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News Square Enix books ¥22.1 billion extraordinary loss for FY2024 after it reviewed its HD development pipeline

I'm going to guess the obvious here and say Kingdom Hearts 4, DQ12, DQ3 HD2D Remake, continued development on FFXIV and in whatever stage Final Fantasy XVII and VIIR Part 3 are in are most definitely safe.
 
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Vernal said:
SO6 and Valkyrie Elysium are not AAA. Like, at all? If anything they couldn't be further from that. AAA isn't 3D environments with a controllable camera not releasing on Switch. Those two are perfect examples of smaller-budget commercial failures from SE.

Also lol at Visions of Mana having zero audience on the platforms it's releasing on, especially PS and PC. Switch is currently the biggest JRPG platform, no doubt, but this idea that these kinds of games don't sell anymore on PS or are irrelevant on PC is beyond nonsensical.

Square Enix is absolutely going the Capcom way. Doesn't mean they're axing everything smaller than FF/KH/(mainline)DQ. But everything Kiryu has said, and is now doing, points towards that being the case.

Chances are they are simply doing less A/AA and taking fewer business risks, especially with trying new IPs (be them AAA or lower budget). And if it has to be this way what I'm hoping for is serious commitment to everything multi-platform and a more focused nurturing of their existing, established franchises, be them smaller (Octopath/Mana/TriStrat), or bigger (FF/KH).
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If you call Star Ocean 6 AA then Star Ocean 2 remake should be A, shouldn't it? What 's gonna exist will be stuff in the Star Ocean 6 caliber, Square is likely to continue to do games cheaper than that, like Dragon Quest Monsters 3, which was a moderate success. I have zero doubt their Nintendo support will continue as it is, and if they feel like they no longer can sustain these, they'll have Nintendo's support financially. They have been publishing (and likely funding) Square titles in west since 2003, I seriously doubt that'll stop anytime soon.

I hear a lot about this "Capcom way" thing but is it really a thing? Capcom always delivers high quality AAA stuff that has never changed. Only difference between Capcom now and Capcom of the past is that they seem to have taken a break from Nintendo development. Their last new Switch title was from 2021 and nothing since then. Even the remasters and collections are on the cheaper front. But this is nothing but a break. Once they build up a new strategy, they'll be back on track with more AA stuff. Starting with new Megaman and Ace Attorney games, I think. I even predict those Final Fight and Power Stone reboots mentioned in the leak few years ago will be fleshed out as AA games pretty soon.
 
If it turns out that they were working on a Chrono Trigger re-release or sequel and have quietly canned it, I am gonna flip several tables
 
chocolate_supra said:
If it turns out that they were working on a Chrono Trigger re-release or sequel and have quietly canned it, I am gonna flip several tables
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CT will be a remake project: One hd-2d for you old people, one akin to the Resident Evil 2 remake approach. Don't worry and believe brother
 
9-Volt said:
If you call Star Ocean 6 AA then Star Ocean 2 remake should be A, shouldn't it? What 's gonna exist will be stuff in the Star Ocean 6 caliber, Square is likely to continue to do games cheaper than that, like Dragon Quest Monsters 3, which was a moderate success. I have zero doubt their Nintendo support will continue as it is, and if they feel like they no longer can sustain these, they'll have Nintendo's support financially. They have been publishing (and likely funding) Square titles in west since 2003, I seriously doubt that'll stop anytime soon.

I hear a lot about this "Capcom way" thing but is it really a thing? Capcom always delivers high quality AAA stuff that has never changed. Only difference between Capcom now and Capcom of the past is that they seem to have taken a break from Nintendo development. Their last new Switch title was from 2021 and nothing since then. Even the remasters and collections are on the cheaper front. But this is nothing but a break. Once they build up a new strategy, they'll be back on track with more AA stuff. Starting with new Megaman and Ace Attorney games, I think. I even predict those Final Fight and Power Stone reboots mentioned in the leak few years ago will be fleshed out as AA games pretty soon.
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I mean, Square published a bunch of low budget bombs recently

Harvestella
Foamstars
Diofield
SaGa Emerald Beyond
DQ Dai
Voice of Cards
Stranger of Paradise
Babylon's Fall
Valkyrie Elysium


And had a big budget bomb in Forspoken and huge disappointments with FF7 Rebirth and Octopath 2 and a mild disappointment with FF16 and a bunch of failures on mobile.

Outside of like Octopath sequels, would Nintendo fund any of these types of games.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Outside of like Octopath sequels, would Nintendo fund any of these types of games.
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Nintendo would fund games that they think they'll sell. Maybe not stuff like DioField or Voice of cards, I can see them going even harder on 2DHD and Bravely style.

