@gloomy_gus Hey it’s fun….but they just won’t stop talking. There were some real gems like the prince saying prepare an angry letter while the castle was being invaded(so soldiers told him it’s a little late for that) But we don’t need 3 consecutive opera speeches around that when I just want to actually get in the the siege battle. Maybe a Circle Strategy would’ve danced aRound that issue?
"Hmm... Most people don't know what nfts are, and a lot of the people who do know what they are don't like them. Let's go all in! What could go wrong?'' - square enix.
More than a decade ago Square enix said that their players didn't want games as a service style games. Fast forward to today, they survived last year canceling however many mobile and GAAS titles and now they're completely rejiggering the whole thing. I'm going to assume a lot of what was canceled were those kind of games.
Suicide Squad failed even harder than their failed Avengers game, I'd be amazed if that's what they're doubling down on, but I'm totally unsurprised if they did.
@@devonwilliams5738cause when suicide squad was first announced/revealed it wasn't revealed to be a live service game yet, so the hype was still there... then they killed all that hype when it got closer to launch
@@devonwilliams5738considering WB is doubling down on live service games even after that disaster, I wouldn’t be surprised if Square kept trying as well. Keep in mind that this is the same company that has continued to pursue NFTs even after it has long since crashed and burned.
I think this is a big part of why Square Enix is having issues right now: Their marketing is atrocious. Nobody seems to even know Foam Stars exists, and now I'm wondering just how many other games they've made recently that I didn't know about.
IMO there's probably a ton of reasons for this: 1. The biggest - they wasted a bunch of money trying to go into NFTs when they were first emerging, and have nothing to show for it because NFTs have always been a scam. 2. As you said, Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth being PS5 exclusive suppressed their sales numbers. There's still just not a ton of PS5s in the wild compared to PS4s. 3. Also as you said, Forspoken and Foamstar. But also, Avenger's, Babylon's Fall, etc. Square NEEDS to rethink their business strategy. Besides Pokemon, they've essentially had a monopoly on JRPGs in the West - 20 years ago, franchises like Persona and Yakuza would kill to sell even a quarter of what Final Fantasy X did. Now, Persona 5 Royal outsold FFVII Remake, and Persona 3 Reload is going toe to toe with Rebirth. Yakuza has grown exponentially with Like a Dragon and LAD: Infinite Wealth. Square aren't the end-all-be-all kings of JRPGs anymore.
Honestly I think they can partly fix the FF remakes sales numbers by putting them on PC day one. Unfortunately with the PS5 drowning in 3rd person action rpgs with limited exploration and a huge focus on story, it’s a tough market which would be alleviated by PC players. I’d say they also need a new franchise to get people excited. KH4 isn’t bad but if they continually double down on existing franchises AAA franchises it’s just going to end badly. It’s better if they make a AA hit at a lower price because of how gamers are looking to be more cost effective rn.
I really have dearly enjoyed Square's low-mid range JRPGs. Bravely Default, Triangle Strategy, OPT/2, the Pixel remasters, these really feel right at home next to the grander releases.
I disagree only with the Pixel Remasters; most of them look worse than previous versions we already got, like the PSP versions of FF1, FF2 and FF4, and also have less content too. The re-orchestrated music is good for the most part, but everything else is subpar compared to what we've previously gotten. They could've saved a lot of money if they just ported the PSP versions instead.
@@tamerkoh Hard hard agree, the pixel remasters look like ass. I hate how oversaturated everything is, it hurts my eyes and is just aesthetically unappealing to look at.
Agreed on the pixel remasters, they look absolutely atrocious. I don't get why anyone would hype them up in any way beyond availability on modern consoles.
One thing that I hope Squenix does with this is that they get their shit together when it comes to budgeting and resource allocation. When you hear that some of their games sold 4, 5 or 6 million copies within a year and they still consider the games as underperforming it means either you had wild, unrealistic expectations from the game or went so over budget that you needed 8+ million copies just to break even...
It probably is unrealistic expectation, because I cannot conceive their lower budget titles not being profitable. Unless they are expecting 400% return on investment, which is flat out ridiculous. 100% to 150% is achievable and I'm sure most of their budget titles do achieve that return.
@@ElJosher They are profitable, but not profitable enough to carry a company as huge as Square Enix, specially with the losses of the bigger budget games. The thing is, their expectations may be unrealistic, but unfortunately, they are also necessary.
It's definitely a budget issue. They are so overblown that "unrealistic expectations" are kind of necessary. Keep in mind this is a problem that's affecting almost the entire AAA industry, not just Square Enix.
After the failure of several live service titles, NFT's crashing and burning, and generally just being unfocused. It just tells me this company is terrible with overall management
Too many mediocre or terrible games is what cause their downfall: Babylon's Fall Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (would had been great if they didn't attempt to bring all that multiverse nonsense into the game) Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins Avengers Chocobo GP (this would had been a great entry had they not litter micro transactions on it) Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy The Diofield Chronicle Star Ocean: The Divine Force FoamStars Forspoken Balan Wonderworld Kingdom Hearts Series: Cloud Edition
It's worth noting that the Super Mario RPG Remake has sold over 3 million units since launch. Granted that these sales are helped by the Mario IP, but this showcases that theres still room in their lineup for smaller scale and cheaper to develop games.
Don't think Square-Enix was that involved in Super Mario RPG Remake's development aside from giving Nintendo the rights for their original characters, the remake itself was done by ArtPiazza, who were responsible for the Dragon Quest remakes for the DS and 3DS
If it weren't for the AI crap, I would love a Super Mario RPG 2, but I'm not supporting a company that relies so heavily on AI as Square Enix seems to be trying to.
Don't forget, Square Enix is still committed to NFTs, unlike the rest of the gaming industry that gave up on it last year. Throw that with how, as you said, companies NEVER seem to learn the right thing from a failed project, I suspect bad things to come.
Remember jumping into the latest Trend bandwagon won't make you open minded, it shows that you don't know what you're talking about, Executives loves Trend and jargon because they're clueless about their own product, they can't contribute anything because they lack the skill. they want to hog all of the credit by sabotaging the whole project and turned it into their narcissistic Trendy project the same is also can be said about AI as well
I swear, part of the problem with modern Squeenix games is the titles. Like what the hell is "Various Daylife?" That is not a title that makes me want to know more, that sounds like some Engrish gobbledygook.
Apparently a contributor to this was that even though FF7 Rebirth did incredibly well. It still didn’t meet the numbers they needed. The problem with that was the numbers they wanted surpassed the amount of PS5s actually sold. So either someone at Square can’t do math or I’m missing something.
@@twincherries6698 A bit exaggerated. But it still got listed at 2nd biggest launch in Japan. Not worldwide. Also a lot of the initial numbers were specifically accounting for physical copies and not digital. Yes, it was beaten by 16. Still doesn’t change the fact that they expected more copies to sell than actual consoles sold.
FF, Dragon Quest, Chrono, Sleeping Dogs, etc. - such great franchises. Sad to see a company who is capable of great titles lose their way. Hopefully they can bounce back.
I don't get this. Square Enix makes some of the most "obviously Japanese" games around. Pretty much their entire library is JRPGs, a genre distinction that people make specifically because of how much those differ from western made RPGs. To this day you hear people complaining about how "anime" FF, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest and so on are. When I think Japanese games that come very close to mainstream western titles in style and tone, stuff like Resident Evil comes to mind not Square Enix series... Am I missing something?
You can't release a massive RPG every month. People won't be done with the last one. For Square they've almost singlehandedly saturated the RPG market themselves so they kind of NEED to make other games if they aren't happy remaining exactly the size they'd stay as the RPG only company.
Whoa, whoa Octopath Traveler 1 has sold over 3 million units. I think team Asano games are fine. They don't cost much to make so 1 million copies at least is probably a great return on investment. ROI is far more important than actual sales figures.
I was wondering where Arlo got hia numbers coz Octopath was a huge hit and created a cult following that went on to support Triangle Strategy and Octopath 2. If Square drops that developer I bet Nintendo will acquire it.
@@pinoyreformat I don't think most people who liked Octopath Traveler had interest in Triangle Strategy,it's an entirely different genre. If they made it a Final Fantasy Tactics game from the first day of development, it might've done better. Unlike Octopath I, II and TS were in budget bins super quickly, even with Octopath II having a PS5 version.
@@Kniffel101 I don't know where you're getting your numbers cause both of them sold over a million copies within the first few months of their launch date, and both were charting on sales lists in Japan in their release week. Triangle Strategy was definitely not a breakout hit and I doubt they expected it to be, but it still sold decently well and got great reviews, plus getting that Game Awards nomination didn't hurt either.
@@Kniffel101 It's weird how in general how they can't seem leverage Final Fantasy well at all. Like you said, FF Tactics 2 would've sold significantly more than Triangle Strategy and all you really needed was a name change and some added FF tropes here and there. I also find it baffling how they never made a classic style Final Fantasy that targeted the Switch. Just one game like that could have probably outsold most of their other 2DHD output combined.
Really wish they would pivot to MORE, middle-tier games. This chase after big-budget high fidelity games is so dangerous and often has not produced great games (in my opinion).
Absolutely, the resource bloat not only kills budgets and schedules (which is part of why generative AI is so appealing to the beancounters), it also railroads the company, tying them to ideas that probably should have been culled or heavily reconsidered before winding up in Sunk Cost land (like Forspoken). Smaller projects might mean less "swinging for the fences", but it also means more agile ability to react to the market or even get ahead of it. There are *far* too many failed film people in games, too, trying to make the wrong sort of projects in the wrong medium. Nothing wrong with some big ideas, but games simply aren't film, and that weird fetish they have for high polycount and "cinematic experiences" doesn't really make for good *games*.
don't expect much new from octopath. the devs behind it used to be owned by square but were recently bought but another company, so any new octopath games will be developed by people who didn't make the first 2 as square would still own the rights to the ip
Hard stop whiplash! I'm currently 40 hours into Octopath Traveler II and loving it. Nearly every "Team Asano" game has resonated very deeply with me: Octopath Traveler, Live A Live, Triangle Strategy, even Bravely Default (I've only done Bravely Second End Layer and Bravely Default II, I missed the first Bravely Default). I feel like they are buying Square Enix a lot of goodwill with gamers and selling enough to justify. I'm hoping that we're getting rid of the Forspoken/Babylon's Fall type misfires. But i'm extremely worried that we're gonna see Asano go Indie in the next year or two.
