Square Enix Loses Nearly $2 Billion in Value Since Final Fantasy 16

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

Absolutely. I don't have a PS5 and my FOMO was high enough that I almost considered buying one just to play FFXVI. I didn't because once I took a bit to think on it, it was a terrible return on investment decision during a time where money doesn't go as far as it used to.

If it had been on PC? I would have bought it without a moment's thought. I'm sure I'm far from alone there.

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You are not alone, I had the same thoughts glad I held off

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I'm not a fan of FFXVI at all, but I have to laugh at the idea that it's the cause of these financial woes of SE.



so we have
- forspoken
- marvel avengers
- x amount of mobile game flops

Let's not put this on FFXVI, it's just SE being SE. FFXVI simply wasn't a seller enough to make up for their other failures.

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That's something i noticed is all these financial articles on square enix is putting all the financial problems solely on ff16 and not accounting the massive flops of all there recent mobile games marvel avengers and forspoken. It just seems easier to put the blame on a recently released game that has only been out 2 months.

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Originally Posted by Nebelheim

That's something i noticed is all these financial articles on square enix is putting all the financial problems solely on ff16 and not accounting the massive flops of all there recent mobile games marvel avengers and forspoken. It just seems easier to put the blame on a recently released game that has only been out 2 months.

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I think some readers are missing the point of the article and what investors said and end up spreading misinformation. Investots "blame" XVI not because it flopped, but because it was a very expensive blockbuster project that failed to cover for the other big eff ups of the company. They also mention not liking producers having so much creative control over the projects, and that's a long workplace culture issue SE has in particular.

I don't know exactly why XVI underperformed (again, it didn't flop, it's different). Some people say PS5 exclusivity, but that didn't seem to hinder the absolute pre sale success VIIR2 had some days ago. I remind people that XVI was outsold by Pikmin 4 in Japan, a niche title that doesn't has the brand power FF has.

But yeah, this year has been a big L for SE, just put this into perspective: people still remembers the absolute failure of Avengers and Forspoken, but do any of you remember Babylon's Fall? Let that sink in...

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Originally Posted by Aldath

I think some readers are missing the point of the article and what investors said and end up spreading misinformation. Investots "blame" XVI not because it flopped, but because it was a very expensive blockbuster project that failed to cover for the other big eff ups of the company. They also mention not liking producers having so much creative control over the projects, and that's a long workplace culture issue SE has in particular.

I don't know exactly why XVI underperformed (again, it didn't flop, it's different). Some people say PS5 exclusivity, but that didn't seem to hinder the absolute pre sale success VIIR2 had some days ago. I remind people that XVI was outsold by Pikmin 4 in Japan, a niche title that doesn't has the brand power FF has.

But yeah, this year has been a big L for SE, just put this into perspective: people still remembers the absolute failure of Avengers and Forspoken, but do any of you remember Babylon's Fall? Let that sink in...

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I think square enix in general hasn't been doing good with producing games and trying to use final fantasy as a franchise to hopefully pull them out of the hole they created.

FF16 is only on the PS5. Of course, it had an uphill battle. It's also much different from traditional FFs, so it ended up well liked by non-FF fans while mixed with FF fans.

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Originally Posted by Nebelheim

That's something i noticed is all these financial articles on square enix is putting all the financial problems solely on ff16 and not accounting the massive flops of all there recent mobile games marvel avengers and forspoken. It just seems easier to put the blame on a recently released game that has only been out 2 months.

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By comparison, FF 16 performed pretty well given the circumstances. If it had been more widely available from the get-go, it would have done extremely well. It just wasn't good enough for SE and its shareholders, apparently. Either way, they are blaming the wrong...well, everything at the moment. The heart of the problem is corporate leadership. Their focus on NFTs will be the end of them at this rate. That market crashed and never really recovered. Most companies have moved on because gamers saw them for the scam that they are.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

By comparison, FF 16 performed pretty well given the circumstances. If it had been more widely available from the get-go, it would have done extremely well. It just wasn't good enough for SE and its shareholders, apparently. Either way, they are blaming the wrong...well, everything at the moment. The heart of the problem is corporate leadership. Their focus on NFTs will be the end of them at this rate. That market crashed and never really recovered. Most companies have moved on.

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Square enix does have a lot of management issues and still making the same mistakes that they made that lead them to have to merge with enix in the early 2000's.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

Did no one read the article?
The "Losses" are from a dip in stock value. No, SE didn't lose any money, their stock is worth less for now because investors sold off.

