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Square Enix share price drops amid claims Final Fantasy 16 didn’t meet ‘high end’ expectations
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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After months of hearing about how Final Fantasy "needed" to become Devil May Cry because RPGs are dead, watching Buldurs Gate succeed and FF16 fall short of expectations is kind of cathartic.
Edit: I'm aware this Square's projections, not actual sales. The point still stands that they made a shift in genre thinking they would unlock a wider audience than they got. Then a shit ton of think pieces and reviews and FF14 fans came out spouting this nonsense about how turn based RPGs are old hat and Square NEEDED to abandon it to hook modern gamers.
Then Boulder Gate drops and proves every single one of them wrong, while Square is wondering why they fell short.
FF16 sold really well though. Square Enix likes making unrealistic expectations for their games and they do it every time. I don’t think they even believe their expectations are real. The real reason for their share loss is increased operational costs.
FF15 sold 5 million copies on the first day, while FF16 took a few days to get to 3 million. It's not selling as well as 15. Anecdotally I'm seeing far less discussion of it online than when 15 came out.
They also have more competition this year. Personally I won't get it till it's on sale because I haven't enjoyed a FF game much in a long time, so I don't really trust them anymore even if critic reviews are positive.
The article states that the 15 sales were for multiple platforms and 16 is for one platform.
Looks like we've found the reason
Capcom was guilty of this 10-15 years ago with the infamous "Capcom test" where they would release a small project or re-release a game in a franchise they were floating around ideas for a new entry in, and if the small game or re-release didn't sell basically like a new AAA game, the franchise didn't get the new entry. This was part of how the company was basically reduced to only Resident Evil and Street Fighter for a time. Fortunately they eventually snapped out of it, probably when they realized you can't make the kind of money you used to make when you're effectively killing off all but two of your IPs due to stupid sales expectations. Square Enix will probably hit that point eventually as well.
Feels more like general human behavior, and less specific to only making games. People can get quite lost in those ways. But as you've said, I'm glad they've snapped out of it. Just in time for me to get a remaster, Ghost Trick! Not exactly groundbreaking here, but it ain't SF or RE lol.
Yeah. What I wanted was something like the graphics of FF7 remaster with the underlying game elements of FFX, the whacky classes of FFTA2 and FFX-2 and the scriptable party behavior of FFXII. And it's just nothing like that.
And here I am just wishing they'd make another final fantasy exactly like FFIX.
Back then I wasn't a fan of the cartoony character design, but I definitely had my fill of hyper-realism in Final Fantasy.
As someone who has FFVI as his most replayed final fantasy, the return to cartoony that FFIX offered was such a bliss to me but I remember that it was really controversial back then.
IIRC people who prefered PSx era final fantasy didn't care much for 9 while those who prefered SNES era generally liked it.
While FF6 is somewhat cartoony with its sprites, I think that's less of an artistic choice but the result of the limitations of the SNES. The portraits and artwork for it are much more realistic. But it makes sense that players would get this impression of a cartoony style, the end result in the game is what it is.
Like with Wind Waker, FF9's reception at the time was overly critical of it, and today we criticize that reaction for being shallow, but one thing to keep in mind is that back then realistic-looking games were just starting to become a possibility, and people wanted to see how far we could get. The frustration was misguided but understandable in context.
In retrospect, as much as I keep some fondness for FF8, FF9's style was a much better fit for the limitations of the PS1. It has aged much more gracefully.
I’m wishing that they’d make one like Lost Odyssey. But 9 would be great too.
Love list Odyssey
Sign me the fuck up.
Take my money
Baldurs gate sold great for larian, those are square enix numbers, and not numbers that would cover the investment square makes into their games. You know this surely.
I'm sure you are also aware of how many turn based games square puts out every year? Spoiler it's more than everyone else.
This sounds like a strawman to me. Maybe you meant that people were claiming that "JRPGs are dead"? In which case, holding up Baldur's Gate 3 of evidence to counter that seems strange. But I haven't heard anyone saying that RPGs in general are a dying genre.
The whole argument really is strange and all speculation. There’s plenty of areas where FFXVI and SE arguably fell short, but even by this guys own admission in his edit, the game met projections. If they were expecting to “unlock more,” those projections would have been higher.
If you look at their recent financial report this seems to be nothing to do with FFXVI as sales in that “HD Gaming” and “Merchandise” area are up. Literally every other area is down, even MMO sales (FFXIV).
Whether people like the game or not, it seems to have helped prevent SE suffer from a worse dip.