The thing is: It resonates with YOU. But YOU ARE but a small fraction of the current set of potential customers. You, me and most of the almost 40' persons that behave as a "audience", but not as buyers. The majority of the current market is composed of teenagers and Young adults - up to 25 years old. And this group will be the ones playing It, but not necessarily buying It - most of them will get It after It being bought by a older person that have little to none interest in games. In the 90's I was playing their games - but the one buying It was my mom (and guess what: she never tive a fuck on what I was enjoying there with the game or not, she just bought It to me) I am saying ALL this to get to this point: we need to be careful about what we desire - there is a risk we actually get It! And that IS what is happening - Square MADE what we desired, but what we desired is the exactly path to their fall; because we wish they never change and they keep developing games that please us (hence, products tailored to satisfy the expectation of a nostalgic, small and not that engaged group of persons that is not buying anymore). This occurs, but they were meant to make games that Will be bought by people that does not necessarily have to play - while the new players should be the ones yelling to the real buyers to buy It, like a kid crying or this kind of "incentive" so the parents give them money. If that was the case for Square they would be ok nowadays - being some kind of EA of RPG or anything like that. But we got what we desired and It is not as good as the nostalgia make It seems like.
the thing that urks me about Forspoken the most is that they could've finished heavily anticipated/requested FFXV DLC instead and thus complete FFXV.. but Noooooo
They'd probably have made bank with the Kingdom Hearts series on Switch if they had just brought them over normally, even digital-download-only. But nooooo, "ports are too haaaaard, let's do Cloud versions!" They need a good restructuring, sounds like.
KH3 definitely would’ve still been cloud-only in that case, and the PC releases indicate Squeenix’s technical staff wouldn’t have been up to the job of Switch ports for KH1 and KH2: those PC releases were actually done by Epic Games
@@crimson-foxtwitch2581 They should have outsourced the job to someone more reliable, then. I'm not willing to give Squeenix a pass on this one; it was a stupid decision to make them Cloud versions.
@@smashbrolink They did actually outsource a company to do Kingdom Hearts ports that were actually good…only for it to be KH1, KH2, and KH3 to PC by Epic Games. That’s why those ports are EGS exclusives
@@jaretco6423 This is very true. At most the DQ3 remake will get pushed back a bit because of SE restructuring itself and what not, but the DQ3 remake will be very easy money for SE because of DQ’s popularity in Japan.
Optimistically we could assume this means they have decided to axe all of their NFT projects realizing its a dead market. Pessimistic we could assume they decided to stop making single player games except big ones and focus completely on live services. Guess only time will tell.
A bit disingenuous to say games like Octopath and Triangle Strategy don't perform all that great and struggle to break 1 million copies. Like, I know the kinds of RPGs you're talking about, but just a reminder that the former has sold well over 3 million copies back in September 2022 and the latter crossed over 1 million in it's first two WEEKS. These are not crazy numbers or anything like that, but they're far from struggling for games of their scale in a genre as diminishing as turn based RPGs, which Square has deemed successful in their reports on them. Not all small to medium scale Square RPGs sell that good. Just that not all of the sell like crap and the Octopath and Triangle Strategy were not good examples to showcase your point.
even those that didnt sell that well, dont look like cost anywhere near enough to be a flop either. even games like diofield and triangle strategy look like sold enough to at least break even, if not more. live a live also seem to sell well enough, and they had good word of mouth. they arent juggernaughts, sure, but i doubt they were money sinkers either.
@@liammcnicholas918 That's TOMB RAIDER, it don't have anywhere near the same budgets or scope. You can't compare a full AAA experience with all detail and promotion those usually get to Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. You're gonna break the scale. Tomb Raider is playing in Pokemon and Uncharted territory. You gotta do numbers in the double digits for those games to even consider breaking even. Much less becoming a hit. Which is why Square deemed Octopath and such successes and Tomb Raider a flop. We're going for National/Local Champion not World Champion.
I wouldn't worry a ton about those mid-budget Switch rpgs yet. As part of this restructuring, Asano, the guy behind them, was promoted. While it's possible they just want to keep him at the company, I think that indicates that Squenix sees the value in his projects. (I am not an analyst)
and i doubt they had that many projects to reach that amount anyways. this feel like them finally waking up and ditching their nonsensical focus on NFT they keep talking about(without showing anything either). nfts are pretty much dead, so i guess is, they are finally pulling the plug on that AAA level NFT game they kept talking about. now THAT is something i can see ballooning into the 100M+ range.
I don't think the HD2D rpgs "only" selling around one million copies on switch is much of an issue. At least they're selling. Games like Harvestella, Diofield, NEOTWEWY, Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean Divine Force etc. failing to sell at all is probably a bigger issue for them. I don't think any of those games have cleared the million copies sold mark, and some of them were definitely more expensive than something like Triangle Strategy or Bravely Default.
even those games, i feel like sold well enough to not be considered flops. most of them was also well reviewed. and did not cost anywhere near as much to produce either. they may not be breaking the million threshold. but i do think they did at the very least paid for themselves. specially since most of them are avaliable in multiple consoles.
I think the restructuring has been a very long time coming. Squeenix has seemed like it has been mismanaged even as far back as the merger. When it was just Squaresoft making Final Fantasy, the releases were almost annual. Ever since they merged into Square Enix, almost every single Final Fantasy game has faced some kind of major issue during development and faced significant delays. Tons of their projects seem to have bloated budgets that face insurmountable requirements on the return. Some great studios that they've acquired over the years are now dead.
@@QuantumConundrum Im really hopeful for something Ogre Battle to come out since we got the Tactics Ogre Remake two years ago, and Unicorn Overlord (which is very similar to the Ogre Battle games gameplay wise) seems to be selling pretty well.
I bought the remake, but alas I fear that if any game were to be canceled it would be a (hypothetical in development) game like that, or a possible new Front Mission. An old title coming back that didn't really move any big needles, is probably gonna be evaluated as "lacking appeal" or something like that.
@@goranisacson2502 it makes no sense for them to cancel those, as they are too cheap to produce in comparisson with the amount of money they make. pretty much the vast majority of those single and double As games they have released had, at the very least, good reception and sales enough to pay for themselves and a bit more.
I think honestly, Square Enix's biggest issue is over-saturation of its brand. It looks like they're releasing a dozen games a year at this point and it could be catching up with them. I don't thunk they should stop green lighting smaller projects, but stagger releases out more evenly.
The double down on final fantasy 7 content has really bothered me. They decided to split the remake into 3 parts, they remade crisis core and that's not including the mobile nonsense they've been pushing out in-between. Not gonna lie... Kinda sick of final fantasy 7.
Hey Arlo, come play Final Fantasy XIV - Free trial includes the base game, plus two expansions for free with no limit on play time - You can play the entire story solo - It's the best Final Fantasy since IX - It's on PC, XBOX and PlayStation so just chose your platform - It's a content gold mine
Exclusivity is killing games. Either release on PC simultaneously or release on all relevant consoles. Rebirth is game of the year, but only a fraction of gamers are getting it
Insane how Avengers/Forspoken flopping at like 80 million each is what started to kill this company. Them not marketing their good games and overlapping their release days cannibalizing what could be sales isn't helping
forspoken? sure, but avengers at least made some money. it probably got, at least, close to paying itself back. since it did sell well enough for forbes to talk about it in a positive light.
@@marcosdheleno just making a profit is not nearly enough in this industry. It was an Avengers live service game dropped at the height of Marvel hype. By all accounts it should have been a smashing near billion dollar success, and it didn't even make the top 10 in sales in 2020
I think Sony paid a substantial amount of money to have FF7Rebirth exclusive to Playstation. But if that money makes up for the sales numbers? Who knows. I think the PC version will bring some extra money and when all 3 parts are released some will buy the whole bundle. There are more ppl out there who want to wait for all three parts than you might think. Many casuals were surprised that Remake was not the whole story.
The issue is that only once had a timed console exclusive payout deal had its number known to the public, and that was that Nintendo paid Capcom $15m plus free marketing on thier end for Monster Hunter Rise back in 2018 hot off the release of World. Sony likely didn't pay Square enough to cover much of Rebirth's budget, they also could've given Square money for a multi-game deal thai included Rebirth which would be less then doing each game individually, keep in mind Squarehad put out 5 Playstation console exclusives since FF7R1 and with at least one more confirmed, Sony likely at least did the deal for all 3 parts of the FF7 remake trilogy at once. Square likely spent at least $150m (though $200m is more likely) of thier own money to make and market FF7R2, 4 year long dev cycles for a AAA sized game isn't cheap. Considering they make only ~$40 and $49 on physical and digital copies sold at full price respectively, FF7R2 is still a long way from profitability and will need a steam port ASAP with good word of mouth to turn a profit. It's a similar case with FF16 too. I would totally expect part 3 to have it's budget and scope reduced significantly in order to help it be profitable, because it will likely sell even fewer copies.
@@1originalaccountnameI think part three will sell more than 2. Higher install base and such. But part 1 has a big sales surge after 2 came out. So there's a lot going for it.
Making Final Fantasy action based is what turned me off to that series. Then we got Octopath and Triangle and I ate those up. Bought them the weeks they came out. This news worries me cause I was really glad to find my new niche with the turn based HD 2d graphics games. Ugh I hope those don't go away.
those games were huge succesfull games tho, i really hope that Square is just cutting the stuff that really suffered loses and are started by their previos crypto bro CEO.
@@juasjuasi4750 I'm betting it's probably more on the other side of Enix that got sold off. Like he mentions with foamstars and the games that makes you wonder why Square is on the box somehow. Plus if their aiming at the 2.5HD games then man is the DQ 3 Remake fucked
Yeah hard to know exactly how to feel about this. The unique games such as the HD 2.5D ones(or something like that?) are really cool and I hope they don’t cut back on too many good ideas. I hope they don’t go too far with it, really interesting to think about it given lack of info of what was left out of given the chance to release.
