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[FF:Enhanced_Reality]

This is really nothing new. But for the longest time, SquareEnix have had some problems. Some pretty big ones. The new company slogan, may as well be, failed to meet expectations. Just to put this into perspective.

• The whole Eidos acquisition, was a shit show. Deus Ex, Hitman, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Just Cause - all failed to meet expectations.
  
  • Square actually thought Tomb Raider 2013 could reach between 5-6 million in sales alone. Wasn't happy with 3.4 million in sales. It took the definitive editions on next gen before hitting and exceeding profitability - as well as surpassing 8 million in sales.
  • Tomb Raider 2013 and Sleeping Dogs were blamed for a huge $134 million loss
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider didn't even make the NPD Top 10 the month it launched, despite the huge fuss about being XBOX exclusive and being a prime time for VG retail as it's practically Christmas shopping start.
  • Further to this, RoTD was only described at selling in excess of 1 million copies by holiday end and PC sales were described as nearly tripling that of XBOX at launch...
  • When Shadow of the Tomb Raider launched, by the end of Q3 that year, it had shipped a total of 4.12 million copies, which was a little over three months. Square stated these sales were weak. What the fuck do they expect?
  • Just Cause 4 failed to recover development costs according to SquareEnix - and went on to GamePass, VERY quickly for a big AAA third party release.
  • Deus Ex Human Revolution, vastly surpassed initial sales forecasts, but SE only described them as "favourable"
  • Deux Ex Mankind Divided after all the fucking around with the pre-order shit and other controversies, likely Square's decisions, put the franchise future on hold after 'underwhelming' sales.
  • Sleeping Dogs, despite a respectable start to life as a new IP was specifically quoted as a contributor to a $70 million loss. SE later said, "Sleeping Dogs sales aren't "poor," original projections "exceedingly high."
  • Hitman: Absolution 4 months after launch was on 3.6 million in sales and SE still said it's a failure.
  • Despite strong reviews, SE said that Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy did not meet expectations. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no update since on sales figures.
• Their mainline and strongest IP is not even performing to their high standards and sales have stagnated for staple franchises like Final Fantasy which is their core franchise.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 sales were way down to the original FFXIII, only selling through 60% of shipment at launch. Lightning Returns set a new series low for sales at less than 20% of Final Fantasy XIII at launch.
  • Final Fantasy XIV was a huge failure at launch and whilst I'm very happy to see how it's gone on, you can't deny, it cost a LOT of additional time and resources to get it to where it is today.
  • Final Fantasy XV needed to sell over 5 million copies when it launched - to break even. (Maybe this is part of the problem?)
  • It took FFXV 6 years to meet the 10 million mark, by which point they said it had now met expectations. Having put their foot in it and admitted it that was a 'personal goal,' they'd cancelled 3 DLC packs and blamed it on refocus. Hrmmm.... Smell that familiar smell?
  • Final Fantasy VII Reunion (The Crisis Core remake) had a great debut, but dropped off very quickly outside Asia and a new report may infer that this title did not meet expectations either. In fairness, after PSP exclusivity for so long, you'd think this was a huge release.
  • Stranger in Paradise had the fourth lowest sales of a Final Fantasy spin-off and couldn't even hit 50k sold in Japan. Nothing more has really been said here, which is telling.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is another great that is unfortunate enough to have the slogan 'Failed to meet expectations' next to it in the 2018 financial meeting.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 didn't sell through launch stock, sold less than 1,000 on XBOX in it's debut week and in the end was described as not being a commercial success.
• Once again, we're getting reports that SquareEnix titles haven't met sales expectations once more and this is after having sold off Eidos which Square gave comical reasons for.
  
  • The report cites many titles from returning franchises fans love like Star Ocean, Tactics Ogre and the Valkyrie series.
  • The same report also name drops the Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core remake which is not good news considering this was a big anticipated release after years of exclusivity on the PSP and without a digital download option.
  • The budget for Forspoken was $75 million and they might struggle to get that back in the long term.

