General Gaming Square Enix confirms US, Europe layoffs as part of restructuring and adopting multi platform strategy after lower profits

[Brian]

Square Enix confirms US, Europe layoffs as part of restructuring | VGC

WWW.VIDEOGAMESCHRONICLE.COM

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Publishing, IT, and Square Enix’s Collective indie games label are affected…

 

Final Fantasy Maker Square Enix Will Aggressively Pursue a Multiplatform Strategy After Profits Tumble - IGN

WWW.IGN.COM

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Final Fantasy maker Square Enix has announced a company reboot amid tumbling profits.

PC getting Day 1

[Bacon]

Hell yeah, brother! Cutting out the WOKE WEST! ANIME TITTIES 4 LYFE!

[Xbob42]

Their platform exclusivity shit never made any sense to me, they'd make random games exclusive to random platforms, sometimes timed, sometimes permanent, and I figured there's no way they were getting paid enough (if they were getting paid at all, if they weren't then LOL) to justify it. Hype on games dies down super fast, so outside of the absolute biggest hits, people generally are going to be a lot less interested if a title hits 6 months or a year later.

 

Those little Dragon Quest games like Treasures and The Dark Prince being timed Switch exclusives is fucking bizarre, there was and still is a Switch exclusive Chocobo racing game, the mainline titles being PS exclusives for a long time, etc. People kept saying of course they wouldn't do it if the numbers didn't add up, but this is Square Enix, so I always had my doubts. Glad to see they realized that's a dumb move and makes no sense. No platform holder is going to pay you enough to make up for the massive delta of lost sales and interest.

 

Put all your games everywhere as soon as you can. Strike while the iron is hot, because in gaming it rarely stays hot for very long. You think FF16 is gonna do gangbusters now that PC players have heard for the better part of a year that it's pretty mid? Think that Sony exclusive money is gonna cover the potential sales you would've had day one? Mmm, I severely doubt it. Some games still get a lot of interest over time, but relying on that as your business strategy is bonkers to me.

[stepee]

So this year for FF7RR and FF16 pc??

[SoberChef]

Still waiting for a Sleeping Dogs sequel, fuck Final Fantasy. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

We’re going to expand into different environments by laying people off because that definitely doesn’t require any manpower

[Keyser_Soze]

4 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Their platform exclusivity shit never made any sense to me, they'd make random games exclusive to random platforms, sometimes timed, sometimes permanent, and I figured there's no way they were getting paid enough (if they were getting paid at all, if they weren't then LOL) to justify it. Hype on games dies down super fast, so outside of the absolute biggest hits, people generally are going to be a lot less interested if a title hits 6 months or a year later.

 

 

They remind me a bit of Atlas a few years ago before they, "figured it out" They were putting one game on a random platform and not on others for one reason or another. Then a button clicked, "we should just put everything everywhere at the same time," and they've been doing quite well with that strategy.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-14/square-enix-shares-tumble-by-most-in-13-years-on-weak-outlook

 

[crispy4000]

@Xbob42
 

You forgot the Kingdom Hearts series never making it off the Epic Games Store on PC. That’s an embarrassment for the ages.

[Xbob42]

34 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

@Xbob42
 

You forgot the Kingdom Hearts series never making it off the Epic Games Store on PC. That’s an embarrassment for the ages.

No, it was quarantined properly away from respectable people.

[gamer.tv]

The amount of times that an SE game falls short of expectations, you’d think they’d hone in on their analysts, rather than the developers. 

[Xbob42]

19 minutes ago, gamer.tv said:

The amount of times that an SE game falls short of expectations, you’d think they’d hone in on their analysts, rather than the developers. 

Expectations are infallible, only reality is flawed.

[crispy4000]

5 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

The amount of times that an SE game falls short of expectations, you’d think they’d hone in on their analysts, rather than the developers. 

 

And yet FF7 Rebirth underperforms.  Still solidly sitting as the #1 rated game of the year.

[legend]

15 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Their platform exclusivity shit never made any sense to me, they'd make random games exclusive to random platforms, sometimes timed, sometimes permanent, and I figured there's no way they were getting paid enough (if they were getting paid at all, if they weren't then LOL) to justify it. Hype on games dies down super fast, so outside of the absolute biggest hits, people generally are going to be a lot less interested if a title hits 6 months or a year later.

 

Those little Dragon Quest games like Treasures and The Dark Prince being timed Switch exclusives is fucking bizarre, there was and still is a Switch exclusive Chocobo racing game, the mainline titles being PS exclusives for a long time, etc. People kept saying of course they wouldn't do it if the numbers didn't add up, but this is Square Enix, so I always had my doubts. Glad to see they realized that's a dumb move and makes no sense. No platform holder is going to pay you enough to make up for the massive delta of lost sales and interest.

 

Put all your games everywhere as soon as you can. Strike while the iron is hot, because in gaming it rarely stays hot for very long. You think FF16 is gonna do gangbusters now that PC players have heard for the better part of a year that it's pretty mid? Think that Sony exclusive money is gonna cover the potential sales you would've had day one? Mmm, I severely doubt it. Some games still get a lot of interest over time, but relying on that as your business strategy is bonkers to me.

