VolticArchangel
Member
"Game with a AAA budget but garbage game design, doesn't meet sales target."
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Square Enix: Forspoken Sales Were Lackluster, Many Small and Mid Games Underperformed
Toots
Gold Member
Just bought Forspoken cause it was more or less 50euro€$ with the lastest psn sale.
Played a few hours (im off to kill the first tanta) and it has nothing to do with the demo. It is much more beautiful (i play rt+120hz) and much more fluid.
The story is garbage, the heroin is crap, and there is a lot of dumb dialogue, but it has this japanese rpg feel to it, with quirky characters and dumb fetch quests. Side content reminds me of FF7 remake side missions. And traversal is really fun, and again the world is quite beautiful (at least twice as beautiful as the demo build, what were they thinking releasing it???)
Played a few hours (im off to kill the first tanta) and it has nothing to do with the demo. It is much more beautiful (i play rt+120hz) and much more fluid.
The story is garbage, the heroin is crap, and there is a lot of dumb dialogue, but it has this japanese rpg feel to it, with quirky characters and dumb fetch quests. Side content reminds me of FF7 remake side missions. And traversal is really fun, and again the world is quite beautiful (at least twice as beautiful as the demo build, what were they thinking releasing it???)
The story is really garbage tho. There's a guy who's mind is half rotted by the blight which turn everything to shit. His whole ordeal is akin to dementia. It is really hamfisted. I'm pretty sure one of the taletless writer at squenix had someone close to him who suffered this tragic illness. And he really wanted to put his experiences in the game. There are moments during dialogues with the dude and his interactions with his daughter (who spent like 20 years thinking he was dead when he was just chilling half a mile from where she was the whole time - talk about shitty story) that sound so anecdotal while trying to be profound, i was facepalming on my couch. I too have someone whom i hold dear suffer dementia, the loss of cognitive abilities, the inability to remember his own familiy, and finally dies. I know how extremely hard it is for everyone involved. I'm not trying to be a dick. It is just done so talentlessly done it boggles my mind that someone so incompetent could find himself in a position to do it. And i'm willing to bet my cock and balls that it was an occidental writer who's responsible for that, and that he/she is very proud of him/herself.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
They should market those mid-size games a bit more instead of sending them out there to die.
Madserb2023
Member
I would rather they reduce the number of games they release and focus on a select few titles. Just put as much staff and as much time as possible on making Final Fantast 16, Final Fantasy Remake 2, Dragon Quest 12 as good as they possibly can be. I feel like they are throwing as much out as possible to hedge their bets, to not be in a situation where one o two failures will put them under, but to me that just shows a lack of confidence in their products.
Woopah
Member
They are saying SE had too high expectations, not that reviewers are to blame.Suuuuure, it was all the 'rebeeewwwwwers' fault!
I think the idea of having mid sized AA titles between the FF/KH/DQ mainline titles is the right approach. The issue is that most of their mid sized titles lately have not been good.
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NickFire
Member
Even if there were no technical issues the game was going to underperform in my opinion. The dialogue in the big reveal trailer kind of screamed that they were targeting a younger demographic. Maybe my kids and their friends are outliers, but it is really hard for single player games to grab and hold their attention. Pretty much never happens without something big to draw them in, like big IP they care about (Starwars, Spiderman, GTA, etc.). So at least in my house, the person most interested in these type of games wouldn't even consider it because of the annoying dialogue, and the people who I think were the target audience never even considered it for 1/2 a second.
So yeah, my opinion is based purely on anecdotal evidence, but it seemed they were chasing an audience that just does not exist in the numbers they thought it did.
So yeah, my opinion is based purely on anecdotal evidence, but it seemed they were chasing an audience that just does not exist in the numbers they thought it did.
Madserb2023
Member
But I think they are linked. The output of Square Enix is massive. They put out games like EA. They don't have unlimited resources and we are seeing that with their latest releases. They clearly can't do quality and quantity. When they have a mid size success like Octopath Traveller they should add that to their triple AAA Catalogue and make a big budget version of it and gradual phase out the failures. Thre is no need for a company the size of Sqare Enix to have more than 4 to 5 games in development. I think Ubisoft has realized this.
ssringo
Member
This is where I'm at with them. Late ports for exclusivity and half assed efforts when they do get around to it. I ignore almost all their releases at this point.
Woopah
Member
Ubisoft put a lot of focus on big AAA games and the cost and complexity of that have put them in serious trouble.
More games like Octopath, Triangle Strategy and Trials of Mana would be good for SE. Quality titles that can be very profitable without selling loads.
If you give Octopath a AAA budget, that means it has to sell much much more just to achieve the same level of profitability.
If this is true, there is no option for this game to pay off, it is simply unrealistic to sell such a number of copies. Therefore, most likely with a probability of 95% it can already be said with certainty that the franchise is dead.
justiceiro
Marlboro: Other M
Square enix and unreasonable expectations, name a more iconic duo.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I think it's their version of Stardrew.
Ar¢tos
Member
Decided to check the trailer.
Switch and PC only, I guess making xbox/playstation ports was too much effort.
Then they wonder why their games don't sell.
Square must be the only multiplatform publisher that has the money and means to release on all platforms but doesn't take advantage of it.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Started it up this morning. So far, so good!
Sucks that Luminous has their copyright on the photos I took
On which platform are you playing? I'm tempted to snag a copy for PS5 since it's around €30 on the local used market lol.
Kvally
Member
PS5. I got it because it's on sale for $46 on the PSN Store.
Fuz
Banned
Woke Stardew Valley.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Cheers! Enjoy the game!
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
Same.
Favorite company as a kid and I can’t tell you the last time I bought one of their games
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
I hope Octopath 2 is doing well. It’s really fucking good.
Captain Toad
Banned
It doesn't seem to be doing well. Unfortunate, because you're right, it's a great game.
Voice of Cards: The Voice of Card games are fun, bit overpriced, waiting for a big discount is perfectly understandable. The Second one is the best of the Trilogy
DioField: I usually love War Documentary types of games so DioField satisfied that need, but too much is told off screen and it was clearly meant to be a franchise, I enjoyed it, but I find it hard to recommend.
Of coure, no marketing would hurt the sales.. there were a lot of games competing too.
DioField: I usually love War Documentary types of games so DioField satisfied that need, but too much is told off screen and it was clearly meant to be a franchise, I enjoyed it, but I find it hard to recommend.
Of coure, no marketing would hurt the sales.. there were a lot of games competing too.
hyperbertha
Member
Hindsight is 2020
Skelterz
Member
I’m convinced that if square-enix released a big budget traditional ATB mainline FF game it would do incredibly well, it’s like they’ve not shaken off there hangover from the Xbox 360 generation, turn based RPG’s fell off a cliff at the start of the HD generation but there back in a big way now just look at the success of Persona 5, Yakuza like a dragon and Dragon Quest XI.