$138M Loss Is Sign of Worse Things to Come for Square Enix

RedRooster

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2000
6,596
0
76
They'd almost be better off just abandoning current gen at this point and cutting their losses. Maybe I'm bitter that its coming to a close, but I'm just not motivated to buy games at all this year, even though I'm playing the heck out of my 360.
Way to go Sony, you ruined the year(by announcing so early).
 

Soundmanred

Lifer
Oct 26, 2006
10,780
6
81
OMG, they haven't made anything good since Final Fantasy 3 anyway! And hard drives are slow and they suck! And all new games except for a couple suck!
Forgot a few things:
-Stuffed suits
-Bureaucracy
-Mainstream sellouts
-Cater to the masses
-Dime a dozen
-Dried up back stabbers
-Ni no Kuni

Will update as necessary.
 
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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
They'd almost be better off just abandoning current gen at this point and cutting their losses. Maybe I'm bitter that its coming to a close, but I'm just not motivated to buy games at all this year, even though I'm playing the heck out of my 360.
Way to go Sony, you ruined the year(by announcing so early).

They did? They have many titles coming out this year on PS3...
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
Good.

Mainstream sellout bastards.

BTW hows that "only make games that cater to the masses" working out for you yeah?

Hows ignoring and shunning the loyal fan base that made you what you are today, hows that doing for you?

Go to hell and take your quick time event hall shooters you call an "RPG" with you.

Dried up back stabbing has been. My money goes to NamcoBandai, Atlus, etc now. I only pick up the latest Final Fantasy when it's $5 in the trash bin these days, and that doesn't take long after launch.

/spit

To think there was a time I would buy ANY console that had just ONE Squaresoft game on it.
 
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exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
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Also how do you have a game that sells over 1 million copies on launch (Tomb Raider) and lose money on it?

Especially a company that did well for two decades making ONLY niche games during the 8/16/32 bit era?

Where the fuck is the money going now? Oh that's right, into the stuff suits and over staffed bureaucracy.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
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Also how do you have a game that sells over 1 million copies on launch (Tomb Raider) and lose money on it?

Especially a company that did well for two decades making ONLY niche games during the 8/16/32 bit era?

Where the fuck is the money going now? Oh that's right, into the stuff suits and over staffed bureaucracy.

I think they spent too much money getting properties that were mild critical success but didn't pull the numbers in. Deus Ex, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider. Spend more than it takes in and you have a problem. I would also say that I think they spend way too much money on their RPG games that really don't have the following they used to and don't sell as well worldwide as past titles did. The production cost went up and the quality didn't follow so much?
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
I would also say that I think they spend way too much money on their RPG games that really don't have the following they used to and don't sell as well worldwide as past titles did.

Too much Hollywood glam and glitz to get the attention of the drooling casuals wanting to jump into the "final fantasy is cool" fad and no actual game substance. Sigh.

Many say it's because the old JRPG formula is dead but that's just it, they don't follow the old JRPG formula anymore and THAT is what makes their games suck. Without the classic Square JRPG foundation, their games are just another dime a dozen mass produced mainstream shovelware.

I want a simple game without "innovative" and convoluted Call of Duty battle systems, but with an unforgettable story that robs two weeks of my life and makes it hard not to cry. I want the hairs on my neck stand up while I watch the 2 hour ending sequence motionless and in awe. Not a Charlie's Angels/Underworld/Matrix action flick. Not the mainstream back patting 5 second "you're awesome! Back to the title screen now! Blitz ball achievement unlocked!" ending of their current games.

And drop the mainstream oriented emo "im too sexy for my shirt" one liner dropping shitty characters already. The Akuma/Sephiroth shit isn't cool, never was.

Ni no Kuni and Fire Emblem and Xenosaga is what Square should be competing with, not trying to combine Call of Duty and Tekken and calling it Final Fantasy XVIXIXIIVIXICCM.

