Square's expectations are the issue here. I don't think I've ever heard them say they hit their sales projections on any game in the last 15 years. And they released some decent games in that time. They just always have insanely over inflated expectations.
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
64 points (94.4% liked)
Games
16402 readers
1680 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
And then they try to fix it by spending even more on the next title.
I don't get it.
It has resulted in some fantastic, well-selling games, but it was never going to reach the universal "literally everyone is playing this" level they seem to keep thinking will happen "any second now".
Making a console exclusive on their worst selling console ever was probably not helping.
What? Squenix overspending still didn't result in proportianlly higher sales?
No way! But surely, next time it'll work!
If youre unfamiliar, squenix keeps upping the budget when they get "hits" expecting the return to scale. Then when it doesn't, they use it as en excuse to abandon the franchise.
They did it with Tomb Raider. They did it with the new Deus Ex games. I really really don't want them to do it Final Fantasy, as I really enjoy the modern games.
Did they still find a way to blame their Western developers since they shed them all?
Maybe they should try making a Final Fantasy game again.
Crazy that splitting a medium-length game into 3 massive parts isn't the right way to remake a game 🙄 is there anyone that hasn't lost interest by now?
So the gimmick in the 7 remakes is that they aren't a remake at all, they are a weird alternate reality spin-off thing that revisits the same characters and locations. I mean, mild spoilers for a four year old game you haven't played at least partially because you didn't know this.
The way they presented this was very weird and they tried to split the difference between still saying it's all a remake but then hinting at it not being a remake sometimes slightly.
My biggest problem with these is that combat feels laggy and weird and I would much prefer a proper turn based RPG in the first place, but seeing the comments here is a bit of an eye opener about how it was all perceived.
I bought this expecting an updated ff7 with better graphics and quality of life improvements. I ended up with a shitty dragons age clone, so I refunded it immediately. Not even going to buy it again if it's on sale.
Yeah, I was decently interested in it until I found out the whole game won’t actually exist for years. Maybe I’ll get the bundle at a deep discount 8 years from now, assuming I even remember it exists.
I do wonder how much of an uptick in sales the first two games will receive once the third is done.
Same, I was hella excited for this remake. FF7 was a mind-blowing experience for me as a child. But I want to play through the whole story and I had forgotten for years that this game existed until seeing this post.
Unfortunately you need to forget about it for another number of years. As only two of the three parts are out. Part two took them four years after part one, so safe to guess the same for part three.
Also, the names are exceedingly confusing:
-
FF7 Part 1 is named: Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020)
-
FF7 Part 1 Enhanced is named: Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (2021)
-
FF7 Part 2 is named: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024)
If their goal is to get people to completely check out due to long, long release schedules and confusing naming, they are succeeding.
I for one am glad they did it. It's breathed so much more life into the world in doing so. OG is a great game but I've been enjoying the remakes way more. And FFVII OG is my favourite RPG and one of the first games I ever played, I used to replay it every other year.
Intergrade is an increbile game. I loved it.
Squenix is still missmanaging the shit out of their franchises, and I will be waiting for Rebirth to be discounted and on PC.
Is it mismanagement if the reason it's only on one console at launch is because the devs want to get each game out as soon as possible, only having to focus on one piece of hardware? They also got more money to make the make the games as big as they are due to making that console the playstation and having Sony invest in timed exclusivity? Seems like a win-win to me. Doesn't stop Sony from having extremely ludicrous metrics in which they expect their games to measure up to though. Which is ultimately why it seems every game they release never meets them.
Sony?
Final Fantasy is owned by Square Enix.
I suspect Sony pays them very little for the timed exclusivity, still that does help.
But the mismanagement I'm referring to is less to do with the platform availability (though that doesn't help) as it is with Squenixes habit of consistently over-estimating final sales, and thereby overspending on development and scope.