 

In the past exclusives probably made more sense because platforms were

1. Much more different from each other than they are now.
2. Games typically required much more lower-level hardware specific coding than they do now.
3. The development budgets were much smaller, so the cost of porting was therefore probably a larger percentage of the original development cost.

Given that, little exclusivity bonuses may have made more financial sense.

 

But now, none of those things hold true anymore.

 

 

8 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

The amount of times that an SE game falls short of expectations, you’d think they’d hone in on their analysts, rather than the developers. 

 

 

Yeah I was going to say something similar. Didn't SE consider games like Tomb Raider failures because it *only* sold millions of units?

[Brian]

As publishers move to fewer games that need to sell multiple more to meet shareholder expectations, what could go wrong?

 

Nintendo, Microsoft, Square welcome us to the era of fewer big video games

WWW.GAMEFILE.NEWS

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Data shows that Nintendo was ahead of the curve on this one.

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

With the sale of their Eidos studios to Embracer, they became mostly a maker of niche games for a primarily Japanese audience (other the FF).  Even FF doesn't sell that well in the West anymore (they only had one game in the top 20 at #16).

Making games multiplatform may not be enough.

[Keyser_Soze]

15 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

With the sale of their Eidos studios to Embracer, they became mostly a maker of niche games for a primarily Japanese audience (other the FF).  Even FF doesn't sell that well in the West anymore (they only had one game in the top 20 at #16).

Making games multiplatform may not be enough.

 

They also released a buttload of them with very little marketing.

 

Diofield Chronicles, Valkyrie Elysium, Harvestella, Tactics Ogre, Star Ocean all released right next to each other, so not only did no one know they came out they cannibalized their own sales.

[Spork3245]

"You mean... we could sell more copies if we released games on more than one platform?" -Square Enix, probably

[Xbob42]

3 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

"You mean... we could sell more copies if we released games on more than one platform?" -Square Enix, probably

"Look, I get it. You're upset we sold a potential 1-2 million fewer copies of our biggest game. But Sony gave us $3 million, which is over ONE MILLION MORE than the highest estimate of copies sold."

[Spork3245]

6 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

"Look, I get it. You're upset we sold a potential 1-2 million fewer copies of our biggest game. But Sony gave us $3 million, which is over ONE MILLION MORE than the highest estimate of copies sold."

 

"We just really like Sony and put our friendship above profits. If we devalue ourselves enough, maybe they'll buy us! Then we can make even less money than before!"

[crispy4000]

22 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

They also released a buttload of them with very little marketing.

 

Diofield Chronicles, Valkyrie Elysium, Harvestella, Tactics Ogre, Star Ocean all released right next to each other, so not only did no one know they came out they cannibalized their own sales.

 

Don't forget Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveller 2 and Crisis Core Reunion.

 

And all these were multiplatform too.

[crispy4000]

34 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

"Look, I get it. You're upset we sold a potential 1-2 million fewer copies of our biggest game. But Sony gave us $3 million, which is over ONE MILLION MORE than the highest estimate of copies sold."

 

The argument the FFXVI team was making at least is that they could release sooner focusing on just one platform.  But that's clearly not a tradeoff the rest of the industry feels is justified anymore.  And it's come back to bite them with how far the PC release still is.

 

It better not be EGS timed exclusive again.  If so, they really don't get it.  But there's lots of dumb short term thinking in the industry lately, so I wouldn't be surprised. 

[Keyser_Soze]

3 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Don't forget Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveller 2 and Crisis Core Reunion.

 

And all these were multiplatform too.

 

Well, I considered doing that but it was a bit weird. Triangle Strategy and Octopath were timed switch exclusives weren't they? And Crisis Core at least came out in December. Diofield and Valkyrie came out within a 7 day span. Then the PC Version of Valkyrie Elysium came out right next to Tactics Ogre which was right next to Harvestella.

 

Great thinkers over there.

 

[crispy4000]

7 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Well, I considered doing that but it was a bit weird. Triangle Strategy and Octopath were timed switch exclusives weren't they? And Crisis Core at least came out in December. Diofield and Valkyrie came out within a 7 day span. Then the PC Version of Valkyrie Elysium came out right next to Tactics Ogre which was right next to Harvestella.

 

Great thinkers over there.

 

 

Yes, in a way?  Triangle Strategy was but only for 6 months: the PC port hit in Fall, not far from to the other games they offloaded.  Octopath II was an everything but Xbox thing in the beginning.

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

On 5/14/2024 at 11:10 AM, Brian said:

As publishers move to fewer games that need to sell multiple more to meet shareholder expectations, what could go wrong?

 

Nintendo, Microsoft, Square welcome us to the era of fewer big video games

WWW.GAMEFILE.NEWS

---

Data shows that Nintendo was ahead of the curve on this one.

 

It’s like they heard the old adage “don’t put all your eggs into one basket” and said “hold my beer. Not only will we make fewer games, we will also release them on fewer platforms. What could go wrong?” 

[Paperclyp]

Shit's gone real wrong in the industry lol. 

[BloodyHell]

Sad, because Rebirth is the best game this year, the best FF, and deserves so much more. 
 

I did my part. I bought most of their releases, including the AWFUL Diofield chronicles. I’m admittedly a SE fan, especially their older stuff. And they rereleased some bangers. Tactics Ogre remake, the recent Star Ocean remake, which is easily my favorite in the series.