Funnily enough, some of the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth development staff said they'll love to remake VI in the same scope as VII, but they admitted it would have to have an even higher scope compared to VII and it would take even longer While I'd like that every Final Fantasy would get the same love and care in regards to a remake compared to VII, I think S-E overdid it and honestly an HD-2D remake of VI would be great, though I think we should wait until the Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake arrives to see how they would tackle VI (PS: I'm aware of the Live-A-Live remake)
Honestly, if they remade FF6 the same way they remade FF7, I wouldn't be interested. It's too different. I just want the game I love, but with an updated presentation. Kinda like FF4 DS.
He had a podcast before, and he did like 18 episodes. It was called ArloCast. He also had a PatreArloCast exclusively for Patreon supporters, but I don't know if he still does that.
Hopefully not, considering those mid-budget games coming to Switch are the ones that are performing well enough (Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default). It's the AAA/AAAA games with underwhelming sales (Forespoken, FF16, FF7R) that is hurting the overall company.
switch support is not ending, it is literally the most popular console in japan, a market that loves these low to mid budget games. They would be stupid to not support it. Also, these mid budget games are definitely making SE profit.
Disappointed Arlo didn't focus of the fact they blew a bunch of cash on NFTs and were developing NFT games. I have a feeling a bunch of the cancelled develop was NFT focused games
It's also worth mentioning that SE just replaces their CEO that was pushing for a lot of nft projects. Beyond that the company is reeling from FF16 being an exclusive and Forspoken being a failure. 7-rebirth will likely make it's money back in time and is very much a point of pride for them. FFXIV, the big mmo, and basically the only SE property that earns money year over year announced that the next expansion will "have more rewards", and the last two have been a little lighter on content than 2017's storm blood, so there's some speculation that it's getting a larger budget in the restructure. I know hearing "Oh the mmo is getting more money" might sound annoying for those that don't play it, but it's actually quite the good game with a reasonable monetization. No gatcha, no pay to win, more than reasonable in game rewards, just a monthly sub and paying for expansion. It embodies the restraint that the rest of SE should be following in this new era for the company.
yep. i also think this is their way of saying they are canceling whatever NFT project they were making. since they did anounce that they were working on some AAA level NFT game. which was also a live service(for obvious reason). those things arent cheap to produce. being MMO-lites. the cost could easily reach the 100M.
I actually loved Harvestella and really want them to make a sequel. It feels like no one even knew it came out, which is just insanity. It also should've launched at $40, in my opinion. It feels like most games, no matter the budget or scale, are priced at $60-70. Those cute RPGs would probably sell so much better if they were around $40-50 at launch.
I know I shouldn’t judge based on another company, especially one that isn’t a video game company… But hearing about 140 million dollars worth of cancellations makes me think of Warner Brothers. And there are no positive comparisons to Warner Brothers right now.
this really sucks for the devs that have been working hard all for nothing and the people that care, but i cant say ill be missing what i felt was their overly-long presences in nintendo directs
Square Enix has a history of overspending on overambitious projects, getting burned, and having to restructure, lather, rinse and repeat. This stuff has happened so many times now.
I certainly hope DQ 12 hasn't been cancelled, but it's no secret that the game has been having MAJOR development issues and its producer was just replaced about a month ago. If there's any major project at SqEnix that's in prime position for "cancellation", or more likely a wholesale restarting of development à la Metroid Prime 4, it's Dragon Quest 12. And to your point on SqEnix releasing a bunch of decent, smaller RPGs that just aren't selling well. If one of these cancelled projects turns out to be a Final Fantasy Tactics remake, I will be devastated. They've given us new releases for every Strategy RPG IP they own, and even created a few new IPs along the way, and they still have yet to give us the one we all actually wanted to begin with.
There's also the worry the deaths of the main music composer and lead character artist/designer affected things... We don't know if they did all that was needed before they passed
@@SorcererLance Yeah, I suppose there's that element of it as well. The character designs I'm not too worried about, because I feel like the principal character designs would have been a fairly early development thing. Also there's always Toriyama's team at Bird Studio and the longtime Dragon Quest artists at SqEnix to fall back on. The music on the other hand I doubt made it very far along, seeing as Sugiyama passed away mere months after the initial reveal of DQ 12. I know Sugiyama had a protege of sorts in Hayato Matsuo, but I think most of his body of work has been in the form of arrangements, not compositions. There are other composers out there who could probably fit the bill, though. Manami Matsumae comes to mind, who I thought did a pretty good job composing for Dragon Quest Swords. I guess we'll just have to wait and see who they're able to find, but I can guarantee you Sugiyama will not be the only credited composer on DQ 12 (and most of the Sugiyama tracks will be legacy music and not new compostions).
@@SeafoamSmiles unfortunately, recent official news revealed the opposite turned out to be true; Sugiyama already had all the music done, but Toriyama's art designs were left unfinished.
@@SorcererLance This is going to be a bit of a long reply, and I apologize in advance. lol I assume you're talking about that post on Reddit that got a lot of traction recently. The original poster has since edited their post to adress the fact that the article they linked was from 2 months ago (on the day Toriyama's death was announced), so it's not exactly new information. Also, and I don't know if the original poster can read Japanese and can translate the text of the article better than Google can, but when I clicked through to the article to read it for myself using Google's page translate I saw nothing in the body of text that explicitly stated that Sugiyama finished his work, or that Toriyama did not. The Reddit poster's summary of the article is a bit misleading. Here's a copy paste from the article as it relates to Sugiyama (via Google Translate): "When Koichi Sugiyama passed away in September 2021, it was said that the composition for Dragon Quest 12 was Sugiyama's last work." Personally, I don't interpret that as, "He completed his work before his death". I read that as, "This is the last project he contributed to". It doesn't actually say whether the soundtrack was completed or not. And here's a copy paste from the article as it related to Toriyama (via Google Translate): "The company said it would refrain from providing detailed answers regarding Toriyama's involvement in the development of Dragon Quest 12 and the impact of Toriyama's death on development." This feels more like a Japanese respect thing where you don't comment on the guy's work immediately after his death (remember, the article is from March 8th). Is it possible he still had contributions to make, sure. But I don't read that as a confirmation either way. It's literally the company saying, "We're not going to talk about him right now".
I don’t think Dragon Quest 12 has been canceled. It’s one of the last guaranteed money goose square Enix has left, but restart on development could be possible. The bigger thing I’m worried about with DQ is does it still have the cultural dominance in Japan it once had, considering it’s been so long since 11. The series is really not that popular in the west, so if they start losing the Japanese audience, it’s kind of dead in the water.
That is worrying. My fear is they will cancel all of their smaller games and zero in on Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts from now on. Getting bought out by Sony is a distinct possibility now. That would be a nightmare.
I sincerely hope that they continue the Voice of Cards series. That series came out and took me by storm. It was such a fun time even if it was a traditional RPG setting. But, man, as a busy parent and full time worker, it was great to come home and just sit in that world for a while.
Arlo, I respectfully disagree with most everything you said about those so called "little RPGs". And that's aside from the fact that those games are far from little in both scope and effort put into them. Not sure if your info is old or just incorrect but both Octopath games sold well. As of 2022 OT 1 sold over 3 million copies. OT2 cleared the 1 million mark at its 4th month since release. Octopath Traveler also has a decently successful mobile game so I suppose it's safe as a franchise especially if your assumption that it operates on a smaller budget is correct. For Triangle Strategy I am not that sure really. It sold 1 million in its first year which is not half as bad given that it is a tactical RPG. TRPGs are notoriously bad sellers in general so it's par for the course, I guess. What is most important, these are 60 dollars games. Not sure if you remember this quote from almost a decade ago but back then Nintendo reported that they need to sell 3 million copies of Breath of the Wild in order to recoup their losses. I assume Breath of the Wild had a way bigger budget than any of the mentioned RPGs. If that was the case, I think they should all be profitable for Square Enix. Whether they decide to ditch this entire branch of games under Team Asano and make them work on some aspect of the next big Dragon Fantasy Hearts colab game, to make mega profits by selling 10s of millions from just a single title, or not, it will be a paradigm shift that would not be driven by those games being unprofitable.
To be fair Hollow Knight is a rather small game in terms of assets and gameplay mechanics. Especially if you exclude all the DLC (which you should if you're going to say the crowdfunding campaign was the entire budget). That works fine for a metroidvania, but a JRPG really needs to have a lot of content.
@@VitalVampyr people also forget that the original FF7 was one of the most expensive games ever made for the longest time. and that was back when money had a much bigger value as well.
Hoping this doesn't impact the SaGa series. Emerald Beyond is such a gem but also so niche. Hopefully its low budget will keep it safe from cuts, alongside Kawazu's status as such a big name in the company.
I think Square Enix has a serious marketing problem, because I haven't even heard of most of their current games and the ones I have heard of don't sound interesting at all. Like what the hell is "Triangle Strategy?" Whose idea was it to call it that? That is not a title that evokes any kind of interest. A title like "Final Fantasy" instantly grabs your attention in a really positive way. And honestly, I think the fatal blow here was probably Forespoken. That game seemed like a big deal for Square Enix, and it just did not land at all. People are so utterly exhausted by the "Default DEI Heroine" and MCU / Rick-and-Morty quippy writing, and Forespoken tried to do that crap right when it was becoming most insufferable. I watch Clownfish TV, and they recently commented that Square Enix could just make a new low-budget 2D Final Fantasy in the spirit of the SNES era, because that's the kind of thing people are into these days. And I agree, they could set aside a small team and basically make the kind of Final Fantasy they would have made 30 years ago. Make it on the cheap, sell it for like $15-20, like an indie game.
Front Mission 3 Remastered too probably and this is infuriating. You have to be pretty dumb to remake the inferior 1 and 2, be surprised they didn't sell enough (you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to realize they wouldn't), and proceed by cancelling the masterpiece that is 3 and that fans were waiting for. I've never seen a company be ran by such monkeys. And now, because their experimentations like Octopath, Triangle Strategy, etc were subpar because they completely forgot about things like pacing and having to grab the player in the first few minutes, they will probably just copy what sells. Say hello to more button-mashing called FF.
@@armorvilTS and OT are subpar experiments?? But they have dedicated fan bases that you can see in this common section right now, and they were both financial successes due to their smaller budgets. You might not like them, but that doesn’t change that many do and that they did make money.