Why? The article says 'The root of the problem, sources told Bloomberg, is that producers were given “full reign” over the scope and direction of projects, whose goals can shift “without warning”. The upshot of this is volatility in the quality of the final product.'
The investors think developers, and in particular Yoshi-p who falls under "Producers", have too much say in the direction of the product. They want more stable, highly monetized games that are the stable minimum viable product, which they think SE is less likely to give them now.
That's the opposite of what gamers want. Acting like this should be a lesson learned for SE you should be aware what they're would take from this, that they need to make more bland live service games with heavy microtransactions to keep investors happy.

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Exactly this.

It's consistently amazing how people wanting to be right about things will latch on to anything they think supports their view of them being right...but how few people scrutinize that to be sure it DOES.

Investors aren't looking at SE "making FFXIV braindead" and thinking "Oh no! We must pull our money!". They're looking at SE doing a lot of random things and their game producers and devs taking risks and going "Oh no! I don't want to risk my money, I want my money to go to routine, tried-and-true blandness with microtransations so I can be guaranteed a consistent profit!"

If SE "learned a lesson" from this, it would be to make bland games with more microtransactions. Is that REALLY what you want them to do? Isn't that the complaint about FFXIV now? The "lesson learned" here would be to DOUBLE DOWN on EW and the Mog Station. The exact opposite of what OP and those in agreement want, I'd think...?

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EDIT:

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

Right about what, exactly? This thread is about the way internal perceptions of SE's ongoing struggles and FFXVI's underperformance may influence FF14's development going forward. It's just a place to speculate; My initial thoughts were optimistic that XIV might receive more internal attention because it's a consistent earner that the new CEO seemingly has an affinity for. I understand that every single thing you do and say is just a contrivance created to serve your weird internal narrative, but you need to understand that not everyone operates like you do.

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Not going to waste a separate post on this other than to say:

That's a pretty antagonistic reply. Not everyone operates like you do, either, friend.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Investors aren't looking at SE "making FFXIV braindead" and thinking "Oh no! We must pull our money!". They're looking at SE doing a lot of random things and their game producers and devs taking risks and going "Oh no! I don't want to risk my money, I want my money to go to routine, tried-and-true blandness with microtransations so I can be guaranteed a consistent profit!"

If SE "learned a lesson" from this, it would be to make bland games with more microtransactions. Is that REALLY what you want them to do? Isn't that the complaint about FFXIV now? The "lesson learned" here would be to DOUBLE DOWN on EW and the Mog Station. The exact opposite of what OP and those in agreement want, I'd think...?

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I agree, that's what they might try. The only "possitive" I see coming out of this mess is that Investors also mentioned SE should consider giving less creative control to Producers because, honestly, some of their bigger games could have come better if it wasn't because they bend over backwards towards the preferences of the producer, like, how Nomura games will end up featuring cloaked guys, time travel and multiverse even if he's not part of the writing team of the game, or how Toriyama couldn't help but to include girls changing clothes (or losing them) as a mechanic.

That said, SE is as infamous as Namco Bandai for making absolute trash mobile games that close in less than a year at most. I know it's the most souless, profitable trend in the gaming industry, but it's hilarious SE can't even seem to get that right. They have good mobile games like Another Eden and Octopath, which have less restricvite monetization and thus seem to be less profitable, and then you have stuff like Brave Exvius which I swear most have less than a thousand concurrent players but all of them are whales. It would be funny to see them crash and burn because of it.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Exactly this.

It's consistently amazing how people wanting to be right about things will latch on to anything they think supports their view of them being right...but how few people scrutinize that to be sure it DOES.

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Right about what, exactly? This thread is about the way internal perceptions of SE's ongoing struggles and FFXVI's underperformance may influence FF14's development going forward. It's just a place to speculate; My initial thoughts were optimistic that XIV might receive more internal attention because it's a consistent earner that the new CEO seemingly has an affinity for. I understand that every single thing you do and say is just a contrivance created to serve your weird internal narrative, but you need to understand that not everyone operates like you do.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Investors aren't looking at SE "making FFXIV braindead" and thinking "Oh no! We must pull our money!". They're looking at SE doing a lot of random things and their game producers and devs taking risks and going "Oh no! I don't want to risk my money, I want my money to go to routine, tried-and-true blandness with microtransations so I can be guaranteed a consistent profit!"