I actually made a topic about this in 2022? When it was announced that Final Fantasy XV had finally hit 10 million in sales. Square Enix has continued to decline both commercially in critically, making some incredibly odd decisions, such as selling Eidos to Embracer (though I'm glad it got sold to a third party.) Embracer reportedly have already flipped or at least, leased the rights to Tomb Raider to Amazon for double what it paid Square Enix for the entirety of it's Eidos sale components. A pretty big fuck you to SE there. It's hard to deny, that this is a company in crisis from the outside looking into the core (pun intended.) They're looking at ploughing into NFT's/Blockchain and they've looked at replacing the company President with NFT experience. Clearly, they aren't going down the right path and this goes beyond the current cry arguments about supporting the ABK deal because of Final Fantasy VII Remake/Integrade, not being on XBOX or Nintendo platforms, despite being on PC.

But in the cesspool of social media, a common theme people are recommending to solve this problem, is acquisition by a bigger fish. More often than not, Sony. I personally think, it's time for Square to admit that they are in trouble and don't really have a very positive outlook at the moment. Trimming the proverbial fat and focusing the company hasn't really added to it's value and they don't seem to be making the right decisions by a golden mile. It's also worth noting that Sony could have acquired Square years ago but never did. They allowed them to buy their shares back and became independent. (But bad Sony buys all the companies though right?) Is acquisition really the answer? Or can the company go back onto a positive timeline? And if they're going to do so, how can they do it?

Personally, if the ABK deal does go through and further consolidation of the market continues, I can see Sony acquiring Square, amongst other companies. I'd rather not, but hey, this arms race started some time ago and has only gotten bigger and bigger.

But I pose you a question and kindly thank you for reading my wall of text.

Put yourself in the shoes of the President of SquareEnix. If you were in charge, what would you do to bring them back to the fore front of being a third party publisher?

 

[feynoob]

"Let's invest in nfts "
Square Enix.

 

[Generic]

No.

 

[In Cold Blood]

The pipelines for games is very long. This means that decisions made 2 years ago will effect the next 5 years of releases.
Why would Sony, or any other company, buy Square when they will have to pay for their fucking retarded decisions for the next 5 years? The new owner would have to come in and nuke half their projects, cancel all that NFT block chain horseshit. Sony as it stands gets nearly every Square game as an exclusive and isn't on the hook for all their terrible decisions.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

New?

 

[BennyBlanco]

Their AA output is far better than their huge budget games IMO. The only big budget SE games
I’ve enjoyed in quite some time are the first 2 Hitman games from the modern trilogy and then they cut IO loose. FFXV and FF7R stink on ice IMO. Octopath 2 on the other hand is probably my GOTY so far.

 

[Myths]

Are we going to have a new SE thread every other day about their haphazard financial situation? Seems like it’s the same analysis at least every week.

 

[Bonfires Down]

Kinda feels like FFXIV is carrying the rest of SE these days. I do expect FFXVI to do well though, probably 15-20 million lifetime.

I don’t expect Sony to buy SE unless they have to. They can get exclusivity for cheap as it stands so why would they.

 

[Skifi28]

Are we going to have a new SE thread every other day about their haphazard financial situation?

Yes.

 

[Punished Miku]

They aren't morons. They have better AA output than anyone. THEIR AAA stuff is all mostly safe bets on existing IP or Marvel. It just shows how hard and risky it is now

 

[adamsapple]

They've failed to meet expectations on pretty much everything outside of FF14 in the last couple of years, no ?

 

[FBeeEye]

They are essentially a B-tier Sony first party anyways. Might as well make it official.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Tbh there output has been alot better than PS3 gen.

Bringing back great versions of Dragon Quest, Tomb Raider (There were no decent Tomb Raider games since PS1 days)
Bringing back Mana series and Tactics Ogre.
KH3, Nier series, Triangle Strategy, Octopath Traveler 1-2, FF14, FF7 remake 2020. FF16 2023. FF72part 2 2024.