It sucks a bit they might be hurting the 2.5 HD games, they are all so beautiful and been fun to play, along with them exploring their old ideas they don’t seem to want to make anymore (Aka BD being old FF games, Octopath being Live A Live, Triangle strategy being FF tactics) As someone who has played most of these it sucks cause these are solid to great games (Octopath 2 is an very good game) One note thought the series director for Bravely Default did say they had something to show off this year for an announcement so we might get one more game in that series or an remaster off the 3DS
One thing I'd love to see them change in the future about remasters: provide more content and quality over an entirely new genre of game. It's the same sort of thing I have with live action movies/shows for pop media rn, changing the format doesn't automatically make it better. Like it definitely can but do it sparingly and only when something else isn't working. An example of this method working wonders for a port/remaster: Miitopia. They gave more content that was relevant to what people liked about the original including outing tickets for relationship interactions, an insanely in-depth mii editor for all the custom character making, and a horse companion that adds a lot of additional fun factor to the gameplay with an entirely new dungeon at the end to motivate the core fanbase of the game to replay it. They didn't change how the game worked or any of its base content, but made it run/look far better than what they could pull off on the 3DS. As a result, the port did great in comparison to the 3DS release and had a total resurgence in popularity when it came out on youtube. I'm not saying the game is perfect or comparable to square quality RPGs, just an example I'm knowledgeable enough about to use here bc I really enjoy it and loved the remaster even more than the original in a lot of ways.
Arlo, you are the best little monster on UA-cam. I love these frequent videos, but if you ever get tuckered out, take time for yourself. You won’t make any of us upset if you take things easy to stay healthy at any point. That said, you are loved and appreciated.
By "HD games" they probably mean their standard crop of ultra realistic graphics instead of 2.5D like Octopath, Triangle and Bravely Default. Which is a shame, since those projects are actually really good games, much better than trash like Forspoken ...
To be honest, alot of the reaction to forespoken was people being either sexist or racist because faye is a POC woman. They complained about the dialogue but then go and like Marvel movies and the scenes people cherry picked where 3 cutscenes taken from vastly big chunks of the game. The vocal minority isn't always the good reception to look at. For example look at Eiyuden Chronicle:: Hundred heroes, that game is getting negative press right now! Because one of the title characters is a black girl, and people are saying because of her it'll fail and people should boycott it etc, but they haven't played it and it's not out as of this comment's conception. I've seen people hate on forespoken then play it and say they love it and it's because people didn't bother giving it a chance. Sadly it's not just press in this instance, and we need to address the elephant in the room that is *prejudice.* [Addition] For example you point out the fear of them possibly cancelling some good games but those were just concepts you don't know if they're good or not, it's just air, just names but forespoken was right there and for all your open mindedness- you didn't give it a chance. You call it cringe but you loved pokemon scarlet and violet and that had WAY more cringe humor and bad dialogue. I think people jumped the gun and didn't bother because they saw a few silly cutscenes, and you know what? I like that Faye didn't have the perfect quip, I like that she wasn't another stoic protagonist that we so commonly get nowadays. And because of the prejudice, the lack of open mindedness, the lack of care...we probably lost that forever. we sadly lost.
It also makes Sqaure more complicit. Now, they're more likely to dig their heels in and refuse to try new things. They'll feel justified in not making games with dark skinned poc because of this reaction, when it should be incentive to make more and weed out the undesirables in your fanbase.
Sad for people on the design/development teams that get their projects cancelled, but I really respect Square/Enix for their quality and consistency so I wish them all luck.
this seems really bad, but could actually be a good thing in the long run. it's one of those things that we won't know until afterwards if it was a good decision.
not sure what all goes into your decision making, but this vid feels like it would have been right at home on the main channel. just a solid discussion video about a really interesting topic
its honestly impressive to see square still standing, i swear any time a new game releases whether good or bad all i see is them saying how they lost 60 quintillion dollars and have -5 bajillion current player counts and then 1 month later they just have a new AAA game hitting the market with $800 "micro" transactions just to repeat the process all over again.
This is slightly scary to me. Obviously we don't know what they are canceling or not making anymore but some of their best games in recent years have all been their "smaller" titles. Just last year Octopath 2, Star Ocean 2 Remake, Theatrhythm FBL and Paranormasight were all incredible.
I knew the moment SE said 3.4 million units in 1 month on Tomb Raider 2013 was considered "poor sales", that the bubble has been ready to burst for a long time.
There goes all the different shapes in the Project Stategy Series.
I'm waiting for Dodecahedron Strategy
How could they do this to project rhombicosidodecahedron strategy....
That's fine, I played the demo and that game was boring as hell.
@gloomy_gus
Hey it’s fun….but they just won’t stop talking. There were some real gems like the prince saying prepare an angry letter while the castle was being invaded(so soldiers told him it’s a little late for that)
But we don’t need 3 consecutive opera speeches around that when I just want to actually get in the the siege battle.
Maybe a Circle Strategy would’ve danced aRound that issue?
@@why3994I was gonna say rhombus strategy, but yours is better 😂
Maybe they shouldnt have gone all in on NFTs
Only thing uglier than those monkeys is karma’s aftermath.
"Hmm... Most people don't know what nfts are, and a lot of the people who do know what they are don't like them. Let's go all in! What could go wrong?'' - square enix.
That was their old president that stepped down in 2021
Noooooo, don’t encourage em to do it againnnn 😂 they attracted to that already.
@zidanetribal1406 except the new president also invested in NFTs
[Due to financial restructuring, the comment intended for this video has been cancelled. Reported losses are 1.7k likes.]
Clever
-_-
Now we gotta make it happen
gaming wasn't meant to be an industry
no we gotta make it not happen. we can't sit around and still buy their slop
More than a decade ago Square enix said that their players didn't want games as a service style games. Fast forward to today, they survived last year canceling however many mobile and GAAS titles and now they're completely rejiggering the whole thing. I'm going to assume a lot of what was canceled were those kind of games.
We don't really know
Suicide Squad failed even harder than their failed Avengers game, I'd be amazed if that's what they're doubling down on, but I'm totally unsurprised if they did.
@@devonwilliams5738cause when suicide squad was first announced/revealed it wasn't revealed to be a live service game yet, so the hype was still there... then they killed all that hype when it got closer to launch
I hope so. Nothing kills my interest more then the words online or live service.
@@devonwilliams5738considering WB is doubling down on live service games even after that disaster, I wouldn’t be surprised if Square kept trying as well. Keep in mind that this is the same company that has continued to pursue NFTs even after it has long since crashed and burned.
Hand to God, I had no idea Foam Stars even released.
This is the first time I've heard of it at all 😂
I think this is a big part of why Square Enix is having issues right now: Their marketing is atrocious. Nobody seems to even know Foam Stars exists, and now I'm wondering just how many other games they've made recently that I didn't know about.
Don't worry, I'm in the exact same boat. I thought it was going to be a summer title for this year, yet it was released 3 months ago
I literally forgot it existed until now
It's ok, game was total ass anyway.
IMO there's probably a ton of reasons for this:
1. The biggest - they wasted a bunch of money trying to go into NFTs when they were first emerging, and have nothing to show for it because NFTs have always been a scam.
2. As you said, Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth being PS5 exclusive suppressed their sales numbers. There's still just not a ton of PS5s in the wild compared to PS4s.
3. Also as you said, Forspoken and Foamstar. But also, Avenger's, Babylon's Fall, etc.
Square NEEDS to rethink their business strategy. Besides Pokemon, they've essentially had a monopoly on JRPGs in the West - 20 years ago, franchises like Persona and Yakuza would kill to sell even a quarter of what Final Fantasy X did. Now, Persona 5 Royal outsold FFVII Remake, and Persona 3 Reload is going toe to toe with Rebirth. Yakuza has grown exponentially with Like a Dragon and LAD: Infinite Wealth. Square aren't the end-all-be-all kings of JRPGs anymore.
Honestly I think they can partly fix the FF remakes sales numbers by putting them on PC day one. Unfortunately with the PS5 drowning in 3rd person action rpgs with limited exploration and a huge focus on story, it’s a tough market which would be alleviated by PC players. I’d say they also need a new franchise to get people excited. KH4 isn’t bad but if they continually double down on existing franchises AAA franchises it’s just going to end badly. It’s better if they make a AA hit at a lower price because of how gamers are looking to be more cost effective rn.
I really have dearly enjoyed Square's low-mid range JRPGs. Bravely Default, Triangle Strategy, OPT/2, the Pixel remasters, these really feel right at home next to the grander releases.
SaGa Emerald Beyond is also fantastic, but that's Kawazu being belligerent and going "I am doing this and you cannot stop me"
I disagree only with the Pixel Remasters; most of them look worse than previous versions we already got, like the PSP versions of FF1, FF2 and FF4, and also have less content too. The re-orchestrated music is good for the most part, but everything else is subpar compared to what we've previously gotten. They could've saved a lot of money if they just ported the PSP versions instead.
@@tamerkoh Hard hard agree, the pixel remasters look like ass. I hate how oversaturated everything is, it hurts my eyes and is just aesthetically unappealing to look at.
Agreed on the pixel remasters, they look absolutely atrocious. I don't get why anyone would hype them up in any way beyond availability on modern consoles.
The DioField Chronicle is one of my new favorite in recent years but I doubt it's ever gonna a sequel now sadly.
One thing that I hope Squenix does with this is that they get their shit together when it comes to budgeting and resource allocation. When you hear that some of their games sold 4, 5 or 6 million copies within a year and they still consider the games as underperforming it means either you had wild, unrealistic expectations from the game or went so over budget that you needed 8+ million copies just to break even...
Square enix games don't sell like that for a decade outside of a few examples and those were under their expectations
No they do sell like that. Not *all* of them obviously but that goes for EVERY game dev
It probably is unrealistic expectation, because I cannot conceive their lower budget titles not being profitable. Unless they are expecting 400% return on investment, which is flat out ridiculous. 100% to 150% is achievable and I'm sure most of their budget titles do achieve that return.
@@ElJosher They are profitable, but not profitable enough to carry a company as huge as Square Enix, specially with the losses of the bigger budget games.
