Former Square Enix Exec Reveals ALARMING Truth of Final Fantasy & AAA
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- čas přidán 23. 05. 2024
- Former Square Enix Business Director Jacob Navok reveals many of the harsh realities of the state of Final Fantasy and AAA games that reveal the dire state of the industry.
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#finalfantasyviirebirth #finalfantasyvii #ff7 - Hry
I made some minor editing errors in this video I realize watching it back. At around 24:28 I accidentally edited out the part where it says "if SQEX can't get it's dev cost down" lol. I apologize. I also realized the microphone was a bit too close to my face while recording! Sorry for that!
No worries.
Also, any estimate on a pc release for Rebirth, yet?
'Cause I did not want to buy a console just for the FFVII remake.
Not again. ( ¬_¬)'
Can you please avoid using gameplay footage when discussing SQEX topics. I wanted to look at some of them but there was too much spoilers.
m8 you say and misspell his surname wrong in the description despite it being right there in the screenshots lol
@@cindervile I'm dyslexic lol.
When you do all this research and can't even figure out 16 and Rebirth are PS5 EXCLUSIVE which most PS players do not have = low sales...
I remember someone saying “You used to go into a store to find the game. Now you go into the game to find the store.”
That’s deep.
Damn……..
Oh lord 😭
😮 fuck
That's... really depressing.
3:31 This "misunderstanding" has been because of how Square Enix handled tomb raider. That game sold 4 million-ish copies and was still seen as "below expectations" at the time. At some point it is no longer the fault of the game developers, but the fault of the managers for being unable to manage development costs and marketing costs. And what bears the brunt of the blame? Not the managers that assigned the budget. Not the managers that went overboard on marketing. The development studio is the one that gets axed.
M
I mean square didnt do layoffs they just sold all their western studios. Considering the whole 360 era and how that effected japan I think that was inevitable. They just realised they dont have to pander to the west by copying american companies again
Square enix is keeping kitase as a producer when the man almost broke the company with the dev cost of the cristal engine, ff15, kh3, and ff7r wich was so badly produced that they had to start from 0 and its not even public how much money they did lost.
Square having always games selling below expectations while selling millions became a meme, but the ones fire are devs and not directives
This is the most underrated comment. Square enix needs a manger development overhaul.
@@ericcortez8386 They just had one.
Free to play games aren't games. They're addiction factories for people who lack self control. No different than a casino
And short attention spans
And they get their money from skins, extras, packages etc.
That would be for gatcha games, where the rewards are random (gambling).
That's true. Genshin is one such game. There's a lot to do but the devs made it so that even though the game is free, you'll inevitably pay tons of money to get new characters, weapons, and stronger characters.
Another trash talking because of jeaolusy.
When i play ps games in 2000s era i also play like nonstop because it was fun and addicting but now everything is just trash DEI and political no wonder i don't even care with console games anymore.
This is actually a great dicussion. I also want to point out another issue that has been less discussed by gamers. Every company, not just gaming company are now competing for not just your money but more importantly your time. The time for everyone is limited. 24 hours minus hours of sleep and work. That nets you even less time. Players are not just deciding whether what they want to play next but could be what they want to do next. Movies, TV shows, Sports, even CZcams videos, Tiktoks - these are indirectly competing with video games for “your time”. This even makes the switching costs to most games even higher than they will ever be.
Yes, some times I thing of playing a game just to end up stuck in some CZcams video Netflix serie or podcast, where in 2015 that was impossible to happen. Also they are competing with game pass and psplus extra, with so many games to play we just put the paid ones in the backlog because we know we can get them later and better because patches are out
Omg you are right! I didn't even thought of that! Makes sense. I now have more games to play than I have time remaining to live. I only played a fraction of the ps4 catalog, I'm nowhere near needing ps5
Not to mention, the market itself is hella saturated right now. 10k games are released each year, and unlike prev gen, the newer games also have to compete against prev game releases. The video game industry is hella competitive rn
You missed one important detail regarding why your time is valuable to these companies.
There's a reason companies will spend millions of dollars developing, advertising, and supporting a "free" game. It's the same reason you also need a different account for every service you use... There's a TON of money to be made selling not only your personal information, but also your habits, likes, dislikes, tendencies, ect. to the data brokers.
And yet most of those companies are attacking their fans as if that works. It is exactly as you say, time is limited and money is tight so who wants to spend their time and money on a company that vocally hates them
We need to also be prepared to go backwards for graphics expectations. Graphics that look better than real life are expensive as hell.
Graphics never look better than real life and I don't need them to look as realistic as possible.
Yep totally agree
I've always been saying this since the PS3 era
I think people here would agree with you, but I think the issue is the majority of gamers who just play their one live service game and dont really follow any of this stuff.
I dont mind at all, you can still make great games even if they look like the came straight from the PS1 era. (actually i kinda want that as a throwback)
"We should have had a FF live service game"
Have you forgotten about First Soldier already?
It's ff14 and it's the only thing that's keeping them afloat and somehow they still put a shoe string budget on it.
@@SourPatchKun You're not wrong, but i feel like FF14 is in a good place.
First Soldier would have been a huge hit had they taken a different path instead of a generic battle Royale. A horde mode like Mass Effect 3's multiplayer would have done much better. Going on soldier missions in 4 person teams.
@@toddolsen4604 Yes, it was a miss on many levels imo, but the point is that they _did_ try.
First soldier is just mobile
Biggest and best answer is stop spending so much damn money. It's like blockbuster movies spending 250m to make them and being terrible, then movies that cost 15-80m coming along and being better and making bigger box office number which given their smaller budgets also nets even more income.
Don't spend 200m to make a game, spend 20-50m. Then you won't need to sell 7m copies to break even
Exactly. Don't jack up prices, instead reduce the budget. Square should go back to the drawing board and make more AA games. They don't cost as much to produce, are often times better than AAA in many ways, and you can concentrate on what makes a good game, i.e lore, story and characters. They don't need all this expensive technology. All they need is your heart being at the right place.
@@Equinoksl They cut out the AA games. They can keep on making AAA games, they just need to cut down the budgets and advertising. They don't need to make near realistic graphics to sell the game, nor do they need to have advertisements for the game on billboards, on buses, or have celebrities in commercials.
Totally agree, reducing the budget for a game is a must, Increasing the cost will just lose them more money/potential revenue as it will turn some people off buying the game.
I truly believe the only way to lower budgets is for gaming to become less mainstream.
People say they shouldn't put so much effort on high end graphics, but I've seen plenty of casual and hardcore gamers complain about graphics not being good enough. I have personally made a couple game recommendations to co-workers that got brushed off because it didn't look real enough. I've seen people complain about games not being suitable for current consoles/ higher end PCs because they didn't look good enough. "Consoles/previous gen consoles are holding back gaming because devs have to program for them instead of making the best looking games they could".
They could invest less in marketing, but I've seen people who have basically gone with the mindset of "If I haven't heard of it/mainstream, it's likely not worth my time". This is also an industry that has, in the past, shown that a good enough marketing campain can go a long way, for better or for worse. Maybe spend less on well known actors... but this is *marketing*, which is meant to catch eyes. Plus it's not like Video games has much of any widely known names outside of the IPs themselves.
And, let's be fair, a lot of us like a little spectacle.
I think the solution to the problem, without some major crash somewhere, would require effort on both the corporate and consumer sides. Both sides have their good points (I mean, FF7Rebirth is a really good game and, reasonable or not, people are finding ways to trash it), but I've seen too many issues on both sides to just sit here and put all the blame on corporate interests.
I think a.i. Is generally going to be used to control the living heck out of people, to the point that the world will become “smaller” as people will trust information even less than they do now. However, for games it’ll help with the cost to make them.
Than SE needs to focus on what made Squaresoft a giant back in the day. Good story telling and gameplay. Graphics can only do so much if the story is boring and gameplay is shit.
Focus on story and characters and not chase the west trends. Make it have flashy character designs like those flashy gatcha titles.
I agree 100% bro i hope Square ennix sees that if not they doomed
I wish it was that simple
@@OmegaKatanaXIII i think SE is their own worst enemy since they themselves are chasing the graphics trend like, men if we want realistic graphics, might as well make it a movie.
If the game comes out looking like ever crisis, will you pay 60 dollars for it?
I think also streaming culture has taken off in the past 10 years so most people don’t buy anymore if they can just watch the entire thing from other people playing. Sometimes its even better because the streamer makes it more entertaining
If you like watching someone else playing a game more so then playing it yourself you are not a gamer in the first place. Lets play CZcams channels exist mostly because not everybody has the money to play all the latest and greatest. So they watch someone else play it.
@@Odder-Being That or you are saving money. There are some games, I'm not interested in playing or have better games to play with the limited time I can play and so I'll watch a streamer/youtuber play it when I'm on a break from gaming.
Streaming is a free advertisement. Some Dev. even paid streamer to play their game. If the gameplay is fun, they will buy your game. Except those story-driven game, with generic gameplay.
@Odder-Being Or the time. I know tons of people, me included who just don't have the time to play anymore. Thankfully I made the time for Rebirth, but it was very difficult and took me a while. I cannot replay. I have to watch other people do things i could not inbetween other things during my busy week. Games just require so much time and involvement and there's more urgency to complete them quicker now to keep up with everyone else. Doesnt apply to everyone, but I bought it simply because it's FFVII. I didn't even finish Remake. I love Tekken and couldn't even finish 8 and haven't played in months after being a hermit for a weekend. I just can't game anymore like I did in the past. Several others I know stopped altogether but we really enjoy watching other people do it when we can. Money is not an issue for everyone, but time is when you have a family or are trying to start one, a high demanding job, and then by time you get started it's already completed x 5 by other people online. It's crazy.
@@OGBabygurl Yeah and games weren't as long as they use to be now. Like when I started playing JRPGs back in 2000, the max time it took was for my first playthroughs were between 50 and 60s hrs and the times would lesson significantly with new playthroughs. I remember in recent years when I finally finished Zelda's Breath of the Wild (and I didn't even 100% it) easily over 200 hrs and it shocked me. Most games I play now are from the indie sector because you're getting good quality games for lower prices and they don't take so long to complete. If I wasn't a lifelong Nintendo fan or diehard Kingdom Hearts fan, I'd probably stop getting their games.
I think many haven't realized that FF7R(1) underwent at least 2 iterations of development because the older one just didn't meet the quality standard and they have to start all over again. That abandoned development still contributed to the final production cost of FF7R. Basically all AAA games take more than 5 years from initial announcement to actual release experience the similar dev hell.
If you include preproduction, dev time is longer than 5 years
"7 rebirth and 16 didn't meet sales expectations." What did you expect putting all of your eggs in the Sony Basket? I'm on PC and want to play these games SO BADLY.
it will release in a few years i suppose.
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Iykyk
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16's fail keeps haunting Square.
16 was just a disaster of a game
Beat me to it
@@vorpalinferno9711 you mean 15, right? That game was far from quality, and I’d wager that the experience of it turned many people off to even trying 16, or getting a PS5 for the FF exclusives.
@@vorpalinferno9711Square has been failing since FF12.
The moment they pushed Matsuno out, Square was done. The rest was inevitable.
Matsuno was the last real talent they had.
I absolutely will not, under any circumstances, pay $100 for a game.
I have a massive back catalog, I don't strictly need to buy another game ever again. If they try to raise game prices to $100 for the base game, it's no skin off my teeth to bounce.
Bring down your budgets, or burn out and fade away.
It's funny because, accounting for inflation, that's roughly what rpgs cost to buy back in the 90s. If games start costing that now, I would only be able to buy like, one game a year. 😅
I would rather have quality games for a slightly higher price than devs bring down budgets. I want gaming to push forward and not with psyop methods like woke SBI agendas or a huge marketplace of addiction exploiting micro-transactions and pop culture references.
