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[Witchilich]

It's not unreasonable to think that'll happen in some cases, I've said that too, PC gaming is often about brute forcing through bad optimization.
Won't be like that with all games though. DF will have their hands full. And Alex when doing optimized settings videos…

A 1200 $ box with unoptimized games sounds like highway robbery.

 

[pulicat]

Asano's team is one of the most profitable teams in Square Enix with a modest budget and good sales results. kazuyamishima Please educate yourself more about Square Enix's organizational structure when it comes to profitability since you refused to blame PS5 console exclusive titles when those games were the main reason why Square Enix made a drastic decision to switch towards a multiplatform approach.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Sont won't buy them but there'll still be Sony fanboys rubbing themselves down to a nub at the thought.

It's Pikmins the ones doing fanfic in this thread. Delulu land as always.

Xenoblade is the closest thing to FF on Switch, so those are the prospect sales of FF being Nintendo exclusive.

 

[yurinka]

Dude, they have done their research. A big title like Final Fantasy confined to a single console for a whole year with a limited user base isn't going to grow your franchise. Take a look at this slide.

Final Fantasy, a series that used to sell 10m units, was on the brink of turning into another niche JRPG from Japan, but fortunately they are changing the direction for the next FF title for simultaneous release.

The graph is very misleading due to several reasons:

• Doesn't consider that big 3rd party games like Final Fantasy or Monster Hunter Rise released as timed console because get paid by the platform holders enough to compensate the lost sales in other platforms
• Makes an arbitrary cut at 1 year to only include the install base of the late PC port of Rise but not the FF late ports to PC, Xbox and Switch 2. Most games make most of their units after the first year, particularly timed console exclusives like MH Rise or the FF mentioned
• The decrease in install base from the first to the second game in each FF subsegment is normal because these 2nd games were released in an earlier point of the generation than these 1st games, where the installbase is smaller
• They only compare FF to only two Japanese RPG top sellers but are very different, but not to other Japanese RPG that are more similar/traditional SP JRPGs like FF (Tales of Berseria & Arise, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 & 3, Persona...) or to other Japanese RPGs that sold way worse than FF despite being in more platforms/having a biger userbase (Dragon's Dogma 2), or PS exclusive RPGs that like FF and unlike MH are SP only (like Horizon Zero Dawn / Horizon Forbidden West) etc. As an example, Horizon Zero Dawn got released with an installbase of 60M PS4 and sold more than any Monster Hunter.

Meaning:

• To release a game in more platforms or later in the generation to do it having a bigger userbase helps, but don't imply to sell more
• The chart is clearly biased making an arbitrary cut in 1 year to don't include the install base of late PC/Xbox/Switch ports of FF while including the MHRise late PC port
• The chart makes an arbitrary and biased selection of games to compare chossing pretty different games while keeping away more similar ones, because they'd show that

Asano's team is one of the most profitable teams in Square Enix with a modest budget and good sales results. kazuyamishima Please educate yourself more about Square Enix's organizational structure when it comes to profitability since you refused to blame PS5 console exclusive titles when those games were the main reason why Square Enix made a drastic decision to switch towards a multiplatform approach.

Most of these numbers seem very bad -and as usual in many other slides- highly biased estimates.

Let's see the amount of people credited in the games in professional roles according to Moby Games, and let's also add MH World and Wilds thaty they cherrypicked to leave out:

• FF XVI: 3,947
• FFVII Rebirth: 3,711
• MH Wilds: 2,567
• FFVII Remake: 2,315
• Dragon's Dogma 2: 1,500
• Monster Hunter World: 1,176
• Monster Hunter Rise: 1,108
• Forspoken: 387 (must be more, because in outsourcing studios they only credit the companies and not the staff)

Let's see the development time spent on them according to (mostly) wikipedia:

• FF XVI: 8 years (since they started concept / very early preproduction)
• MH Wilds: "at least 5 to 6 years" (in "development")
• Dragon's Dogma 2: "around/roughly 5 years" (development)
• FF VII Rebirth: 4 years and 3 months (since started active development in november 2019)
• FFVII Remake: 4 and a half (since "entered full production")
• MH World: almost 4 + 1 (almost 4 of development + 1 of 'brainstorming'/preproduction)
• Forspoken: between 4-5 years (Luminous was founded in March 2018, writer was first contacted late 2017)
• MH Rise: 4 years (pre-planning development started after completing Generations and Generations Ultimate)

So the highest budget by far should be for FFXVI, then MH Wilds amd FF VII Rebirth and way under them, at a pretty likely similar scale, FF VII Remake, DD2, MH World, MH Rise, Forspoken

These companies haven't disclosed the marketing budget for these games, and without that data you can't calculate the CPI. In adition to this, Sony paid marketing for all these games except Rise, who got the marketing support from Nintendo.

 

[Astray]

Do you realize I also posted this?
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/activist-investor-square-enix-sale-in-2026.1691277/post-271083437

And that despite being from half a year ago it's what they continue having TODAY in their website?

You are very deluded.

Your link literally says the disclosure is only correct until March 31st 2025 (went to the link on Square's site to verify this for myself because it's even on your own screenshot!).

6-7 months of stock movement can easily change the entire map.

These disclosures tend to only be required every couple of quarters.

Also why on earth would an activist investor outfit publish a report before getting their share holdings together? That's activist investing 101!