The thing is, their expectations may be unrealistic, but unfortunately, they are also necessary.
It's definitely a budget issue. They are so overblown that "unrealistic expectations" are kind of necessary. Keep in mind this is a problem that's affecting almost the entire AAA industry, not just Square Enix.
4:30 You forgot about Babylon's Fall. But that's okay, so did everyone else.
You forgot that balloon baselworld or whatever it was called.
God I hope Platinum are doing okay after that garbage
@@sagepirotess6312 nobody cares about balans wonderland either lol. A shame such a dope ass character design was wasted on that garbagefire
@@rinnnnnnnnnnrinBalan Wonderworld. XD Nobody knows the name.
@@rinnnnnnnnnnrin I never said it was good. This thread was of bug budget games that flopped. I think you missed that.
Heartbroken if this means no more Octopath games. Both of them were fantastic.
Same, they're honestly both in my top 5 favourite games ever.
Triangle Stratgy is my favorite of the style. I was really hoping for a remake or sequel to FF tactics but ya that's not happening.
It`s tricky since the dev was bought by from software parent company
Technically, we don’t know that, but I’m inclined to agree with you that both that’s probably what we get canceled and that those games are amazing.
I haven’t played it but it looks very pretty
Man, shout out to Arlo for his ability to speak on this so coherently in a TopicArlo. It was a high enough quality speech for a main channel video.
I expect nothing less from him, he's a great speaker/script writer.
I think it might be because we don’t actually know what happened, so he has a lot to say, but it’s very speculative.
After the failure of several live service titles, NFT's crashing and burning, and generally just being unfocused. It just tells me this company is terrible with overall management
Oh please, Ubisoft is terrible with overall management, EA is terrible with overall management, these guys are game industry saints by comparison.
Too many mediocre or terrible games is what cause their downfall:
Babylon's Fall
Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (would had been great if they didn't attempt to bring all that multiverse nonsense into the game)
Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis
Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins
Avengers
Chocobo GP (this would had been a great entry had they not litter micro transactions on it)
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
The Diofield Chronicle
Star Ocean: The Divine Force
FoamStars
Forspoken
Balan Wonderworld
Kingdom Hearts Series: Cloud Edition
It's worth noting that the Super Mario RPG Remake has sold over 3 million units since launch. Granted that these sales are helped by the Mario IP, but this showcases that theres still room in their lineup for smaller scale and cheaper to develop games.
Don't think Square-Enix was that involved in Super Mario RPG Remake's development aside from giving Nintendo the rights for their original characters, the remake itself was done by ArtPiazza, who were responsible for the Dragon Quest remakes for the DS and 3DS
@@pablocasas5906 is artpiazza not associated with square? having previously done the DQ remakes, I assumed they were a subsidiary or something.
@@pablocasas5906...read the WHOLE comment friend. To The Last Line.
If it weren't for the AI crap, I would love a Super Mario RPG 2, but I'm not supporting a company that relies so heavily on AI as Square Enix seems to be trying to.
@@pablocasas5906 Square Enix owns Arte Piazza. Ever wonder why all of their games are S-E IPs? S-E likely made a ton of money off SMRPG's success.
Don't forget, Square Enix is still committed to NFTs, unlike the rest of the gaming industry that gave up on it last year. Throw that with how, as you said, companies NEVER seem to learn the right thing from a failed project, I suspect bad things to come.
What if those were the projects that got thrown out?
Remember jumping into the latest Trend bandwagon won't make you open minded,
it shows that you don't know what you're talking about,
Executives loves Trend and jargon because they're clueless about their own product,
they can't contribute anything because they lack the skill.
they want to hog all of the credit by sabotaging the whole project
and turned it into their narcissistic Trendy project
the same is also can be said about AI as well
@@Dharengo I can only hope
@@mist1858 Of course, I'm not making any promises, I'm just pointing at a possibility.
Hopefully it was just Various Daylife 2 and 3 that were cancelled instead of interesting original projects.
I swear, part of the problem with modern Squeenix games is the titles. Like what the hell is "Various Daylife?" That is not a title that makes me want to know more, that sounds like some Engrish gobbledygook.
Hope to god they didn't cancel any plans for Dragon Quest Monsters, but most likely are...
the leaks imply it was that NFT game that was cancelled. so i think we'll be okay
@@Nando75549 a new one just came out recently and did well. i think you're in the clear with that.
I think Darius Vanlife is one of those lifestyle yt pages everyone was sick of by about 2019 or so.
Apparently a contributor to this was that even though FF7 Rebirth did incredibly well. It still didn’t meet the numbers they needed. The problem with that was the numbers they wanted surpassed the amount of PS5s actually sold. So either someone at Square can’t do math or I’m missing something.
Sounds like they should fire their market speculators instead of the projects lol.
"Incredibly well" it's selling worse than XVI 😂
@@twincherries6698 A bit exaggerated. But it still got listed at 2nd biggest launch in Japan. Not worldwide. Also a lot of the initial numbers were specifically accounting for physical copies and not digital. Yes, it was beaten by 16. Still doesn’t change the fact that they expected more copies to sell than actual consoles sold.
@@twincherries6698 Its budget was likely not as big as people think given it's still on UE4 and a lot of Remake's assets were reused.
It didn’t do really well at all.
Square enix needs to stop trying to appeal to the average western audience and focus on making the kind of games they became famous for
FF, Dragon Quest, Chrono, Sleeping Dogs, etc. - such great franchises. Sad to see a company who is capable of great titles lose their way. Hopefully they can bounce back.
I don't get this. Square Enix makes some of the most "obviously Japanese" games around. Pretty much their entire library is JRPGs, a genre distinction that people make specifically because of how much those differ from western made RPGs. To this day you hear people complaining about how "anime" FF, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest and so on are.
When I think Japanese games that come very close to mainstream western titles in style and tone, stuff like Resident Evil comes to mind not Square Enix series... Am I missing something?
You can't release a massive RPG every month. People won't be done with the last one. For Square they've almost singlehandedly saturated the RPG market themselves so they kind of NEED to make other games if they aren't happy remaining exactly the size they'd stay as the RPG only company.
I fully agree.
@diargakande6740 no your not missing anything you just have idiots who spew shit beacuse they think they know what there talking about
To think we could've had this much Arlo content the whole time if it weren't for the gosh darn algorithm! I love this channel!!!
Me too!
Whoa, whoa Octopath Traveler 1 has sold over 3 million units. I think team Asano games are fine. They don't cost much to make so 1 million copies at least is probably a great return on investment. ROI is far more important than actual sales figures.
I was wondering where Arlo got hia numbers coz Octopath was a huge hit and created a cult following that went on to support Triangle Strategy and Octopath 2. If Square drops that developer I bet Nintendo will acquire it.
@@pinoyreformat I don't think most people who liked Octopath Traveler had interest in Triangle Strategy,it's an entirely different genre.
If they made it a Final Fantasy Tactics game from the first day of development, it might've done better.
Unlike Octopath I, II and TS were in budget bins super quickly, even with Octopath II having a PS5 version.
@@Kniffel101 I don't know where you're getting your numbers cause both of them sold over a million copies within the first few months of their launch date, and both were charting on sales lists in Japan in their release week. Triangle Strategy was definitely not a breakout hit and I doubt they expected it to be, but it still sold decently well and got great reviews, plus getting that Game Awards nomination didn't hurt either.
@@Kniffel101 It's weird how in general how they can't seem leverage Final Fantasy well at all. Like you said, FF Tactics 2 would've sold significantly more than Triangle Strategy and all you really needed was a name change and some added FF tropes here and there. I also find it baffling how they never made a classic style Final Fantasy that targeted the Switch. Just one game like that could have probably outsold most of their other 2DHD output combined.
@@maharaja101I wanted this truly interesting thing. I don't want more boring FFT cash grab slop.
Really wish they would pivot to MORE, middle-tier games. This chase after big-budget high fidelity games is so dangerous and often has not produced great games (in my opinion).
Absolutely, the resource bloat not only kills budgets and schedules (which is part of why generative AI is so appealing to the beancounters), it also railroads the company, tying them to ideas that probably should have been culled or heavily reconsidered before winding up in Sunk Cost land (like Forspoken). Smaller projects might mean less "swinging for the fences", but it also means more agile ability to react to the market or even get ahead of it. There are *far* too many failed film people in games, too, trying to make the wrong sort of projects in the wrong medium. Nothing wrong with some big ideas, but games simply aren't film, and that weird fetish they have for high polycount and "cinematic experiences" doesn't really make for good *games*.
as someone who LOVES the Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default series, this worries me :(
i dont think they are included. they were far too cheap, and made more than enough money for square to abandon them.
don't expect much new from octopath. the devs behind it used to be owned by square but were recently bought but another company, so any new octopath games will be developed by people who didn't make the first 2 as square would still own the rights to the ip
Hard stop whiplash! I'm currently 40 hours into Octopath Traveler II and loving it. Nearly every "Team Asano" game has resonated very deeply with me: Octopath Traveler, Live A Live, Triangle Strategy, even Bravely Default (I've only done Bravely Second End Layer and Bravely Default II, I missed the first Bravely Default). I feel like they are buying Square Enix a lot of goodwill with gamers and selling enough to justify. I'm hoping that we're getting rid of the Forspoken/Babylon's Fall type misfires. But i'm extremely worried that we're gonna see Asano go Indie in the next year or two.
its funny how square had 2 teams that are complete opposites one making banger after banger, and the other only delivering DUDs.
The thing is: It resonates with YOU. But YOU ARE but a small fraction of the current set of potential customers. You, me and most of the almost 40' persons that behave as a "audience", but not as buyers.
The majority of the current market is composed of teenagers and Young adults - up to 25 years old. And this group will be the ones playing It, but not necessarily buying It - most of them will get It after It being bought by a older person that have little to none interest in games. In the 90's I was playing their games - but the one buying It was my mom (and guess what: she never tive a fuck on what I was enjoying there with the game or not, she just bought It to me)
I am saying ALL this to get to this point: we need to be careful about what we desire - there is a risk we actually get It! And that IS what is happening - Square MADE what we desired, but what we desired is the exactly path to their fall; because we wish they never change and they keep developing games that please us (hence, products tailored to satisfy the expectation of a nostalgic, small and not that engaged group of persons that is not buying anymore). This occurs, but they were meant to make games that Will be bought by people that does not necessarily have to play - while the new players should be the ones yelling to the real buyers to buy It, like a kid crying or this kind of "incentive" so the parents give them money. If that was the case for Square they would be ok nowadays - being some kind of EA of RPG or anything like that. But we got what we desired and It is not as good as the nostalgia make It seems like.
