Actionbros... we're losing the fight

techraptor.net/gaming/news/square-enix-financials-2024-25

Actionbros... we're losing the fight...

Good. SE fans deserved to be milked like the drones they are.

What exactly is it this company has done to piss everyone off so badly?

Betrayed they’re audience

This They destroyed the, arguably, most beloved JRPG series ever made.

They have proved that they do not know what to do with their series and constantly under deliver on everything. It really feels like there is just a few people at SE that actually know what they are doing, namely Asano's team, the DQ team, and the SaGa team. Hell, even the outside developer Xeen knows how to properly handle Square's IPs better than Square.

Watch, next FF will be turn-based and won't sell 400k copies

yeah it's kinda wild to see mismanagement this bad
it almost comes across as intentional at this point

profits are up thanks to Dragon Quest

Doing the opposite of what fans have been asking for years AKA a normal fucking FF game and they quadruple down on action shit instead and endlessly trying to pander to a western audience EVEN THOUGH THE WESTERN AUDIENCE IS TELLING THEM TO STOP FUCKING DOING THAT. They deserve to lose more money, they should just become a publishing company and rent out their IPs to someone that gives a fuck. Old japanese men will forever be the biggest bane of the video game industry. They act like a bunch of fucking bitchy women too.

sales profits

So still beating FF7 R3.

normal fucking ff game

and what is that supposed to be? you niggers not gonna like anything anyway, because it's not a thing you played during your childhood, it's a lose/lose situation
they might as well experiment more, even if it means not appealing to random retards on the internet (lol)

Kek this

Common turnBASED W like predicted.

if squenix were to go bankrupt tomorrow, nothing about the industry or games available would change at all
they're a complete non entity at this point
all they put out is:
a) high budget games that are dogshit designed by idiots trying to appeal to non existent idiots
b) zero budget unfinished dogshit that might be decent if it got any budget and attention
c) remakes, almost all of which are drastically worse than their original
and d) remasters, some of which are acceptable
and the reality is squenix don't even make half their shit, they just publish things made by other, sometimes better devs - like tri-ace or whatever

your strongest output should not be d, output b should flat out not exist, output c should not be worse than the original every single time in every single aspect, and your worst output should not be a
it is completely ass backwards

oh look its nomuras strongest soldier yet again

and what is that supposed to be?

Start making turn based jrpgs with 500 different rpg systems layered in, with an actual budget so it's a proper fucking length and not some short piece of shit or ubisoft tower yellow paint simulator, with zero references to modern dogshit politics or the real world in general in its writing, with attractive and cool LIKEABLE characters
It is very easy anon, no matter how much you act like a retard. Final fantasy as a series has existed for 35+ years, for 15-20 of those years it was good. People who played ff5 in their childhood still bought ffx, they were no longer children, it was still good
Clown

But I was told that SE's expectations are unreasonable. I'm starting to think FF16 and Rebirth did flop after all.

They chased the "new"baudience while telling their old audience to keep up or be left behind, but square learned too late there was no "new" audience at the end of the road, just emptiness

This. The new audience they're after aren't interested in traditional video games. They want to doomscroll TikTok and p(l)ay gachas.

I wouldn't even argue they play gacha games. It's mostly Fortnite or FOTM multiplayer slop. And even all of that is a distant second to, as you said, feeding your data to China.

They want to doomscroll TikTok and p(l)ay gachas.

And squenix has eos'd very gacha they've ever made within only a few years. They cannot make a gacha that people want to play, because all they want to do is extract money. They look at the top gachas (which are less monetized and less predatory in their design and practices) and cry that they aren't getting that money, so shut it down

FF7 R3

I'm still mad. The FF7 remake should have been a "free" homerun for them. Not some highly controversial fan-splitting shit.
I can't imagine how many hundreds of millions of dollars they pored into Rebirth, and even more into the marketing campaign, only for it to flop out 2 million sales.
FF7R should have been 1 game that started a new era for SE.