Harvestella wasn't a huge bomb though, it hit #3 on eShop, that's quite a feat. Better marketed better sequel would perform much better. Square really needs Nintendo's amazing marketing capabilities on those, though. That was the sole reason why Triangle was a success while Octopath 2 was just ok.
 
9-Volt said:
If you call Star Ocean 6 AA then Star Ocean 2 remake should be A, shouldn't it? What 's gonna exist will be stuff in the Star Ocean 6 caliber, Square is likely to continue to do games cheaper than that, like Dragon Quest Monsters 3, which was a moderate success. I have zero doubt their Nintendo support will continue as it is, and if they feel like they no longer can sustain these, they'll have Nintendo's support financially. They have been publishing (and likely funding) Square titles in west since 2003, I seriously doubt that'll stop anytime soon.

I hear a lot about this "Capcom way" thing but is it really a thing? Capcom always delivers high quality AAA stuff that has never changed. Only difference between Capcom now and Capcom of the past is that they seem to have taken a break from Nintendo development. Their last new Switch title was from 2021 and nothing since then. Even the remasters and collections are on the cheaper front. But this is nothing but a break. Once they build up a new strategy, they'll be back on track with more AA stuff. Starting with new Megaman and Ace Attorney games, I think. I even predict those Final Fight and Power Stone reboots mentioned in the leak few years ago will be fleshed out as AA games pretty soon.
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SO2R was also sold at a lower price point, so yes it was a smaller budget project, but does that really make much of a difference? We have no way of telling whether DQM3 is a cheaper game to make than SO6. Both are dubbed in JP/EN and localized into multiple languages (DQ more in fact), both are sizable 3D RPGs with open environments, both receive middling marketing spend. The point is none of that is AAA. Big-budget productions are pretty easy to differentiate from the smaller A/AA stuff. And I literally never questioned their Nintendo support? Don't know where that's coming from given that I specifically stated that they'll likely do more multi-platform, not less.

What people mean by going the way of Capcom is pretty apparent. Bigger focus on proven franchises, less but bigger games, fewer new IPs. It's that. And good luck on that double A revival from CAP. We're lucky if they put out a new AA (non re-release) game a year.
9-Volt said:
Nintendo would fund games that they think they'll sell. Maybe not stuff like DioField or Voice of cards, I can see them going even harder on 2DHD and Bravely style.

Harvestella wasn't a huge bomb though, it hit #3 on eShop, that's quite a feat. Better marketed better sequel would perform much better. Square really needs Nintendo's amazing marketing capabilities on those, though. That was the sole reason why Triangle was a success while Octopath 2 was just ok.
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Harvestella probably sold OK but nothing above that. If anything all things considered with it being a Switch console exclusive (with Nintendo's help to boot, i.e. Treehouse), and trying to appeal to a very sizable Switch audience (farming lif-sim x RPG) the game under-performed. Harvestella's producer also left SE so its commercial performance and future outlook likely wasn't anything to write home about.

Onto your last point. "Triangle was a success while Octopath 2 was just ok." I'm kind of tired of repeating myself but I guess it's my mistake really: what's your source on this? Because OT2 literally hit a million faster than TriStrat soooo... It reverted the HD-2D series sales decline seen from OT1>TS>LAL. It had sales PR shared too (which is usually reserved for games SE is at the very least content with).
 
Vernal said:
SO2R was also sold at a lower price point, so yes it was a smaller budget project, but does that really make much of a difference? We have no way of telling whether DQM3 is a cheaper game to make than SO6. Both are dubbed in JP/EN and localized into multiple languages (DQ more in fact), both are sizable 3D RPGs with open environments, both receive middling marketing spend. The point is none of that is AAA. Big-budget productions are pretty easy to differentiate from the smaller A/AA stuff. And I literally never questioned their Nintendo support? Don't know where that's coming from given that I specifically stated that they'll likely do more multi-platform, not less.
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Their AA/A lineup is usually what Nintendo gets, fewer of them means fewer on Nintendo. Granted, we don't know anything about their plans on the successor, honestly Square going 100% on it would be very surprising for me, as they are not big fans of "miracle porting" (we got 2 from Square on Switch). But yes, they seem to be changing, we should hope it's for the better.
Vernal said:
What people mean by going the way of Capcom is pretty apparent. Bigger focus on proven franchises, less but bigger games, fewer new IPs. It's that. And good luck on that double A revival from CAP. We're lucky if they put out a new AA (non re-release) game a year.
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This is where you need to have some faith in. They never said they won't do small budget games anymore and constantly doing surveys on dormant franchises. We should have something very soon.
 