I feel the recent inflation in all aspects of my life so I agree that increasing prices is not a good idea in general, but I am only ok with it if we are talking huge and complete games like FF7 Rebirth that doesn't drip feed DLC.
They're already around that where I am. I pretty much only buy 1 game a year... Rarely 2
@@lpstweetytv5242 not even I think Phantasy Star IV was actually $100 when it came out not even adjusted for inflation...
@digitalrex5 Yeah it was lol
This just makes me, as a gamer and as a future parent, want to ensure that my children don't invest money into "free to play" games like fortnite.
These games are fine to play, but I don't think it's good for anyone to encourage people to dump their money into a free product.
Not going to just let my kids sit around and play fortnite all the time. Gonna get them into the good games worth playing.
And I'm not against them playing fortnite and other games like it. I'm just against them dumping money into them for no real content.
Cosmetics are not real content. It's copium.
When I was little, I saved my leftover lunch money, allowance, and savings from small jobs to spend on games I was looking forward to playing with my friends. Not spending it on v bucks. That's the problem. Kids are spending their money to do what their friends are doing. Which is spending money on vbucks and robucks, instead of saving money to buy other games. If my kids are bored and don't know what to spend money on, I'm going to teach them how to invest it. (ethically) into the stock market rather than trying to waste it on cosmetics.
Also there's no such thing as a free product in our world. You are just paying for it some other way (usually your personal data).
yeah don't let em pay money for f2p games, let them pay money of square enix games where they pay a sub, extra for containers, forced to log to not lose a house, all while they already paid money for the expac, the base game and you get a shop which has all the cool items in it xD
My kids are not allowed to play anything like that. Started them on the classics. Pacman, original Mario, Zelad, etc.
@@metalface_villain well as long as ppl recognize this greedy system and still pay for it while having fun it's kinda okay-ish. XIV is the only game I'd be willing to do that for, but still with clenched teeth bc there's no other option. But it's a game which accompanied me for many years and it holds big sentimental value, so I accept this rip off. But I've never do that twice. Ever. I wish they won't continue this system on the next mmo (XVII?) too 🥲
its hard to prevent tho they will play cs valorant fortnite those esports title since valorant grow so much that kids and woman play
Exclusivity is exactly why they didn't reach "target sales". I can vouch for that because I desperately want to play 16 and rebirth but I don't own a PS5 nor can I afford to drop over $800 just to play two games. Now I'm at their mercy waiting for the PC port to finally come. By that time the games are spoiled and my interest has dropped enough that I don't want to pay full price for them so since I waited this long already, I'll wait for a 50% off sale.
SE take note of this because I KNOW I'm not alone.
No that isn’t what killed sales lol. You’re saying that if it wasn’t exclusive that they’d have made enough to complete with stuff like fortnite. Exclusivity does not make THAT massive of a difference.
It would have made more
money, but still nowhere near fortnite money.
Every non-creative/non-marketing position is dead weight. Executives are expensive middle men. The video game industry sensibilities that they keep holding onto are dated as well; including the capitalistic greed. These big companies will fall, and indie studios will pick up the slack.
Yep! All these rotten aaa companies will eventually be replaced (at least for us hardcore gamers) by studios of new or old talent of people that come together to serve their actual costumers and create what we want to consume.
You can already see this with i.e. the new "old rocksteady" studio. I bet my ass their first game is gonna be bonkers.
16's fail keeps haunting Square.
16 was just a disaster of a game
Hell, marketing is overpaid as well. For example, I remember when FF14 Shadowbringers released, there was that commercial for the game with Tom Holland in it. It was a good commercial, but when I watched it, I was thinking 'man that must have been expensive to make and it won't even bring in many new players to warrant the cost.'
preach 👏
Eh. I get taking a knock at big corporate companies and executives who are loyal only to their stakeholders. Those stakeholders in turn are ultimately loyal to big banks that hold their money, and those banks are beholden to a central bank that inflates the money supply. It’s pretty croniest. Capitalism as just what is voluntary exchange still is a two way street. At the end of the day despite all of the effort put into controlling where the flow of generated wealth goes, the customer is still king. If someone doesn’t like the quality of product or service being put out, they’re not obligated to buy it. Hence crashes in industry. Corporations can hope to generate a following often by buying up IP’s left and right, but they don’t own customers. The mentality in assuming the latter is hubris, and I’m all for the smaller and AA companies out there taking over the market amidst the AAA crash. Crashes are really a reorganization of industry.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake makes me so happy all Square Enix games too man...I really love that company, so nostalgic
🤦🏽♂️
Tired nostalgia cringe comment, drink🍺
This is sad what's happening to the gaming industry
Not really. There's plenty of success stories being experienced by Indy developers on Steam. Square Enix just makes games like a dinosaur, and FF hasn't been good for a long time.
@@captainthunderbolt7541 Oh! OK, I agree with your statement, and in my opinion I am a fan of the two Final Fantasy VII Remakes, and I the first game I bought on my PS5 console was the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth game for full price of $129.99, and I going to buy Final Fantasy XVI sometime this year.
I find it funny that multiple billions of dollars is considered a failure
because ur 2 dumb to understand that profits need to be bigger than costs
ffs this is gaming not a luxury brand
just what the heck does all these CEOs does in a game industry anyway
stop ruining the fun in the world with your profit cold blooded shittery
like all those financial big conglomerate can just go poof and I would not care
fuck them
When multiple more billions of dollars was spent on development and marketing, it's completely normal
multiple billions is a failure because ceos are not able to gift themselves as big of a bonus as they would want to for doing absolutely 0 work and sabotaging their own games with each and every moronic choice they make
it's a failure year if the CEO can't buy a new jet
Raising prices won't help triple A games but drive more people to f2p games or to wait for discounts.
I've been spending the 70 for new games, but if they went to 100 I'd never buy a new game again, would always wait for a half off sale.
Yeah, I rarely buy a game at $70 as it is because the quality of AAA in general is still crap at launch and usually by the time it's fixed, the game is discounted. If the price of AAA went up to $100, I would never buy any game at launch again.
One fallacy I find with the way they determine the games success is they just seem focused on the game itself and not the IP as a whole.
Like say ok, FF7 Rebirth made 3million sales and that part is no profitable however, what about the merchandise sales from that IP. The merchandise sales shoudl count towards the success of the IP because one can not exist without the other. You can't sell Merchandise of FF7 Rebirth, like say music or character if they don't exist and it's the fact that the game exist that that merch can be sold.
So when it comes to the overall success of a game, I don't think a binary way of looking at it is accurate/as simple as X game sold Y so it failed, it should be X game sold Y units and Z merchandise for A amount of profits/losses. Then you can fully gauge the suggest the success of an IP but if they only want to focus on the game itself, that's a losing battle, the whole point of a game and subsequent Merchandise is to capitalize on the success of a series and have people want to support the product by buying other supplemental material.
i agree 70 dollars is reasonable however 100 for the base game would be crazy.
@@supersaiyaman11589 A lot of it is the overall economy and literally the cost of living. Many SNES games adjusted for inflation would cost well over $100 in today's dollars. But it was semi-affordable because everything else was cheaper, our parents could spend a larger percent of their income on entertainment.
I generally don't buy games until they've been held a year. They are cheaper at that point, they've been patched, and they have whatever extra content is going to be released usually. Why would I pay upfront for hype for an inferior game?
Short answer. Some games are designed to be addictive cash cows. People play them and at the same time don't get anything other than a demanding need to play.
These are winning over games that are fulfilling and have substance.
People are addicted to crap as usual.
Jacob Novak has some good points, but he seems off in a lot of things (like you should not be basing your profitability off investing in the stock market as a video game company). Like why do you have to be cutting edge in graphics in your games? Why do you have to spend as much money on advertising? AAA gaming needs to really cut down on their budgets instead of raising prices because they don't seem to understand that while the price of games has not kept up with inflation, neither have wages of people.
And Novak was talking about the price of packaged disc games going up? Yeah, why are you still making your games as packaged discs? A lot of game companies just sell the game digitally and save a ton of money on not having to package a game and send it to retailers.
And GTA6 at a $100 price tag? No thank you. I rarely buy games at the $70 price tag and usually wait for the game to drop in price because AAA games are buggy messes at launch and by the time the game is marked down, it's in a decent state. Congratulations, AAA gaming, you broke the model you rely on expecting most of your sales of your game to happen in the first 2 weeks. Now that is not likely to happen as much anymore.
Also, people are rejecting the live service model now. Live service games can still do well, but you have to be careful to not over monetize the game and you have to realize that the there is a limit to how many live service games can be out at once.
I think part of it is the shareholders and investors demand constant growth or they’ll pull their investments, modest games with modest budgets may be less expensive but they won’t sell more.
@@jairekambui7738 And that's the big thing the CEO needs to emphasize when a company becomes big enough to not get that constant growth. Emphasize that the company is now more of a long-term investment company now so don't expect that constant growth. The CEOs don't want to do that because then they pretty much stop getting those big bonuses and such.
First and foremost they need to make good games and target an audience that exists and stop expecting the audience to just show up. Most of the failures are less the cost and simply making a bad game or one people couldn't even be bothered to care about. Too many pushing games as an art rather than as a game first too.
I understand why devs are drawn to the Epic Game Store. The issue is, it doesn’t matter how much more you make from an EGS sale when most PC gamers (yes, the vast majority) are just not going to buy a game from EGS.
So which is better: making more money from fewer sales on EGS, or making less money from vastly more sales on Steam/GOG?
Just release on all three storefronts.
I bought FF VII remake on Epic when it launched, I literally couldn't play it because of DRM, on Epic it requires constant internet connection or can't play a singleplayer game. Never agaim buying from there. Bought it on steam and zero issues playing offline.
Look at it like this, If you decide to be multiplatform on epic/steam. Lets say you sell 100k units on each store at 69 a pop (6.9 million). You only pay epic 828k vs steams (2.7 million). Epic also now has a feature where if you make it exclusive on epic for only six months you can forgo that 12 percent. So instead it becomes (0). This is why
all the other big studios don't care if they release on steam later down the road because just a single sale is worth it.
@@markth078 Epic doesn't force it the always online connection, its set up by developer preference. Square did it with all their games on epic as a sort of drm.
Would you be willing to accept the price on EGS being like $60 and $100 on Steam then? I think people would complain.
@@WachpwnskiYou can't do it that anyway because of steams price parity rule. But if you could a lot of developers would do that. The price parity rule is anti-competitive in nature. It would be like hey this platform allows me to earn more so its cheaper here vs this store. So I would be okay with that.
That's very good insight, product shaped game vs service games is precisely the issue.
Old product kings like SE are sinking because of this, trying to grasp and adapt to the service genre but they have to almost start from scratch again and get rid of that glorious legacy, that's hard and risks are high.
In the end, retro-gaming never made more sense than today.
Old games are great, but it’s sad to see these companies and franchises struggling. Final Fantasy is the most popular, primer jrpg franchise. If FF is struggling you know the industry is in a bad state. FFXV likely sold more just on PS4 back in 2016-2018 than FFXVI and 7 Rebirth combined.
We know they arent pulling a random number out of their ass. The problem is that SquEnix is wildly overestimating the popularity of Final Fantasy. They need to realize that FF is a 5 to 10 million seller. Long term. It has legs and will reach those numbers eventually. So they need to budget accordingly. They dont.
The same can be said for many of these franchises.
They should really be releasing more Final Fantasy games that are at a smaller scope and cheaper. It's wild how well they struck that balance in the PS1 days.