I was reading on Anon Babble and a thread a few days ago on Anon Babble people were saying they are remastering/rereleasing FFXI (multi platformed mobile ps2 x360 PC etc) anyone got any more juice about this?

XI doesn't need a remaster and it's literally just setting more money on fire if they do.
Not to mention that game has WAY to much content now for them to do it justice. Unless they're going the WoW-classic route, but it's not like this game's is that huge anyway.

Start making turn based jrpgs

Guaranteed that even if Square did, it'd sell somehow worse than the other recent Final Fantasy.

What they were good at was bending the limits of the consoles and the type of games they produced by hiding what was less good while displaying visual "prowess" instead.

Now it's not as breathtaking as it was.

Is anything though? I feel like graphical fidelity has kinda peaked, and we're even seeing some older arts lost to time and brainrot.

they don't want it to succeed, it would be an embarassment to their last decade of leadership and direction
it wouldn't sell worse, guaranteed
but it might not sell much better sure, given that squenix are retards and refuse to design a game with depth or good side content or length or anything else because they have people in charge that are on record saying they hate rpg systems, that they want to play with 1 button because people are old or retarded etc, and because they refuse to devote budget to anything worth a damn

good on square enix for actually trying something more ambitious and interesting than modernizing a game thats still available and playable on literally everything. Personally I see little to no value in simple graphical modernizations. They're boring. Persona 3 remake, remake of one of the most iconic jrpgs ever just came and gone. Mafia 1 remake? Barely anyone cared, even though the original was one of the most highly regarded games of its time and often got talked about for years even after release. And the list goes on. Demon souls remake? Shadow of Colossus remake? Dead Space remake? All amounting to a wet fart, and often considered worse because remaking a piece of art 1:1 will never be able to capture the original intention.

but muh sales! ff7 remake in one go wouldve been a huge success!

first of all, who cares? Even if you are a shareholder, their stock is actually healthy. But as a consumer, its not my concern in the slightest as long as games keep being made, and they are. FF7R3 is not canceled. Even a lowball estimate puts rebirth sales at 2mil at launch and AT LEAST another 1mil on PC, with probably half a mil to another 1 mil on ps5 between launch and now. Thats not outstading, but also not a flop.
And frankly its not ff7 or 16 thats causing issues for square mainly, but almost all of their mobile games and smaller titles flopping one by one.

I can't imagine how many hundreds of millions of dollars they pored into Rebirth

Not that many. Rebirth was made in about 3.5 years with some of that during covid time (dont forget that Remake had DLC releasing in 2021 too)
Rebirth basically wholesale reused Remake's assets and tech, Square developed their inhouse solution for asset streaming and a very basic version of nanite for open world, and thats bout it. Like it or hate it, I'd argue Rebirth is actually a very efficient game in terms of how it was developed. Its why square is very soft on Rebirth in terms of language. It didnt sell amazingly, but it covered its costs and turned a profit with the PC release.

The main issue Square-Enix has with Final Fantasy is that they still believe that their core demographic is the current 15-24 year olds, while in reality only 30+ year old nostalgiafags give a single fuck about Final Fantasy as an IP.

FF7 Remake is basically a decade too late.
But I would say that 15 was a success at capturing the interest of the younger demographics. 16 however seemingly had no interest in appealing to them. People often say 16 is a trend chasing game but who the fuck considers DMC style combat to be trendy nowadays? RPGs are more popular than ever

im retarded, i meant to say they use soft language on Rebirths commercial performance

Except none of that's true. The only salvageable assets from Remake were practically the character models, and only the core team at that. Literally the entire world and practically everyone in it had to be made from scratch. Just the asset work in itself easily runs in the millions, and modeling and voice acting and system design for the many minigames no one liked isn't free either.

even their own turn-based games are more profitable than final fantasy

L O L @ SE

be quiet you retard squenix board member
every game is meant to "come and go"
you will never get a game that is talked about every day and played every day, fuck off lmao
people play it, its done, they move on
if its a good game (like the 90s and mid 2000s produced) people will replay it every 5 or 10 years
nobody will replay your modern slop
their "ambition" was zero, it was to fuck up everything established, dumb it down even further for normgroids and simply copy bad design from other "modern" games and slap it in
if you didn't want them to remake 7 properly, that is fine if you had the intelligence to reach the correct conclusion which is "they should instead use that budget to make a new game that's good" instead of "they should still 'remake' it to try and coast on the ip but simply make it dogshit" lmao

good for square enix for finally killing the most profitable IP they ever had

The fact that the remake sold LESS than the original is telling, especially with how expensive video game development is now.