Way better than alot of publishers and way better than the games they were bringing out PS3/360 era and start of PS4/Xb1

 

[TheCed]

They have high highs and low lows...

If you look at their stocks, the Quarantine Years are over so it's dropping a bit like everyone but it's not a Ubisoft situation.

They will be fine. FFXIV alone is a juggernault.
FFVIIr Remake seems to do quite well, they were quite happy with the sales at launch I remember.
FFXVI has a lot of hype behind it, it will do quite well.
The Pixel Remasters are comming on consoles, you know they'll be fine.
I think Dragon Quest XI did a lot of good for the DQ franchise, I hear a lor more about it than I used to, it's a growing name.

Yeah their AA output didn't do too well, that's true, but I highly doubt they had a big enough budget to counter balance the big names.
Forspoken tho... yeah that thing happened... Not gonna defend it, it doesn't seem appealing to me.

They really did mention Crisis Core underperforming ?
A shame really, while the game certainly has a lot of flaws in its storytelling, the gameplay improvements are great and I wish they'd follow the same type of Remakster formula for future re releases.

 

[Kokoloko85]

They are essentially a B-tier Sony first party anyways. Might as well make it official.

Apart from the exclusives that were release on Nintendo. Octopath traveler didnt even make it to PS yet it was on Xbox

 

[Dick Jones]

I hope SE follow the Capcom plan. Build on your best IP (which they have plenty) and no stupid risks. I don't want an acquisition fuck that. I just want basic competent leadership.

 

[AlteredForms]

Square Enix were legends in the JRPG genre and now they're starting to look like fools. To me the remasters on Steam are the only thing worth checking out, I mean is anybody actually anticipating the next Final Fantasy instalment?

 

[T4keD0wN]

But in the cesspool of social media, a common theme people are recommending to solve this problem, is acquisition by a bigger fish. More often than not, Sony. I personally think, it's time for Square to admit that they are in trouble and don't really have a very positive outlook at the moment. Trimming the proverbial fat and focusing the company hasn't really added to it's value and they don't seem to be making the right decisions by a golden mile. It's also worth noting that Sony could have acquired Square years ago but never did. They allowed them to buy their shares back and became independent. (But bad Sony buys all the companies though right?) Is acquisition really the answer? Or can the company go back onto a positive timeline? And if they're going to do so, how can they do it?

Personally, if the ABK deal does go through and further consolidation of the market continues, I can see Sony acquiring Square, amongst other companies. I'd rather not, but hey, this arms race started some time ago and has only gotten bigger and bigger.

But I pose you a question and kindly thank you for reading my wall of text.

Put yourself in the shoes of the President of SquareEnix. If you were in charge, what would you do to bring them back to the fore front of being a third party publisher?

I dont want anyone to aquire them. They would just poison whoever would do so.
Id prefer it if Square Enix just went bankrupt and sold off all of their IPs for 1$. Bad business decisions should result in consequences and not bailouts.

But they will be fine because Final Fantasy is super popular and seems to keep them afloat. Although id gladly sacrifice FF if it meant SE goes away.

 

[Dick Jones]

Square Enix were legends in the JRPG genre and now they're starting to look like fools. To me the remasters on Steam are the only thing worth checking out, I mean is anybody actually anticipating the next Final Fantasy instalment?

FFXVI and VII Remake 2 [fuck yeah]. I'd be less enthusiastic of FFXVI if Yoshi-P wasn't involved.

 

[feynoob]

I think it's time for companies to stop making their games exclusive to certain platforms and allow their games on all platforms.

You can build loyalty that way and have access to more people buying your games.

Though that will be a pipe dream.

 

[adamsapple]

FFXVI and VII Remake 2 [fuck yeah]. I'd be less enthusiastic of FFXVI if Yoshi-P wasn't involved.

FF16 just screams like the single player FF14 people have been asking for years.

It already has a pretty big built-in audience.