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If they're smart, they'll look at the content model that was in play when the game generated the hype that actually helped drive EW's initial boom. EW itself is a risk they've taken; They've substantially slowed down the patch schedule while replacing a few popular systems with demonstrably less popular ones.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I'm not a fan of FFXVI at all, but I have to laugh at the idea that it's the cause of these financial woes of SE.



so we have
- forspoken
- marvel avengers
- x amount of mobile game flops

Let's not put this on FFXVI, it's just SE being SE. FFXVI simply wasn't a seller enough to make up for their other failures.

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You forgot Babylon's Fall... >.>

There's also a few things that could have been huge but were unfortunately mishandled like Chocobo GP, IMO Marvel Avengers would fall into that category as well. That new game FoamStars has potential but we'll have to see what they actually do with it gameplay wise.

As for the reason FF16 is getting so much blame, it's the same situation as with Hollywood movies. There's been a fair number in recent years that were popular and sold movie tickets but were considered a failure due to the huge cost of making it in the first place. Selling millions of units isn't as impressive when you realize they had to sell X million units just to break even financially.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

That new game FoamStars has potential but we'll have to see what they actually do with it gameplay wise.

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I was willing to give it a chance up until it was revealed that the big, beefy blond guy shown in the reveal trailer was not actually a playable character. So it's a hard pass from me. :p

FFVIIR's second portion is shaping up to be pretty intriguing, though so I imagine that'll do fairly well for itself.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I was willing to give it a chance up until it was revealed that the big, beefy blond guy shown in the reveal trailer was not actually a playable character. So it's a hard pass from me. :p

FFVIIR's second portion is shaping up to be pretty intriguing, though so I imagine that'll do fairly well for itself.

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After googling what Foamstars is, I can say with all confidence that if it fails is will still be remembered by the same reason Overwatch is, and it has nothing to do with gameplay.

About Rebirth, if the game ends up surpassing how good the first part was, it might as well help SE look better with investors. I have 0 trust in Nomura to write a coherent plot at this point, but the gameplay might be enough to hard carry it.

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Originally Posted by Aldath

After googling what Foamstars is, I can say with all confidence that if it fails is will still be remembered by the same reason Overwatch is, and it has nothing to do with gameplay.

About Rebirth, if the game ends up surpassing how good the first part was, it might as well help SE look better with investors. I have 0 trust in Nomura to write a coherent plot at this point, but the gameplay might be enough to hard carry it.

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My main concern is how Nomura will end this next installment, since it's such a pivotal event in the game itself, and one of the most iconic moments in FF history (in my opinion). I just hope he doesn't ruin any of that. I want to be emotionally wrecked by this. If he totally ruins all of that, I will not be buying the 3rd installment.

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Originally Posted by Aldath

After googling what Foamstars is, I can say with all confidence that if it fails is will still be remembered by the same reason Overwatch is, and it has nothing to do with gameplay.

About Rebirth, if the game ends up surpassing how good the first part was, it might as well help SE look better with investors. I have 0 trust in Nomura to write a coherent plot at this point, but the gameplay might be enough to hard carry it.

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The upcoming title I want more info on atm is Dragon Quest 12. During a Dragon Quest live stream event awhile back they announced it was in development and gave us a preliminary title screen then went silent about it.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

My main concern is how Nomura will end this next installment, since it's such a pivotal event in the game itself, and one of the most iconic moments in FF history (in my opinion). I just hope he doesn't ruin any of that. I want to be emotionally wrecked by this. If he totally ruins all of that, I will not be buying the 3rd installment.

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When a huge part of the story seems to be purposely trolling OG players, yea, you can count on Nomura ruining it.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

When a huge part of the story seems to be purposely trolling OG players, yea, you can count on Nomura ruining it.

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As I said before, investors don't like SE's aproach, letting producers get a hands on approach and also take creative director roles. If something good comes out of this, it could be the end of Nomura's reign of terror, at least as far as his influence over anything not KH is.

The guy seriously has a fetish or something, everything must somehow include Shibuya (or a clone of said city), robed individuals, destiny, time travel, belts and fashion.

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Originally Posted by Aldath

As I said before, investors don't like SE's aproach, letting producers get a hands on approach and also take creative director roles. If something good comes out of this, it could be the end of Nomura's reign of terror, at least as far as his influence over anything not KH is.

The guy seriously has a fetish or something, everything must somehow include Shibuya (or a clone of said city), robed individuals, destiny, time travel, belts and fashion.