It didnt sell amazingly, but it covered its costs and turned a profit with the PC release.

This is not a good outcome for your literal one time only emergency golden goose button, I'm sorry you simply cannot spin it otherwise
This would be fine were it a new game, or a new ip, but for an ff title AND ff7 the prime ff title? The value the potential of an ff7 remake held is worth more already by itself than the profit they've made so far. Catastrophic ip devaluing

read operating profts

considering that most people who like "story focused" ff's ;like 4, 6 - 10 actually hate 5, you're full of shit

its not about action or turn based
its about square enix
this fucktard company can't do anything right

Let's see, on the top of my head

scam people with dq11

chase trend 10 years too late

kill games with egs exclusive deal

ethic department

obvious development hell on all major project

forespoken

ff7 remake ghosts

Square enix is actively trying to kill itself. It's actually impressive the dedication to making stupid decision they have, no good will is left. With the way I understand management in Japanese companies I don't see improvement in the future they are stuck in a downward spirale.

Remember when they sold all their Western IPs for pennies so they could make NFTs? lmao

NFTs

The ironic part is that they're STILL doing this.

I'm over the change in Final Fantasy, the last standard FF I bought I was 12 and decided I didn't like the new combat system. XIII I didn't play because I didn't own a PS3 at the time and I saw XV as an action game and didn't even bother to pick it up. XVI looked like more of the same, though I was interested in the setting.

The only FF I've actually played in any serious fashion since the mid 2000s was FFXIV which is more like a nostalgic theme park of old FF games, right down to calling spells Fire 1, Fire 2, and Fire 3. I enjoyed it mostly for nostalgia and for playing with other people.

What's strange is despite growing up with FF from the NES to today, I don't really have the drive to get worked up over its change. It's like that yeah, modern FF doesn't appeal to me at all but FF 1-10 is still there, I can still play them, and there's still tons of fans to discuss them with. The games are self-contained and complete on their own so whatever comes out afterwards can be ignored. It's not like the tragedy of Blizzard who completely raped every single one of their major franchises in ways inconceivable and retroactively destroyed old games with re-releases and modified multiplayer. I can't even play Brood War anymore without seething that Starcraft II exists. Typing this post has only served to open old wounds and piss me off again.

deflection nitpicking reply, i'll take that as your admission you're wrong lmao
the individual ffs i picked don't matter, the point was to demonstrate that it has nothing to do with childhood due to the length of time between them
also nobody "dislikes" 5, you're just a dumb faggot

ff5 has one of the best narratives in the series, Galuf death scene was better than Aerith

I mean, okay? Good for you that you're not that easily fizzled I guess, but a lot of people are still kinda pissed about how they ruined a series that used to be the flag bearer of the JRPG genre.

As much as people scream, I think this is the reality of the situation in part. I don't think SE could deliver on an FF that would draw me in like the old ones, partially because gaming has changed and partially because I have changed. I am a lost cause to focus on.

That being said, I don't think evolving the game into an action title is a good idea either, FF needs evolution, not revolution, the series needs to take a look at how it can improve on the formula to create something that doesn't yet exist and fill a need people don't know they have. FF is just constantly looking at what's selling well and copying it without understanding why it draws people in and the results are that FF feels like a knockoff of something better.

I'm just saying, FF has it bad but there are other games out there that have it worse and companies more deserving of my utter hatred. SE is incompetent, but they don't piss on the ashes of the past and salt the earth. For that, they simply deserve to be ignored rather than actively hated.

but they don't piss on the ashes of the past

Remastering, remaking and "pissing on the ashes of the past" is literally all they do now though.