If the Final Fantasy Tactics and IX are cancelled I will riot
I doubt anything Final Fantasy was affected lol
For all we know, a lot of these projects could have been soft canceled for years and they’re finally actually pulling the plug.
the thing that urks me about Forspoken the most is that they could've finished heavily anticipated/requested FFXV DLC instead and thus complete FFXV.. but Noooooo
irks
I have literally never heard of Foamstars until this video.
same
It's on PS Plus (or was) and is actually fun. It's popular to hate but just dont take it seriously.
They'd probably have made bank with the Kingdom Hearts series on Switch if they had just brought them over normally, even digital-download-only.
But nooooo, "ports are too haaaaard, let's do Cloud versions!"
They need a good restructuring, sounds like.
KH3 definitely would’ve still been cloud-only in that case, and the PC releases indicate Squeenix’s technical staff wouldn’t have been up to the job of Switch ports for KH1 and KH2: those PC releases were actually done by Epic Games
@@crimson-foxtwitch2581 honestly, with the things that some developers have acomplish on the switch, a kh3 port would been pretty doable
@@ancient_debris4065 not with the level of technical expertise Squeenix’s staff has
@@crimson-foxtwitch2581 They should have outsourced the job to someone more reliable, then.
I'm not willing to give Squeenix a pass on this one; it was a stupid decision to make them Cloud versions.
@@smashbrolink They did actually outsource a company to do Kingdom Hearts ports that were actually good…only for it to be KH1, KH2, and KH3 to PC by Epic Games. That’s why those ports are EGS exclusives
I hope we're getting an Octopath 3 someday
Me too. I would love to drop another 100 hours into the series.
I'm sure we will, the series has done decently well for how niche it is
I just hope Dragon quest 3's 2D/HD remake is NOT one of them since even it still doesn't have a release date.
I don't think it will. Considering it's very popular in Japan, I doubt they'll cancel it.
@@jaretco6423 This is very true.
At most the DQ3 remake will get pushed back a bit because of SE restructuring itself and what not, but the DQ3 remake will be very easy money for SE because of DQ’s popularity in Japan.
Optimistically we could assume this means they have decided to axe all of their NFT projects realizing its a dead market.
Pessimistic we could assume they decided to stop making single player games except big ones and focus completely on live services.
Guess only time will tell.
Imagine both.
A bit disingenuous to say games like Octopath and Triangle Strategy don't perform all that great and struggle to break 1 million copies. Like, I know the kinds of RPGs you're talking about, but just a reminder that the former has sold well over 3 million copies back in September 2022 and the latter crossed over 1 million in it's first two WEEKS. These are not crazy numbers or anything like that, but they're far from struggling for games of their scale in a genre as diminishing as turn based RPGs, which Square has deemed successful in their reports on them.
Not all small to medium scale Square RPGs sell that good. Just that not all of the sell like crap and the Octopath and Triangle Strategy were not good examples to showcase your point.
even those that didnt sell that well, dont look like cost anywhere near enough to be a flop either. even games like diofield and triangle strategy look like sold enough to at least break even, if not more. live a live also seem to sell well enough, and they had good word of mouth.
they arent juggernaughts, sure, but i doubt they were money sinkers either.
Square Enix also said Tomb Raider pushing 4 million was a failure so idk
@@liammcnicholas918 That's TOMB RAIDER, it don't have anywhere near the same budgets or scope. You can't compare a full AAA experience with all detail and promotion those usually get to Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. You're gonna break the scale.
Tomb Raider is playing in Pokemon and Uncharted territory. You gotta do numbers in the double digits for those games to even consider breaking even. Much less becoming a hit. Which is why Square deemed Octopath and such successes and Tomb Raider a flop. We're going for National/Local Champion not World Champion.
I wouldn't worry a ton about those mid-budget Switch rpgs yet. As part of this restructuring, Asano, the guy behind them, was promoted. While it's possible they just want to keep him at the company, I think that indicates that Squenix sees the value in his projects.
(I am not an analyst)
and i doubt they had that many projects to reach that amount anyways.
this feel like them finally waking up and ditching their nonsensical focus on NFT they keep talking about(without showing anything either). nfts are pretty much dead, so i guess is, they are finally pulling the plug on that AAA level NFT game they kept talking about.
now THAT is something i can see ballooning into the 100M+ range.
I hope games like the HD2D Dragon Quest III survived this...
dragon quest is too culturally important to Japan for it to have gotten the axe this easily imo
I don't think the HD2D rpgs "only" selling around one million copies on switch is much of an issue. At least they're selling. Games like Harvestella, Diofield, NEOTWEWY, Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean Divine Force etc. failing to sell at all is probably a bigger issue for them. I don't think any of those games have cleared the million copies sold mark, and some of them were definitely more expensive than something like Triangle Strategy or Bravely Default.
even those games, i feel like sold well enough to not be considered flops. most of them was also well reviewed. and did not cost anywhere near as much to produce either.
they may not be breaking the million threshold. but i do think they did at the very least paid for themselves. specially since most of them are avaliable in multiple consoles.
Don't touch the Team Asano games, Square Enix! They've been the ones making games I actually like.
I think the restructuring has been a very long time coming. Squeenix has seemed like it has been mismanaged even as far back as the merger. When it was just Squaresoft making Final Fantasy, the releases were almost annual. Ever since they merged into Square Enix, almost every single Final Fantasy game has faced some kind of major issue during development and faced significant delays. Tons of their projects seem to have bloated budgets that face insurmountable requirements on the return. Some great studios that they've acquired over the years are now dead.
I’m gonna be really pissed if I find out they were making a new Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre game and they cancelled it…
Wow, what a callback. I forgot about those!
@@QuantumConundrum Im really hopeful for something Ogre Battle to come out since we got the Tactics Ogre Remake two years ago, and Unicorn Overlord (which is very similar to the Ogre Battle games gameplay wise) seems to be selling pretty well.
I bought the remake, but alas I fear that if any game were to be canceled it would be a (hypothetical in development) game like that, or a possible new Front Mission. An old title coming back that didn't really move any big needles, is probably gonna be evaluated as "lacking appeal" or something like that.
@@goranisacson2502 it makes no sense for them to cancel those, as they are too cheap to produce in comparisson with the amount of money they make. pretty much the vast majority of those single and double As games they have released had, at the very least, good reception and sales enough to pay for themselves and a bit more.
If this means the new Bravely game got canceled I am devestated.
I think honestly, Square Enix's biggest issue is over-saturation of its brand. It looks like they're releasing a dozen games a year at this point and it could be catching up with them.
I don't thunk they should stop green lighting smaller projects, but stagger releases out more evenly.
You’re probably on to something here. A lot of their smaller titles felt (on the surface) a little bit samey. Maybe they could have eased up
What? Most of there game never makes it to the mainstream anymore. Lucky if anyone knows what there doing
The double down on final fantasy 7 content has really bothered me. They decided to split the remake into 3 parts, they remade crisis core and that's not including the mobile nonsense they've been pushing out in-between.
Not gonna lie... Kinda sick of final fantasy 7.
@@BlaizeTheDragon I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than a trilogy tbh. Like 4 + epilogue game
@@scratch7971 Nah, but they'll probably remake the Advent Children movie and/or make a DLC Epilogue of it's story.
Honestly the triangle strategy and octopath games could sell much better with any half decent name
Honestly octopath is a good name triangle strategy yeah bad name
Just watched the final trailer for some ideas... Triflame Tactics was the first thing that came to mind. Or Tridom: Wayward Flames.
Octopath is a good an succinct name, Triangle Strategy isnt the best.
I like Octopath because it gets the point across and let's you know what kind of game you're getting, Triangle strategy though? Lol
You know what the next step likely is though. "We have way less projects.... guess we don't need so many employees."
Uh oh. When’s AI gonna join the dumpster fire?
Fewer projects :)
@@DuckAlertBeats No. They are not speaking in proper English. I'll write them that way when they make a few more sensible decisions.
Just wanted to say I absolutely love TopicArlo and just hearing your more free-form thoughts, ramblings and musings on all these different topics!
Hey Arlo, come play Final Fantasy XIV
- Free trial includes the base game, plus two expansions for free with no limit on play time
- You can play the entire story solo
- It's the best Final Fantasy since IX
- It's on PC, XBOX and PlayStation so just chose your platform
- It's a content gold mine
Exclusivity is killing games. Either release on PC simultaneously or release on all relevant consoles. Rebirth is game of the year, but only a fraction of gamers are getting it
To prove your point, I hadn’t even heard of it. I had to google it after reading your comment.
Insane how Avengers/Forspoken flopping at like 80 million each is what started to kill this company. Them not marketing their good games and overlapping their release days cannibalizing what could be sales isn't helping
forspoken? sure, but avengers at least made some money. it probably got, at least, close to paying itself back. since it did sell well enough for forbes to talk about it in a positive light.
@@marcosdheleno just making a profit is not nearly enough in this industry. It was an Avengers live service game dropped at the height of Marvel hype. By all accounts it should have been a smashing near billion dollar success, and it didn't even make the top 10 in sales in 2020
I think Sony paid a substantial amount of money to have FF7Rebirth exclusive to Playstation. But if that money makes up for the sales numbers? Who knows.
I think the PC version will bring some extra money and when all 3 parts are released some will buy the whole bundle. There are more ppl out there who want to wait for all three parts than you might think. Many casuals were surprised that Remake was not the whole story.