Square Enix spent 7 years telling one story with FFXIII... that hurt them more than they'll ever realize.
@@deedoubsthey do release smaller FF games like stranger of paradise, Theatrhythm, World of Final Fantasy, etc. it’s just that nobody buys them
Most of the mainline final fantasy are at 5-10 million mark ironically.
I agree. Final Fantasy wants to be ambitious but it's borderline impossible to emulate those old experiences with high accuracy due to how expensive they would be to make. Final Fantasy prides itself on having stellar visuals and storytelling, but having both along with a solid gameplay system is in many cases financially unachievable. The structure of a JRPG is among the most expensive in game development because of the sheer amount of things that they have in them.
It reminds me of the issue that 2D games had when they tried to transition to 3D back during the N64 era, where some of the stuff just didn't work in that transition due to ideas no longer being good ones or they became too difficult to replicate in 3D, and it seems that Final Fantasy is facing a similar crisis trying to figure out how to make a story-focused, globe-trotting adventure with AAA budget. Rebirth came the closest to this out of any game of its type, but at the cost of it being only one of 3 whole ass games. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that that isn't financially sustainable in the JRPG genre.
Clearly, there are compromises that need to be made for Final Fantasy because the ambition of these games does not match the financial backing that SE is willing or able to put into them. Bringing back the older world map system instead of having a giant open world would do wonders to help with that, plus I quite liked seeing the characters moving from location to location over the span of a few minutes; there's something relaxing about it.
@@davidmuller6011 Stranger of Paradise, Theatrythm, and World of FF are all spinoffs with decidedly different gameplay from normal FF games.
When I say they need to make smaller games, I mean they need to be making smaller actual FF games... sort of like how FF8 and FF9 were smaller games than FF7.
All of these businesses want to make excuses for why things have become so bad financially for them. The reality is simple. Most of the AAA games that get released are terrible. Square Enix has had many examples of terrible releases, or poor decisions in general these past several years. There really isn't much good that can come from allowing Business Majors to make decisions that have crucial effects on creative industries. They are completely out of touch.
elden ring, a game that most people shouldn't even be playing since it's so hard, popped off, they literally just drop trailers with no warning and everyone flocks to watch them and why is that? because fromsoft's top priority was to make a great game. when u make a great game u don't need as much marketing spending since the quality speaks for itself and once u launch a couple of those, people trust u and will buy ur next game too. the other studios on the other hand make hot trash and throw in shops, nfts, soon ads and all that nonsense because they want to milk ur pocket instead of focusing on the game's quality. another problem is, what is actually the cost of the game? are the games really not profitable or are the ceos and execs not making as much money as they wished they would? in a normal world all those useless ceos and execs would not even exist to siphon the money from the hard working people making the games and have the audacity to complain about money on top.
It's merchandising.
Square Enix needs to start treating fans as fans, instead of this weird-ass tsundere relationship they have going on. Fire up the licensing deals and get printing. FF7R Nendoroids, Pop-Up Parades of the FF14 cast, $200 high-quality Sephiroth statues. No one wants a $12k Terra statue, but people will sell their kidney for a decent-sized figure of Estinien or G'raha Tia.
Fandom is basically a free money printer, because people want to identify with something, instead of just being generic, blind consumers.
No one wants a 12k Terra statue...
Tell me you don't know the Fandom without telling me you don't know the fandom...
Square has pretty good merchandising, it's just not widely available. They should include marketing materials with the games (like with pack-in manuals) that have some shirts, figures, guides, art books, music, and key chains advertised inside.
@@RaifSeverence Who needs a Terra statue?
They could also steer away from releasing one or two AAA games every decade and instead lower budget and put mainline releases on a AA scale.
And everyone will bitch about it. Like they do about all other lower budget games...
Their lower budget games really didn't do that great, so it's not really surprising they want to focus on the big sellers even if they have high costs in development.
or maybe cut costs on stupid marketing, implementing silly stuff that no one asks for, start making good games that people want to play and reduce ceo pays instead of firing the workers. just throwing some crazy ideas out there.
@@zero1343 Their lower budgets failed because of lack of marketing and the dumbass decision to release many of them close to each other. Diofield Chronicle, Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, and Harvestella all flopped due to ALL of them releasing within the same Sept-Nov period. That's THEIR fault.
I bought a gaming pc 2 years ago and haven’t touched consoles all that time. I’ve been playing $30, $40, games from steam and been enjoying it more than expensive, unfinished triple A games. I’m already waiting for new indie games to come out and they won’t be more than $40. Fck em.
Same vein. One of my fav genres are the farming sims and my most anticipated game for this year falls in that genre and it was just announced for early access this August. The price- almost $15!! That's a steal and I have enough money in my Steam account to get it. The ONLY AAA games I am interested in are some of Nintendo's flagships and Kingdom Hearts 4 (but even I am worried how much that game will cost if Square keeps going on this track).
That's your tastes. Personally I play exclusively on PS5, and I love the ergonomics of it, particularely the PS5 controller.
The only problem is the games I like don't come out enough. The likes of Elden Ring are just very rare.
Indy games are absolutely killing it right now! All the doom and gloom of console players sounds pretty ridiculous if you spend any time of Steam!
Do you think the budget for FF7R3 will be affected at all? I’m so worried that the devs won’t be able to give/make 100% of their vision..
The difference between RE and FF is that one releases on all platforms and the other does not. We are in an era where trying to be exclusive is fishing for console sales and not game sales. For example I’m not going to buy a ps5 for FF7R but instead I’ll wait until it’s on steam.
The exclusivity deal is typically too good to pass up but it’s also why it’s “not profitable”.
Thing is: SE made a TON of mobile live service games that failed. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, Record Keeper, Dissidia Opera Omnia, and the only one that lives: Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Visions. The issue is the fans that love the FF series will play around with some of these games but attracting the younger generation won't happen because there isn't something that is pulling new fans in. FF is narrative storytelling first and foremost, sadly that doesn't have any pull with gamers playing things like Fortnite or Genshin, even more so when these FF games bank on someone playing one of the mainline games to draw them in the first place. IMO, SE should just focus on their IPs and improving the foundations they set with the OG games. The nail in the coffin for FF7 Re was the PS5 exclusivity and limiting their reach to a console that was nearly unobtainable the year it launched
Also if Square is worried so much about sales, maybe they shouldn't intentionally make controversial plot lines a la FF 7 multiverse. I know they turned off a sizeable chunk of their audience with that, which is a big problem if you're doing a three game series and needing you players to come back for games 2 and 3. It's not that they remade 7 and it isn't selling well, it's that they DIDN'T actually remake 7 and that's a big part of WHY it isn't selling well.
Tired and overused argument. Your kind literally consists of no more than a 100k max. Thats chump change for SE. But as always any negative press for these games is used by people like you to drone on about the same issue you havent moved on from since 2020. Its kind of like that dude NSP qoutes in the video that thought SE’s solution would be to pauze on FF and remake Parasite Eve and Chrono Trigger. Two niche IP almost no one beyond the hardcore fanbase knows about. And he actually believed this or wanted to use it as a vehicle to get his agenda across.
No in reality its very easy for non-super fans to just look at OG FF7 as the first draft thats now used in the remake series for the definitive version. So it not being a literal 1:1 doesnt matter anymore. That only matters when you’re hyped focused and nostalgic about an old game from the 90s you’ve been overidealizing for two decades. It has already reached a point where audiences look at Remake/Rebirth and then compare to OG and start to point out all the flaws and improvements made. Entirely forgoing the game as canon as a result.
I’m sure this is painfull to hear but this was bound to happen. ‘it not being the exact same as the old thing’ stops being a compelling argument the moment multiple improvements start to root themselves in the new thing.
Lmao clown they did not turn of a large amount of fans. You guys are just a very loud minority. Which is a fact. The main reason why they don't sell is simple final fantasy just isn't that popular of a brand.
@@mikev8746 From someone more outside the FF community his argument is not overused, it's underused actually compared to your corporate programming take. Even you yourself contradict your claim by saying they're in the minority player base wise.
100k x 70
7 Million in profits from one game isn't chump change even for a studio like Square, and that doesn't include the good faith to old fans that goes a long ways in free advertising from those die hard fans.
Also worth mentioning Square making the games a trilogy means they can reuse many assets and get an additional 14 million from that same group.
I'm not a Final Fantasy guy but if FF 7 is the first draft the paper must have been 24 karat gold cause Remake's core story changes are garbage. FF7 is not Lord of the Rings, but it's told fine for what it is, while the DIRECTION and character moments are better in Remake the story writing is dreadful. The whispers in particular are horribly handled and honestly the most disrespectful plot device I've seen in ANY media. It's sad to see the new blood posers pretend to be fans while shitting on the OG game. Defending these greedy mega corps who just wanna wring money "reimagining" (Advent Childen sequel fanficing) a classic. Just consume product, eat the g0ysl0p.
I'll be the first to say FF7 from a gameplay perspective was not groundbreaking, but it's a technical marvel and the blending of science fiction dystopia with fantasy elements is cool. The remake trilogy on the other hand is just piggyback on Marvel multiverse garbage, Crisis Core/Advent Children, and Sephiroth being everywhere "cuz he da bad guy" without good pacing or reason for his appearances anymore. I write a lot so seeing this shit is painful ,especially when someone else's art is tarnished for this "remake". Like the gameplay of the remake all you like, it's a different game, and an inferior story.
@@seliph-qq8ew Why am I corporate programmed just because I like a game lol? What kind of argument is that. It's a good game dude. Look up the metacritic.
And I'm not saying that number is chump change. But if the millions of sales these current games are getting don't move the needle. A 100k more won't do the trick. What is your argument even?
> Also worth mentioning Square making the games a trilogy means they can reuse many assets and get an additional 14 million from that same group.
Exactly, that's why companies alongside risk aversion like doing sequels. I don't get your point since you were trying to disagree with me and yet this is exactly what I've been saying.
> I'm not a Final Fantasy guy but if FF 7 is the first draft the paper must have been 24 karat gold cause Remake's core story changes are garbage.
You're not a FF fan and yet you think you're in a position to judge if the story changes are garbage? Also there are no core story changes. It's the same events playing out. They added meta narrative shit and expanded on everything. Completely different kind of story changes than it being the core that got changed. Shows how little you understand on the subject. Why even comment?
> character moments are better in Remake the story writing is dreadful. The whispers in particular are horribly handled and honestly the most disrespectful plot device I've seen in ANY media
Dreadfull is a big word. The actual dialogue writing is much better. The plot writing in certain moments is not as good as it could have been but it's also not bad. Calling it garbage just betrays you have some form of emotion tied to this even though you are supposedly 'not an FF fan' lmao. The whispers are not great but I do think that they were needed or their solution to achieve some goals for the remake project. I can live with them but most certainly without. However every game will have elements you don't like. I also don't like elements of FF7 OGs plot. It's just that remakes give mindless critics the excuse to just say something is bad because of it's absence in the original.
> It's sad to see the new blood posers pretend to be fans while shitting on the OG game.
Dude I played the OG when I was a kid back in FF7 multiple times in a 2 year span when I was obsessed with it. I followed the story and replayed it here and there throughout my life several times. I watched the movie. Played the PsP game. Piss off with your cheap suggestion that everyone that loves these games is a newbie and a corporate shill.
> Defending these greedy mega corps who just wanna wring money "reimagining" (Advent Childen sequel fanficing) a classic. Just consume product, eat the g0ysl0p.