The company also points to the success of Final Fantasy XIV expansion Dawntrail in its MMO department

But Phor Tchan told me thag Dawntrail flopped

it did, they're just desperate
it was the worst performing 14 expac in existence, their players tanked, they only started to come back when the later patches came in and the mq was done entirely and could be ignored and they started making balance changes

BTFO

Have you ever even played a Blizzard game? Their last few rereleases have actively gone back and ruined the original in ways, usually by forcing multiplayer updates to the newest version. You literally can't even play Warcraft III in the original multiplayer anymore.

SE, for all of their incompetence, can't go back and force me to play something like FFVI with a rewritten script or FFVII with rebalanced materia or whatever. I'm completely free to play FFX without thinking about Titus kicking a blitzball bomb and decapitating himself. I don't have to think about Advent Children when I play FFVII. The pixel remasters don't invade my old cartridges and make them worse. But I can't go back and play the same old ladder matches against players from all over the world in Warcraft III or the original Starcraft without being forced into a new version.

Fifteen years of unmitigated shit, after a two decade pedigree that gave us every reason to expect greatness.

How can this be? Rebirth did everything right

Visuals

Combat

Double your money's worth of sephiroths

Open world

Tons of bloat and shit that didn't exist in the original game

Waifufag fuel

Gay and interracial NPCs

Cooky and silly cut scenes that make you feel like you're watching a cringey retardedly high budget anime

QTEs

Sluggish gameplay segments while DyNaMiC plot things happen

I mean, sure, it's been over 14 months and square STILL hasn't released sales numbers, but it's definitely still goat baybee!
Don't be so naive, anon
Everyone knows it was zoomers, casuals, troons (etc), and streamers that put square on the map 25+ years ago. Why shouldn't square continue to market to exclusively them? Oh... wait...

good summary

Fell for memes

big budgets

does less than 10 million units sold? FAILURE

didn't take care of its gargantuan of IP and let it rot and decay

ARPG as a whole

muh western appeal

NFT meme

Kept big budgets despite knowing it is a bad call

allowing muh west meme appeal to become intrusive to older titles that should've been left alone like Dragon Quest

And the funniest thing is... all of their low budget releases they never had any hopes for were mostly successful and well regarded by the general audience despite not being the golden age Square of all in the slightest

I liked fantasian, octopath, ffrk (before it died), and ffpr WAY more than anything square has put out since 12
That can't be helped though, between enix influence, and corporate share holder bullshit, it was a matter of when, not if

ffrk (before it died)

why i'm not surprised they'll kill the mobile game. I liked record keeper when I was playing it

Considering just how little it costs to make these minor games, I'm always surprised SE decided to throw it all to the wind to focus on massively overproduced AAA slop that no one is buying.

If they could rework the game to stand on it's own as a non-gacha, I'd happily pay full admission
A game utilizing such minimal resources could have SO. MUCH. CONTENT.
More importantly, it could help beidge the gap for newcomers to the series. But no, it wasn't making million$ a day, so now the only way is to get a Japanese proxy, learn moon rune, and start all over. I hate this reality so much

If they could rework the game to stand on it's own as a non-gacha, I'd happily pay full admission

If only ff had a dedicated fan audience like Sonic. Sonic runners iirc came back from the mobile death due them.

8 years run

Holy shit... ngl it had a good run

turn-based fags are mentally ill.

And over the span of ~7.5 years, I might have missed 4-6 days total
Losing that was devastating. If I wasn't so retarded, I'd absolutely start some fan project up

as a Bleach Brave souls player since 2015, I kneel. You have a better record than me (only 4 months out of it)

Rise, anon. For without out our battlefield, we're equally footed anons.