 

[jhjfss]

 

[Drizzlehell]

Any company that puts out such banger games but consistently tries to sabotage them with shitty ideas, only to then throw them under the bus and blame them for their financial woes instead of taking some fucking responsibility for once, deserves to either die or be bought out by someone with an actual vision and common sense.

 

[KaiserBecks]

They are essentially a B-tier Sony first party anyways. Might as well make it official.

That's not even remotely true but shows how a little bit of moneyhatting can change the overall perception. AAA isn't everything, their output on Switch in particular has been great for quite some time.

 

[Ozriel]

Bit of cherry picking for OP not to mention FF7R’s success.

 

[Black_Stride]

Square Enix execs making projections on how much a game should make in its first week:

P.S
The industry letting United Front Games close down is one of the saddest stories of the modern age.
I really wonder where all that talent went. I hope they landed safely cuz United Front Games deserved better.
We salute you!

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

This is really nothing new. But for the longest time, SquareEnix have had some problems. Some pretty big ones. The new company slogan, may as well be, failed to meet expectations. Just to put this into perspective.

• The whole Eidos acquisition, was a shit show. Deus Ex, Hitman, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Just Cause - all failed to meet expectations.
  
  • Square actually thought Tomb Raider 2013 could reach between 5-6 million in sales alone. Wasn't happy with 3.4 million in sales. It took the definitive editions on next gen before hitting and exceeding profitability - as well as surpassing 8 million in sales.
  • Tomb Raider 2013 and Sleeping Dogs were blamed for a huge $134 million loss
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider didn't even make the NPD Top 10 the month it launched, despite the huge fuss about being XBOX exclusive and being a prime time for VG retail as it's practically Christmas shopping start.
  • Further to this, RoTD was only described at selling in excess of 1 million copies by holiday end and PC sales were described as nearly tripling that of XBOX at launch...
  • When Shadow of the Tomb Raider launched, by the end of Q3 that year, it had shipped a total of 4.12 million copies, which was a little over three months. Square stated these sales were weak. What the fuck do they expect?
  • Just Cause 4 failed to recover development costs according to SquareEnix - and went on to GamePass, VERY quickly for a big AAA third party release.
  • Deus Ex Human Revolution, vastly surpassed initial sales forecasts, but SE only described them as "favourable"
  • Deux Ex Mankind Divided after all the fucking around with the pre-order shit and other controversies, likely Square's decisions, put the franchise future on hold after 'underwhelming' sales.
  • Sleeping Dogs, despite a respectable start to life as a new IP was specifically quoted as a contributor to a $70 million loss. SE later said, "Sleeping Dogs sales aren't "poor," original projections "exceedingly high."
  • Hitman: Absolution 4 months after launch was on 3.6 million in sales and SE still said it's a failure.
  • Despite strong reviews, SE said that Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy did not meet expectations. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no update since on sales figures.
• Their mainline and strongest IP is not even performing to their high standards and sales have stagnated for staple franchises like Final Fantasy which is their core franchise.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 sales were way down to the original FFXIII, only selling through 60% of shipment at launch. Lightning Returns set a new series low for sales at less than 20% of Final Fantasy XIII at launch.
  • Final Fantasy XIV was a huge failure at launch and whilst I'm very happy to see how it's gone on, you can't deny, it cost a LOT of additional time and resources to get it to where it is today.
  • Final Fantasy XV needed to sell over 5 million copies when it launched - to break even. (Maybe this is part of the problem?)
  • It took FFXV 6 years to meet the 10 million mark, by which point they said it had now met expectations. Having put their foot in it and admitted it that was a 'personal goal,' they'd cancelled 3 DLC packs and blamed it on refocus. Hrmmm.... Smell that familiar smell?
  • Final Fantasy VII Reunion (The Crisis Core remake) had a great debut, but dropped off very quickly outside Asia and a new report may infer that this title did not meet expectations either. In fairness, after PSP exclusivity for so long, you'd think this was a huge release.
  • Stranger in Paradise had the fourth lowest sales of a Final Fantasy spin-off and couldn't even hit 50k sold in Japan. Nothing more has really been said here, which is telling.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is another great that is unfortunate enough to have the slogan 'Failed to meet expectations' next to it in the 2018 financial meeting.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 didn't sell through launch stock, sold less than 1,000 on XBOX in it's debut week and in the end was described as not being a commercial success.
• Once again, we're getting reports that SquareEnix titles haven't met sales expectations once more and this is after having sold off Eidos which Square gave comical reasons for.
  