Scrawnton said:
Surely they can't think big AAA budget games are the answer after how FF16 and FF7R performs, right?
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Based on how 2024 has gone, the best idea to rush out as many AA multiplayer games as possible and hope that 1 out of 20 hit randomly.

But AA single player games look dead right now.

It's not really like Square has had many or any successes in the last 5 years.
 
Bad news for Nintendo. PR statements like ''we will focus on AAA games and abandon low budget games'' is just market speak for ''We will make games that only comes out on PS, Xbox and PC and abandon Nintendo platforms''.

Visions of Mana snubbing Nintendo could just be a logical result of this new policy. SE abandoning games like Octopath Traveler, the only kind of games they made for Nintendo will mean the relationship will now naturally decline in the future.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I mean, Square published a bunch of low budget bombs recently

Harvestella
Foamstars
Diofield
SaGa Emerald Beyond
DQ Dai
Voice of Cards
Stranger of Paradise
Babylon's Fall
Valkyrie Elysium
Click to expand...
Voice of Cards wasn't a flop

Various Daylife is a better example
 
9-Volt said:
Their AA/A lineup is usually what Nintendo gets, fewer of them means fewer on Nintendo. Granted, we don't know anything about their plans on the successor, honestly Square going 100% on it would be very surprising for me, as they are not big fans of "miracle porting" (we got 2 from Square on Switch). But yes, they seem to be changing, we should hope it's for the better.

This is where you need to have some faith in. They never said they won't do small budget games anymore and constantly doing surveys on dormant franchises. We should have something very soon.
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Yeah, I do believe SE's future AAA output will include Switch 2. I guess our faiths lie at opposite ends ahahah.

In general I think this restructuring will come with a multi-platform focus for everything, big or small.
 
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Scrawnton said:
Surely they can't think big AAA budget games are the answer after how FF16 and FF7R performs, right?
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It's possible they think the bigger games underperformed due to smaller games pulling staff and resources away from them. It's possible they're thinking if they throw more staff at the next AAA game it'll turn out better and won't underperform. IMO that'd be very flawed logic but it might be the way they're looking at it.
 
Hope tactics and 9 remaster are safe.

They probably shouldn't have released so many smaller but still hefty titles with the final fantasy font and non- descript boxes and no actual reference to final fantasy IP so close to each other like Harvestella, Various Daylife or Diofield . Or maybe it was some GaaS stuff that got canned after Chocobo Racing and Foamstar bombed and I guess they helped fund Babylon's fall too. Or both. Lots of weird decisions at once from Squeenix. not to mention the crypto and AI thing.

I think its possible FF16/7R2 are still their best ROI and the smaller titles genuinely bombed hard. So I can see why they'd want to move back to bigger core titles if that was the case. That said, they'll need to reign expenses in too as single player current gen games don't have great attach rates and square is not managing most multiplayer experiences all too well either.

They aren't abandoning nintendo, so dramatic. Dragon quest and mana are still coming guys. Although the kingdom hearts treatment has been baffling so far. FF7R3 might not come though and 2 might also be off the table. But even Nier automata did alright on switch so I don't know.
 
Scrawnton said:
Surely they can't think big AAA budget games are the answer after how FF16 and FF7R performs, right?
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they clearly just haven't gone far enough with any the things they've done

they need to make a game that costs 5 billion dollars to make, releases only on the PS6 even if it isn't out yet, is somehow simultaneously a sequel to X-2 and Lightning Returns, and is half rhythm game and half grand strategy

also it should cost $100 to buy and come with a free NFT with the option to purchase more NFTs via DLC
 
SE has never learned the lesson of blindly stacking AAA game development from Final Fantasy 13 onwards, almost all HD game development programs end up in a black hole because of blindly pursuing technical details that have nothing to do with gameplay, such as resolution, number of polygons, and texture details, etc. I mean, look at Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda has advanced rendering and lighting technology from the 8th generation, and avoids investing too much in useless visual details by stylized rendering.and lighting technology that avoids investing too much in useless visual details through stylized rendering, and even Capcom's pursuit of realism has led to this year's Dragon's Dogma2 slipping drastically in terms of gameplay experience compared to other Capcom games in recent years, and AAA development of this caliber has always presented the problem of poor completion due to lack of development time (not everyone is aRockstar)
 
robertman2 said:
this feels it's more about Direct filler like Diofield, Harestvella and Various Daylife, plus failed GAAS like Chocobo Racing and Foamstars
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I'm sure it's a bit of everything. They've had several failed AAA efforts that were poorly managed, and/or just poor concepts from the outset. They released a deluge of A/AA games that were all competing with each other. Meanwhile they sold off Eidos, so their AAA portfolio is now quite small for a publisher of their size. To top off they wasted a bunch of money and resources on failed mobile games too.

Everything they've been saying and doing for the last 6 months or so makes perfect sense as to addressing their issues tbh.
 
The Final Fantasy Brand is no longer an exclusive system seller they thought it is. They have a problem fracturing their fanbase (See Crisis Core) and milk older titles that are bad ports and overcharging. Don't forget the mistreatment of Eidos then selling them off to focus on NFT's. So many poor decisions you wonder why they're still standing.
 
Don't look at me, I actually bought and played every single one of those smaller games they put out. Most of them were great. People are just weird now and say they want a return to smaller titles but nah, they really don't, it's all a lie. "Direct Filler" is such a horrible term. Like, holy shit shut up. How disgustingly insulting do you have to be?

I love that the new SaGa which came out less than 1 week ago is apparently already a bomb though. No knowledge of the budget, expectations, sales, doesn't matter, it's a bomb. This is why these games get like this. The game barely exists and it's already right in the trash.

FF16 was also not a disappointment. I don't know how many times Square themselves need to say it did fine before that sinks in. Stop saying it underperformed. The company itself is telling you it did fine. It did fine.

As for Rebirth, even with lower sales, we don't know the details of the exclusivity deal, how much they got, what we do know is they smartly reused assets from Remake and made it in a shorter timeframe than the average AAA game and there are clearly some cut corners here and there. It would not surprise me at all that it did perfectly fine and people are trying really stupidly to pin everything on Rebirth and not, you know, the FF7 BR that got shut down within 1.5 years.

"Huge disappointment" though huh. Jesus.
 
If I remember correctly, Square Enix released a ridiculous number of games in 2022. The lineup was unreal. I can't imagine that went well for them. I'm very curious what their lineup in in 2027 will look like in contrast.

Danny said:
Bad news for Nintendo. PR statements like ''we will focus on AAA games and abandon low budget games'' is just market speak for ''We will make games that only comes out on PS, Xbox and PC and abandon Nintendo platforms''.

Visions of Mana snubbing Nintendo could just be a logical result of this new policy. SE abandoning games like Octopath Traveler, the only kind of games they made for Nintendo will mean the relationship will now naturally decline in the future.
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I don't think I agree with this. If Square Enix wants to have better revenue for their video game projects, I don't think abandoning a really popular platform would be the answer. Unless Square Enix saw that multiplatform games underperformed on Switch, if anything, I imagine the direction given would be, "Hey, AAA teams? You need to start planning Switch 2 versions now if you weren't already."

I suspect Visions of Mana is a Switch 2 launch window title and Nintendo's delay of the console to 2025 is just going to create a larger gap between its release and the other versions than anticipated. If Visions of Mana doesn't end up on Switch 2, then I'll have to reconsider how I'm seeing Square Enix.

Another possibility I could consider is if Sony is paying Square Enix money to make games for PlayStation and Microsoft is paying Square Enix money to port games to Xbox but Nintendo is doing none of that and games are underperforming there. If that's the case, perhaps I could see Square Enix shifting away from Nintendo.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
SaGa peaked at 1700 players on Steam.
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Steam might not be the preferred platform for it and as someone mentioned, it tends to do best on Switch. We don't know what the actual numbers are until we start seeing them reported (which we'll get info this week for Japan).
 
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VintoWin said:
Even with their cash cow FFXIV online? o_O
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The issue with FFXIV being their cash cow is that it's a MMO.
What do I mean by that?

It's constant revenue no doubt, but it's always going to follow the same pattern of increased revenue in an Expansion year and decreased revenue in the 2nd year before the next Expansion. If you've got middling or struggling other sections in your portfolio, this means your financials are going to look like a seesaw.

With FFXIV in particular, it's also possible that it reached its peak playerbase with Endwalker.
With WoW having its worse moment and Endwalker being the culmination of years of storyline buildup, numbers were the highest they ever been at the launch of an Expansion. It's not unlikely that Dawntrail and future expansions don't achieve the same subscription numbers as EW(although this is still TBD).
grobla123 said:
Hope tactics and 9 remaster are safe.
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I do think that at least one project that would've already cost them a decent amount of money/time has to have been cancelled.
I don't think that the 140M figure can just be a gazillion mid/low budget games.