Squenix did it with Tomb Raider, they did it with Deux Ex, and then axed the franchises entirely because they "failed to meet sales projections". They still sold like hell, but "underperformed" because Squenix had completely bonkers expectations, and thereby also spent way more than warranted.
The marketing budget for Shadow of the Tomb Raider was apparently more than a third of what they paid for development, and even the development cost was questionable.
The exact same pattern is happening with Final Fantasy, where they try to fix waning sales by going bigger and bigger, instead of more efficient and consistent. I hope they wise up before they axe FF, too.
It'll be a cold day in hell before I buy a 3-game series of a remake. Even the glory of hi-def Tifa bazongas can't entice me, and Pornhub has my back on that anyways.
Waited for the PC version of Intergrade, and then a sale. It was absolutley fantastic IMO. But I will still do the same with Rebirth.
Squenix keeps trying to spend more to get more, and it never fucking works.
It's always "our titles are performing below expectations and we will be forced to axe the project" when the whole reason things are going south is that they somehow thought there was a market to make hundreds of millions, then spend accordingly.
And when fans aren't interested in buying one game three times for full price:
Rebirth didn't need to be bigger and better than Intergrade. It just needed to be the same quality level (which was excellent, now with Rebirth its overshooting the sweet spot by a mile) and cost less than full-price.
Enjoy your exclusive deals! I see they are working very well.
FF16 and FF7 are the only PS5 exclusives I would consider, but two games aren't enough to buy a new generation - one that's almost over even. Maybe release some graphically worse PS4 versions like almost everyone else? Oh, and PC ports of course if they haven't.
"If they haven't" makes me thing you aren't considering it particularly hard, since 7R has been out for a good while on PC and XVI just came out.
If anything this thread tells me Square maybe isn't great at marketing, or at least at making games that seem appealing to people not keeping tabs on gaming news proactively.
I think the second FF7 part isn't on steam yet? But personally speaking, while I'm slightly interested, I not to eager on these games. FF16 semms to have cut back on too many RPG mechanics for my liking and FF7 just isn't complete yet. I'll have another look once the 'full game' is out.
16 and FF7 part 1 are on PC.
This is the correctest answer. I know sooo many people who still got their PS4 and refuse to buy a PS5 for 1 or 2 games they are interested in.
Honestly, I can only speak for myself, but 7R felt actively bad to play to me. Them trying to split the difference between a turn based RPG and an action game just made everything feel weird and slow, the way animation priority works on it is super unsatisfying and I really don't click with how a lot of it is paced. Plus it's been ages since anyone made a proper spectacle-focused turn-based RPG, and this was a missed opportunity, honestly. Persona looks stylish and great, but it's not going for the same thing.
That, as a result, made me not want to jump into the sequel, because I never finished the original and people were telling me they play the same.
XVI is a bit of a different beast, I just wasn't in a hurry to play it because... yay another action RPG form Square that probably doesn't play great, but I did want to check it out, so I waited for the PC port that just came out and got that. Still haven't gotten into it. I hope it's good. It seems to be doing fine on Steam, but it also looks extremely expensive to make, so if they say it didn't work I believe them, I suppose.
I thought remake's combat system was great and it was my game of the year when I came out. FF16 was also great for me, but it was never going to make everyone happy, it had far too many issues and was a focused action game.
Ff7 rebirth though- holy shit, it was just too fucking long. Too exhausting to play. So much shit to do it was overwhelming and SO, SO much filler. So many terrible, stupid story decisions undercutting emotional moments and jumping the shark on itself. I went from loving it because it was more remake to hating it because of many of the changes and the writing. Just...exhausting.
Square just seem like they are missing hard because FF16 was too focused, and FFRebirth is too big and up it's own ass.
Them trying to split the difference between a turn based RPG and an action game just made everything feel weird
I haven't touched any Final Fantasy games once FF-13 did this. It's an awful system that killed my interest in the franchise. Not to mention how brain dead linear the lever design was.