If my cookbat doesn't look and feel like a kill la kill fight, it's bad

HURRRRRR

You've genuinely not paid attention to Square-Enix for the past twenty years.

keep churning out dragon quest as expected from enix, though very, very slowly, so whatever

have a ton of IPs and old franchises abandoned because not big money makers

the few ones they've revived died again due to execs having ridiculous sales expectations for low-budget remakes/revivals they barely advertised outside of a nintendo direct or sony state of play

final fantasy basically is a shadow of its former self, stripping all the RPG mechanics out in favor of cutscenes and cinematic action gameplay with no real substance

what they have tried to subsist on for the series is literally churning out more sequel/spinoff shit with questionable writing or design choices, and an MMO that just went full retard almost a year ago that makes 64% of the company's gaming earnings still

ton of failed mobile and gacha games left right and center, constantly pushing for a live service and everything sucked ass horribly

wasted billions of dollars on NFTs, cloud servers and AI only for literally none of it to go anywhere

signed on for console exclusivity with PS5 only to find out the hard way no one buys most PS5 games at all worth a damn

sold off pretty much almost all of their western IPs because they were so stupid with them that they didn't care to keep them around anymore, and then have pissed away any good will for the couple they kept

have sacked a majority of their dev teams in some way or another, so you basically got the KH/Nomura crew, the Bravely Default crew, the Dragon Quest crew, and the Final Fantasy XIV crew left; everything else is a hodgepodge of whoever they can spare tossed between a bunch of different projects all over the place with no consistency

Forget Expedition 33, Square-Enix collapsing on itself has been a very, very long time coming for many, many reasons.

People ('people') ITT are talking about spending 8 years on gachaslop and you consider turn-BASED to be mentally ill? Lmao.

The action based final fantasy is also just shallow compared to most other action games

point proven

8 years on gachaslop

Good chunk of those older gacha also being turn-based.

Great post. To me the stab that pierces deepest is:

sold off pretty much almost all of their western IPs because they were so stupid with them

In 2022 it was announced that nu-Deus Ex (HR and MD, alongside their remasters) had sold 12 million units.
Modern SE can only dream of 12 units sold of literally anything these days.

And all this for what? So they can shit out half-baked Final Fantasy games no one wants?

ridiculous sales expectations for low-budget remakes/revivals

such as

stripping all the RPG mechanics out in favor of cutscenes and cinematic action gameplay with no real substance

Anon, you can't go around saying the truth about things, especially to arpgfags

This. Truth is incredibly hurtful to these people.

It doesn't help that Square-Enix wants EVERYTHING to sell super millions, yet I can't think of a single game they've had besides Final Fantasy XIV that's met these impossible expectations for the past several years since COVID. They either call everything else a disappointment, or stay silent and let interest bleed out, inferring they were disappointments anyway.

So they can shit out half-baked Final Fantasy games no one wants?

Yes. See, doing what your customer base wants, and something you're really good at is boring. Square should absolutely be able to ride their own coattails and make everything shit, so that that way, by the time their "monkeys in a room with a typewriter write Shakespeare", everyone will be so tired of all the other feces smeared works that they won't care

Seriously, I want more OTs and TSs.

They want it to sell in the trillions because developing these games is really REALLY expensive and considering the once-valuable IP they're sitting on it wasn't downright unreasonable either.
Sadly, for them, the IP can only carry them half way, the rest has to be done with an actual good game, and that's the part they struggle with.
And the more they whip their IP without complimenting it with a good game, the less that IP is going to be able to carry.

I would, without a shred of irony, give Square fucking Enix actual money for Triangle Strategy 2.

I paid full price for the original, it was really fucking fun since no one actually died so you could actually devise some stupidly funny strats.
Maybe balance hard mode a bit better since some characters like dodge tank grandma fall off.

Yeah totally. I agree that the balance was a little all over the place, but I still enjoyed it. A single-player game doesn't really need much balancing anyway. I just didn't bring/fully utilize the overpowered units.

NG+ is insanely unbalanced just for that.
The amount of tries it took me just to finish the fucking first fight with only the characters that were supposed to be there were really frustrating.

I actually never got around to NG+. Was it, overall, worth the playthrough?

rebirth is the best jrpg i have ever played an i play jrpgs since snes days and its by far my favorite genre

Let me guess, the combat?