Square Enix really shot themselves in the foot by making their biggest releases PS5 exclusive. They didn't perform poorly, but they didn't meet sales targets, which is bound to happen when you limit your audience base while trying to make up for massive budgets. Everyone wins with their newfound commitment to make their future major releases multiplatform. PATREON: www.patreon.com/yongyea TWITTER: twitter.com/yongyea INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/yong_yea TIKTOK: www.tiktok.com/@yongyea TOP PATRONS [BIG BOSS] - Devon B [BOSS] - Charlie Galvin - Gerardo Andrade - Michael Redmond [LEGENDARY] - azalea
Single platform availability used to be feasible for Sony and Japanese games. Now with the shrinking of both the Japanese video game market and Sony's share in Japan (Nintendo's dominating it), it's no longer an option for Japanese devs.
The limit sold better than Square's previous multiplat attempts. Seriously, the FF XIII trilogy & XV were on Xbox, yet didnt sell as much as the PS versions
Nobody talks about how they said before that a game selling 30 million was failure to them and just want to be rich from gaming and they not making money fast enough and they selling gta online make billions and they want that this why they push out Avengers and it failed
it's blackrock financial advices and mandates, they had to choose, either they push for the full nft / crypto agenda or insert more and more bipoc everywhere like capcom.
Most Sony games are single player games with no MTs, live service is more common with blizzard and ubisoft and EA, according to Eurogamer, around 13% of AAA games are live services with MTs
basically sony isnt paying enough to keep exclusivity. the fact is if you have to wait 1 year after the release of a game before you can play it on a console/pc you own you might as well wait another year for the game to go on sale. the hype is gone.
Sonys heavy hitters are going to generate money. It’s just how business goes and I believe Square Enix is starting to realize they are no longer a heavy hitter in the industry. Players get cut all the time in sports who were once good same thing is going to start happening to gaming. Microsoft is damn near ready ti cut Halo and 343 soon.
I bought FF7 remake twice, so hype is certainly there. But since I bought it on PS4 first, and I'm not a console player in general, I keep forgetting to play it. So I figured owning it on PC increases the chances I play it. But instead I always have to consider if I should continue on PS4, or restart on PC, and never get around to play it. All in all, had I gotten it directly on PC, I would have downloaded it and played it and probably completed it. For SquareEnix it is a good deal, 2 sales. But that is short term, since because I haven't played it, I also haven't bothered to buy any other SquareEnix titles. So they lost money on that end instead.
We live in a world where entitled companies think selling 3 million copies is an utter failure. Meanwhile, other studios thanked their fans for the 500k-1m copies sold.
YesIt isn't entitlement. It depends on how much was used to develop that game. Same as films. A film like Marvel's Avengers (200+m production cost excluding marketing) would be considered a loss-making failure if it made about 400m in revenue compared to a smaller budget film like John Wick (100+m production cost excluding marketing).
I think what the game industry needs to follow the movie industry where they reveal product budget and sales numbers so we can see. At least that is IMO.
No benefits for any one and I love PlayStation. I love sony UI and products since walkman, PSP PlayStations. I want to play Forza, Zelda but I am not buying multiple consoles. However, I will buy a PC one day.
No one kept that same energy during the 360 generation. Where, I had to watch my beloved Ace Combat series kept off of Playstation by MS. Would've played it on my 360, but it RROD a bit before the game released..
FF XVI and VII Rebirth are games that likely had budgets of over 200 million dollars. That means they would need around 7 million copies just to break even. Both games have sold HALF of that. So, no, they have lost money for sure.
@@XanderVJ Just saying a number doesn't make it true. 200mm is just a general number for AAA games and even then, you're using the high end. There are going to be differences in costs from a US produced game vs a Japanese one, especially labor when Japanese devs don't nearly get paid as much and there's less corporate bloat. Plus, Sony would've had to pay for exclusivity in order to get it from an outside studio so they're not responsible for a good portion of that. The only thing anyone knows is that SE didn't make money overall including lower revenue from their mobile and MMO (FF14 sales also declined last year) departments as well as Forspoken which they would still be writing off since it released last January and should've still had same projected sales in the following months that came up zero.
It used to push developers into developing high quality games, so that's not true. The issue is that it's not a sustainable strategy anymore as cost of game development increased exponentially.
Yeah but I can't wrap my head around this because why would different consoles exist if not for exclusives? Why buy Xbox over PS5 or vice versa if they have the same games, when all these things do is play game?
@DanOfTheHill For the merit of the system? As a PC gamer I do buy consoles do to their plug n' play nature and the fact that not every game has a huge online scene or modding scene. I might as well buy these games on a physical medium I can own and preserve and I might as well do it on the best console.
@@DanOfTheHill Consoles used to be different enough where consoles had exclusive hardware capabilities that made the consoles have thier own pros and cons just outside the games that were on the console. Now consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series S are basically just the same device with different branding, the only thing the PS5 has over the Xbox is the DualSense controller.
So everything else in tech company. That's why they are laying off so many people in those sectors. Remember, amazon had built a lot of warehouses during the pandemic because they thought people like to shop that way, but people didn't have a choice. And once everything opened up, it went back the way it used to be, Amazon closed half their warehouse they built.
@@tiffanyt9329 its kinda weird that tech corporations say that they are visionary, thinking about future but couldn't predict the simple thing what people would do after the pandemic. their short term profit now making long term affect on general people as well
I can't remember the last time square enix released a good title. Kingdom Hearts 3 was a flop, so were the remake games. There were plenty of ps4s when it failed. It was even bundled.
@@Suuulan Yep. They alienated the old audience and didn't sell anywhere near enough to break even. FF7R needs an estimated 9 million (just short of FF15's 10 million) and Rebirth needs an estimated 5.5 million.
@@ohnosmoarlulcatz ive played original Ff7 too and I must say I'm happy they threw in something new. To each their own and I hope they don't cancel the third game.
You are incredibly wrong. The FF7 Remake games are a success in terms of overwhelmingly positive reviews and response. It only "sold low" due to inclusivity which needs to banned on third party titles. FF7 rebirth is my personal game of the year.
Quite funny too. Maybe it did a favor. Theres like 3 PS5 Games or what and nothing on Xbox. Valve, Lenovo and Asus have made better Consoles for their Money this Generation than Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo. I will die on this hill.
Funnily enough...? Right now. If you actually read the financial report, Square is satisfied with the "solid performance" of games like FF16 and FF7 Rebirth. They even promoted Rebirth's director. BUT to know that, you would have to actually read the friggin report, something that most youtubers are unnable to do, apparently. I guess that clickbait titles and spreading misinformation, give more views than telling the truth.
Production cost aren't too high. Its the CEO's pay rivaling or exceeding the game's entire budget that's the issue. This is before the insanely bloated marketing costs.
There’s actually some people out there saying to “just buy a PS5”. Many people can’t shell out $500 dollars on the fly. And even if you can, $500 to play one or two games? I’m good!
@@crystalwater505 PC gaming isfree online and have the best sales deals to games or getting games to not so legal ways, wtf you talking about? you dont need a console to follow a gaming news
@@crystalwater505 you say it as if $500 is chump change or something lol. This doesn’t just affect people living paycheck to paycheck. People with good income might not see paying $500 just to play one or two games as smart.
@@ORO323 I mean, that's my point. If you're living paycheck to paycheck you may want to get a cheaper hobby. Perhaps go to college and get a trade instead.
The worst part is that, this time, it actually did meet their expectations. But most youtubers have decided to ignore what the financial report actually says, in favor of what speculators are vomiting on the internet.
@@Ukaran from what I heard (from various sources) is that FFXVI did met SE's expectations but it did exceed it in a way that investors wanted it to or something like that. To be fair - I still find that holding FFXVI and VIIR under exclusivity doesn't help - I've seen several people who outright told me "I'm waiting for PC release, not buying console for one game". Which makes sense - highly regarded game did receive good reviews and even people who played agree that it's a good game but buying console for it is not worth it (I borrowed PS5 to play it)
@@OmegaEnvych you keep that same energy for all the steam only games by your logic then no game should release unless it can come out on every platform
To be fair, I would say it’s worth every penny considering the incredible size of this game. You’re getting your money’s worth. There’s simply too much to do in here, the story alone is like 70 hours. And if you explore the world, it will take you more than 120 hours.
Square would also be saying these games failed to reach their goal even if they were on PC and Xbox. They said the same about Guardians of the Galaxy, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Juat Cause... all of those were multiplatform.
Releasing Rebirth on every console under the sun won't save it lmao Dude it already failed ice cold in JP, there's not even a demand for the game. And in america they started shipping them back.
Exactly most people who have PS5 now aren't even familiar with FF7 so the nostalgia for a game selling at 75 dollars. FoamStars why buy generic Splatoon when Splatoon exists.
@@thomas-ol3ni they shouldn't have took so long to frickin make the game! And they can't even make it as one big OPEN WORLD like 15 was; i mean, that's how the old FF7 was. they've had to make this in Parts which is just really lame, prob dissappointed alot of oldskool FF7 fans.
Nah, I personally think it's because they think the "3 disk" released would work, in a world where our attention span last shorter than a male japanese pornstar hold their ejaculation on-set. Square Enix acts like a 40 years old milf milking an overworked office worker's jizz. What did they expect, a satisfying ending? Now they got desperate enough to open their "product" to EVERYONE.
@@Steven9567 Well yeh but i mean just make the actually *World Map* seamlessly OPEN fully to explore, but just simply make it detailed like how FF15's world map is. Ofcourse all the actual towns and cities, nibelheim, wutai etc, can still be fully fleshed out, where you enter them and it loads up it's own big, open map. So just like Midgar is in FF7 Remake, like that i mean. Is the PS5 not even powerful enough to be able to do that!? lol. Seems not, maybe this generation of new Consoles are not as "next gen" as they make out then.
@@dreamer6737 man, funny how it's always FF when people talk about SE (good or bad), but seldomly hear anyone talk abou DQ or any Enix games for that matter.
It's time to break away from Sony's icy titan grip my guys. Thank you Square-Enix, maybe you can grow a pair once more. This ESG stuff just aint cutting it.
I'm not sure if this is a reference to something but... Still, who the hell do we even go to to play games anymore? Microsoft Xbox? Yeah... They got their own crap to cram down our throats. Or... just Microsoft in general; "Congratulations! You made an amazing, award-winning, widely acclaimed game... Now get the fuck out of here you freeloaders!!!!" Other than indie, it feels like you can not play games without making some minor, to major moral compromises... (And indies too, at times.) Also hardware? Nvidia? ASUS? Right... Which company can you think that hasn't majorly tried to screw over people atleast a few times. Just... Nothing you do will feel even 80% morally okay. Either one thing is really corrupt, if not a little bit of everything is somewhat corrupted. (And all of this not
@@Killer_Turnip that's what I meant. How ASS-US is just out with their freshest corruption move. And NVIDEA has been a constant state for years... I could perhaps make the point a little clearer though.
It’s misleading to say they are episodic. It’s not a telltale situation. Every entry is a complete game with chunky campaigns, specially rebirth. The story is split into 3 parts, yeah, but they expand so much that it would be impossible to fit the entire story in a single disc.
I often go to Best Buy during my lunch break and see tons of Rebirth copies on the shelves and ask an employee if they sell well and they told me only during the first week at launch but it didn't sell out. All the copies on the shelves right now are still copies from the launch day.
I wonder if SE ever considered that people may think games are too expensive now. I can only buy one $80 game every two months, and rebirth just wasn’t on my list.
so people can take it without paying this why gta 6 not coming day one on PC they want to make money not have PC player play and beat their games and than refund them
I don't even get why they went back to being exclusive with Sony after FF15, the whole reason they went multi-platform starting with FF13 was because prior to that title Sony actually was the _king of the hill_ with the PS2 it made sense back then to release for a console practically everyone had, but after the Xbox 360 dropped and PC became more accesible it didn't made any sense for a 3rd party to go solo on a single platform. Then again, this is the same company that sold both Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to invest on NTF a year after the fad was already dead and Greenlit Forespoken, so they releasing two high profile games on a console with ten users is not that far-fetched from them.
Well, what the hell was square-enix expecting? Were they expecting to sell as well as God of War or Spider-man? FF is popular, but not THAT popular. The sales for FF16 and Rebirth are actually good, its Square's fault for having too much expectations. Still, by all means, release these games to other platforms, they already served its purpose anyway, and that is to sell more PS5 consoles, so I'm sure Sony is happy.
@@antiquecardboard No, exclusivity only matters to the platform holder, it doesn't benefit the devs or the consumers. If Mario was on PC yes a lot of people would play on PC but that doesn't mean nobody will buy a switch for Mario.
@@antiquecardboard For awhile they might if they wanted the portability aspect of it, but honestly the Switch doesn't deserve the sales anymore just to play Mario. This is why Nintendo hates emulation because it cuts into thier market of selling a console with decade old hardware at a premium price.
@@BorsPepsi It does (potentially) benefit the devs. They are paid for the deal. Meaning what they're paid could be larger than what they would've earned from the sales on other platforms. A net positive. Obviously that wasn't the case here though.
I stopped participating in the console war a long time ago. I preferred PlayStation, but I also didn't hate XBox. My last console was PS4 shortly after it first launched. I got to enjoy it for about six months before it was stolen during a move. My PC is by no means a powerhouse, but it runs my games smoothly enough that I get to enjoy them. That's all I care about.
@RestorationRelaxation More people getting to play more games is the opposite of boring. Customers don't win in a console war. Only the companies making the consoles do.
@quentinb734 If the point of a console is exclusive games and nothing else then it is anti-consumer and shouldn't exist. Keeping the consoles around isn't a reason to have exclusives; exclusives being the only thing they have is a reason to get rid of them.
I don't understand why some people freak out about exclusives being shared to other platforms? It can only be good for gamers if these companies that make console selling games, expand their market to other consoles. Bottom line if all games are available on all consoles, the game creators get bigger budgets for future games as well as it makes the console creators have to deliver a better console than the competition. Competition is GREAT for consumers of said product.
You're also more likely to get it on sale in the future because the company has already made a profit from it. Unless the company goes full broke and starts selling their stuff for nothing prices, in which case you don't get future titles of the thing... Because it's over.
@@ShuckleII Exclusivity ≠ Literally 1984. That's a stretch if I've ever heard one. There are plenty of cases where exclusive games ARE a good thing, it's always an important key driver for console sales, best example being the Switch. It just didn't work out for Square Enix is all.
Wow, so it turns out that restricting who can buy your games reduces the amount of people who will buy your games. Truly an unheard of metric that nobody could've predicted.
This. PS4 was the last era for me with consoles and I went to PC. Don't regret it at all. I also play Switch but I treat that as a handheld. I have a Switch Lite.
Still think exclusivity is a necessary evil? Alot of people that bought Helldivers 2 on PC, and was able due to Valves regional pricing and it's global coverage, something that consoles never allowed because of their closed ecosystem. In America consoles are popular and cheap because we're lucky to have a sustainable economy, however, in other parts of the world PC cafe's is the go to for PC gaming and cheaper than consoles because they cost triple the price there. I don't care for the console wars of exclusivity because I know that my filipino friend that I play on Steam will never be able to play those exclusive games.😢 PC MASTER RACE! WE CARE NOT FOR EXCLUSIVE!
Good. These games deserve to be played by as many people as possible. Release future titles on both PlayStation and Xbox simultaneously, release the PC version when it's ready, then put out a Nintendo version if possible (as either a cloud version or on a future console that is powerful enough)
Definitely saw this coming, with rising development costs there's no way on this planet that Sony can offer them more money to stay exclusive than what they would made going multiplat day 1. Literally the most unsurprising thing of the century
Who could've guessed that selling on a platform that nobody could get for multiple years and that to this day has barely any reason to exist outside of an SSD wouldn't do so hot.
If they're gonna continue releasing on Epic Games Store then they're not gonna do much better. PC gamers are at Steam, EGS is good for free games and Fortnite but that's about it.
This reminds me of what's happening with streaming and why that is struggling now to make a profit. The big media companies got greedy so instead of licensing out their movies, they thought they could claw back that additional revenue via having their own service and exclusives. This is what makes something like Max different from a service like Netflix that was originally made as an aggregator for syndicated content. But now that times have changed after COVID and inflation and people can't afford a bunch of expensive individual services, their play for clawing back that additional revenue lost from licensing their content out has backfired *dramatically*. This is what is happening to Square Enix and video games too as both XBox and Playstation 5 have been underwhelming to say the least this generation. Because what Microsoft & Sony are competing on now aren't who has the better console or service, but what titles they can lock behind their restrictive ecosystems. It's rent seeking, not innovation, and it turns out for something non-essential like video games & entertainment people just won't buy into it. I'm so glad that I can afford to do PC gaming and the Steam Deck because it's openness it probably what's going to save video games in the long haul.
True fans won’t lose interest no matter how long the wait. You would be surprised how long fans are waiting for ES6 to come out despite Microsoft buying out Bethesda
I don’t think waiting times between games are an issue. Just look at GTA The 5th game released like 11 years ago but almost the entire world is super hyped for GTA 6 despite waiting so long.
Well.... Square finally realizing that exclusivity is a bad idea if you want a high sales number... Which is obvious to anyone with half a brain. Also they might wanna stop talking about pushing NFTs and shit, that also turns off their customer base.
I love Square, but they deservedly lost money to teach them a lesson. Certain 3rd party games should never be exclusive to any one platform because of the history of said title. When I saw that they brought over all the other FF games to xbox, I thought they took a turn away from major title exclusivity, but here we are. I would've loved to play FF16, but I sure as hell will not be buying a Sony console for it.
Part 3 will probably still be exclusive but it’ll be the last. The contract was most likely for the whole remake and I’d be shocked if they could get out of it after 2 games.
I get the need for exclusives and the draw of them… Mario, Zelda, the plethora of PlayStation exclusive characters and games…. But… taking what has grown into a multi platform series and THEN single it to one console is a big F U to the fans who don’t have that console. As an Xbox owner and lifelong fan of Final Fantasy, unless I fork out over $500 for a console to play 1-3 games, I will never be able to play the full final fantasy series… rebirth okay fine it’s a reboot sequel, but locking a main numbered ‘16’ behind exclusivity is what I am annoyed about
Square Enix is a weird company. Their company head had an interview and talked about their game should look like it's made by Japanese. Then they have Babylon's Fall and Forspoken released around that period and FF16 a year later.
@@MaxLittleBuddy Naoki Yoshida also attempted to address Japanese Twitter's concerns about FF16 at PAX Expo in the US. So that gives you an idea how of out of touch they are.
Oh damn, it turns out *le gasp* that if you limit your product to about 20% of your entire market, it doesn't sell well. Well gee who would have thunk it.
Idk, the main benefit I can see for a game being on a single platform is that the developers will be able to optimize better because they will put all of their resources into one version. Without exclusivity, they will have to optimize more versions, which means they have to spread resources. So, they will either have to increase the overall budget, or extend the development time to achieve the same type of game size/polish. Which will also increase budget. They will probably have to downsize their games in order to stay within the same amount of money spent per game.
@@Whitedudeabove They don't HAVE to be that much more expensive to make, though, that's the problem. These companies dump so much into advertising that it's just absurd, sometimes effectively doubling the cost of the game's development.
They didn't call it a disappointment. Quite the contrary, it had a "solid performance", according to their Financial Highlights. They even promoted the director(Hamaguchi) to an executive position in the company because of it. Unfortunately, YongYea chose to believe in speculators vomiting misinformation in the Internet, instead of looking for what the financial report actually says.
@@Ukaran Doesn't matter what the financials say (they said it wasn't good enough),, if it's not performing well on 1 platform anymore (either from sales or changed their minds on direction/strategy),, then the plan going forward has to be multiplatform, put it this way, if they say "games are not performing well enough on multiple platforms", then it's 100% a Square problem not a game sales or multiplatform problem, time will tell.
Exclusivity only made sense back when each platform had distinct hardware which made ports difficult to make. Now that consoles are just fixed spec PCs with minor tweaks, exclusivity is nothing more than a console seller.
Heads up for any game studio out there: stop spending half a billion dollars for a videogame. You are insane if you think you'll break even, it's not worth the risk and the stress.
THANK YOU. Seriously, I'm going up a wall seeing people rambling about Square being stupid for making these games exclusive as if that was the origin of their troubles, when that's not it in the slightest. JRPGs have never sold well on PC, and even worse on XBox. Yeah, they will make some extra cash, but it won't save them at all. The real problem Square Enix has is their over budgeting tendencies.
I've always said that high budgets do not equal a good game or more importantly (for the developers) successful. It's been proven time and time again that games with much smaller budgets are more successful in the long run because they're cheaper for the consumer and not as many copies need to be sold to make a profit.
Also these game companies are out of touch with the current living crisis. As much as I wanted to buy these two games when they came out, i cant justify spending over $200 AUD for 2 games... its a joke
@topclips1872 No they won't. They'll simply keep going till it's unsustainable, the top will jump ship with their golden parachutes and everyone else can get f****ed.
FF is one of my favourite series out there, but I refuse to buy a PS5 just to play a couple of exclusives, so it would be insane if they ended their exclusivity bs.
ff7 sold bad because the first part destroyed the best game ever made. Im shocked that they made a second part after how negatively the first part was received
I think I speak for a lot of PC players, but Square has shot themselves in the foot and have clearly shown that they care more about partnerships with executives and not PC consumers. Don't worry. Even if they release their games on PC, we won't be looking for it. You've lost our interest. Your executives can go buy it.
I’ll still be getting it on PC since it means I don’t need to drop hundreds of dollars to get a PS5 just so I can play 2 games. Stupid company decisions sure, but a good game is still a good game.
Corpo: *keeps releasing broken, unplayable and falsely marketed products* Also corpo: Hmm, why are people not preordering Also corpo two, braindead boogaloo: *releases a game on a single platform that requires an expensive console purchase with 177 countries that can't make accounts* Also corpo, the return of the CEO: Why are our games not selling well?
I also imagine the $70 price tag is also a factor on why they aren't selling as many copies as they want. Also, the money spent on these 3rd party exclusivity deals is not nearly enough to cover for the loss of 2/3s of the market.
Infinite growth is unachievable anyways. Square isn't in a downward trend. Just greed from the CEO and shareholders is dragging them down. They're still doing great just not infinite growth which shouldn't be an objective, ever.
@@GelgoogJ Which is sad, because I actually loved that movie. If it hadn't been tied to the Final Fantasy franchise, and was just a generic sci-fi, I think it would have done well enough.
I ran a business for 30 years. What executive made the decision to make the game exclusive on a single platform that doesn't even have market share? There are more PC players than any other platform, yet they decided to give exclusivity to a console platform. That's simply a stupid decision from the get-go, regardless of supposed "favorable" terms with Sony. Market share always drives profits. If I was on the Board that person would be gone.
I agree going non-exclusive will bring in more money, but also SE had some out of touch expectations on how much their games would sell. 16 sold over 3 million copies the month of its release. SE always likes to act like each AAA title is going to break the world but none has done that in the Enix era.
It feels like they want particular games to make up sales losses of their major flops. Avengers, Forspoken and Babylon's fall definitely lost them money. So they want Final fantasy to pick up the slack.
What happened to Square-Enix: 1. NFTs 2. Live Service Games (Bioware cannot do Anthem, do not force yourself Square) 3. Playstation exclusivity 4. Weak marketing on some of their titles 5. Changing gameplay on established titles, like Valkyrie Elysium and FFXVI
It feels like they favor Squaresofts old properties when it comes marketing. Like you will always know, when the next FF comes out. If it weren't for Nintendo Directs, you would barely hear from anything from DQ. Or that the HD-2D games also came to Steam.
I'm a PC gamer only and I own all the Final Fantasy games on PC besides FF16 and Rebirth since they are exclusive to PS5. In fact, I didn't even know these games existed because Square Enix didn't advertise it on their Steam Store which I'm following them on. If I knew about these games and they were on PC, I would have bought those games too for sure since I am interested in them BUT... they are not on PC and I am not willing to purchase a PS5 just for 2-3 Square Enix games. Asking me to buy a new hardware for 2-3 games is just asking for too much imo. It's not my fault that I couldn't buy their newest games due to this huge console paywall requirement to play their newest games.
Listen if these people would come down from their "clouds" and see that a lot of people are disillusioned with a lot of video games due to shitty releases of games that could be great and expecting people to spend thousands of dollars on consoles and video games...ike he said with the decline of the economy and prices going up...how do they expect to just go out of our way to spend $60-$150 on a game that is mediocre to ok with a good chunk of us having to spend that much just to survive with expensive groceries and bills. Its ridiculous
We've been known foamstars is coming to other platforms in August due to disclaimers on their trailers, and i really hope it does well there because it's one ot the swaggiest and funniest shooters I've played in a bit, and I don't want it to die do soon when every update has been s banger. They listened to the community with constant updates fixing bugs and issues, they even fixed their overpriced microtransactions, lowering prices of all of em and that kind of communication and action deserves to succeed in a gaming world that has so many companies ignoring their player base
We’re you really enjoying consoles having exclusive games it’s really boring if you love a game so much you would want to play it on many consoles as possible not only on one console
@Luigiplaya246is that the best you can say you sound broke can’t afford buying your favorite games on every consoles I bought tekken 8 on every console every final fantasy on every console were not in the 80’s kiddo
@Luigiplaya246 I like my own comment you make a lot of sense but I know I like my comment for sure more then yours go get a job who can’t afford a $500 console
@Luigiplaya246your comment makes no sense to even reply this isn’t about liking your own comment I’d that what you do like your own comments since you talked dumb like that I gave the comment a like 👍 now the person has 3 likes didn’t know you can like your comment 3 times go cry somewhere else
What they said is that the games were doing fine, but they didn't make the profits needed to offset all the bad decisions made that killed their profits. They literally had a 17% revenue increase and sales numbers were up, but things like cancelling multiple games intended for releases 2027 and up completely destroyed any possible profitability. It's funny that everyone harps on the 3 games released exclusively on PS, when they also released 9 games exclusively on Switch in the same timeframe that barely sold 1 million copies.
This is great news. Square Enix used to be the gold standard in gaming but the younger generation these days mostly knows them for Forspoken, Marvel's Avengers, Babylon's Fall, Foamstars and the meme of never meeting their sales expectations. Getting their development pipelines in order and finally ending the exclusivity deals is a much needed change.
While making these games PS5 exclusive(or at least a timed-exclusive) was always going to cause the sales to be lower than it would have been otherwise due to a smaller customer base, let's be real: When was the last time that Squenix *didn't* say that a game they released failed to meet their expectations? To me it seems more like they just keep setting sales expectations way too high and haven't figured out that despite being a big-name studio with big-name franchises that doesn't just mean they can release something and expect INFINITE MONEY. Of course there's also plenty of other factors to take into account. One of the big ones would be the rising cost of AAA game development. It's costing more and more money and more and more time to make a game that qualifies as 'AAA' then it did a couple console generations ago, which isn't really something that the company themselves can fully control, because there's a lot more factors to it outside of just gaming that I'm not going to get into here. Then there's the fact that AAA games are turning out less and less polished on release which negatively impacts their reception and sales. Again, a lot of things that go into that, though that *is* in the devs(or rather the higher ups) control. The fact that AAA is no longer the gold standard has also led to the rise of indie games and an increase in sales in that market, with more people opting to chose them rather than the AAA game. After all, why would people buy a $70 game that isn't even that good when they can get three $20 indie games that are just as good if not better and still have ten bucks left over? And that's not even getting into all of the PR disasters that Squenix specifically has had, that's just been the general gaming market! Squenix's baffling insistence on trying to promote NFT and blockchain and crypto despite pretty much all of their customers telling them "don't do this, it's a bad idea, we don't want it, we're not going to buy into it if you do do it so just save us all the time and yourselves the money and drop it", as well as their live-service flops with Babylon's Fall and Avengers, which definitely didn't help things, and then selling off beloved studios like Crystal Dynamics. Looking back, the failures of Babylon's Fall, Avengers, and Forspoken(well, definitely Forspoken, the other two might be old enough that they've already made back the loss elsewhere) is probably also a massive reason for why Squenix set sales expectations for FFXVI and VIIRebirth so high, in order to try and recoup their losses on those games. Had they not gone through with even one of them, I'm sure they wouldn't be nearly as bothered by the reception that FFXVI and VIIRebirth have had. So I guess really the takeaway is that what Squenix REALLY needs to do is stop wasting time and money trying to trendchase NFT and live-service garbage and just do what made them so popular to begin with: make good games. Really that applies to any of the various developers that have been having troubles lately(Warner Bros. anyone?), but I digress.
Oh gee who could have seen this coming? The absolute shitshow that was rolling out of PS5s, couple that with the fact that inflation and cost of living are out of control with pay not keeping up, and to top it all off charging 70 DOLLARS for what is effectively the other half of the game for FF7. These fucking companies can pound sand.
Games Exclusivity means less time and resources for a game developer to test a game, If they choose for non-exclusivity, they need shell-out more MONEY and TIME in testing the game from different types of systems(PS/XBOX/PC). game developing isn't "one size fits all",. Games settings needs to be tweaked rigorously (from startup to end credits/to every side quests and to every mini games/every FMVs) to fit different types of system and technology (PS/XBOX systems), Moreover a different types PC architectures(AMD/Radeon : Intel/Nvidia). Do you know how hard to port an Iphone games to an Android phones? almost doubling the resources and time needed. So good luck on their budget.
I actually believe that all but (most of) the board members at Square understand what sales should be like when they do exclusive releases in some capacity. Be it Japan only release, PS5 only release, etc. I think their problem with this is that there's a mix of people who 1) feel they should only work with Sony because it's Japanese and 2) feel like their Japanese audience is enough to offset global audiences... somehow. Much like elsewhere in the world, Japanese shareholders and boards aren't exactly the smartest people of the bunch. They just have money, but that doesn't translate to common sense intelligence. "There's 5 million PS5 owners in Japan. Why aren't we meeting our goal of selling 15 million copies of a FF7 Rebirth in Japan alone?"
As a metric it either show 2 things….first, people aren’t buying these types of games anymore….or PS5 sales are overstated and aren’t as good as media touts it to be.
Music to my ears. And yes Yong it’s definitely an issue of quality. After a string of mediocre titles, the FF brand has no reputation left to spend, and it’s really amusing to see SE desperately try to catch a captive audience to sell their most recent digital slop to. Anyone who think it’s just because of exclusivity is on some columbian grade copium. I for one am looking forward to seeing their uncritical fanboys continue enabling them into hemorrhaging even more cash to produce shiny piles of heaping shit.
1 thing, FF Rebirth devs openly came out and said they LIKED only working on 1 platform at a time. They said FF7 Rebirth would not yet be released if they had to develop for multiple platforms. While I have no problem with things being multi platform (obviously) there ARE downsides to releasing on everything at once. Imagine if Cyberpunk 2077 released PC only 1st and worked on other platforms
Square Enix really shot themselves in the foot by making their biggest releases PS5 exclusive. They didn't perform poorly, but they didn't meet sales targets, which is bound to happen when you limit your audience base while trying to make up for massive budgets. Everyone wins with their newfound commitment to make their future major releases multiplatform.
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Saw this happening a mile away...hell i was expecting this after what happened with the original FF7 remake
exposed you just leave a period lol
Karma
Thank you Chong Yue for the awesome news.
@@tomatomaki It's YongYea, dumbo!
Wow, limiting your game to only approx 1/3 of your user base limits your sales! Who woulda thought?
Yeah, i like my ps5, i hate exclusivity.
Common Sense isn't common especially for executives who get paid Millions
If only all companies would realize this, exclusives need to die in my opinion,give the choice back to gamers not the companies
Single platform availability used to be feasible for Sony and Japanese games. Now with the shrinking of both the Japanese video game market and Sony's share in Japan (Nintendo's dominating it), it's no longer an option for Japanese devs.
The limit sold better than Square's previous multiplat attempts. Seriously, the FF XIII trilogy & XV were on Xbox, yet didnt sell as much as the PS versions
Maybe they shouldn't have blown all that money on NFTs and micro transactions.
Nobody talks about how they said before that a game selling 30 million was failure to them and just want to be rich from gaming and they not making money fast enough and they selling gta online make billions and they want that this why they push out Avengers and it failed
Then there's Forspoken and Avengers... Blaming it on exclusivity is just silly. They failed on their own.
it's blackrock financial advices and mandates, they had to choose, either they push for the full nft / crypto agenda or insert more and more bipoc everywhere like capcom.
@@TheCoolgame24 Wow, punctuation.
Most Sony games are single player games with no MTs, live service is more common with blizzard and ubisoft and EA, according to Eurogamer, around 13% of AAA games are live services with MTs
Isn’t Square Enix the company that always complains about sales on all their games?
Yeah it's true they'll never receive the same amount of numbers like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto
They all do. They'll never be satisfied.
It's one of the reasons why we don't have sleeping dogs 2 one of the reasons.
Consistently. They seem to think they'll sell more copies than there are PS5 😂
@@erwarkfor real!!! XD
basically sony isnt paying enough to keep exclusivity. the fact is if you have to wait 1 year after the release of a game before you can play it on a console/pc you own you might as well wait another year for the game to go on sale. the hype is gone.
Yup, im already waiting a year, another year or 2 is nothing lol.
Sonys heavy hitters are going to generate money. It’s just how business goes and I believe Square Enix is starting to realize they are no longer a heavy hitter in the industry. Players get cut all the time in sports who were once good same thing is going to start happening to gaming. Microsoft is damn near ready ti cut Halo and 343 soon.
It can even be more, with so many Games out, i totally forgot that there was a FF7 Remake :P
I bought FF7 remake twice, so hype is certainly there.
But since I bought it on PS4 first, and I'm not a console player in general, I keep forgetting to play it.
So I figured owning it on PC increases the chances I play it. But instead I always have to consider if I should continue on PS4, or restart on PC, and never get around to play it.
All in all, had I gotten it directly on PC, I would have downloaded it and played it and probably completed it.
For SquareEnix it is a good deal, 2 sales. But that is short term, since because I haven't played it, I also haven't bothered to buy any other SquareEnix titles. So they lost money on that end instead.
FF is not exactly a niche, it's a cash cow, so paying for exclusivity can never make up for the money earned from a multiplatform release.
We live in a world where entitled companies think selling 3 million copies is an utter failure. Meanwhile, other studios thanked their fans for the 500k-1m copies sold.
I'm pretty sure Nintendo found success with their games despite not all selling over 3+ Million.
Metroid and Kirby are notable examples.
@@user-be3qc7re9oit all depends on. How much the game took to make it. Plus they use that money to make new games.
YesIt isn't entitlement. It depends on how much was used to develop that game. Same as films. A film like Marvel's Avengers (200+m production cost excluding marketing) would be considered a loss-making failure if it made about 400m in revenue compared to a smaller budget film like John Wick (100+m production cost excluding marketing).
@@user-be3qc7re9oFire emblem 3Houses is another example, while it eventually hit 3Million, it did so with pretty much minimal marketing
I think what the game industry needs to follow the movie industry where they reveal product budget and sales numbers so we can see. At least that is IMO.
Exclusivity of 3rd party titles benefits no one but the platform holder.
Did it really benefited the platform holder in this time
No benefits for any one and I love PlayStation. I love sony UI and products since walkman, PSP PlayStations. I want to play Forza, Zelda but I am not buying multiple consoles. However, I will buy a PC one day.
@ramonalvarez19 My guy, if it didn't benefit them Sony wouldnt pay for exclusivity.
@@SM-ov7yi so apple should just sell their iPhone for free now because you dont want to pay right
No one kept that same energy during the 360 generation. Where, I had to watch my beloved Ace Combat series kept off of Playstation by MS. Would've played it on my 360, but it RROD a bit before the game released..
“disappointing sales” is codeword for “we didnt make even more money”
FF XVI and VII Rebirth are games that likely had budgets of over 200 million dollars. That means they would need around 7 million copies just to break even.
Both games have sold HALF of that.
So, no, they have lost money for sure.
@@XanderVJ what terrible maths man
@@XanderVJ AAA gamming companies have literally turn into Hollywood
@@XanderVJ Just saying a number doesn't make it true. 200mm is just a general number for AAA games and even then, you're using the high end. There are going to be differences in costs from a US produced game vs a Japanese one, especially labor when Japanese devs don't nearly get paid as much and there's less corporate bloat. Plus, Sony would've had to pay for exclusivity in order to get it from an outside studio so they're not responsible for a good portion of that. The only thing anyone knows is that SE didn't make money overall including lower revenue from their mobile and MMO (FF14 sales also declined last year) departments as well as Forspoken which they would still be writing off since it released last January and should've still had same projected sales in the following months that came up zero.
duh, obviously...