Would it freaking KILL them to hire at least ONE god damn story writer instead of 10 more CGI artists? And listen to the writer's vision and not the investors? Because NOT doing any of that is DEFINITELY killing them while we know the former kept them alive for two decades.

Pro tip Square: don't make another RPG until you have a 1000+ page novel backing up the story and characters first. Stop making flashy CGI and throwing in a story 5 days before launch. It's not working.
 
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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Lol way to sum it up. I'm playing through persona 4 golden for the 3rd time and I doubt any square game could make me do that
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
Lol way to sum it up. I'm playing through persona 4 golden for the 3rd time and I doubt any square game could make me do that

yet another game I need to get back into. I love the persona games, but I've not managed to finish a single one :( Ugh damn my teenager like attention span.

I think I finished more games before the internet.

Square needs to think about what created Final Fantasy to begin with and re-evalutate.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
I really just wish that developers would stop pushing proper nouns down our throats. I've been growing more annoyed by it recently, and was rather glad to see an Extra Credits episode talk about it as well. I remember reading the Final Fantasy XIII background story, and just saying, "Wait... the who did the what to whom during what?"

At least Call of Duty doesn't shove nouns in my face! :p
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
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Yea it does, but "M4" and "ACOG" dont require any imagination or brain activity :awe:

But yeah another reason 13 sucked, tried to explain the whole story and world lore in the first 15 minutes of the game all at once to a short attention span ADHD target audience that likely skipped said scenes anyway to get to the action were they could shoot something .
 
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Fingolfin269

Lifer
Feb 28, 2003
17,948
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Yea it does, but "M4" and "ACOG" dont require any imagination or brain activity :awe:

But yeah another reason 13 sucked, tried to explain the whole story and world lore in the first 15 minutes of the game all at once to a short attention span ADHD target audience that likely skipped said scenes anyway to get to the action were they could shoot something .

I think you may be the most jaded console gamer I've ever encountered. ;)
 

Drako

Lifer
Jun 9, 2007
10,697
161
106
Yep, they need to stop with the FF franchise. They have already killed it, and they need to put a bullet in its zombie brain and move on.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
But yeah another reason 13 sucked, tried to explain the whole story and world lore in the first 15 minutes of the game all at once to a short attention span ADHD target audience that likely skipped said scenes anyway to get to the action were they could shoot something .

I'm pretty certain that 99.9% of the population would get bored with something like that. That actually ties in with another Extra Credits video about exposition in games, which your (exaggerated) example would definitely fail at. :p
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
I think you may be the most jaded console gamer I've ever encountered. ;)

You would be too if your most beloved company, genre, and franchise went MIA for an entire prolonged console generation (two if you count PS2) and was beat to death all in the name of milking a few extra bucks off the 80 IQ zombie mass market that couldn't tell the difference between a real gun and airsoft if you shot them with both.
 
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smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
Yep, they need to stop with the FF franchise. They have already killed it, and they need to put a bullet in its zombie brain and move on.

No, since it isn't like the Final Fantasy games are connected. They aren't having to continue some silly story across 15 games like Capcom tries to do with Street Fighter.

They just need to start making JRPGs like they used to. Before disc based media, they had to convey their story through well written dialog and thoughtful narrative. Now they can just make most of the game a cutscene and forgo and real writing. You no longer have to use well written dialog to convey Cloud's lameness, you can just make a cutscene to do that with.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
And it doesn't even have to be text if that's too outdated for people. Xenosaga makes EXCELLENT use of in game cut scenes and voice acting with optional subtitles if you want text.

Xenosaga is modern JRPG done PERFECT.
 

Anteaus

Platinum Member
Oct 28, 2010
2,448
4
81
They need to return to the basics. A solid story with a pure turned based combat system that focuses on strategy and less on twitch gameplay.

Final Fantasy 13 was a interactive CG movie more than a game. The combat system was generally twitch action based and the rest of the game was on rails, with set pieces accented with gameplay similar to MGS4. FF13 felt more like a tech demo for the PS3 than an actual game. It was very pretty but quite shallow.

For an example of what I'm talking about look at Lost Odyssey. It's not a square game, but the combat system was top notch and had a solid story to boot. Maybe it wasn't as polished as FF13, but at least it was engaging.

My big issue with Square is that every time they do get it right they f*ck it up with the following release as if it would be a sin to carry over something from the game before. I hate ATB with a passion. Give me true turn based combat like FF1, FF4 and FFX any day over all of that quasi turned based crap.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
8
0
Also how do you have a game that sells over 1 million copies on launch (Tomb Raider) and lose money on it?

Fvked up Hollywood accounting?

Tomb Raider is the best game I've played this year, and I was looking forward to some DLC that added content, fleshed out the other characters, etc, but instead, we're getting half assed multiplayer DLC.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
14,946
1,077
126
The fact that game companies sell exponentially more games today than ever before and still fail shows that these companies truly don't know what they are doing. This is why it's funny listening to people go on and on about how much more games cost to make today. Maybe they should wise up and realize not every game needs a budget of a blockbuster movie and isn't going to move CoD numbers.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
In before "production costs went up". I call bullshit.

The guys rolling around the mat with motion capture rigs don't cost any more when you go from 480p to 720p to 1080p. Plus the motion capture rigs are already paid for back when they were first acquired for PS1.

Going from 480p to 1080p doesn't make the cost of story writing go up.

Using live bands and orchestra's and making 3 disc CD quality sound tracks has been done since SNES/Sega CD/PS1 era.

The cost of modeling and animating doesn't go up because even PS1 models were already created with higher cinema quality poly counts before down sizing them to fit the constraints of the system (polygon budget). I argue it was HARDER to make good low poly models back then than to make cinematic quality multi million poly models today.

Programming isn't harder, as the bulk of game work these days is in asset/artwork; 3D engines and programming ability have converged and stabilized to a well known science over a decade ago. Any random Indian or Korean can write a state of the art 3D engine in Flash these days, you don't need John Carmacks anymore.

Voice acting, again, done since the Sega CD.

All that's really gone up in terms of production of current gen games is texture sizes, and again you could argue that photo quality textures is and always has been natural for an artist and not having to convert to 256 color pixel art as the final step now just makes it easier. Assets have ALWAYS been pre-production/concept in higher quality. Now those assets can go straight into the game with no post processing to reduce them.

Computers and rendering power are cheaper than ever. You no longer need multi million dollar SGI workstations to render video, a $1500 PC with the latest GeForce card can do it.

So where the fuck are all these increased production costs? 3D game dev costs dont go up linearly with pixel count, it doesn't work that way. I call bullshit.

We should be asking why does it cost $100 million to make a shitty game today? It doesn't. I bet it costs 1-10 million tops, while the other 90 million goes to advertising and Armani suits and limos and high rises for the publisher execs and useless licensing and merchandising deals (NFL, etc). Oh just like the movie/music industry? Do the actual game designers that slave 100 hours a week see any of it? Or do they just get a shitty $40,000/yr salary while the publisher CEO waxes poetically about exploiting franchises and how it shouldn't be fun for developers to make games and how all that matters is how much money they make on their next quarterly?

Because games were doing good and boomed LONG before any of this living large glam shit came into the picture.
 
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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
I still think on my friend's son who I occasionally play mp games with and his stack of games with substance and story he ignored and skipped through because he just wanted action, and the realization that he would never finish any of them because he missed the whole explanation of what he needs to do or what he needs to look for. Even in cod. He just runs around shooting and doesn't even atop to think that maybe the dialog where you were given a mission objective might actually be important.

Saddens me every day. I provably read a novels worth of dialog in persona 4 over the past week and he won't even listen to some guy on an action game explain where to go. I would love to see him tackle xenogears. After 5 minutes "where is my guns and why did that monster appear from nowhere and I couldn't snipe it?"