  • The report cites many titles from returning franchises fans love like Star Ocean, Tactics Ogre and the Valkyrie series.
  • The same report also name drops the Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core remake which is not good news considering this was a big anticipated release after years of exclusivity on the PSP and without a digital download option.
  • The budget for Forspoken was $75 million and they might struggle to get that back in the long term.

I actually made a topic about this in 2022? When it was announced that Final Fantasy XV had finally hit 10 million in sales. Square Enix has continued to decline both commercially in critically, making some incredibly odd decisions, such as selling Eidos to Embracer (though I'm glad it got sold to a third party.) Embracer reportedly have already flipped or at least, leased the rights to Tomb Raider to Amazon for double what it paid Square Enix for the entirety of it's Eidos sale components. A pretty big fuck you to SE there. It's hard to deny, that this is a company in crisis from the outside looking into the core (pun intended.) They're looking at ploughing into NFT's/Blockchain and they've looked at replacing the company President with NFT experience. Clearly, they aren't going down the right path and this goes beyond the current cry arguments about supporting the ABK deal because of Final Fantasy VII Remake/Integrade, not being on XBOX or Nintendo platforms, despite being on PC.

But in the cesspool of social media, a common theme people are recommending to solve this problem, is acquisition by a bigger fish. More often than not, Sony. I personally think, it's time for Square to admit that they are in trouble and don't really have a very positive outlook at the moment. Trimming the proverbial fat and focusing the company hasn't really added to it's value and they don't seem to be making the right decisions by a golden mile. It's also worth noting that Sony could have acquired Square years ago but never did. They allowed them to buy their shares back and became independent. (But bad Sony buys all the companies though right?) Is acquisition really the answer? Or can the company go back onto a positive timeline? And if they're going to do so, how can they do it?

Personally, if the ABK deal does go through and further consolidation of the market continues, I can see Sony acquiring Square, amongst other companies. I'd rather not, but hey, this arms race started some time ago and has only gotten bigger and bigger.

But I pose you a question and kindly thank you for reading my wall of text.

Put yourself in the shoes of the President of SquareEnix. If you were in charge, what would you do to bring them back to the fore front of being a third party publisher?

That's not a new slogan In fact that slogan is 10 years old now.

 

[Yoboman]

They've diluted their portfolio to the point its near impossible to judge when you'll get a good game from them. This is an issue going back generations, probably when they decided direct sequels and spin offs were a good idea

Back before PS2, you'd just get mainline FF and Dragon Quest games always of the highest quality, then some experimental games like Chrono, Xenografts, Vagrant Story also releasing.

Back then they were basically what From Software are now in reputation.

Now it's all diluted to the point of idiocy with confusing names to make it all even worse.

Basically it's if in 10 years we found From Software making Dissidia 012 Elden Ring Opera Omnia Type 0 Part 1 and it was a mediocre mobile fighting game

 

[wvnative]

For now they are fine, 7R and 14 are bangers, i believe octopath traveler and triangle strategy have done well. XVI will make money easily. But they gotta quit with stupid ideas like the avengers and forspoken or it's going to catch up to them, not just financially but reputation wise as well. i hate the bad rap square gets as they are my favorite publisher, but you can't blame the negativity on people because the few screw ups they've had are pretty colossal screw ups.

 

[TheGodfather07]

What would be the point of Sony acquiring square enix when their games are either already exclusive to PS or sell mostly on PS anyway. The audience is already there on sonys platform. They would only do it as a defensive move if there was a threat of Microsoft getting them, but there is no chance of that happening imo.