Exclusivity is never good for the customer. It's only good for the platform holder.
It used to push developers into developing high quality games, so that's not true. The issue is that it's not a sustainable strategy anymore as cost of game development increased exponentially.
Yeah but I can't wrap my head around this because why would different consoles exist if not for exclusives? Why buy Xbox over PS5 or vice versa if they have the same games, when all these things do is play game?
And the studios the platform holder owns
@DanOfTheHill For the merit of the system? As a PC gamer I do buy consoles do to their plug n' play nature and the fact that not every game has a huge online scene or modding scene. I might as well buy these games on a physical medium I can own and preserve and I might as well do it on the best console.
@@DanOfTheHill Consoles used to be different enough where consoles had exclusive hardware capabilities that made the consoles have thier own pros and cons just outside the games that were on the console. Now consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series S are basically just the same device with different branding, the only thing the PS5 has over the Xbox is the DualSense controller.
man, covid really gave companies unreal expectations of what people will do.
So everything else in tech company. That's why they are laying off so many people in those sectors. Remember, amazon had built a lot of warehouses during the pandemic because they thought people like to shop that way, but people didn't have a choice. And once everything opened up, it went back the way it used to be, Amazon closed half their warehouse they built.
@@tiffanyt9329 its kinda weird that tech corporations say that they are visionary, thinking about future but couldn't predict the simple thing what people would do after the pandemic. their short term profit now making long term affect on general people as well
@@anwarparvez6480 Companies can only see as far as the next quarter. Anything beyond that is too risky of an investment.
it made them power hungry and obsessed even more with money..
@jackstraw4222 Well, that's isn't new. Lol. That's how the rich stay rich, and that's how the poor stay poorer. And nothing in between.
I can't remember the last time square enix released a good title. Kingdom Hearts 3 was a flop, so were the remake games. There were plenty of ps4s when it failed. It was even bundled.
Octopath Traveler, but they didn't want that one to succeed.
Ff7 remake and rebirth is bad? I love those games..
@@Suuulan Yep. They alienated the old audience and didn't sell anywhere near enough to break even. FF7R needs an estimated 9 million (just short of FF15's 10 million) and Rebirth needs an estimated 5.5 million.
@@ohnosmoarlulcatz ive played original Ff7 too and I must say I'm happy they threw in something new. To each their own and I hope they don't cancel the third game.
You are incredibly wrong. The FF7 Remake games are a success in terms of overwhelmingly positive reviews and response. It only "sold low" due to inclusivity which needs to banned on third party titles. FF7 rebirth is my personal game of the year.
Available on one platform: ✔️
$70 standard edition: ✔️
Bad world economy: ✔️
What’s the surprise here
Also scalpers keeping people from buying the console. I completely skipped this gen just because of that
@@tempestsquall5882 The scalpers made me buy a PC this generation. I'm very thankful for them for that.
Quite funny too. Maybe it did a favor. Theres like 3 PS5 Games or what and nothing on Xbox.
Valve, Lenovo and Asus have made better Consoles for their Money this Generation than Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo.
I will die on this hill.
Also doesn't help that it's technically an episodic story. I know some who are waiting for the third release to buy it in full.
When does Square Enix not say sales disappoint though...
When they don't spend over 200 million dollars in a game, thus not needing to sell 7 million copies just to break even.
Which is not too often...
They don't want money, they want ALL THE MONEY.
They're putting WAY MORE money into their games then they are getting back
Funnily enough...? Right now.
If you actually read the financial report, Square is satisfied with the "solid performance" of games like FF16 and FF7 Rebirth. They even promoted Rebirth's director.
BUT to know that, you would have to actually read the friggin report, something that most youtubers are unnable to do, apparently.
I guess that clickbait titles and spreading misinformation, give more views than telling the truth.
@@Ukaran Corpo speak can claim they're happy all they want. That's what every company does
Production costs are just too high now for AAA games to be exclusive to one console or PC exclusive.
Bad take
Yeah, bad take. They're too expensive for multiplatform releases most of the time, too.
Between production costs and sales targets. With the sales targets usually being the bigger factor.
It's really not. Triple AAA games just want to have more profit.
Production cost aren't too high. Its the CEO's pay rivaling or exceeding the game's entire budget that's the issue. This is before the insanely bloated marketing costs.
There’s actually some people out there saying to “just buy a PS5”. Many people can’t shell out $500 dollars on the fly. And even if you can, $500 to play one or two games? I’m good!
Exactly! I wanna play Bloodbourne and the FF7 remake games but nah I’m not shelling out over $600 for the console and 3-4 games
If you can't afford a 500$ console then you shouldn't be following gaming news at all, you've got bigger issues.
@@crystalwater505 PC gaming isfree online and have the best sales deals to games or getting games to not so legal ways, wtf you talking about? you dont need a console to follow a gaming news
@@crystalwater505 you say it as if $500 is chump change or something lol. This doesn’t just affect people living paycheck to paycheck. People with good income might not see paying $500 just to play one or two games as smart.
@@ORO323 I mean, that's my point. If you're living paycheck to paycheck you may want to get a cheaper hobby. Perhaps go to college and get a trade instead.
Wait, you mean to tell me that restricting where your products are sold can actually hurt the sales of said products?
😮
I stopped counting how many times Square Enix said about their games „the sales numbers didn’t meet OUR expectations“…
The worst part is that, this time, it actually did meet their expectations. But most youtubers have decided to ignore what the financial report actually says, in favor of what speculators are vomiting on the internet.
@@Ukaran from what I heard (from various sources) is that FFXVI did met SE's expectations but it did exceed it in a way that investors wanted it to or something like that.
To be fair - I still find that holding FFXVI and VIIR under exclusivity doesn't help - I've seen several people who outright told me "I'm waiting for PC release, not buying console for one game". Which makes sense - highly regarded game did receive good reviews and even people who played agree that it's a good game but buying console for it is not worth it (I borrowed PS5 to play it)
I agree it gets annoying
@@OmegaEnvych you keep that same energy for all the steam only games by your logic then no game should release unless it can come out on every platform
@@Ukaran no it didn't
I didn't want to spend 75 on rebirth and I really want to play it. Greed is destroying gaming
lol@ 60-$70 games.
Just wait for a sale then lol
To be fair, I would say it’s worth every penny considering the incredible size of this game. You’re getting your money’s worth. There’s simply too much to do in here, the story alone is like 70 hours. And if you explore the world, it will take you more than 120 hours.
Square would also be saying these games failed to reach their goal even if they were on PC and Xbox. They said the same about Guardians of the Galaxy, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Juat Cause... all of those were multiplatform.
Releasing Rebirth on every console under the sun won't save it lmao Dude it already failed ice cold in JP, there's not even a demand for the game. And in america they started shipping them back.
Exactly most people who have PS5 now aren't even familiar with FF7 so the nostalgia for a game selling at 75 dollars. FoamStars why buy generic Splatoon when Splatoon exists.
@@thomas-ol3ni they shouldn't have took so long to frickin make the game! And they can't even make it as one big OPEN WORLD like 15 was; i mean, that's how the old FF7 was. they've had to make this in Parts which is just really lame, prob dissappointed alot of oldskool FF7 fans.
Nah, I personally think it's because they think the "3 disk" released would work, in a world where our attention span last shorter than a male japanese pornstar hold their ejaculation on-set.
Square Enix acts like a 40 years old milf milking an overworked office worker's jizz. What did they expect, a satisfying ending?
Now they got desperate enough to open their "product" to EVERYONE.
@@RaikenXion ehhh i actually like it flesh out he city more
@@Steven9567 Well yeh but i mean just make the actually *World Map* seamlessly OPEN fully to explore, but just simply make it detailed like how FF15's world map is. Ofcourse all the actual towns and cities, nibelheim, wutai etc, can still be fully fleshed out, where you enter them and it loads up it's own big, open map. So just like Midgar is in FF7 Remake, like that i mean.
Is the PS5 not even powerful enough to be able to do that!? lol. Seems not, maybe this generation of new Consoles are not as "next gen" as they make out then.
I am more impressed SE is still alive ngl. The amount of stupid decisions is just shocking
Yes, but they have come back with higher quality titles now. Square Enix during FF13, FF14 1.0 and FF15 was trash.
@@dreamer6737 agreed, squeenix in 2010s had trash games. Not surprised many consumers lost faith in them.
@@dreamer6737 man, funny how it's always FF when people talk about SE (good or bad), but seldomly hear anyone talk abou DQ or any Enix games for that matter.
without FF14 they very likely would not be.
that game pulled them up from the abyss in the last second.
It's time to break away from Sony's icy titan grip my guys.
Thank you Square-Enix, maybe you can grow a pair once more. This ESG stuff just aint cutting it.
Am I the only 1 who read this in Johnny's voice?
@@wiseguy240Winston Nope, I did too.
I'm not sure if this is a reference to something but...
Still, who the hell do we even go to to play games anymore?
Microsoft Xbox? Yeah... They got their own crap to cram down our throats.
Or... just Microsoft in general; "Congratulations! You made an amazing, award-winning, widely acclaimed game... Now get the fuck out of here you freeloaders!!!!"
Other than indie, it feels like you can not play games without making some minor, to major moral compromises...
(And indies too, at times.)
Also hardware?
Nvidia?
ASUS?