The issue is that only once had a timed console exclusive payout deal had its number known to the public, and that was that Nintendo paid Capcom $15m plus free marketing on thier end for Monster Hunter Rise back in 2018 hot off the release of World. Sony likely didn't pay Square enough to cover much of Rebirth's budget, they also could've given Square money for a multi-game deal thai included Rebirth which would be less then doing each game individually, keep in mind Squarehad put out 5 Playstation console exclusives since FF7R1 and with at least one more confirmed, Sony likely at least did the deal for all 3 parts of the FF7 remake trilogy at once. Square likely spent at least $150m (though $200m is more likely) of thier own money to make and market FF7R2, 4 year long dev cycles for a AAA sized game isn't cheap. Considering they make only ~$40 and $49 on physical and digital copies sold at full price respectively, FF7R2 is still a long way from profitability and will need a steam port ASAP with good word of mouth to turn a profit. It's a similar case with FF16 too.
I would totally expect part 3 to have it's budget and scope reduced significantly in order to help it be profitable, because it will likely sell even fewer copies.
@@1originalaccountnameI think part three will sell more than 2. Higher install base and such. But part 1 has a big sales surge after 2 came out. So there's a lot going for it.
"High Definition" video games in Square-Enix-language refers to PC and console games, as opposed to Mobile games and MMOs.
Making Final Fantasy action based is what turned me off to that series. Then we got Octopath and Triangle and I ate those up. Bought them the weeks they came out. This news worries me cause I was really glad to find my new niche with the turn based HD 2d graphics games. Ugh I hope those don't go away.
those games were huge succesfull games tho, i really hope that Square is just cutting the stuff that really suffered loses and are started by their previos crypto bro CEO.
@@juasjuasi4750 I'm betting it's probably more on the other side of Enix that got sold off. Like he mentions with foamstars and the games that makes you wonder why Square is on the box somehow.
Plus if their aiming at the 2.5HD games then man is the DQ 3 Remake fucked
Yeah hard to know exactly how to feel about this. The unique games such as the HD 2.5D ones(or something like that?) are really cool and I hope they don’t cut back on too many good ideas. I hope they don’t go too far with it, really interesting to think about it given lack of info of what was left out of given the chance to release.
Still would love to see Final Fantasy 6 get the HD-2D treatment. The game's original art style already looks the part.
The original still holds up, tho... How will this differentiate?
Does it need to?
Funnily enough, some of the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth development staff said they'll love to remake VI in the same scope as VII, but they admitted it would have to have an even higher scope compared to VII and it would take even longer
While I'd like that every Final Fantasy would get the same love and care in regards to a remake compared to VII, I think S-E overdid it and honestly an HD-2D remake of VI would be great, though I think we should wait until the Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake arrives to see how they would tackle VI (PS: I'm aware of the Live-A-Live remake)
Honestly, if they remade FF6 the same way they remade FF7, I wouldn't be interested. It's too different. I just want the game I love, but with an updated presentation. Kinda like FF4 DS.
Personally I would prefer xenogears 😅
That Tropical Freeze background music just gave me the itch to go back and replay that game. Crazy to think it’s about a decade-old game…
Best 2D platformer ever. Where would you rank it?
DKC2 better imo
@@twincherries6698 That one is, indeed, amazing.
Arlo! Why did you show end game stuff for FF7 rebirth? I thought we were on the same page for spoilers.
thank you for this comment!
Could be that the editor hasn't played the game and doesn't know it's a spoiler
In his defense, I think this was in the final trailer and I don't think he knew it was towards the end
The only Rebirth footage shown was trailer footage.
@@RedheadButNotReally it is, but the final trailer had endgame stuff in it
Octopath 1 and 2 might be in my top 5, definitely top 10, games of all time. Such good games that don’t get enough love
Same here. I've put about 500 combined hours into them. Mods go a long way to increase playability.
Honestly loving TopicArlo so much. Its great getting so many more videos on more topics even though theyre shorter.
I just have to mention how much I love this channel, it’s a much more chill place where Arlo can post anything he feels like and I’m loving it.
You should put topicarlo on Spotify or start your own podcast
He had a podcast before, and he did like 18 episodes. It was called ArloCast. He also had a PatreArloCast exclusively for Patreon supporters, but I don't know if he still does that.
Square killing their mid budget game line up, which pretty much means the end of their Switch support.
Asano, the guy in charge of all those Switch games literally got promoted to a board member.
Hopefully not, considering those mid-budget games coming to Switch are the ones that are performing well enough (Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default). It's the AAA/AAAA games with underwhelming sales (Forespoken, FF16, FF7R) that is hurting the overall company.
@@chasemiller3712this has nothing to do with ff7r
@@ausgod538 babylons fall dont forget about that trainwreck oh and foamstars i guess.
switch support is not ending, it is literally the most popular console in japan, a market that loves these low to mid budget games. They would be stupid to not support it. Also, these mid budget games are definitely making SE profit.
What is the seashore war remix in the background?
I really enjoy listening to you talk about games, Arlo. Really digging the new channel.
Disappointed Arlo didn't focus of the fact they blew a bunch of cash on NFTs and were developing NFT games. I have a feeling a bunch of the cancelled develop was NFT focused games
It's also worth mentioning that SE just replaces their CEO that was pushing for a lot of nft projects. Beyond that the company is reeling from FF16 being an exclusive and Forspoken being a failure. 7-rebirth will likely make it's money back in time and is very much a point of pride for them. FFXIV, the big mmo, and basically the only SE property that earns money year over year announced that the next expansion will "have more rewards", and the last two have been a little lighter on content than 2017's storm blood, so there's some speculation that it's getting a larger budget in the restructure.
I know hearing "Oh the mmo is getting more money" might sound annoying for those that don't play it, but it's actually quite the good game with a reasonable monetization. No gatcha, no pay to win, more than reasonable in game rewards, just a monthly sub and paying for expansion. It embodies the restraint that the rest of SE should be following in this new era for the company.
yep. i also think this is their way of saying they are canceling whatever NFT project they were making. since they did anounce that they were working on some AAA level NFT game. which was also a live service(for obvious reason).
those things arent cheap to produce. being MMO-lites. the cost could easily reach the 100M.
@@marcosdheleno I don't know if that's the case but I certainly hope it is.
Loving the content on this channel. It's always great to get more Arlo stuff, even though he doesn't show his blue, fluffy face here.
I actually loved Harvestella and really want them to make a sequel. It feels like no one even knew it came out, which is just insanity.
It also should've launched at $40, in my opinion. It feels like most games, no matter the budget or scale, are priced at $60-70. Those cute RPGs would probably sell so much better if they were around $40-50 at launch.
I would love a sequel as well.
I know I shouldn’t judge based on another company, especially one that isn’t a video game company…
But hearing about 140 million dollars worth of cancellations makes me think of Warner Brothers.
And there are no positive comparisons to Warner Brothers right now.
this really sucks for the devs that have been working hard all for nothing and the people that care, but i cant say ill be missing what i felt was their overly-long presences in nintendo directs
Square Enix has a history of overspending on overambitious projects, getting burned, and having to restructure, lather, rinse and repeat. This stuff has happened so many times now.
I certainly hope DQ 12 hasn't been cancelled, but it's no secret that the game has been having MAJOR development issues and its producer was just replaced about a month ago. If there's any major project at SqEnix that's in prime position for "cancellation", or more likely a wholesale restarting of development à la Metroid Prime 4, it's Dragon Quest 12.
And to your point on SqEnix releasing a bunch of decent, smaller RPGs that just aren't selling well. If one of these cancelled projects turns out to be a Final Fantasy Tactics remake, I will be devastated. They've given us new releases for every Strategy RPG IP they own, and even created a few new IPs along the way, and they still have yet to give us the one we all actually wanted to begin with.
There's also the worry the deaths of the main music composer and lead character artist/designer affected things... We don't know if they did all that was needed before they passed
@@SorcererLance Yeah, I suppose there's that element of it as well.
The character designs I'm not too worried about, because I feel like the principal character designs would have been a fairly early development thing. Also there's always Toriyama's team at Bird Studio and the longtime Dragon Quest artists at SqEnix to fall back on.
The music on the other hand I doubt made it very far along, seeing as Sugiyama passed away mere months after the initial reveal of DQ 12. I know Sugiyama had a protege of sorts in Hayato Matsuo, but I think most of his body of work has been in the form of arrangements, not compositions. There are other composers out there who could probably fit the bill, though. Manami Matsumae comes to mind, who I thought did a pretty good job composing for Dragon Quest Swords. I guess we'll just have to wait and see who they're able to find, but I can guarantee you Sugiyama will not be the only credited composer on DQ 12 (and most of the Sugiyama tracks will be legacy music and not new compostions).
@@SeafoamSmiles unfortunately, recent official news revealed the opposite turned out to be true; Sugiyama already had all the music done, but Toriyama's art designs were left unfinished.
@@SorcererLance This is going to be a bit of a long reply, and I apologize in advance. lol
I assume you're talking about that post on Reddit that got a lot of traction recently. The original poster has since edited their post to adress the fact that the article they linked was from 2 months ago (on the day Toriyama's death was announced), so it's not exactly new information.
Also, and I don't know if the original poster can read Japanese and can translate the text of the article better than Google can, but when I clicked through to the article to read it for myself using Google's page translate I saw nothing in the body of text that explicitly stated that Sugiyama finished his work, or that Toriyama did not. The Reddit poster's summary of the article is a bit misleading.
Here's a copy paste from the article as it relates to Sugiyama (via Google Translate): "When Koichi Sugiyama passed away in September 2021, it was said that the composition for Dragon Quest 12 was Sugiyama's last work."
Personally, I don't interpret that as, "He completed his work before his death". I read that as, "This is the last project he contributed to". It doesn't actually say whether the soundtrack was completed or not.
And here's a copy paste from the article as it related to Toriyama (via Google Translate): "The company said it would refrain from providing detailed answers regarding Toriyama's involvement in the development of Dragon Quest 12 and the impact of Toriyama's death on development."
This feels more like a Japanese respect thing where you don't comment on the guy's work immediately after his death (remember, the article is from March 8th). Is it possible he still had contributions to make, sure. But I don't read that as a confirmation either way. It's literally the company saying, "We're not going to talk about him right now".
I don’t think Dragon Quest 12 has been canceled. It’s one of the last guaranteed money goose square Enix has left, but restart on development could be possible. The bigger thing I’m worried about with DQ is does it still have the cultural dominance in Japan it once had, considering it’s been so long since 11. The series is really not that popular in the west, so if they start losing the Japanese audience, it’s kind of dead in the water.