 

[ReBurn]

They're just not that good at anything besides Final Fantasy. They should just stick to that.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Why would Sony, or any other company, buy Square when they will have to pay for their fucking retarded decisions for the next 5 years?

This. S-E is a cesspool of corporate incompetence, all the typical stereotypes about Japanese corporation not innovating, not listening to feedback - it’s all there.

 

[ClosBSAS]

Yoshi p carrying squarenix.

 

[Kadve]

SE reported a revenue of 365 Billion Yen (~2,8 Billion USD. Bamco "only" reported a 910 Million Yen revenue by comparison) last year. They are doing fine even if not as great as they used too.

If we should be worried about anyone its Ubisoft. They suffered a 2 billion Euro loss last year....

 

[Captain Toad]

Unless you have numbers otherwise, a few games not hitting their lofty expectations does not mean the company is in danger.

I don't care what the negative "I hate everything" gaming forum people say - I still love SquareEnix and play through many of their games every year.

The last game I played was Theatrhythm Final Bar Line and I loved it. I'm currently really enjoying Octopath Traveler 2. Final Fantasy XVI and FFVII Rebirth are two of my most anticipated upcoming games.

 

[Warablo]

Deus Ex: HR was great

They have some fun titles, but I don't know how profitable they are.

 

[Pejo]

A lot of people praise Yoshi p, but to me all he did was copy WoW and secure a place for ERPers for FFXIV. I'm not delusional to think 1.0 FFXIV was good, but at least it was original. It was trying something new, had some really fucking obtuse systems, but it was decidedly its own thing. He came in and threw a Japanese coat of paint on WoW where we play "simon says" and "the floor is lava" for 20 mins.

I'm not saying that's necessarily bad, since the general public seems to love it, and he single handedly is keeping SE afloat the past few years with revenue generated by FFXIV.

Now FFXVI is around the corner, I'm excited for it, but it's basically DMC with a Final Fantasy coat of paint. Survey is out on whether it will be good. At least I'm confident that most if not all of the story will be self contained within the game, unlike the Frankentstein's monster that Tabata had to work with.

Regarding "Failed to meet expectations", I see a lot of half measures from SE. I see a lot of DEELLLAAYYYYEEED trend chasing. Things that were 'flash in the pan' successes that SE decides to ape 3-5 years after and then release 10 years after. I see a lot of fan favorite IPs with new entries, but mucked up by trying to westernize them or make them more "accessible" to non weebs. I see them taking whatever exclusivity money they can get their hands on with zero regard of what that does to their brand. I see them releasing fun mid-quality games to appease their core fanbase and then completely abandoning them with zero marketing and pricing them well above what they should be priced at. I see NFT talk when literally the entire world says, "no we don't want that scam in our games".

Matsuda being ousted as CEO is good for the company. I hope they refocus on what made them the powerhouse they used to be and stop with the trend chasing. Capcom has done just that and is constantly finding success after success while keeping a generally positive opinion via word of mouth and with fans. SE is much bigger than Capcom and has more capital to work with, so I think this would work out fairly well for them.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

What they need is to refocus on what they are actually good at. They will be fine.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Bit of cherry picking for OP not to mention FF7R’s success.

 

[64bitmodels]

They're just not that good at anything besides Final Fantasy. They should just stick to that.

Pretty much this.
They got big off Final Fantasy and thought they could handle any IP, then they fumbled eidos, and turned Kingdom Hearts (what could have been a top selling franchise) into a confusing mess of a story.
they should just do what fromsoftware does and stick to making Final Fantasy and RPGs instead of trying to get into this NFT junk

 

[TheGreatMusashi]

I feel like this has been their motto for a decade. It seems like almost no matter what game comes out, unless it’s something with insane numbers, they are always disappointed.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

They're just not that good at anything besides Final Fantasy. They should just stick to that.

imagine that when they butchered that Franchise for a decade or so

 

[Brigandier]

The whole Eidos debacle was a catastrophe... They pretty much let them go for free lol.