Right...
Which company can you think that hasn't majorly tried to screw over people atleast a few times.
Just... Nothing you do will feel even 80% morally okay. Either one thing is really corrupt, if not a little bit of everything is somewhat corrupted.
(And all of this not
@@VodhrI wouldn't go ASUS. Stuff coming out over their scammy, mob-like tactics for repairing customer products.
@@Killer_Turnip that's what I meant.
How ASS-US is just out with their freshest corruption move.
And NVIDEA has been a constant state for years...
I could perhaps make the point a little clearer though.
If they end exclusivity, everyone wins. Customers, Square Enix, and shareholders.
Or they could sell off Final Fantasy in return for NFT stuff.
It doesn't help that FFXVI was a bad game ad FFVII rebirth was mediocre.
Damn right, ff7 rebirth the mini games
And here I thought FF6 was a beloved game by the playerbase. Damn, guess it's *that* bad, huh?
FFVII Rebirth has a 92 metacritic score and is lauded as the best FF in decades...
@@jmcg85 You are tripping but ok, also don't use metacritics as source of how good is a game
@@mafian234 mb I mean FFXVI 😂
>Make episodic remake of game
>Split episodes between different consoles
>Sales slump
Who would’ve thought
It’s misleading to say they are episodic. It’s not a telltale situation. Every entry is a complete game with chunky campaigns, specially rebirth.
The story is split into 3 parts, yeah, but they expand so much that it would be impossible to fit the entire story in a single disc.
Meanwhile COD and Ark on like 400 GB tho
@@ironwolf677 noone's talking about a single disc.
I aint buying two consoles to play the same story lol
@@MrMarci878 Both games are also on PS5
No need for 2 consoles
@@ironwolf677 My friend bought the first on PS4.
How exactly does he not need two consoles again?
That's on them. They signed exclusivity rights and logically that means money gets limited. SquareEnix should've known that already.
"We didnt sell 10 copies for every human on earth we're dissapointed." ~ Squeenix
I often go to Best Buy during my lunch break and see tons of Rebirth copies on the shelves and ask an employee if they sell well and they told me only during the first week at launch but it didn't sell out. All the copies on the shelves right now are still copies from the launch day.
The $70.00 price tag probably had something to do with that.
Also most people buy digital nowadays.
I wonder if SE ever considered that people may think games are too expensive now. I can only buy one $80 game every two months, and rebirth just wasn’t on my list.
Look at value not cost. 80 for anything less than 100 hours gameplay is not worth it.
@@samhobbs9116 It comes to down to cost unfortunately. I just cannot afford to buy multiple $80 games every month.
Never made sense to not release FF16 on PC
It never makes sense to be exclusive at all. Literally cutting the market into 1/3
so people can take it without paying this why gta 6 not coming day one on PC they want to make money not have PC player play and beat their games and than refund them
I don't even get why they went back to being exclusive with Sony after FF15, the whole reason they went multi-platform starting with FF13 was because prior to that title Sony actually was the _king of the hill_ with the PS2 it made sense back then to release for a console practically everyone had, but after the Xbox 360 dropped and PC became more accesible it didn't made any sense for a 3rd party to go solo on a single platform.
Then again, this is the same company that sold both Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to invest on NTF a year after the fad was already dead and Greenlit Forespoken, so they releasing two high profile games on a console with ten users is not that far-fetched from them.
@@TheCoolgame24well that’s a company that won’t last long if they can’t respect their gamers on pc, console gaming is dying a slow death.
At the moment not releasing to PC is just shooting yourself in the foot.
Well, what the hell was square-enix expecting? Were they expecting to sell as well as God of War or Spider-man? FF is popular, but not THAT popular. The sales for FF16 and Rebirth are actually good, its Square's fault for having too much expectations. Still, by all means, release these games to other platforms, they already served its purpose anyway, and that is to sell more PS5 consoles, so I'm sure Sony is happy.
Exclusives never made sense to me. Like why would any developer want to limit their sales?
Nobody would buy a switch if you could play Mario on pc. Exclusivity matters.
@@antiquecardboard No, exclusivity only matters to the platform holder, it doesn't benefit the devs or the consumers. If Mario was on PC yes a lot of people would play on PC but that doesn't mean nobody will buy a switch for Mario.
@@antiquecardboard For awhile they might if they wanted the portability aspect of it, but honestly the Switch doesn't deserve the sales anymore just to play Mario. This is why Nintendo hates emulation because it cuts into thier market of selling a console with decade old hardware at a premium price.
Because they are paid for the exclusivity deals. Which could potentially lead them to earning more than if they had released it on all platforms.
@@BorsPepsi It does (potentially) benefit the devs. They are paid for the deal. Meaning what they're paid could be larger than what they would've earned from the sales on other platforms. A net positive. Obviously that wasn't the case here though.
I would've already bought FFXVI and 7 if they were on pc. I don't have a ps5 and really have no plans of getting one.
I stopped participating in the console war a long time ago. I preferred PlayStation, but I also didn't hate XBox.
My last console was PS4 shortly after it first launched. I got to enjoy it for about six months before it was stolen during a move. My PC is by no means a powerhouse, but it runs my games smoothly enough that I get to enjoy them. That's all I care about.
Same. I'm sick of this exclusivity nonsense.
Same. After PS4 I was done with console, well, except Switch.
Good all games should be playable on all platforms that can run them. Simple as that.
That’s no fun though. What a boring market that would be
Boring market for the console company perhaps but amazing for the devs, publisher and gamers
@RestorationRelaxation More people getting to play more games is the opposite of boring.
Customers don't win in a console war. Only the companies making the consoles do.
so what’s the point of a console then?
@quentinb734 If the point of a console is exclusive games and nothing else then it is anti-consumer and shouldn't exist. Keeping the consoles around isn't a reason to have exclusives; exclusives being the only thing they have is a reason to get rid of them.
I don't understand why some people freak out about exclusives being shared to other platforms? It can only be good for gamers if these companies that make console selling games, expand their market to other consoles. Bottom line if all games are available on all consoles, the game creators get bigger budgets for future games as well as it makes the console creators have to deliver a better console than the competition. Competition is GREAT for consumers of said product.
You're also more likely to get it on sale in the future because the company has already made a profit from it.
Unless the company goes full broke and starts selling their stuff for nothing prices, in which case you don't get future titles of the thing... Because it's over.
SE has always had ridiculous sales quotas
Look at Nintendo 💀
Thank god DQ12 is still being developed.
Already been spoiled on Rebirth, turns out it’s hard to hide from a game for THREE MONTHS SONY!!!!
Exclusivity is segregationism.
@@ShuckleII Exclusivity ≠ Literally 1984. That's a stretch if I've ever heard one.
There are plenty of cases where exclusive games ARE a good thing, it's always an important key driver for console sales, best example being the Switch. It just didn't work out for Square Enix is all.
Wow, so it turns out that restricting who can buy your games reduces the amount of people who will buy your games.
Truly an unheard of metric that nobody could've predicted.
More and more people are moving to PC. This is the best decision Square could have made!
This. PS4 was the last era for me with consoles and I went to PC. Don't regret it at all. I also play Switch but I treat that as a handheld. I have a Switch Lite.
Still think exclusivity is a necessary evil?
Alot of people that bought Helldivers 2 on PC, and was able due to Valves regional pricing and it's global coverage, something that consoles never allowed because of their closed ecosystem. In America consoles are popular and cheap because we're lucky to have a sustainable economy, however, in other parts of the world PC cafe's is the go to for PC gaming and cheaper than consoles because they cost triple the price there.
I don't care for the console wars of exclusivity because I know that my filipino friend that I play on Steam will never be able to play those exclusive games.😢 PC MASTER RACE! WE CARE NOT FOR EXCLUSIVE!
Good. These games deserve to be played by as many people as possible. Release future titles on both PlayStation and Xbox simultaneously, release the PC version when it's ready, then put out a Nintendo version if possible (as either a cloud version or on a future console that is powerful enough)
Definitely saw this coming, with rising development costs there's no way on this planet that Sony can offer them more money to stay exclusive than what they would made going multiplat day 1. Literally the most unsurprising thing of the century
Who could've guessed that selling on a platform that nobody could get for multiple years and that to this day has barely any reason to exist outside of an SSD wouldn't do so hot.
If they're gonna continue releasing on Epic Games Store then they're not gonna do much better.
PC gamers are at Steam, EGS is good for free games and Fortnite but that's about it.
This reminds me of what's happening with streaming and why that is struggling now to make a profit. The big media companies got greedy so instead of licensing out their movies, they thought they could claw back that additional revenue via having their own service and exclusives. This is what makes something like Max different from a service like Netflix that was originally made as an aggregator for syndicated content. But now that times have changed after COVID and inflation and people can't afford a bunch of expensive individual services, their play for clawing back that additional revenue lost from licensing their content out has backfired *dramatically*. This is what is happening to Square Enix and video games too as both XBox and Playstation 5 have been underwhelming to say the least this generation. Because what Microsoft & Sony are competing on now aren't who has the better console or service, but what titles they can lock behind their restrictive ecosystems. It's rent seeking, not innovation, and it turns out for something non-essential like video games & entertainment people just won't buy into it. I'm so glad that I can afford to do PC gaming and the Steam Deck because it's openness it probably what's going to save video games in the long haul.
It took over 4 years from Remake to Rebirth.