Just running hard with any mantra and not having an actual filter in place where you're able to select things on a case by case basis is probably the most mid-IQ thing one could do. Everything is a mega corp money printing scheme to you is it now? There's no middle ground or grey area? Corporations can't be greedy while the creators are genuine? There's no nuance in your takes. Probably because you lack the cognitive ability to uphold personal values on a moment to moment, case by case basis. Being a footsoldier on either side is just sad. You never win out.
> I'll be the first to say FF7 from a gameplay perspective was not groundbreaking, but it's a technical marvel and the blending of science fiction dystopia with fantasy elements is cool.
Ah look so you are an FF7 fan. See there you go. Don't pretend otherwise buddy. You're the same as any of them.
> The remake trilogy on the other hand is just piggyback on Marvel multiverse garbage
Woah so you can see multiverse elements in Marvel movies and then distill some supposed 'multiverse' elements in FF7R and equate those things together and then just figure out both things are on the same level of quality. Even down to being the same in tone and style. Damn impressive man. I bet you rock at the google image captcha test 😂
> and Sephiroth being everywhere "cuz he da bad guy"
He's also everywhere in the original but you're in the mid IQ mindset most npcs are where a good thing is good in all it's elements and a bad thing is bad in all it's elements so there's no point in discussing this shit with you.
> I write a lot so seeing this shit is painful
Clearly not at a high level of quality though else you wouldn't be arguing with random people on a youtube channel and instead you would be working on your own LotR fantasy book or FF7 OG masterpiece.
> especially when someone else's art is tarnished for this "remake".
What do you mean someone else's art lol. The original devs all have leading roles on this project. What are you spacing out on? And tarnished is a big word. The reality is the original FF7 is a nice polygon game for the 90s PSX times. It was made in 1 year and has lots of flaws in execution, writing and presentation. The remakes improve on allot of these things while in turn coming up short with some other things. That's how things go you know?
> Like the gameplay of the remake all you like, it's a different game, and an inferior story.
It's literally a different game yeah. Or what did you mean? That it's not FF7? Truth is I think it solidifies FF7 OG as a rough draft. It's failings in certain story elements and gameplay sections are just a side effect of trying to remake something. You wont convince me that a game that was made three decades ago by more inexperienced devs with 6 months system development time and 6 months of production time did such an immaculate job of it that the thing could not be improved upon.
Nah man, you're coping hard here. The remakes have bad elements and great elements. It's still FF7 and actually fleshes a ton of things out. The classic will always be there if you want to see how things began. If you can't deal with that please try and work through it by yourself or with a shrink. But stop trying to attack people online for what they like and calling them corporate shills. It's pathetic. Only because you can't mentally disassociate.
@@mikev8746 "It's literally a different game yeah. Or what did you mean? That it's not FF7?" Yes, This is the core problem I have with this game. You yourself admitted to me that it's straight up a different game. If you wanna like it as it's own thing then alright, but you claim the OG is a rough draft, its not they are separate stories and games. FF7 Remake is borderline a sequel to the Original and AC.
Completely different gameplay, and the story is more of a new timeline/sequel than a direct retelling. Improvements to character writing do not make up for the horrible plot changes. Whispers are a new edition that are inconsistently utilized and unnecessary. Here's why Zack Fair didn't need to be brought back the way he was, he undermines/cheapens our actual main characters. characters returning from and avoiding death is already cheap and being from a different universe is a case of "Who gives a shit about it?" Zack's point in a writing sense is to flesh out Cloud's backstory and provide a glimpse of a mentor figure. He wasn't utilized well enough to really justify spending more time with the characters especially when we have Cloud and the rest of the cast already.
The gameplay being different is not bad, but when the gameplay is different and the story is heavily changed, yes, they are different games entirely utilizing the same world/concept. Compare FF7 remake to something like Resident Evil 1 Remake, which is a prime example of a game that is a straight remake. Plot is unchanged though there is some story expansion and MUCH better execution, gameplay is faithful while mechanically improved and has room layout changes for the returning players. That's the problem with something like FF7 Remake, it changes so much it's just a new game. There's a difference between iterating on a rough draft, and making a new story with returning characters/concepts.
"Im sorry, we need to start charging £90 a game to cover production costs"
"Does it need to be so expensive?"
"BUT LOOK AT THE TREES! THE LEAVES MOVE DYNAMICALLY! ISN'T THAT INCREDIBLE?!"
😮💨😮💨😮💨😮💨
What needs to change is the business and their models because it’s unsustainable.
1. Stop making unrealistic expectations like comparing sales to what would have been made on stocks. Trying to think that an investment 5 years ago is going to compare to the stock market 5 years later is absurd.
2. Lower budgets to more realistic numbers and cut executive overhead. That’s the fat they really need to trim, not the people making the games.
3. Accept that the game market is vastly different than it was 10 years ago and adjust expectations accordingly. That golden goose they want to chase, the children’s market, is no longer obtainable in large numbers with purchased games because wages have stagnated for decades, the cost of living has gone up, and parents will 9 times out of 10 pick a f2p game over something that’s $70+.
4. Accept that perpetual growth is unsustainable and will destroy your company. Increasing sales prices will do nothing but shrink the audience further because, again, wages have been stagnating for decades. There is no water in these stones so stop thinking that consumers are the ones who are magically going to fix your issues.
5. Work to change the sales model with platforms and online gaming stores. If game companies start failing they’re next. The online store may be safe since Steam has such variety and Epic has endless Chinese money but they will still take a big hit too.
Do not give these companies, even SE, any sympathy because these companies have no concern for their players. We are not the customers, their shareholders are. We are the part of the product that they cannot actively control and they need to start taking sole responsibility for the mess that the AAA market is in now. Make better products and earn your $70 because no one will save you but you.
The issue is really just exclusivity. FF7 Remake sold more than 7 million, I guarantee it would have been 10+ if they just released it on Xbox, PS4 and PC day 1. Also didn't cheap out on the PC version for as far as I can tell no reason. The other thing is Rebirth isn't even that expensive of a game compared to its contemporaries, they made it in three years which is actually pretty quick nowadays.
Answer to 4 is Black Rock and Vanguard so you are behind.
@@SLAMTUCKER Astral Chain is such a great game but there it is locked on the Switch
I think after breaking with Sony they will try to go your way, I was expecting FF XVI for PC and I need Team Ninja to follow the same path, I do not care about other companies, Capcom, Namco, Sega and the others are not producing anything of value, well, Capcom is at a times but they went back to censorship, cheapness and monetization.
@dontbothertoreply9755 Black Rock and Vanguard don’t address anything in point 4 but go off I guess 😂
Your first point is not an unrealistic expectation on the part of the investors who provide the budget to make the development of these games possible. The money to develop a game has to come from somewhere, and it sure as hell isn’t from the development team. The point is: why would investors dump money into developing a game when they could get more money by investing in the stock market instead?
When the expectations of a customer keep rising to the point of perfection, the costs of money and time rise until it becomes unsustanable. Burnout arrives and it all falls apart.
I will buy a FF game from square no matter what, call me simp, but they are the only video game company that still make game for introvert gamers.
One of the things I see as a big problem with AAA game now a days is some of the companies are trying to skimp on content and what content they are leaving in their games is lacking substance. Another issue I am seeing is these companies are trying to pander to specific groups of people that are not even fans by adding in or changing certain characters to be the opposite gender or making them guy. Now don't get me wrong if that is what people want their characters to fine so be it. But if you change these type details just to try and be inclusive then all you are going to do is alienate your fan base.
The other issue is the hypocritical censorship that is going on. If you advertise a type of wardrobe on a character, then censor it and claim that the new outfit is the one you meant for the character then don't show the outfit that is being censored in the first place. The back peddling these companies are doing is only going to bring up more questions that the company may or may not be able to answer without serious ramifications from their fan base. Look at Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's cutscene with Aerith and Tifa went they meet Cloud on the beach in Costa Del Sol. Tifa had her outfits censored to show less skin. Look at the outfit Eve was wearing in the preorder advertisement and then look at what she has changed on the same outfit after the Day 1 patch.
The main reason anyone plays a game is to escape the real world for a certain amount of time to unwind from all of the drama and crap going on with real life. At least that is why I play games. If I want to play a game that has a very attractive female character that happens to be in a skimpy outfit in a few scenes i.e. FF7 Rebirth Tifa on the beach that should be my choice. After all I chose to buy the game and all. While I bought it to see what the changes for the game story were seeing as the OG FF7 is my favorite game of all time should it really matter that they have a very small section of the game where two of the characters are in swimsuits? No, it should not. The fact people go and complain because they see a little skin on a female character in a (game) but don't complain about Cloud being topless and in shorts is hypocritical to say the least.
"Square Enix needs to right now is to radically increase audience" . Thats exacly what YoshiP tried with FF16
I can't stand these endless games and refuse to engage anything that doesn’t have a clear beginning and end.
Easiest solution is to hire less expensive marketing teams. If they can't sell your game they're not worth the money. There is no justification for spending over $100 million on marketing, over and over again while missing your projection by a monetary value marginally higher than the cost of that marketing team.
Ah yes. Get rid of the marketing team. That's a great way to get eyes on you newest game...
$100 mil for marketing is chump change for AAA games. But that's the problem. AAA is too expensive to develop, then sell at $60 a pop.
Case in point: compare the end credits runtime of God of War 3 vs the end credits run time of God of War (2018)
GoW3: 8.5 mins.
GoW('18): 33 minutes.
If you think $60 is enough to cover the amount of money needed to A: pay all those people and B: be profitable at the same time as a sustainable business model, you are delusional.
Edit: the key here is "sustainable business model". Look a studio like falcom. Their games cost $60 and general consensus amongst nonfans is "they need to update their graphics" or " why does it look like mobile game trash". And yet, I've yet to hear them saying their games haven't met sales expectations since 2008s Zwei 2. And they've been in game development longer than Square enix.
And he'll, when Square Enix puts out a game that ISNT FF quality, they get the same comments regarding graphic quality.
@@RaifSeverence or we could be way less hyperbolic and recognize that if the marketing team can't do it at the price point that it's at that you could heavily downsize it and lean on a small group of professionals that utilize things like streamers to push your games as indie games are currently doing. But it's way less exciting when we're not making completely hyperbolic arguments isn't it? Let's ignore the fact that I'm throwing out a completely arbitrary number when I say a hundred mil because every game has a different budget for this sort of thing, It's not a fucking secret that these companies spend a large portion of the budget for the game on marketing. Now let's just ask a really basic question, when do I start getting diminishing returns when referencing the price I'm willing to pay for marketing? If you already have saturation because everybody knows your name, If the platforms are going to promote your product regardless of your investment into marketing, At what point are you just dumping money into content slop that's going to be back fed into ad blockers? But again we can't touch on any of this type of shit when you're trying to make entirely hyperbolic arguments...
To your point, Square IS mainly relying on established IP, so we already follow every development without watching legacy media or TV. I don't think Square needs to invest in a super bowl commercial or collaboration with Porsche to market 99% of their output. And I don't personally know anyone that watches legacy media so I don't have any firsthand experience with anyone swayed by the expensive marketing deals made by SE. They should just forward builds and do interviews with people like NSP and FFU.
30% fees are crazyyyyyy. EGS being 12% hopefully shifts the industry in the same direction.
Reality is that games are expensive AF to make at a quality that pushes boundaries.
AI is going to be the way to make these kinds of experiences cheaper, and let smaller teams make higher “quality” visuals…
There is going to be a big shift over the next few years…
@@RaifSeverence you really can’t spend a large amount on a game and not spend a large amount in marketing. You would be doing your devs a disservice, sending their hard work and your money out to die without any fanfare.
Honestly I blame FF16’s boring battle system and empty feeling world for the low sales. The game was a chore to get through and severely hurt the brand. Rebirth is actually amazing, fun, and full great content. It’s a shame.
I blame the fact it's not on PC and I'm not buying a console for one game.
Is it crazy that in the UK we are jealous that US gamers ‘only’ need to pay $70 ? New games here are $90 if you convert the currency.
That doesn't say anything of value. Direct currency conversions aren't a good indicator of how much things cost in different countries due to multiple factors. For instance, those $70 in the US are before taxes, meaning American pay more than that, while prices in Europe always include taxes, no exceptions. But there's also purchasing power and cost of living. 90$ in the US doesn't have the same value as the equivalent of 90$ in the UK because of that.
@@XanderVJ ok
Nintendo saw this back during the Gamecube era, which is why they long since abandoned this self destructive path. Sooner or later, the rest will be FORCED to see it.
In summary, the market is shifting too fast, so making games every 6 years is a no go. This is why FFXIV is the only game left that is making money for SE: a good game (of course), a well oiled machine dev team, user feedback that is implemented, constant updates every 4 months with an expansion every 2.5 years
As a matter of fact, they started to see it during the N64 era. The GC era was when they saw their observations were actually true.
this is pure copium, endwalker had updates every 4 months but they were all a day to 1 week worth of gameplay. ff14 fumbled real bad. they had a big opportunity riding off shadowbringers which was great and also had a huge boost from wow refugees but with those gone and endwalker being as bad as it was i don't see a bright future for them. i might ofc be completely wrong and dawntrail goes and blows everyone's socks off but i will personally be very surprised
@@metalface_villain FF14 has been carrying SE LOOONG before Shadowbringers. A quick google search will show you their annual profits, that used to be in the negative (as in actual losses) during the FF13 age, and started to go up when ARR arrived. The only fumble was to make FF7 a trilogy and call part 1 a remake. Now THAT was a fumble.
So, in summary, they either go the live service route (like their latest fumble, FF7 ever crisis), make games cheaper and faster having them run on ALL platforms, or close shop.
@@metalface_villain sounds like you started in shadowbringers. endwalker during its (expected, and common) lull was more populated than every other expansion at its peak
I do hope when Nintendo's next console comes out they don't try to outdo themselves with making 'bigger games'. I think when making Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, they were experimenting with the "Open world concept" and even though both games are sold A LOT (they're they best selling Zelda games for a reason), I worry with how much games cost now that if they keep trying to get 'bigger', they'll start losing their fanbase. Like I didn't get Tears of the Kingdom for 2 major reasons, the biggest was that price point. 2nd reason was because I wasn't a fan of BotW's gameplay and since gameplay will always be #1 in my book, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a game I wasn't going to enjoy playing.
You are not paying for the hard working engineers, designers, creative producers for a nearly $100 game, you majority pay for those high paid executives and useless corporate middle man such as managers, sales, marketing.
You realize without marketing a product loses all presence in the market noise. A perfect example of this was the Starbury Basketball shoe. Those sold for super cheap like $20 and initially benefited from being attached to an NBA player at the time Stephon Marbury and excellent word of mouth. After the initial buzz around the Starbury's died down after a couple of months the sales dropped to almost zero instantly. People need advertisement to be reminded a product exist because all the competition to that product is blasting you with their presence day in and day out.
Also how do you expect a Project to get finished with little management? The people who make games are artist and if you left it to them they would take 20 + years tweaking a game to perfection. Moreover everything would be weird like Death Stranding. Management pulls in the reigns and allow games with actual widespread appeal to get made in a somewhat timely fashion. Even in the past in gaming when everybody claims there was so much passion there was massive amount of money poured into marketing and sales, even more relative to the cost of development expenses back then as games took about a year to develop with a 20 person team.
this is my area of expertise
every company out there, for every dollar they spend on marketing, they get more than a dollar back. marketing wouldn't exist and wouldn't be done if it wasn't profitable. if you don't have a marketing team, you don't know that a game is coming out, you don't get the trailers to show off the game, you don't get the articles in Kotaku and other magazines discussing the upcoming games.
you're right about other leeches on the companies, though if you really want to look at the biggest problem, look at the share holders more than anything since they're the ones that are demanding that video game companies make more money making games than they would playing the stock market. in fact most of the high executive pay and bonuses are set by the share holders, and the share holders reward the executives with these bonuses for delivering short term profit
This guys saying marketing is useless has no idea 😂 w/o marketing your product fails.
I feel so bad for not spending time in some sweet old games I bought but didn't play enough. Like Stalker. I played Final Fantasy 7 and was a fanboy through my whole childhood. I think that the remake looks cool, but there are so many options. I don't feel the need to spend so much money on it when there are some awesome games still on my library.
The situation is so dire that I didn't play any AAA release in the last couple of years already. I'm still catching to the old masterpieces.
SE was once known for 2 things. Unforgettable experiences, and graphics that positively blew your mind. Every FF release was practically a PlayStation showcase for the machine's capabilities.
That all basically stopped after FFX.
Man. A few months ago I commented on one of your videos, pre-launch of Rebirth. I commented about my fear about Rebirth either being the franchise’s Empire Strikes Back or the franchise’s Last Jedi…and similar to the game’s nuanced ending, it feels like we got both at the same time.
On one end, I adored the game. I couldn’t put it down, and was enthralled by Gaia’s expansive, ever intriguing world. Yet due to sales failing to meet expectations, the future of Final Fantasy feels grim…similar to the gloomy state of Star Wars post Last Jedi.
At least the game was phenomenal. Perhaps one day, interest will renew, and we will see a resurgence in sales similar to Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.
as a 20+ year long fan of both franchises, i get that on a personal level. the only thing that has me attached to star wars nowadays was tcw s7 and jfo/js. just like how the only thing that has me attached to ff nowadays is this trilogy in some ways. 16 was pretty good tho.
I really tried to get into the remake series, but unless you have a huge attachment to the og. It's just not very interesting 😅 I played the original last year for the first time, and I just don't care for the same game twice. FF7's time had passed, that's the reality of it
@@lpstweetytv5242 The Remake series is pretty damn different tho. It's not a 1:1 remake. And THAT is why its great
There’ll be more sales when they’re ported to pc, Xbox, and whatever Nintendo decides to call their next thing
@Davethawave1999 It's still the same game for the most part, the changes are a bit silly. It's not a draw for me
20:30 Honestly I think the best FF to make a Genshin style game would be a new Crystal Chronicles. Art style and such are there, but make it like Genshin. However they need to be somewhat fair with the gatcha on characters and make sure the story is solid for a FF game. I can see something like that being a good FF alternative to FFXIV. Or get 16's battle director onboard and create a combat similar to Wuthering Waves which currentloy has one of the best battle systems in a mobile gatcha. Such a battle system woudl work really well with character, with the Q button used for character specific Limit Breaks.
I really noticed that mentality with Palworld.
Remember all the articles writing about how Palworld „failed“ because the player counts dropped so much a few weeks after release? A mostly singleplayer game with finite content. That sold over 20m copies in early access. And just because it couldn‘t ensnare players forever like a live service game (which wasn‘t its goal, remember the devs even encouraged people to play other games until new updates arrive) some people really thought this game was a failure??
That really showed me how much the mentality for games had changed. I still only play singleplayer games and absolutely despise games that try to trigger my FOMO with dailies and stuff like that where I end up playing a game only to satisfy that even though I‘m in the mood for something else and just having fun. It‘s such a sad thing for me honestly.
SE thinking FF7 Rebirth is a failure in any way is wild to me. It’s hands down one of the best games I’ve ever played (and the original was my first JRPG experience). The sheer level of accomplishment that team pulled off should be celebrated. The fact that its sales is the only thing the company can focus on is disheartening. Rebirth set the bar for all JRPGS going forward, and that bar is very high.
Im having a hard time to understand how anyone could rate rebirth Higher than 7/10. Sure the grafics are insane but gameplay wise? Its frustrating. Ive never played a jrpg that has had worse design than rebirth. But you do you.
@@Pyck3the gameplay was a lot of fun.
@@kevinthunder3375 dont get me wrong when i say this. I did enjoy rebirth but i had to play on easy mode the entire time. However when it came to beating the more difficult challenges it just fell apart.
@@kevinthunder3375not for some of us (excessive minigames, some of them bad, cheap bosses in some cases, delta between hard and easy modes is huge, etc). Loved Remake as hell, in comparison.
Keep in mind how many copies they could have sold with multiplatform releases. I personally had 12 friends with Xbox/PC that couldnt play either FF16 or 7Rebirth but really wanted to. Truly took the short term gain of an exclusivity payout
The exclusivity deal for FF16 and Rebirth were signed like well over a decade ago at this point by Matsuda who was squares previous CEO
now i'm not making this a pissing contest but i have 7 friends within our friend group who picked up a PS5 just to play FF16 and FF7Rebirth. I feel like this argument is no different than saying ''pirates hurt sales''. It cannot be a coincidence that its always SE crying about not meeting expectations while other exclusive games are getting massive profits despite being exclusives. When it works, it works. Surely multiplatfrom will earn them more but it will also cost them more to develop too which will also increase their development time overall since all versions have to be ready all at once. Most of the broken PC launches of today happen because the devs simply cannot work fast or good enough to make all the platform ready for launch so they target whatever platform sells the most which ends up hurting PC then gamers not only NOT buy the game but they also badmouth the devs(rightfully so ofc) so it even ends up as a lose-lose situation for devs. Hell FF7 remake had years to develop a PC port and it still launched terrible.
@@davidmuller6011i remember FF16 first trailer says that it was going to release to PC day one then Square said "nu uh we never said that" confusing.
They could sell more but it wouldn’t be that much difference financially in the short term as they will have an even longer time of development to optimize for every systems. FF16 wouldn’t have been released yet if they decided to release the game day one on all systems. The real issue for Square is that they have too many games that takes too long in development before release which eats up all the cost. Rebirth is 4 years after Remake and that is still considered quick. Another thing to note is that the FF franchise number was never really that big to begin with. The 3million sales number is actually quite in line with most games meaning majority of their fanbase, especially the early adopters are on the PS consoles.
@@EfecanYSL Years? FF7 Remake on PC dropped a year after launch.
You know, im listening to this, and all im thinking is that FFXIV will be getting a budget boost.
I am not opposed to this at all lol!
Yoshi-p stays winning. it cant be helped.
FF14 is the main money making game that SE have right now. And it is not a bad game also, one of the best in the main line series in terms of story. What SE needs us multi platform release like what Capcom is doing.
Enix is pretty stupid so I would he surprised. Yoshida has talked about them not getting more budget before despite doing so well
imo ff14 is doing too little way too late. they really should have gone all in on the ff mmo and released a brand new one without all the clunk of 14 and take ideas from other mmos to improve on their weak points instead of releasing the same old stuff with slightly improved graphics. many people quit already, some will obviously return for dawntrail and maybe initially u will also get some new players but imo ff14 doesn't have a bright future. i would say that this expac is kind of a make or break for them, with a good possibly of the game goin down the stinker if it's not at shadowbringer levels and if it doesn't have enough content throughout the patches. i might be wrong cuz ppl said that about wow all the time and wow bounced back but ff14 isn't wow and i'm not necessarily talking about quality but about the popularity wow had, the nostalgia effect, the fomo practices (which i don't really like) all of which and more make wow much harder to fail than ff14.
I really don’t know what they can do at this point. They’ve seen other series copy the current trends of gaas, open world sandbox, Sony-esque narrative driven, and DMC-esque combat, only for their games to underperform. They make Octopath traveller to appease their hardcore fan base and it under performs. I could see them making a good Baldur’s Gate 3 crpg and still under perform.
Very informative. You deserve a subscribe sir. I’ll be looking forward to more like this.
What I can tell from this discussion is that the gaming market itself isn't broken, but rather the capitalistic system is broken as it requires constant growth for venture capitalists to invest, rather than having healthy privately owned game studios that is profitable. FFVII Remake/Rebirth and FFXVI still sell enough to justify development cost.... It's just that it isn't enough to fill the pockets of venture capitalists that expect 2x - 3x the money during the development process. That's where the AAA industry is broken. As a gamer I want the dev teams to get the revenue stream of sales, not the VC people. So, time for gamers to support privately owned studios/publishers instead of the ones on the stock market?
Both games didn't met expectations they both bombed they spent too much on the game, they haven't broken even yet.
@@playername9391 If I count on the conservative side FFVII Remake has made ~300 million dollars in profit considering the 7+ million sold copies... All estimates show that the game has cost about 150 million to make. So there's about a 2x profit. It's enough for a healthy private business to thrive, but not enough for venture capitalist that want to maximize their profits.
@@PixelShade and they use that profit to make other games including rebirth and 16, assuming both are around 300m and sold at 70, playstation takes 30%. Ff16 would make 147 million in total and FF7 r would be around 122.5m at total below 300m to recoup the budgets of both games, they haven't even broke even for the games, even if Sony paid for some of the dev cost, they still have an expected RoR to reach for each project.
Stop boring talking points about capitalism or whatever. Square is a mess in terms of budget management and how they handled the final fantasy brand.
I can't wait for the NightSkyPrince Battle Pass.
Yep this is the most important thing to happen next.
I think one of the biggest issues with final fantasy is that every game is a different genre for the past like 15 years. I think if they just kind of stuck with one thing they would have a better time as you're not targeting a different audience every single time
that plus exclusivity
This is much more a discussion about the failures of a capitalistic system than about video games specifically. Did you notice that the largest portion of sales expectations is not marketing nor even development? The largest component of what these games are ‘expected’ to make is as compared to investment into the stock market over that same time period. Capitalism doesn’t reward success, productivity, nor creativity, it only rewards the generation of more capital, regardless of whether the means by which that capital is generated is helpful or harmful.
If video game sales expectations are competing against expected stock market return, then think about what is a more ‘sure bet.’ Is expected ROI higher investing into video games or in arms manufacturing?
Insomniac is based in California where dev salaries are huge compared to Japan
Game companies want to cut cost over making good games…in America that is
@@ericwalker6477Nop. They want to cut costs because they spend too much money to make their games ultrarealistic.
@@ericwalker6477 Well, for one thing, if they want to cut costs in the US, they should move their operations out of California. It's obscenely expensive there compared to the rest of the US. Hell, you could move to north to the state of Washington, and you'll save a ton of money compared to California and that's not factoring in other states as well.
One thing gamers need to do is STOP dogpiling anyone who criticizes a game. This results in LESS consumer feedback. There are FF rebinge fans who will lose their minds if someone dares suggest that the whole thing ought to have been made as ONE game without so much filler content. Even if it resulted in a longer development schedule and we'd still be waiting. Even as three games, it could have been much better, but the checklist format and profound time-wasting format that actually gets boring after a while, frustrating minigames that gate achievements and good items, the damn CHECKLIST exploration are awful.
The problem is that a tiny % of sycophantic players rush to "defend" the game by attacking anyone who has legitimate criticism as if it's not legitimate. This ISN'T SELLING WEL, and they do mental gymnastics to say it is. We didn't need so many minigames. The minigames themselves make players spend countless hours in frustration, and many will just give up, as they have already spent over two hours attempting and got sick of it. If they say anything online, they are made fun of by people who were willing to spend 6 hours if need be. The game isn't testing skill but patience. And if a player gets sick of something and gets attacked online for "complaining about the optional content," THEY SURE AREN'T GOING TO BUY THE SEQUEL.
Worse than the frustrating content, if the checklist format, and the gating of all the best items behind minigames and shitty format Chadley VR challenges. Players get sick of the damn hexagon room, and by the time you platinum the game you will hate the thing. At the expense of giving a small % of players with the patience for it an endorphin hit, it pisses off a lot more who just told themselves they will never buy another Square Enix game. It wasn't that the bosses were all that hard, it was having to waste a half hour of time to get back to the one they needed practice at. They will end up spending over six hours trying, but most of that time is beating the same things over and over that they already know they can beat, and that feels like a half hour unskippable cutscene by the third time. They get sick of it. Platinuming a game ought to make the player like it MORE not less.
And one of the worst parts is the missed opportunities and missing basic features. The same exact enemies always spawn in the exact same places! Why isn't there at LEAST a randomizer for enemy types within each open zone? No day and night cycle? FF15 had, that. Speaking of that game, why not the party use tents to restore HP & MP like in the original game? There could have been a handful of cutscenes and we'd see the characters interact as they set up camp. It also could have been used in certain locations to start certain hidden quests. Instead, we got chocobo stops.
So, what you have is a frustrating slog fest of minigames and VR battles that gate the best equipment in the game and the concept of exploring for the good stuff is replaced with checklists of redundant tasks and a story that is more confusing that it used to be. Sure, use ad-hom all you want on me, but you will NOT HELP SALES by insulting the people who have legit reasons they don't like the game.
Yes, the fans who defend this game ALWAYS resort to insulting the person who didn't like an aspect of the game, and the result is 1.) They just shrunk their own fanbase, and 2.) Other people who didn't like the game see how anyone who complains is treated, and they then don't voice the necessary criticism. Square Enix doubles down on the terrible, and then everyone wonders why the game doesn't sell.
Sounds like a skill issue. This game is made for elite players and it is selling amazingly well because of it. Nobody cares if casuals like you don't buy it. Square doesn't need your money. Bye.
You're ignoring the real reason sales are low. The lack of a PC release.
@@drexasaurus3788 Oh, I'll give you that, it would sell decently on Steam, but that is because the PC format removes a lot of the frustrating content, because PC players just cheat at the parts of games that they don't like. That doesn't mean there isn't a content issue, and the missed opportunities in the game and missing basic features like enemy spawning being random and a missing night and day cycle still hurt the game.
The most braindead comment I ever read no wonder no one is taking criticism seriously lmao clown.
Literally cope lmao 95% who played it loved it literally get good.
Part of the reason why I think FF7 Remake and Rebirth aren't selling as well is simply because a lot of the people that gravitated to the Remade FF7 were OG FF7 players and they didn't like the way Remake was 'allegedly' going. Furthermore, what Intergrade and Rebirth have done is say that where Remake was 'allegedly' going was were it was going and thus, destroyed the very foundations on which the OG FF7 was made. We saw a great story told through the lense of love and loss, and the one person that we lost, we could never get back. What Rebirth has done was effectively brought Multiversal Theory to FF7's story which effectively means we will always have characters like Zack and Aerith around when they should be dead. On top of that, Sephiroth and the Whispers make an appearance every so often in Remake, Intergrade, and Rebirth. This dilutes the player's experience when we get to face off against them. So if Sephiroth is supposedly the BBEG of the new FF7 story as well, he hardly feels as threatening as he should. Ultimately, I am not surprised that the Remade FF7 story hasn't settled in so well, especially with games like Rebirth being the alleged GOTY. I think that the reason why it didn't land is because Final Fantasy 7 was treated like a Kingdom Hearts game and not like a Final Fantasy 7 that needs to not only replace, but respect the themes of the original game. All in all, FF16 likely also failed in the regard that it failed to tell a story that actually fit the MC. For example, while 16 did tell somewhat of a story, it failed to tell a compelling story about the MC and the only thing that it had going for it, was literally turning into summons and wrecking shiz up in cinematic combat. While that is a thrilling thing to see, what is the reason for it? Why is the MC doing it? What is the purpose of the MC doing this? While I am alright with playing a mediocre game, I don't go to Final Fantasy to be mildly entertained by graphics alone. I go to Final Fantasy to play through the story, checkout its minigames and easter eggs, maybe face off against powerful superbosses that would test my wits, and see just how powerful I can get or need to be at the bare minimum to beat the end boss. Overall, graphics just don't entertain me like a great and resonating story. Mechanics mean nothing to me if I can't verse myself on them in the very beginning. Thrilling fight scenes just don't amaze me and keep me going back to them without that deep rooted connection to them. Sephiroth instilled enough fear in us by the mear mention of his name that we understood that we needed to really hate the guy. This is why at the end of the OG FF7, we would have a real drive to beat Sephiroth. At the end of Remake, I never felt any real drive to fight him at all.
I would like to see them do what they have done with White Knight Chronicles on a grander scale. A great single player game that is long and detailed with online tied in. Drop a DLC once in a while in the form of an expansion and sell cosmetics only. Do that to the Final Fantasy 7 sequel; allow character creation to play alongside the main ones, but keep the focus on Cloud. That way we're all unique online.
People in the comment section think the only way to fixed this is just to go back to the old SquareSoft days… it doesn’t work like that.
This video proves it. FF7 Rebirth is literally their best FF in years and will probably be this year's GOTY, but it's struggling to take off and sell. Elden Ring DLC have literally way more traction and will probably sell more than both remakes.
The problem is that Square Enix is faced with a modern industry and doesn't know how to deal with it. Their biggest title being exclusive doesn’t help either.
What can they do to change this
Elden Ring: on multiple platforms
FF7R2 ( &FF16 for good measure): PS5 exclusive.
That god awful timeline and multiple realities bs from rebirth is not their best. I'd take generic ff16 over that any day
@@RaifSeverenceunless they were also going to release it on the switch I don't think the sales would dramatically shift.
In all the other recent multiplatform FF releases over 80% of the sales have been on playstation.
With pc being the 2nd biggest, which they always release later down the line anyway.
@@samoth5161 I agree that the fact that FF7 ReTrilogy has the multiverse in its story doesn't help. If remember they said that FF7 Remake would be newcommer friendly, this isn't the case. Plus, it's hard to keep up with a trilogy of remakes. I liked FF16, so if CS3 improves on all the mediocre aspects of FF16 with a new IP, I'll gladly take it. I'd like them to make another mainline FF but I think FF fans like the game design of FF7 ReTrilogy more and tbh i understand why, I mean Yoshi-P has said he'd like to direct a solo mainline FF, so there's always a chance.
I don't know where he gets his numbers but ths S&P went up 87.71% over the past 5 years meaning a $100 million investment would yeild $87.71 million in profit not $201 million. That's a big difference. I also don't like how people only say AAA is broken. Indie is kinda broken too. 96% of indie games don't make a cent and even fewer can eat off that money. So out of the 14,000 or so games on steam in 2023 560 of them made money. I don't understand how that is perfectly normal.
14.5% is the yearly return. With compound interests, it's multiplication by 1.145^5 so approx 1.97.
100 millions invested, expected return 197 millions.
@@GerBessa
As someone who is in the stock market... That 14% is if you buy at the low sell at the high... The stock market doesn't have compound interest by itself. You need to have money managers actively going in and out every few months to make real money. Just buying and holding nets you that 87% gain. It's not compounding
@@GerBessa Or you could just go, "What is the 5 year return of the S&P" to get the exact number.
You need to factor in compound interest
@@GoldChocobo77 When you take a 5 year sample you can't compound 5 years. There has only been 1 cycle.
Fantastic, eye-opening video. Thank you for covering all of this.
Has anyone else thought the whole industry should shift on community fundraising?
It would prevent flops if games were scaled based on preorders.
Not enough interest = no game = no loss.
Massive interest and fundraising = AAA game.
Mild interest = AA game or mobile.
Shouldn't it be safer? I mean, in the construction industry you pay upfront then they start building it.