It feels like square is struggling hard rn, even tho they are a huge company they sweating
Maybe if they'd stop wasting money on bloat positions like their entire Ethics Board.
@@HenshinFanaticnah now people are gonna call you an incel for even considering it
@@HenshinFanatic What a stupid comment.
@@HenshinFanaticI wish.
octopath taveller 1 sold over 3 million units....
That is worrying. My fear is they will cancel all of their smaller games and zero in on Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts from now on. Getting bought out by Sony is a distinct possibility now. That would be a nightmare.
I sincerely hope that they continue the Voice of Cards series. That series came out and took me by storm. It was such a fun time even if it was a traditional RPG setting. But, man, as a busy parent and full time worker, it was great to come home and just sit in that world for a while.
Arlo, I respectfully disagree with most everything you said about those so called "little RPGs". And that's aside from the fact that those games are far from little in both scope and effort put into them.
Not sure if your info is old or just incorrect but both Octopath games sold well.
As of 2022 OT 1 sold over 3 million copies. OT2 cleared the 1 million mark at its 4th month since release. Octopath Traveler also has a decently successful mobile game so I suppose it's safe as a franchise especially if your assumption that it operates on a smaller budget is correct.
For Triangle Strategy I am not that sure really. It sold 1 million in its first year which is not half as bad given that it is a tactical RPG. TRPGs are notoriously bad sellers in general so it's par for the course, I guess.
What is most important, these are 60 dollars games. Not sure if you remember this quote from almost a decade ago but back then Nintendo reported that they need to sell 3 million copies of Breath of the Wild in order to recoup their losses. I assume Breath of the Wild had a way bigger budget than any of the mentioned RPGs. If that was the case, I think they should all be profitable for Square Enix.
Whether they decide to ditch this entire branch of games under Team Asano and make them work on some aspect of the next big Dragon Fantasy Hearts colab game, to make mega profits by selling 10s of millions from just a single title, or not, it will be a paradigm shift that would not be driven by those games being unprofitable.
It only took a little less than $60,000 to create Hollow Knight, one of the best games ever made.
Meanwhile, square enix...
To be fair Hollow Knight is a rather small game in terms of assets and gameplay mechanics. Especially if you exclude all the DLC (which you should if you're going to say the crowdfunding campaign was the entire budget). That works fine for a metroidvania, but a JRPG really needs to have a lot of content.
@@VitalVampyr That's true, of course. Mostly I just think about how many lower budget games they could be funding if they wanted to.
@@VitalVampyr people also forget that the original FF7 was one of the most expensive games ever made for the longest time. and that was back when money had a much bigger value as well.
I am incredibly, incredibly scared they canceled the Dragon Quest III remake.
Nice glaceon
Hoping this doesn't impact the SaGa series. Emerald Beyond is such a gem but also so niche. Hopefully its low budget will keep it safe from cuts, alongside Kawazu's status as such a big name in the company.
I think Square Enix has a serious marketing problem, because I haven't even heard of most of their current games and the ones I have heard of don't sound interesting at all. Like what the hell is "Triangle Strategy?" Whose idea was it to call it that? That is not a title that evokes any kind of interest. A title like "Final Fantasy" instantly grabs your attention in a really positive way.
And honestly, I think the fatal blow here was probably Forespoken. That game seemed like a big deal for Square Enix, and it just did not land at all. People are so utterly exhausted by the "Default DEI Heroine" and MCU / Rick-and-Morty quippy writing, and Forespoken tried to do that crap right when it was becoming most insufferable.
I watch Clownfish TV, and they recently commented that Square Enix could just make a new low-budget 2D Final Fantasy in the spirit of the SNES era, because that's the kind of thing people are into these days. And I agree, they could set aside a small team and basically make the kind of Final Fantasy they would have made 30 years ago. Make it on the cheap, sell it for like $15-20, like an indie game.
The next Final Fantasy Tactics installment was in the canceled titles, I just know it ;_;
Front Mission 3 Remastered too probably and this is infuriating. You have to be pretty dumb to remake the inferior 1 and 2, be surprised they didn't sell enough (you didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to realize they wouldn't), and proceed by cancelling the masterpiece that is 3 and that fans were waiting for. I've never seen a company be ran by such monkeys. And now, because their experimentations like Octopath, Triangle Strategy, etc were subpar because they completely forgot about things like pacing and having to grab the player in the first few minutes, they will probably just copy what sells. Say hello to more button-mashing called FF.
My weak heart...
@@armorvilTS and OT are subpar experiments?? But they have dedicated fan bases that you can see in this common section right now, and they were both financial successes due to their smaller budgets. You might not like them, but that doesn’t change that many do and that they did make money.
It sucks a bit they might be hurting the 2.5 HD games, they are all so beautiful and been fun to play, along with them exploring their old ideas they don’t seem to want to make anymore (Aka BD being old FF games, Octopath being Live A Live, Triangle strategy being FF tactics)
As someone who has played most of these it sucks cause these are solid to great games (Octopath 2 is an very good game)
One note thought the series director for Bravely Default did say they had something to show off this year for an announcement so we might get one more game in that series or an remaster off the 3DS
Really appreciate the consistent output on interesting topics on this channel :)
*cries in twewy fan*
If we are lucky they will cancel FF7 remake part 3.
One thing I'd love to see them change in the future about remasters: provide more content and quality over an entirely new genre of game. It's the same sort of thing I have with live action movies/shows for pop media rn, changing the format doesn't automatically make it better. Like it definitely can but do it sparingly and only when something else isn't working. An example of this method working wonders for a port/remaster: Miitopia. They gave more content that was relevant to what people liked about the original including outing tickets for relationship interactions, an insanely in-depth mii editor for all the custom character making, and a horse companion that adds a lot of additional fun factor to the gameplay with an entirely new dungeon at the end to motivate the core fanbase of the game to replay it. They didn't change how the game worked or any of its base content, but made it run/look far better than what they could pull off on the 3DS. As a result, the port did great in comparison to the 3DS release and had a total resurgence in popularity when it came out on youtube. I'm not saying the game is perfect or comparable to square quality RPGs, just an example I'm knowledgeable enough about to use here bc I really enjoy it and loved the remaster even more than the original in a lot of ways.
Arlo, you are the best little monster on UA-cam. I love these frequent videos, but if you ever get tuckered out, take time for yourself. You won’t make any of us upset if you take things easy to stay healthy at any point.
That said, you are loved and appreciated.
I love you Arlo. Please have my furry blue babies
Jesus Christ seek the spaghetti monster in the sky seek help go to therapy smoke some zaza become chill just chill tf out
@@darkmaster4868 i want to have his flurry blue babies
By "HD games" they probably mean their standard crop of ultra realistic graphics instead of 2.5D like Octopath, Triangle and Bravely Default. Which is a shame, since those projects are actually really good games, much better than trash like Forspoken ...
No hd is just console games
Part of the problem is putting a lot in very little places. The PS exclusivity is hurting them in the long run.
Hey arlo been loving the new style of videos everyday but i cant help but think that videis like this one couldve been on the main channel
To be honest, alot of the reaction to forespoken was people being either sexist or racist because faye is a POC woman.
They complained about the dialogue but then go and like Marvel movies and the scenes people cherry picked where 3 cutscenes taken from vastly
big chunks of the game.
The vocal minority isn't always the good reception to look at. For example look at Eiyuden Chronicle:: Hundred heroes, that game is getting negative press right now!
Because one of the title characters is a black girl, and people are saying because of her it'll fail and people should boycott it etc, but they haven't played it and it's not out
as of this comment's conception. I've seen people hate on forespoken then play it and say they love it and it's because people didn't bother giving it a chance.
Sadly it's not just press in this instance, and we need to address the elephant in the room that is *prejudice.*
[Addition] For example you point out the fear of them possibly cancelling some good games but those were just concepts
you don't know if they're good or not, it's just air, just names but forespoken was right there and for all your open mindedness- you didn't give it a chance.
You call it cringe but you loved pokemon scarlet and violet and that had WAY more cringe humor and bad dialogue. I think people jumped the gun and didn't
bother because they saw a few silly cutscenes, and you know what? I like that Faye didn't have the perfect quip, I like that she wasn't another stoic protagonist
that we so commonly get nowadays. And because of the prejudice, the lack of open mindedness, the lack of care...we probably lost that forever.
we sadly lost.
It also makes Sqaure more complicit. Now, they're more likely to dig their heels in and refuse to try new things.
They'll feel justified in not making games with dark skinned poc because of this reaction, when it should be incentive to make more and weed out the undesirables in your fanbase.
Sad for people on the design/development teams that get their projects cancelled, but I really respect Square/Enix for their quality and consistency so I wish them all luck.
this seems really bad, but could actually be a good thing in the long run. it's one of those things that we won't know until afterwards if it was a good decision.
I can’t tell if this is good or bad news for my HD-2D Chrono Trigger remake dreams
not sure what all goes into your decision making, but this vid feels like it would have been right at home on the main channel. just a solid discussion video about a really interesting topic
its honestly impressive to see square still standing, i swear any time a new game releases whether good or bad all i see is them saying how they lost 60 quintillion dollars and have -5 bajillion current player counts and then 1 month later they just have a new AAA game hitting the market with $800 "micro" transactions just to repeat the process all over again.
The only thing many fans have ever wanted for the past 20 years is a 1 for 1 remake of the OG FF7, they just need to do it and be done with it.
This is slightly scary to me. Obviously we don't know what they are canceling or not making anymore but some of their best games in recent years have all been their "smaller" titles. Just last year Octopath 2, Star Ocean 2 Remake, Theatrhythm FBL and Paranormasight were all incredible.
These daily uploads are absolutely what the doctor ordered
Imagine FF 1-6 in the style of Octopath Traveler!
Seashore war slowed down hits hard man, it really fits the theme of the video. Nice job Kane!
I knew the moment SE said 3.4 million units in 1 month on Tomb Raider 2013 was considered "poor sales", that the bubble has been ready to burst for a long time.
SE: I'll make less games now. It's not as if something bad could happen, right?
ATLUS with Persona 6 in the backpack: