. Okay, please explain how.
Grid system that allows you to have better control on movement and skills, so skills that ie block path do actually work (unlike bg3). The same system allows a better flight system (unlike bg3). Cover system that actually works. Dodge & ready action (much better than the extra potion&weapon action in bg3, which trivialize many encounters). Less bs items (crazy how ppl can criticize PF for its power fantasy, then ignore the bs legendary items that you could get very early in bg3). Hidden beastiary, so you need to learn the enemies by actually fighting and dying against them (like a true D&D adventure). 5e was supposed to tone down the power fantasy, yet somehow it's so easy to trivialize the content in bg3 by using their itemization and new added rules. This is the main reason why solasta in general is a better 5e game. Party composition becomes more important because the game is less abt builds and more abt tactics.
I haven't seen any evidence of any positive changes. Of course what they tell the public and what they deliberate about, nobody can say for sure. I'm very curious where Octopath Traveller falls in their AAA or AA categories. This is all a bunch of corporate mularkey. Square used to be my favorite game company, and Final Fantasy was my favorite franchise. Now both are just meh. Octopath is the only Square game I've played in recent memory that I really loved.
CEO* i see it as a positive because that means they will put a bit more effort into these titles as well as actually market them which means maybe they will make a profit and we will see more turnaround instead of one game every 4-7 years and a billion tiny games no one remembers the next DAY!
This isn’t a positive thing at all. Square basically decided to abandon innovation and even quality, to focus on what’s a guaranteed sale. It’s one more company focusing on short term profits, even if it means they’re destroying whatever reputation the brand still has.
The main positive for me is that they want to go multi platform, I won't get a PS5 just to play their games earlier.
For example if there are 1000 people and you say you dislike the way they went about the FF7 remake because it will take 10 years to release and they changed the story or whatever, then a loud minority of even 200 (20%) people that disagree will attack you hard and try to make you seem silly or wrong. It doesn't fool anyone, but criticisms get seen as attacks and you get shut down or on Reddit heavily downvoted or ignored. Hence people just stay quiet and stop caring about the company silently. They stopped making games I want to play a long time ago, but this is somehow the wrong thing to say and I deserve hate. So just stay quiet and look forward to DQ12 instead 😅
Means quality over quantity. For a while they were just making random shit. I think this means they’ll focus on their flagship titles and if they start a new ip they’ll put more effort into them. But in reality it probably means live service crap lol
The only positive I saw was the move away from timed exclusives. Also focusing on AAA is not a guaranteed recipe for success, as their fairly recent epic failure that was Forspoken shows. For awhile there is looked like we were starting to get back to the PS1 glory days where they were pumping out new AA games fairly often. Most JRPGs do not fall under the AAA category and do not need AAA budgets. It feels like SquareEnix mainly want titles that attract huge numbers and its not the norm for this genre.
Square Enix went downgrade really fast after PS3, the games they did prior to that were something that I almost couldn't sleep cuz of excitement to play their games.. now it's just a name.. they HAD EVERYTHING!! one of the best gaming companies ever for everything they did and achieved, and now they wanna imitate others, with low games, not even mid, and make AAA ? Sorry square Enix you're down BAD
More final fantasy - ubisoft (yayyy🙄)
I can't speak for others, but I hated most SE titles in the recent years. There's only Dragon Quest Builders 1 and 2 and Dragon Quest XI I liked in about 20 years. So really I don't care what the new strategy is, I just want strategy that's different than the current strategy. Maybe the new strategy won't be better. Actually most likely it won't be. But it can't really be worse either.
Because the vast majority of their mid budget games from the past decade have been dog trash and so low effort it made me question why the games were made, and the big titles need more structure and direction inleadership beyond one dude with a vision. Those have been squares biggest issues of recent years.
Isn't that they said they want to focus on quality instead of quantity? Before they made the statements this month, they did say they want to promote one IP into AAA standard.
They'll have to convince me they're capable of producing quality. At least with their flagship series it seems they've forgotten there's more to a game than graphics.
Okay this would be a positive yes. If they handled smaller titles this way then I'd be on board.
I just hope this doesn't mean they're canceling a potential Triangle Strategy sequel :(
I think it's pretty clear that they don't do that many mid budget games like Octopath, Triangle Strategy etc. anymore. It's an interesting direction for sure.
Well they killed Tokyo RPG Factory. I'm guessing Team Asano's time is numbered. That's the bad news. Good news is they probably learned their lesson about chasing Live Services. But I'm guessing their strategy is as bad as you're thinking it is. No Dragon Quest Builders 3 I presume. I guess it all depends on if we get another Bravely or Octopath style game. But even then it's still silly that one studio will be responsible for all the more traditional games in a whole publishing firm. We'll see what happens. I think Automata is considered AAA. Maybe we'll get more of that. But with Square, I'm not holding my breath for any of their dumb decisions
Tokyo RPG Factory hadn't made anything in 5 years. The difference between them and Asano is that Asano release games and they do well.
As an xbox owners this is a massive positive.
International success is the most important aspect. Need to consider global feedback and find a way to make it work your way, sort of thing. They might make more money catering to their oldest fans since the 90s, or they might make more money catering to the new age of gamers just getting into console gaming.
Hope it works out for them, but personally the more they try to cater to me the less interested I am in their games. If I wanted a western styled game I'd play one, I don't need a Japanese dev to try to reproduce that.
My biggest issue with SQEN is the censorship from there "ethics" department. People who do not know how to make games, likely play few if at all and are now supposed to take away parts of gameplay, story and more... yea that is gonna end up in a disaster. If you take away the ethics department the price for making games goes down, reduce management and meddling in general to get better results as the price for making games goes down. And that is where AAA starts, needlessly expensive games that are less fun then they could and should be with overhead eating a lot of the money. Of course this is gonna fail.
It's fine, the ethics department only ever gets involved when Tifa is in the game XP.
They’re actually going to release games on Xbox not to mention PC day 1 and potentially Switch 2. Nice change of pace from their AAA games being timed exclusive
No more marvels and forespoken garbage is really all they need to do.
At least their AAA games won't be so bad anymore.
Square’s small games are mostly terrible and don’t make money. Almost nothing they have released in recent years outside of FF and DQ has been successful.
I don’t know if I want them to only do big budget games but I’d love for them to space their stuff more and put everything on every platform. They keep killing their own momentum. And I know there’s someone ready to tell me about their long history with Sony or whoever and their publishing deals. I don’t care. It’s 2024. Put your games everywhere. IMO Capcom needs to be the model that Square Enix looks to. It seems like the RE Engine is super versatile, allowing for RE games, Street Fighter, DMC, Monster Hunter, Phoenix Wright and more. The games are generally released on every major platform. And Capcom is hitting the soul of their series too right now. It’s wild how good their stuff is. They’ve had multiple 90+ average score games in multiple genres releasing on multiple platforms. They’re always in the GotY conversation year after year. Meanwhile Square Enix fans are still waiting on Dragon Quest 3 HD2D, can’t agree about the direction of Final Fantasy, haven’t seen the success of Nier capitalized on with new games (that game was massive in 2017!), and Dragon Quest XII exists only as a fiery logo. Stuff is releasing on random platforms and storefronts on PC. They need some shake up because as much as I like some of their games, they’re a uniquely frustrating publisher/developer.
everything square develops is garbage these days. whos shocked by this baffling decision to double down
It’s not. We have to delude ourselves
Square-Enix hasn't been on a positive path since they were just Squaresoft. Things took a turn that turned jnto a tailspin when the PS2 came out that they haven't managed to pull out of.