Ff7 remake should had just been the original game but fleshed out with extra backstory elements to increase the depth. They did not remake it, they kingdom hearts it by making it a sequel. That is not what people wanted.
But it ended up being what people loved FF7 was not the problem
Ff7 and 16 is not the problem. It's the past titles that failed. Babylons fall, avangers, forspoken. All made by their western division. Stop this false narrative that FF7 killed SE. The truth is, FF7 and 16 is not enough.
Square enix had bad expectations.
1. The FF7 re: trilogy is incomplete. There are tons of people who want to buy the trilogy but do not want to wait in between game releases.
2. As such, the sales for the final game and the previous 2 parts will increase drastically when part 3 comes out and the trilogy is complete.
Square enix assuming people would be willing to wait a decade to see the completion of the trilogy, as a new player, is ridiculous. New fans who started with FF7 OG are intentionally waiting for the remakes to be finished.
3. Good games dont get discounted for even a decade. Look at the last of us, persona games, big titles like that, full price.
4. FF games have infinite ROI. They might not get their ROI when they expect it, but they are guaranteed to get it. Literally, all FF titles are still bought and played today, even on mobile, which means worldwide sales potential.
5. Square wastes money on advertisements, trailers, and showing too much too frequently. They could have saved literally millions by being more frugal. Just look at how much they are spending on the re trilogy ads, trailers, ect. Completely unnecessary.
6. FF14 is essentially the #1 mmorpg out there. WoW is up there, but they don't announce their sub numbers for a reason.
7. Not enough people will pay $100 for any game, just in general. At that point, people will outright pirate the game.
8. No one likes epic games. People have epic games for the ocasional free game. It literally can't compete with steam. As I said above, if games release epic games exclusive, people will pirate the game and manually add it to steam so they can still have steam features that epic doesn't have.
Anyone judging whether or not FF7 re trilogy was a good idea or not are jumping to conclusions. The trilogy isn't finished. No one new is buying into a 10 decade trilogy off the rip without already being attached to it. Most of the FF7 re trilogy sales are fans who played the original. There are some new players who also bought the original. However, most new players will not come till the next game releases or is near releasing. At which point, players will then play the previous 2 parts.
If they announced any random big title, mass effect, halo, god of war original, ect was being remade the same as FF7 re trilogy, it would be in the same boat. Those games are old, then you are splitting it into 3 parts, and then forcing people to wait a decade for a complete story. That's a lot to ask. Your ROI is back loaded, and if done well, your ROI is significantly higher than cost because the game will continue to make sales for decades.
The FF7 trilogy will still be making sales 2 or 3 decades from when its completed.
Source: Trust me bro
for point one, I'm with this one. a friend bought me part one as a birthday gift, but I refuse to buy part two because I am morally opposed to spending $210+ to get a complete story. I get dividing the game up was probably the best thing they could do for development to break up the workload and get some money flowing back into the team... but the first game was padded to hell, and I honestly just don't really trust the second game to not have the same problem.
for point three, this is why we need to insist on physical media. they might not get discounted buying them digitally, but also the developer has little incentive to do so whereas with physical copies not only can you sell the used copy to put toward your next game purchase, but someone else can also buy a discounted copy of that game.
point four, you have to remember when you bring up mobile, every time they rerelease the games like that, it also involves new development costs. sure it's probably not as extreme as when they games were initially developed, but its not as though porting games to new platforms or to mobile comes without development costs.
for point five.... this shows you don't understand how marketing works, and I say this as someone who works in marketing. you can say you don't like how square does its marketing, and that's fair, but look at some of their AA games. You cut the marketing budget and almost every time, you also cut profits and sales. marketing teams are not immune to cuts and layoffs and the like to save companies money, but if doing the marketing wasn't effective, they wouldn't be doing it at all.
@anthonydelfino6171 for your second point, companies consider reselling of games as theft, the same as pirating a game. This is because they receive 0$ for a game that is re sold. As such eventually physical copies will no longer exist, and this is already happening. Most pcs don't come with a cd drive, consoles are being sold without a disc drive, and eventually they wont even give you an option, forcing you to only be able to buy games digitally. This is also why theres been a push towards giving out games for free on day 1, as long as you buy a subscription to x service.
As for your final point, just because you work in marketing, doesn't mean you actually know what u r talking about. For 1, this game required 0 marketing at all. It literally will sell by word of mouth alone. Have you heard of Dark Souls, it had no marketing for it, and it sold only on word of mouth, and look what has happened because of it. FF7 has been the most anticipated remake for over 2 decades. All the copies part 1 sold was already predetermined sales the day it was announced. All this marketing they did isn't pulling new sales from new players who never played the original. Streamers is whats did that, which is free marketing.
You think elden ring needs to do any marketing for its dlc. No. Literally everyone who played elden ring and liked it is buying the dlc day 1. Its a waste of money to over market it, which they have not. FF7 however has so many announcements, so many trailers, and spoils so much of the games for no reason.
Theres not a single game in history that sold more copies because of over spending on marketing. You know what sells games more than marketing, blanket lies during the 1st announcement, and interviews. We saw this with Fallout 76, with Overwatch 2, with No Mans Sky, and countless other games. If you want to sell a game, all you need to do is lie.
I still do think that Square should have a focus on remakes, like Capcom. I wonder how FF7 remake would do if it was actually the whole FF7. We still haven’t gotten FF7 remake yet, as far as I’m concerned (even tho I love remake and rebirth). The best FF titles are 6-10, they are magic, and opening them up to a modern audience should be a priority, imo. 11-15 (besides 14) have little impact and aren’t games I would even really recommend, which is a big problem imo.
I currently got a Big size Tifa figure make from china
and i gonna say final fantasy 7 remake graphics is Nice and the figure i got look very realistic and very good,the detail of the character is 👌
square enix did a good job at designing ff 7 characters so i am very satisfied
So… idk what Final Fantasy means to you guys…
but to me it means everything :/
I’ve been playing them since I was 4-5 years old and I don’t think I’ve ever gone a full year without playing a Square Enix game since and I’m over 30..
Square helped me improve in so many ways academically, and even with my social skills in and out of school, maybe because I started playing so young, but either way it did.
It’s taught me tons of other stuff as well and has done so much more for me than anyone, or anything else ever has and it’s not even close.
but yea I 100% would not be nearly as great as I am today without Square. And I say great in the sense that Im very happy with how I turned out and I know a huge part of it was because of Square Enix.
I know they’ve been there for you guys as well and you learned things from them and used their games to cope with the anxieties and stresses of life. Their games also nourish your creativity and critical thinking skills, more so if you started at a young age, which a lot of us did start young I’m assuming lol
For sure I’m going to support Square as best as I can and buy several FF, Star Ocean, and Kingdom hearts games, that I don’t have on this new PSN account. I can’t log into my other account and I can’t get a hold of a customer rep on the phone so it is what it is. Little sad tho cause I had more then probly 1200$ worth of games and I believe more than 1000$ of that were Square Enix games.
I hope you guys will also join me in supporting Square Enix as much as possible.
I don’t usually say things like this either.
Edit: even if you can just buy 1 or 2 cheap games, im sure everything helps ya know.
Let’s show them we got their backs!
They’ve all worked hard for so many years and you can see that it was more to money with them. They were passionate about the stories they created. And they wanted to share the.
I understand having a deep attachment to something from your childhood, but it's probably not good to consume wantonly. Do you actually like every single game? I'm not trying to be mean, I'm genuinely curious.
@@lpstweetytv5242 like I said it’s not just my childhood lol I’ve been playing FF, star ocean, and Kingdom hearts games since forever, my earliest memory in life is when my cousin brought his Playstion over and had FF7, 8, and 9. It’s funny too cause he first put in FF9 and I legit just rebought FF9 a couple weeks ago and have been replaying it lol
And I didn’t mean that I was going to buy every game lol I’m gona buy several that I wanna replay and I’m gona get a few that I haven’t played before like the first and second star ocean.
@avnn.1851 Oh, I see lol, sometimes I get worried about people who seem to overconsume. It can be so detrimental, but I get you. I'm actually playing FF9 right now, I'm not very far tho :)
@@lpstweetytv5242 oh wow what a coincidence lmao
idk what kind of player you are but I love to max out stats and grind levels and do every single side quest and junk but on FF9 if maxing out stats is something you’re interested in then don’t get too high leveled too quick.
Wait til you get really good equipment. I’m gona get a little further so I can get a bunch of equipment that raises speed and strength. If you level up with equipment on that raises stats then you get those stats boosted every level permanently 😬 idk if it’s your first time playing it or if you’ve played it way back then but that’s just a little tip in case
@avnn.1851 It is my first time, so thanks for the tip! :) I like to explore and do sidequest, too, though I'm not one to grind too much. It might sound weird, but I like playing under level sometimes, it forces me to use better strategies lol Sometimes I do get caught up in the story tho and start only doing mainline XD
In the old time, in the eyes of most people in the world, entertainment is EXPENSIVE. Now, welcome 2020+, everything is entertainment. Too much supply = lower prices.
Before 2000, buying a game for an equivalent to at least 100 USD of today's price is common.
And remember: nowadays, Square Enix is not the only company that can make "Final Fantasy Level" game in the world. And this is made worse by those time Square Enix lost by doing stupid things that gives the momentum for other games to beat Square Enix momentum into almost nothing.
Very informative video. Thank you and keep up the good work.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is that perhaps one of the reasons FF7 Remake didn't make as much as expected is that it was cut into three parts whcih prolonged the story and kind of diluted it. People got bored of waiting for the next part and the length of each.
FF Ribirth it wasn't going to sell well and it is prooven.
As a project deviates a lot from the original (no it is not 95% faithfull and 5% addition., it is the other way around). People didn't like that direction after Remake and fell out. Many new players of Remake maybe do not konw what exactly is going on, is it an actual trilogy etc. So they could miss out 2 and 3 or not bother at all....
Also Exclusivity hearts game sales.
A game like Elden Ring that was supposed to address more niche audience sold 12mil almost the first month... So yeah I do not get why people are confused with low sales numbers for FFRibirth... problem is a combination of a lot of things
Square needs to release the Final fantasy series on all platforms Xbox,PC,PS, and maybe even nintendo, to expand the franchise to a larger audience, Final fantasy does not have the same power as Mario/Pokemon to be releasing on a single platform anymore, the Old ps1 days are over. they are just killing that franchise slowly instead of expanding it to a larger group of people.
The problem with that, it's even more development costs. Right now they can just contractually release FF16 on PC, which I would buy just to play it. But they have a lot of porting to work on.
@@Wachpwnski You got to spend money to make money, Capcom understands this. They have been releasing all their main franchise games on Xbox/Ps/PC, for a while now. So if square keeps releasing a Niche game (Which Final Fantasy is) on a single console, i don't see final fantasy lasting much longer. Look at Capcoms Market cap history vs Squarenix history, squarenix used to be 3 times larger than Capcom. now Capcom is over Double the size of square in market value wise just from the past 10 years. Square needs to stop thinking like it's the Ps1 era, times have changed.
@@rangerover4882I agree multiplatform is the way for them to get back to the top. And stop making western games (like forsaken and avengers), forcus on what made Sqauresoft and Enix great... JRPGs and innovative japanese games. 33:59
@@rangerover4882 That’s true. Resident Evil 4 remake did really well and was released on PC. Not sure why they keep doing exclusives then basing the success of that game off of how well it sells on one console. Say 500 people own a PS5 and they expect 225 sales, it seems a little delusional.
@@rangerover4882 can't remember where I saw it but someone had mentioned that PC is a good chunk of Capcom's market now.