Square didn't think fans would lose at least a tab bit of interest?
True fans won’t lose interest no matter how long the wait. You would be surprised how long fans are waiting for ES6 to come out despite Microsoft buying out Bethesda
I don’t think waiting times between games are an issue. Just look at GTA
The 5th game released like 11 years ago but almost the entire world is super hyped for GTA 6 despite waiting so long.
waiting isn't the issue. its the fact that not everyone owns or wants to own a PS5. Especially with how hard they were to come by at first.
@@ironwolf677 gta are self contained games there is no gta 6 part 1, part 2, ect. It's just gta 6.
Well.... Square finally realizing that exclusivity is a bad idea if you want a high sales number... Which is obvious to anyone with half a brain. Also they might wanna stop talking about pushing NFTs and shit, that also turns off their customer base.
I guess they finally noticed that Majority of the RPG players migrated to the Switch and PC after Sony Stopped caring about RPGs around the PS3 era.
There's also the whole Vita RPG resurgence that was crushed and brushed under the carpet.
RPGs are perfect for the Switch and PC though.
What a surprise limiting who can play your games to a select few if not one platform(s) for years would inevitably affect your sales numbers.
It's not like they didn't know this. Obviously they knew this. It just didn't meet the sales expectations with this in mind.
I love Square, but they deservedly lost money to teach them a lesson. Certain 3rd party games should never be exclusive to any one platform because of the history of said title. When I saw that they brought over all the other FF games to xbox, I thought they took a turn away from major title exclusivity, but here we are. I would've loved to play FF16, but I sure as hell will not be buying a Sony console for it.
Part 3 will probably still be exclusive but it’ll be the last. The contract was most likely for the whole remake and I’d be shocked if they could get out of it after 2 games.
Who would've thought that selling a game in a console that no one owns is going to make people not buy it.
I get the need for exclusives and the draw of them… Mario, Zelda, the plethora of PlayStation exclusive characters and games…. But… taking what has grown into a multi platform series and THEN single it to one console is a big F U to the fans who don’t have that console. As an Xbox owner and lifelong fan of Final Fantasy, unless I fork out over $500 for a console to play 1-3 games, I will never be able to play the full final fantasy series… rebirth okay fine it’s a reboot sequel, but locking a main numbered ‘16’ behind exclusivity is what I am annoyed about
I wonder if they are going to blame their western division for this?
They literally blamed their own japanese games all the time
They do. That is why Square is shutting down their western branch.
Square Enix is a weird company. Their company head had an interview and talked about their game should look like it's made by Japanese.
Then they have Babylon's Fall and Forspoken released around that period and FF16 a year later.
@@MaxLittleBuddy Naoki Yoshida also attempted to address Japanese Twitter's concerns about FF16 at PAX Expo in the US. So that gives you an idea how of out of touch they are.
@@MaxLittleBuddyFF 16 is still Japanese aesthetically
I _really_ hope this means we can get older exclusives ported to other consoles and PC.
Oh damn, it turns out *le gasp* that if you limit your product to about 20% of your entire market, it doesn't sell well. Well gee who would have thunk it.
The time of year after year growth is over. Its unsustainable
“Disappointing Sales” is just code word for “We didn’t make enough money.”
@@ox_trueprotagonistchrisred9085 Of course not. Square Enix invested tons of money into FF7R and FF16 and it's been a disaster for both.
Just waiting for Rebirth to come to steam pc
It's because big corporate is greedy no matter who they are
Idk, the main benefit I can see for a game being on a single platform is that the developers will be able to optimize better because they will put all of their resources into one version. Without exclusivity, they will have to optimize more versions, which means they have to spread resources. So, they will either have to increase the overall budget, or extend the development time to achieve the same type of game size/polish. Which will also increase budget. They will probably have to downsize their games in order to stay within the same amount of money spent per game.
It was NEVER an issue before. Now all these companies are disappointed in their sales? Has to be more to it.
Shareholders. It almost always comes back to companies appeasing to those leeches.
Games are more expensive to make but the price of games have barely changed enough to compensate.
@@Whitedudeabove They don't HAVE to be that much more expensive to make, though, that's the problem. These companies dump so much into advertising that it's just absurd, sometimes effectively doubling the cost of the game's development.
@@Whitedudeabove How have they gotten more expensive to make now that they don't have to worry about physical copies and have easier tools to use?
@@TyrantWesker it's not just advertising, but that is part of the problem.
Me here waiting when FF7: RB arrives on PC while Square Enix is already concluding their sales & calling it a disappointment..
They didn't call it a disappointment. Quite the contrary, it had a "solid performance", according to their Financial Highlights. They even promoted the director(Hamaguchi) to an executive position in the company because of it.
Unfortunately, YongYea chose to believe in speculators vomiting misinformation in the Internet, instead of looking for what the financial report actually says.
I'm not waiting I'm just not buying it
@@Ukaranfound the pony
@@Ukaran Doesn't matter what the financials say (they said it wasn't good enough),, if it's not performing well on 1 platform anymore (either from sales or changed their minds on direction/strategy),, then the plan going forward has to be multiplatform, put it this way, if they say "games are not performing well enough on multiple platforms", then it's 100% a Square problem not a game sales or multiplatform problem, time will tell.
@@tempestsquall5882 Why? It's one of the best game series ever made.
You honestly telling me, you're gonna hit the grave without ever experiencing it?
Square - „we need literally every human being to buy 3 copies of our game to meet sales expectations”
Dont forget 6 copies for every ant
Exclusivity only made sense back when each platform had distinct hardware which made ports difficult to make. Now that consoles are just fixed spec PCs with minor tweaks, exclusivity is nothing more than a console seller.
Heads up for any game studio out there: stop spending half a billion dollars for a videogame. You are insane if you think you'll break even, it's not worth the risk and the stress.
THANK YOU.
Seriously, I'm going up a wall seeing people rambling about Square being stupid for making these games exclusive as if that was the origin of their troubles, when that's not it in the slightest. JRPGs have never sold well on PC, and even worse on XBox. Yeah, they will make some extra cash, but it won't save them at all. The real problem Square Enix has is their over budgeting tendencies.
I've always said that high budgets do not equal a good game or more importantly (for the developers) successful. It's been proven time and time again that games with much smaller budgets are more successful in the long run because they're cheaper for the consumer and not as many copies need to be sold to make a profit.
Also these game companies are out of touch with the current living crisis. As much as I wanted to buy these two games when they came out, i cant justify spending over $200 AUD for 2 games... its a joke
Neverending year after year growth is unsustainable. They will learn
@topclips1872 No they won't. They'll simply keep going till it's unsustainable, the top will jump ship with their golden parachutes and everyone else can get f****ed.
@@Pyxis10 it already is unsustainable hence the change in policy. They in fact learned
It’s almost as if limiting your audience is a terrible idea when you want to sell to as many as possible.
FF is one of my favourite series out there, but I refuse to buy a PS5 just to play a couple of exclusives, so it would be insane if they ended their exclusivity bs.
ff7 sold bad because the first part destroyed the best game ever made. Im shocked that they made a second part after how negatively the first part was received
Shame on me I thought rebirth would wrong the rights of remake. Now I'm never gonna buy a square game EVER again.
Hopefully more IP's can be freed from the shackles of dumb exclusivities.
**Paitently waits for Bloodborne on PC**
I am terrified of the prospect of SONY buying from soft just to make their future games exclusives.
I think I speak for a lot of PC players, but Square has shot themselves in the foot and have clearly shown that they care more about partnerships with executives and not PC consumers. Don't worry. Even if they release their games on PC, we won't be looking for it. You've lost our interest. Your executives can go buy it.
I’ll still be getting it on PC since it means I don’t need to drop hundreds of dollars to get a PS5 just so I can play 2 games. Stupid company decisions sure, but a good game is still a good game.
Corpo: *keeps releasing broken, unplayable and falsely marketed products*
Also corpo: Hmm, why are people not preordering
Also corpo two, braindead boogaloo: *releases a game on a single platform that requires an expensive console purchase with 177 countries that can't make accounts*
Also corpo, the return of the CEO: Why are our games not selling well?
Yeah, might have been a better idea to make them multiplatform from the start. Remember, the PS5 wasn’t exactly easy to find on launch.
I also imagine the $70 price tag is also a factor on why they aren't selling as many copies as they want. Also, the money spent on these 3rd party exclusivity deals is not nearly enough to cover for the loss of 2/3s of the market.
Infinite growth is unachievable anyways. Square isn't in a downward trend. Just greed from the CEO and shareholders is dragging them down. They're still doing great just not infinite growth which shouldn't be an objective, ever.
It absolutely is. FF games held steady at about 7 to 8 million for almost 2 decades. Then, they lost it all and haven't recovered since.
@@ohnosmoarlulcatz I think things changed after Spirits Within flopped
@@GelgoogJ Which is sad, because I actually loved that movie.
If it hadn't been tied to the Final Fantasy franchise, and was just a generic sci-fi, I think it would have done well enough.
lol you must be a pony..the cope is crazy
@@mattstanford9673 Spirits Within was a lot closer to the Mana games where they had to collect spirits to help them defeat the baddie.
I want more ffx like final fantasy games.
Linear and they open up at the end of the game.