They make absolutely shit games that are huge budget and flop like Forspoken which was total crap.

Outside of FFXIV, FF7R and The last Remnant remaster I can't think of anything that is worth a damn from SE this past 5 years.

 

[fran.fernandez]

Wait the square enix who just got a new building in a fancy place in Tokyo ?
That is making more money than even before they actions are way top.
Failed games yet , for them, they are huge.

There’s a lot of Japanese mobile companies who have to disappear before square and they are doing ok too …

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

Because they suck at giving people what they actually want. People wanted versus 13, not boyband sim. People wanted a ff7 remake, not a (spoilers)

At least 14 performs well, and I really hope 16 is good

 

[Nautilus]

They are fine.

For every AA underporfiming, there's an Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default.

For every AAA underperforming, there is a DQ 11, FF VII Remake and KH 3.

Plus they get a lot of money out of FF XIV.

They do need to get their shit together about some of their strategies.Releasing 5 games in 3 months is just stupid. And honestly, they need to start porting over their back catalog like Capcom does. Swear to god, Capcom must make enough money to fund their current games just by selling their old ass games, because some of their RE games, Dragons Dogma, their collections and MH games just won't stop selling.

 

[Gamerfan81]

Just from memory when I was a kid, in a span of 4 years say from 1993 to 1997 when they were primarily known as Squaresoft, they managed to put out such legendary gems:

Secret of Mana-1993
Final Fantasy 6- 1994
Breath of Fire-1994
Chrono Trigger- 1995
Secret of Evermore-1995
Super Mario RPG-1996
Final Fantasy 7-1997
Final Fantasy Tactics-1997

Someone here mentioned that they were the Fromsoftware of back in the day, I disagree. They were much better and had not only quality but quantity.
Now, I don't care about their games. I just finished playing DQ 11 and thought it was a bloated mess. I'm guessing many of their games are like this now.

 

[Ronin_7]

Sony to the rescue !

 

[Woopah]

They have high highs and low lows...

If you look at their stocks, the Quarantine Years are over so it's dropping a bit like everyone but it's not a Ubisoft situation.

They will be fine. FFXIV alone is a juggernault.
FFVIIr Remake seems to do quite well, they were quite happy with the sales at launch I remember.
FFXVI has a lot of hype behind it, it will do quite well.
The Pixel Remasters are comming on consoles, you know they'll be fine.
I think Dragon Quest XI did a lot of good for the DQ franchise, I hear a lor more about it than I used to, it's a growing name.

Yeah their AA output didn't do too well, that's true, but I highly doubt they had a big enough budget to counter balance the big names.
Forspoken tho... yeah that thing happened... Not gonna defend it, it doesn't seem appealing to me.

They really did mention Crisis Core underperforming ?
A shame really, while the game certainly has a lot of flaws in its storytelling, the gameplay improvements are great and I wish they'd follow the same type of Remakster formula for future re releases.

They said some mid tier games underperformed but they didn't specify which ones. I doubt Crisis Core did badly.

 

[Skelterz]

When Square-Enix realise the games they’re choosing to make now are not the games that made them the household name they are today then maybe they’ll be successful again.

I feel like I’ve posted this multiple times before but in the Xbox360 generation JRPG’s and quirky Japanese games weren't as popular so many Japanese studios started to westernise there games to cater to the western palate, in some cases this worked in squares case it didn’t, and now you see many Japanese companies fully recovered from this period making games they want to make with all the Japanese quirk such as capcom atlus and from software however square are still stuck in this state of limbo trying to find the next big thing for the western gamer all the while failing to realise the inherent value in there traditional game development styles.

Had Square-enix realised at the start of the PS4 generation that turn based JRPG’s where making a comeback with games like Persona 5 being up for GOTY maybe we would have got the FF7 remake we actually deserved but instead we got a cooking cutter run of the mill action game with tons of padding a revised story and it’s split into chapters.

The company is dead at this point.