Edit: Spelling/Grammar
26:40 OR, crazy idea here, CEOs like Booby Kottik, Andrew Wilson, Straus Zelnick, etc. consider taking a pay cut.
While the competition of live services is certainly part of the conversation, the other larger aspect is the worth of money nowadays in consideration of inflation. No wonder people stick to one game (especially free-to-play, even if they have micro transactions) when they have to be more selective of where they spend their money, meanwhile these CEOs are getting yearly paychecks that could fund studios for decades.
I don't mind Steam having a 30% cut, I prefer buying my games there, because I know they're also trying to innovate with SteamDeck, SteamOS, and whatever Deckard VR is going to be.
We're in a weird position where these corporate leaches are sucking the industry dry, developers are forced to push out bad/unfinished products they often times didn't even want to work on, and then get punished when consumers don't buy the slop because, as Jacob said, they're starting to wait for reviews more often now.
This is an important conversation, but I feel a lot of people's priorities aren't in the right place.
Yep, CEOs and the corporate executives are getting paid obscene amounts of money that they really aren't worth.
For me a turn off is if I feel like I am being preached to. Just want to enjoy the gameplay and story. Another thing which is a turn off is if the darn game is incomplete. Side quests or main missions that aren't complete and you can tell it's not complete. or if the game ends like it is going to get a part 2 and then doesn't. Or they cut it into 2 games and then never release part 2. Or if certain promises are made then not kept.
What’s crazy is my son never wanted to touch a final fantasy game until he played a few persona games because of gamepass. So he decided to play remake > rebirth > 16 > og 7 > now ffxiv. Also he wants to play all the og games now. Maybe SE missed the gamepass train to get people hooked.
Why don’t we just admit JRPGs are a niche audience with a lower ceiling than god of war and Spider-Man. Cut development costs accordingly. Stylize the graphics. Cut back on scale and spectical if need be. Release on more consoles especially Nintendo
Really hate how many people be bringing up spiderman 2 and how much the game cost to make. There’s so much information behind the budget and is not comparable to other large AAA games. Really wish that that leak never happened.
That game was supported by a loyal fanbase and carried by its name. There was no quality to support it's succes. And on any onther platform or as a 3rd party game it would have failed. Hard.
Yea, Lisense fees were 9 digits. They got a % of total sales.
absolute shite game
@@Tuningforks85 a game for everyone is a game for noone. You just weren't the target audience
I mean Spiderman 2 is still a bug riddled mess I tried it again 2 days ago, fell through the floor again
It's much deeper than AAA gaming. The whole world is going through a dark time and until we bring it back to light, everything will suffer.
The main issue is budget. They decided to chase perfection which is insane as far as investment. They bet the bank every single release. Instead they could have gone with a mid to low budget game and placate a niche with a demand already in place. This has the added bonus of allowing you to put the same amount of money into 6-8 games, diversifying the investment so when one of those games fails it does not hurt so much while you can aim at niche audiences with select games... Quit chasing the ENTIRE industry with single titles, I do not care how strong the IP is, this is foolish.
The issue isn't that they remade FF7; it's that they dicked it up with the whole concept of EPISODIC release. It resulted in a bunch of filler content that people despise and boring, redundant gameplay because they needed the filler due to cutting the thing into three games. The episodic idea was the source of the game's failure. When all is said and done, they would have made much more money making a single game than the profit of all three games added up. If it were made as a singular game, there would be no need for checklist formats, Chadley at all, or the excess minigames designed to be frustrating to make you spend more time in them. The filler is low quality and makes players hate the game. None of it would have needed to be there had this been designed as a singular game. There also wouldn't be a big drop-off in sales between titles. Sequels don't sell well, which is the main problem with episodic releases.
Rebirth was a great game. The problem is ps5 exclusitivity.
one of the things too that the gaming industry is struggling against, especially over the past 3-ish years, is that with the way that corporations have been price gouging on basic necessities, people just have less disposable income to put into gaming. So people are more inclined to spend more money on games that continually update and roguelikes that change up a bit every time you play them. and this will only get worse as AAA games are now starting to go up to $70 per game. The cost of a game can be the same as the of a week's groceries for me (a single person) and so if my finances were tighter, it becomes a very real question of buying a new game or buying food.
I do think that we need to lower our standards as players and not demand the flashiest cutscenes or amazing graphics and all the other things that drive up development costs so that developers can make fun games that cost less to make. games that give them more wiggle room on how much profit they have to make so they can take more risks, and more interesting games can be considered successful.
This hits home for me. I have nephews from age 5-12. I tried to get them into FF7 Remake, but halfway through they just go back to computer games. It's sad that because our younger generation can be pulled in a different direction from wanting quality and good storytelling games, that we will have less of those games.
They too young for ff
Define computer games. It's too broad of a term to toss around.
@@jefftheindianchief8279 stuff like Valorant or Team Fight Tactics, Minecraft. Stuff that is repetitive but may not be optimized in terms of graphics or storytelling. And I have nothing against computer games, as I used to play League of Legends. I just find it sad when there isn't a balance and these kinds of games push out quality games like FF7 Rebirth
Well, I never liked Fortnite & similar games... This makes me like it even less. I play games for story and music, which I consider to be art. Fortnite has everything but a good story... It's literally killing the art of game making and gaming. One of my favorite art forms...
i don't care about fortnite either but just cuz it's not the type of game that you prefer it doesn't mean that it's killing art, at least not cuz of its gameplay. one would argue that the most important part of a game is the gameplay, not the story and music, those are there to elevate the gameplay, not to be the gameplay. the true art of making a game would mean making great gameplay. a telltale game that has a good story and u just click one of 4 dialogues is barely considered a game imo, at that point one might as well just go watch a movie. ofc there are games that put everything together, like elden ring, with great story, visuals, music and gameplay which can be considered the peak of artistic expression in gaming but they wouldn't be that if the gameplay was lacking and wasn't at the forefront.
9:45 This is why I always do my best to buy my games on or as near release day as possible, at full price. I only buy used games when the game is out of print.
I would be fine paying $100 for quality games, such as FF16 and FF7Rem/Reb.
Such a goodboy...who's a goodboy?
Remember what Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata said years ago about fun gameplay being more important than graphical fidelity?
I feel like indie games have also created an impact because their lower budgets mean lower prices.
You can get freaking insane deals on them when they're already cheap, and people will buy them for the low cost without even playing them.
When the price of other games is so low, spending the $70 on a AAA title you're not sure you'll like feels like a huge risk
They didn't make sales because they released it on console. I would have bought a copy for me and a friend on PC if they offered it. People don't game on console anymore, I don't buy games unless it's on Steam.
Well now it’ll come to pc and other consoles
Sorry, "people don't game on console anymore"? What?
@@glumbumble I way misspoke on that. I meant to say there is a large PC gamer market and consoles take a lot of tuning to get games to play well on them.
There are many PC gamers that aren't particularly interested in buying consoles but would like to play these console exclusives. I originally bought a PS5 solely to play Sony exclusives. Now, many of the Sony exclusives I was interested in are on (or coming to) PC. Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, FF7 Remake & Rebirth, God of War, Horizon, etc. Why bother making them exclusives if they're coming to PC sooner or later?
Considering the budgets needed to develop these games, it's just hurting their bottom line. If they need more sales then they need to make the games available to as many gamers as possible as soon as possible. Interest in any particular game tends to wane within a few weeks to months after its release. Hell, I'm very interested in FF7 Rebirth but I totally forgot that it was out because I rarely log into my PS5 lately.
some people dont want to hear this, but I really think that ending in remake turned off more people than we first thought
I agree 100%. It turned off purists, non-jrpg fans, and anyone else who doesn't like convoluted bs. All in one go they hit every type of fan
@@samoth5161 The saddest thing is the gameplay was so tight, and people would have ignored how linear the first one was if they stuck the landing on the story
Indeed. But there are many aspects to why remake pissed people off, not just the ending. Hell, not being a turn based adventure like original is already divisive, or the story not being a 1 to 1 ratio of the original. Even if we say the gameplay is good or story is great, that isn't what a lot of people were asking for. I love the games, but it is what it is.
Which is not true. But whatever.
Can someone explain to me why they don't wait until it comes out on PC to make assumptions on how much they will really make with the game?
I have a 14-year-old son. After a horrid divorce in which I couldn't see him for over 3 years at one point he got pretty into Fortnite, then later Madden and CoD as well. By the time he was 10 I was finally back in his life to an extent, and by 13 we were together at least a couple of days per week. When he was young (3, 4, 5) he would beg me to play Skyrim and, of all things, Deus Ex: Human Revolution where I would always have to knock human enemies out since I didn't want his to see me stabbing people or shooting them. Lol, anyway, he could sit there for hours, and at 4 and 5 I would let him fight various enemies in Skyrim which was a riot. But when I was chopped out of his life for a while there, it was pretty much just Fortnite for a while there.
Then at 13 he started playing Skyrim again on his own, then out of the blue he decided to start on a Metal Gear game on his Playstation, then the Gears of War series on his Series X...so I'm on the phone with him and he's literally confused after I told his mother to uninstall Baldur's Gate 3 on his PC bc, hey, he is only 14...but he asks me why almost every new game _"is trash"_ and I didn't have much of an answer besides _"Idk man, DEI I guess."_ He doesn't play Fortnite anymore, or at least it is incredibly rare, but if companies like Square want to sell more games they need to be realistic *AND* make games *the majority* of people will want to play.
That doesn't mean not including woke shit, it means not excluding things considered...err...not "woke"? Seriously, that's pretty much it. As for the sales delusion, using the stock market as a baseline is idiotic. Take out Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft and we are up 3% over the last 2 years. Take out the top 7 stocks and the US market is down 2%. So if the market goes down, and it will, probably sooner than later, then they would consider a game a success if it lost money? That is what he is saying. What happens when the mortgage backed securities bubble bursts again? The AI hot air balloon filled with *THOUSANDS* of startups? The market drops 25% overnight and 50% over a couple of years and...Square is fine investing $200M to only see $100M back? They need to worry about making good games and keeping budgets reasonable, not doubling their money in profits and getting a 3% APR ESG loan instead of a 4.7% one not based on the amount of DEI they can squeeze in at the expense of removing things the majority of their fans want.
Good gameplay, good story premise, exceptional writing, decent graphics, beautiful people. It's not to complicated. That appeals to pretty much everyone of every age *if* they like that genre of game.
Whats up with gamers always acting like they speak for the gaming community as a whole
In 1995 I imported Chrono Trigger to Sweden for $80. $80 in 1995 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $164.59 today, an increase of $84.59 over 29 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.52% per year between 1995 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 105.74%. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Except that game cost $45 dollars in the United States. Most people weren’t paying that.
It was not uncommon to see "killer app" SNES games like Super Mario RPG selling for 70 to 80 bucks, and at N64's launch you could not get SM64 or Pilotwings 64 for less than that. But when it became obvious that the PS1 wasn't going away, that forced the prices down to this day.
@@nansi113 It was selling for $80 in mid-sized U.S. cities on release. And Sega Genesis RPGs going back to Phantasy Star II were similarly priced. Shining Force II was $80. Phantasy Star IV was $100 in the same fiscal year as Chrono Trigger.
People forget that TV space is limited and you have streaming apps competing for screen time along with gaming and CZcams likes. It is no longer a business model that is which game is going to take the attention of our gamers, but which application is more likely to have the screen time that my game can have!
I would pay $120 for ff. I’d rather that then it die out. Even if it’s not as groundbreaking as it used to be. There’s stuff I don’t like about rebirth, but it is actually groundbreaking. It is fresh and an incredible experience. Maybe we should introduce a “tipping” function like in store retailers are all doing now lol.