I ran a business for 30 years. What executive made the decision to make the game exclusive on a single platform that doesn't even have market share? There are more PC players than any other platform, yet they decided to give exclusivity to a console platform. That's simply a stupid decision from the get-go, regardless of supposed "favorable" terms with Sony. Market share always drives profits. If I was on the Board that person would be gone.
I agree going non-exclusive will bring in more money, but also SE had some out of touch expectations on how much their games would sell. 16 sold over 3 million copies the month of its release. SE always likes to act like each AAA title is going to break the world but none has done that in the Enix era.
It feels like they want particular games to make up sales losses of their major flops. Avengers, Forspoken and Babylon's fall definitely lost them money. So they want Final fantasy to pick up the slack.
What happened to Square-Enix:
1. NFTs
2. Live Service Games (Bioware cannot do Anthem, do not force yourself Square)
3. Playstation exclusivity
4. Weak marketing on some of their titles
5. Changing gameplay on established titles, like Valkyrie Elysium and FFXVI
It feels like they favor Squaresofts old properties when it comes marketing. Like you will always know, when the next FF comes out.
If it weren't for Nintendo Directs, you would barely hear from anything from DQ. Or that the HD-2D games also came to Steam.
Don't forget heavy use of AI
I'm a PC gamer only and I own all the Final Fantasy games on PC besides FF16 and Rebirth since they are exclusive to PS5. In fact, I didn't even know these games existed because Square Enix didn't advertise it on their Steam Store which I'm following them on. If I knew about these games and they were on PC, I would have bought those games too for sure since I am interested in them BUT... they are not on PC and I am not willing to purchase a PS5 just for 2-3 Square Enix games. Asking me to buy a new hardware for 2-3 games is just asking for too much imo. It's not my fault that I couldn't buy their newest games due to this huge console paywall requirement to play their newest games.
Listen if these people would come down from their "clouds" and see that a lot of people are disillusioned with a lot of video games due to shitty releases of games that could be great and expecting people to spend thousands of dollars on consoles and video games...ike he said with the decline of the economy and prices going up...how do they expect to just go out of our way to spend $60-$150 on a game that is mediocre to ok with a good chunk of us having to spend that much just to survive with expensive groceries and bills. Its ridiculous
We've been known foamstars is coming to other platforms in August due to disclaimers on their trailers, and i really hope it does well there because it's one ot the swaggiest and funniest shooters I've played in a bit, and I don't want it to die do soon when every update has been s banger. They listened to the community with constant updates fixing bugs and issues, they even fixed their overpriced microtransactions, lowering prices of all of em and that kind of communication and action deserves to succeed in a gaming world that has so many companies ignoring their player base
They intentionally limited their possible customer base to 10% of it's potential, and didn't get as much money as they thought they'd get? Shocking
We’re you really enjoying consoles having exclusive games it’s really boring if you love a game so much you would want to play it on many consoles as possible not only on one console
@Luigiplaya246is that the best you can say you sound broke can’t afford buying your favorite games on every consoles I bought tekken 8 on every console every final fantasy on every console were not in the 80’s kiddo
@Luigiplaya246 I like my own comment you make a lot of sense but I know I like my comment for sure more then yours go get a job who can’t afford a $500 console
@Luigiplaya246your comment makes no sense to even reply this isn’t about liking your own comment I’d that what you do like your own comments since you talked dumb like that I gave the comment a like 👍 now the person has 3 likes didn’t know you can like your comment 3 times go cry somewhere else
@@samamir8765he must of deleted his first comment I missed it glad you committed on it before he committed again what a weirdo
@@samamir8765don’t listen to him you like your own comment you didn’t even give yours a like that’s how much he’s full of trash talk
Watch em disappoint everywhere else too 😂
What they said is that the games were doing fine, but they didn't make the profits needed to offset all the bad decisions made that killed their profits. They literally had a 17% revenue increase and sales numbers were up, but things like cancelling multiple games intended for releases 2027 and up completely destroyed any possible profitability.
It's funny that everyone harps on the 3 games released exclusively on PS, when they also released 9 games exclusively on Switch in the same timeframe that barely sold 1 million copies.
This is great news. Square Enix used to be the gold standard in gaming but the younger generation these days mostly knows them for Forspoken, Marvel's Avengers, Babylon's Fall, Foamstars and the meme of never meeting their sales expectations. Getting their development pipelines in order and finally ending the exclusivity deals is a much needed change.
While making these games PS5 exclusive(or at least a timed-exclusive) was always going to cause the sales to be lower than it would have been otherwise due to a smaller customer base, let's be real: When was the last time that Squenix *didn't* say that a game they released failed to meet their expectations? To me it seems more like they just keep setting sales expectations way too high and haven't figured out that despite being a big-name studio with big-name franchises that doesn't just mean they can release something and expect INFINITE MONEY.
Of course there's also plenty of other factors to take into account. One of the big ones would be the rising cost of AAA game development. It's costing more and more money and more and more time to make a game that qualifies as 'AAA' then it did a couple console generations ago, which isn't really something that the company themselves can fully control, because there's a lot more factors to it outside of just gaming that I'm not going to get into here. Then there's the fact that AAA games are turning out less and less polished on release which negatively impacts their reception and sales. Again, a lot of things that go into that, though that *is* in the devs(or rather the higher ups) control.
The fact that AAA is no longer the gold standard has also led to the rise of indie games and an increase in sales in that market, with more people opting to chose them rather than the AAA game. After all, why would people buy a $70 game that isn't even that good when they can get three $20 indie games that are just as good if not better and still have ten bucks left over?
And that's not even getting into all of the PR disasters that Squenix specifically has had, that's just been the general gaming market! Squenix's baffling insistence on trying to promote NFT and blockchain and crypto despite pretty much all of their customers telling them "don't do this, it's a bad idea, we don't want it, we're not going to buy into it if you do do it so just save us all the time and yourselves the money and drop it", as well as their live-service flops with Babylon's Fall and Avengers, which definitely didn't help things, and then selling off beloved studios like Crystal Dynamics. Looking back, the failures of Babylon's Fall, Avengers, and Forspoken(well, definitely Forspoken, the other two might be old enough that they've already made back the loss elsewhere) is probably also a massive reason for why Squenix set sales expectations for FFXVI and VIIRebirth so high, in order to try and recoup their losses on those games. Had they not gone through with even one of them, I'm sure they wouldn't be nearly as bothered by the reception that FFXVI and VIIRebirth have had.
So I guess really the takeaway is that what Squenix REALLY needs to do is stop wasting time and money trying to trendchase NFT and live-service garbage and just do what made them so popular to begin with: make good games. Really that applies to any of the various developers that have been having troubles lately(Warner Bros. anyone?), but I digress.
Oh gee who could have seen this coming? The absolute shitshow that was rolling out of PS5s, couple that with the fact that inflation and cost of living are out of control with pay not keeping up, and to top it all off charging 70 DOLLARS for what is effectively the other half of the game for FF7. These fucking companies can pound sand.
Another issue with Square Enix currently is FF XIV has an issue where it is declining VISA debit cards from subscriptions.
Games Exclusivity means less time and resources for a game developer to test a game, If they choose for non-exclusivity, they need shell-out more MONEY and TIME in testing the game from different types of systems(PS/XBOX/PC). game developing isn't "one size fits all",. Games settings needs to be tweaked rigorously (from startup to end credits/to every side quests and to every mini games/every FMVs) to fit different types of system and technology (PS/XBOX systems), Moreover a different types PC architectures(AMD/Radeon : Intel/Nvidia). Do you know how hard to port an Iphone games to an Android phones? almost doubling the resources and time needed. So good luck on their budget.
Square Enix reporting disappointing sales of their latest titles?
So....... business as usual then?
FF16 and FF7R's result scared them soo bad that they changed tactics immediately
I actually believe that all but (most of) the board members at Square understand what sales should be like when they do exclusive releases in some capacity. Be it Japan only release, PS5 only release, etc. I think their problem with this is that there's a mix of people who 1) feel they should only work with Sony because it's Japanese and 2) feel like their Japanese audience is enough to offset global audiences... somehow. Much like elsewhere in the world, Japanese shareholders and boards aren't exactly the smartest people of the bunch. They just have money, but that doesn't translate to common sense intelligence. "There's 5 million PS5 owners in Japan. Why aren't we meeting our goal of selling 15 million copies of a FF7 Rebirth in Japan alone?"
As a metric it either show 2 things….first, people aren’t buying these types of games anymore….or PS5 sales are overstated and aren’t as good as media touts it to be.
Music to my ears. And yes Yong it’s definitely an issue of quality. After a string of mediocre titles, the FF brand has no reputation left to spend, and it’s really amusing to see SE desperately try to catch a captive audience to sell their most recent digital slop to. Anyone who think it’s just because of exclusivity is on some columbian grade copium.
I for one am looking forward to seeing their uncritical fanboys continue enabling them into hemorrhaging even more cash to produce shiny piles of heaping shit.
1 thing, FF Rebirth devs openly came out and said they LIKED only working on 1 platform at a time. They said FF7 Rebirth would not yet be released if they had to develop for multiple platforms.
While I have no problem with things being multi platform (obviously) there ARE downsides to releasing on everything at once.
Imagine if Cyberpunk 2077 released PC only 1st and worked on other platforms
This is what happens when the vompany relies on nostalgia and hype over creativity and replayability.
I don't know if this means the games we love are beginning to die or not, but it is a really scary time for this industry.