Considering we've heard nothing of the FFIX 9 remaster and it's been years since the Nvidia leak...
It's just a feeling and obviously I know nothing, but I can't help but have some doubts.

grobla123 said:
They probably shouldn't have released so many smaller but still hefty titles with the final fantasy font and non- descript boxes and no actual reference to final fantasy IP so close to each other like Harvestella, Various Daylife or Diofield . Or maybe it was some GaaS stuff that got canned after Chocobo Racing and Foamstar bombed and I guess they helped fund Babylon's fall too. Or both. Lots of weird decisions at once from Squeenix. not to mention the crypto and AI thing.
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My guess is that they most likely did as Capcom has done.
Capcom took the revenue generated by MHW starting in 2018 to greenlit 3 new IPs(Exoprimal/Goddess game/Pragmata) which they had not done since forever.

Square Enix probably took the profits of FF XIV once it started really racking up the money, circa 2017-2018 with Stormblood(?), and re-invested that money into as many video game projects with external partners with little attention to the financial viaibility of these projects.

This was actually one of the points we got as part of a preview of things to come in the last earnings report:

In February:
Several securities analysts who attended the call said the new structure is planned to go into effect in April. This reportedly includes a new system of checks to judge the quality of games at earlier stages of development.
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I have a feeling that some of the clearly undercooked games were just as a result of not enough oversight, leading them to just release the titles to recoup some of the development costs.

grobla123 said:
I think its possible FF16/7R2 are still their best ROI and the smaller titles genuinely bombed hard. So I can see why they'd want to move back to bigger core titles if that was the case. That said, they'll need to reign expenses in too as single player current gen games don't have great attach rates and square is not managing most multiplayer experiences all too well either.
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I do think that FF as a franchise has the capacity for growth.
Getting mainline FFs out the door in a quicker manner and perharps having a stronger identity from game to game(in terms of game concepts) would be very beneficial for the series.
Another key area the need to improve is FF spin-offs. Strangers of Paradise/The First Soldier/and other recents ones have been pretty lackluster.

DQ is in a somewhat similar position. It's spin-offs have been hit and miss, although they're selling way more than FFs.
The real issue with DQ is that DQ XI was 2017 and its 2024 and we still don't even have a release date.
Kind of hard to capitalize on the success of the last entry and growth in terms of worlwide audience when your next one is so far away.
 
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Yeah sadly I wouldn’t be surprised if FF9 remake got put on the chopping block. These games get cancelled in development more often than we realize.
 
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Decently relevant to the discussion at hand we have an update on this:
Dardan Sandiego said:
Mochizuki burying the lede here



rip Creative Business Units, long live Creative Studios
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Credit to orzkare on ResetEra
The head of Creative Studio 1 is not Kitase but Hamaguchi now.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/直樹-浜口-340b71225/
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Creative Studio (Number) confirmed to be the new naming scheme then. We should get the whole picture from SE themselves soon though right.
 
Final Fantasy 17 has to be multiplatform, no more exclusivity. As well as no more fracturing the fan base. Release the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy to all platforms and PC. Embrace your AA titles, hopefully a Triangle Strategy sequel comes.
 
MilkyChance said:
Final Fantasy 17 has to be multiplatform, no more exclusivity. As well as no more fracturing the fan base. Release the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy to all platforms and PC. Embrace your AA titles, hopefully a Triangle Strategy sequel comes.
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They are cancelling most of their AA titles because most have bombed.
 
Seven said:
Steam is not the only platform it released on and Kawazu did say in a previous interview that the SaGa games sold best on the Switch.
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I would love to see those numbers because I get the sense that Kawazu just wants his games out there regardless of how profitable they are. And good for him!
 
ngpdrew said:
I would love to see those numbers because I get the sense that Kawazu just wants his games out there regardless of how profitable they are. And good for him!
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his games are even on mobile. he wants his games everywhere. it's not a surprised if Saga sold best on Switch, but I doubt it would matter since these gamese don't sell much anyway
 
ILikeFeet said:
his games are even on mobile. he wants his games everywhere. it's not a surprised if Saga sold best on Switch, but I doubt it would matter since these gamese don't sell much anyway
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The dude is in love with the smell of his own shit. As a person with crippling impostor syndrome, I am jealous of that.
 
ngpdrew said:
The dude is in love with the smell of his own shit. As a person with crippling impostor syndrome, I am jealous of that.
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I'd be jealous too if I thought I was good enough to even have imposter syndrome.
 
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