 

[Badlucktroll]

Microsoft should buy them.

 

[E-Cat]

There is a no sale option. There's no scenario 3DIP leaves Square Enix without something drastic happening to the company.

Still sounds like a prior to me that it's a foregone conclusion S-E gets broken up for parts in a no-sale scenario.

 

[Fess]

A 1200 $ box with unoptimized games sounds like highway robbery.

That's just how PC gaming is. Your hardware is important.
But we don't know how powerful the Xbox will be yet, and lots of people play on laptops, and like it, so it doesn't have to be a big problem. We'll see.
Either way, Steam Machine is the first one to walk through the fire on this newish product segment. I suspect we'll see more widespread attempts to optimize there and use of preset settings ala "Steam Machine Verified".

 

[deriks]

If was a early 2000 I would say Sony, but nowadays it's a very weird scenario with a lot of different people. Maybe just for the sake of internal culture, a japanese company will buy. Maybe

 

[Raven117]

Sony is the natural choice. Whether they do, who knows.

 

[CentralScrutinizer]

Sorry to burst bubble, but they would have flopped 10x more on the Switch. Assuming the Switch wasn't dogshit hardware and actually capable of running the games to begin with.

SE would love to get more free money from Sony. But it's more likely they don't see any value in paying for an exclusivity period for this dying franchise, especially with Xbox out of the picture. So now FF will continue flopping but without Sony footing the bill.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Hopefully Sony

Nintendo will just patent RPG so no one can do anything else anymore and Microsoft... it will just kill it, like they always do.

Chine will transform 3/4 of its IP into GaaS free2play mobile games while Saudi Arabia will put Ronaldo on Final Fantasy

 

[Witchilich]

That's just how PC gaming is. Your hardware is important.
But we don't know how powerful the Xbox will be yet, and lots of people play on laptops, and like it, so it doesn't have to be a big problem. We'll see.
Either way, Steam Machine is the first one to walk through the fire on this newish product segment. I suspect we'll see more widespread attempts to optimize there and use of preset settings ala "Steam Machine Verified".

People who play from the couch on their TV want an out of the box experience that just works. Xbox will provide an inferior PC gaming experience because you can't upgrade it. Ultimately for those playing in the couch, $600 PS6 will offer more optimized games than $1200 Xbox.

 

[justiceiro]

Outdated way of thinking. Square will probably be sold to a mobile giant that will cancel all console release and only focus on mobile games from now on.

 

[yurinka]

You are very deluded.

Your link literally says the disclosure is only correct until March 31st 2025 (went to the link on Square's site to verify this for myself because it's even on your own screenshot!).

6-7 months of stock movement can easily change the entire map.

These disclosures tend to only be required every couple of quarters.

You must be seriously retarded or have some reading comprehension issues.

I posted the oficial data that the Square Enix website as of two days ago, which is updated until the start of the current fiscal year. Back then these folks had nothing at Nintendo, and I wrongly asssumed that there weren't big changes since then because normally there aren't bing changes. Then the other user pointed that these people bought their stocks more recently, after that March 31 point, showing receipts from April or June. I accepted them and rectified. That's all.

Also why on earth would an activist investor outfit publish a report before getting their share holdings together? That's activist investing 101!

People is free to say whatever they want.

In this case, being one of the top shareholders of a company it's normal that they may share their opinion (having a lot of money doesn't mean they are right, there's people saying crazy shit everywhere) and particularly to do it publicly if what they are looking for is to influence the market and particularly the stock value of that company, or the votes of the other main shareholders.

Particularly if there's a shareholder meeting soon, to let the others know their point of view and to put some context on something they may say or ask for there later.

But separate from this specific case, in many companies there's from time to time some 'crazy folk' who has just a few stocks and makes some dumb claims, or are hitmen hired by bigger dogs (often big hedge funds, and these activist happen to be former employees of such company) who try to make some noise to try to negatively affect the company stock value to bring it down letting the big dogs buy cheaper (in gaming see Ubisoft as example, happened a couple times). Normally that dumb folk claim's have no effect, but when it's a hitmen stunt these claims are shared by the hitmen media owned by these big dogs (see Bloomberg as example).

Their idea is to manipulate the stock value of a company to negatively affect their stock price with headlines of "shareholders of X company are very angry and made X claim!" to later buy stocks of that company cheaper.

You often can double check it by looking where the CEO did work previously, to see if there's a hedge fund or big bank there. And if such hedge fund or back bought shares of that company shortly after the company stocks went down shortly after these claims.

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

SEGA just can't, they're sub (level 3). CAPCOM is at the same level (2 if i remermber), and SONY 1 (same for Nintendo i guess). So you have your answer.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Nintendo has the money, but have never shown the appetite for big acquisitions or investments. Can't see them spending $8B (1.1T yen) on this.

Nintendo doesn't have to spend big money to get the studios of SE they'd want. AFAIK, they've already been investing in specific units of SE; they could just buy those units outright and other companies could buy one or multiple of the remaining.

We already have precedent of Nintendo doing this now with them purchasing that Bandai-Namco Singapore studio, so I'd expect more of that in the near future. Sony would likely acquire the Final Fantasy unit. As for the others, they'd probably get acquired by various other publishers, maybe specific IP are also up for acquisition too. And I can see most of SE staff going over to whatever companies acquired the respective units in particular.