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Even ff7 remake was somewhat ruined with the whole death eater looking things that looked like it was ripped out of kingdom hearts and the whole multiple timeline crap. All the final fantasy games he is involved in seems to take kingdom hearts elements or characters wear clothes covered in belts or some weird time travel stuff. He even wanted to make ff15 into a musical at one point and scrapped everything they did mid development for his musical idea and scrapped development multiple other times. After almost 10 years of no progress on ff15 square had enough and told him to work on kingdom hearts 3 full time while someone else take on his progress and had to completely redo everything he did.

If SE would just focus on what they are good at instead of doing some weird excursions into marvel and even their obsession with making action combat games.

They want to go with the time but i often have the feeling gamers want exactly the opposite. Something that has soul and doesn't just look pretty. One of the reasons why the indie game market has grown so big.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

My main concern is how Nomura will end this next installment, since it's such a pivotal event in the game itself, and one of the most iconic moments in FF history (in my opinion). I just hope he doesn't ruin any of that. I want to be emotionally wrecked by this. If he totally ruins all of that, I will not be buying the 3rd installment.

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Personally, wouldn't count on it. Having learned the games are only meant to be a trilogy, and are continuing to explore this "alternate timeline" bs, there's simply no possible way to really hit the same story beats in a satisfying manner. There's gotta be a ton of stuff cut out to make everything fit, and at this point the best thing you can do for yourself is set aside preconceptions and go in with the idea that "this is a story about the characters knowing about how the story should go and trying to avoid it."

Nomura will not ruin FFVII. Most of the weird ideas were from Kitase, instead. Nomura wanted a 1:1 remake. Also, Nomura is not longer involved with FFVII remake as he is now doing KH4.

People thinks that Nomura ruined everything, but the reality is that the original FFVII was like that because of him. Too much unfair hate to him for stupid rumors on internet. They even a cussed him of ruin FFXIII when he didn´t even participate on that game as he was doing Versus XIII.

Well... someone still owes us an entire cast of characters wearing nothing but belts... >.>

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Originally Posted by Xlantaa

Nomura will not ruin FFVII. Most of the weird ideas were from Kitase, instead. Nomura wanted a 1:1 remake. Also, Nomura is not longer involved with FFVII remake as he is now doing KH4.

People thinks that Nomura ruined everything, but the reality is that the original FFVII was like that because of him. Too much unfair hate to him for stupid rumors on internet. They even a cussed him of ruin FFXIII when he didn´t even participate on that game as he was doing Versus XIII.

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people need a scapegoat and Nomura is an easy target. I hate the FF fanbase which also includes each and everyone of you. But I agree, its so stupid that people pin everything on Nomura even when he's not personally involved.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

people need a scapegoat and Nomura is an easy target. I hate the FF fanbase which also includes each and everyone of you. But I agree, its so stupid that people pin everything on Nomura even when he's not personally involved.

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TBH it's not much different than countries placing blame on their situations on their president, prime minister, monarch, etc...

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

Absolutely. I don't have a PS5 and my FOMO was high enough that I almost considered buying one just to play FFXVI. I didn't because once I took a bit to think on it, it was a terrible return on investment decision during a time where money doesn't go as far as it used to.

If it had been on PC? I would have bought it without a moment's thought. I'm sure I'm far from alone there.

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I actually went to Bestbuy and had the PS5 in my hot little hands because I wanted to play FFXVI for myself after watching my friend stream it all day. I opted to hold off since I was still debating which version I preferred, and money was a little tight at the time. So it was very much an impulse purchase I'm happy to have reigned in. I'll still get either it or the PS5 eventually but it's far less of a FOMO nowadays. Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely stole my obsession and I don't even care all that much about Rebirth atm.

What's funny is I didn't even know BG3 was a thing until that same friend bugged me about it cause he wanted to do a co-op campaign. One month later and I have 200 hours in the damn thing >.>

Well FFXVI lost all the charm about the series and looks like a generic western game, FF7 Rebirth looks so much better.

Despite the controversial around FFXV at least you can recognize the names nor faces of the characters, but in FFXVI I couldn't care less about who is the protagonist or what's his name.

I'd say that despite FFXIV's continued success today, SE needs to improve their quality control on other games in order for the company to make the money to stay afloat.

The gaming industry has been fickle for the past few decades.

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Originally Posted by Xlantaa

Nomura will not ruin FFVII. Most of the weird ideas were from Kitase, instead. Nomura wanted a 1:1 remake. Also, Nomura is not longer involved with FFVII remake as he is now doing KH4.

People thinks that Nomura ruined everything, but the reality is that the original FFVII was like that because of him. Too much unfair hate to him for stupid rumors on internet. They even a cussed him of ruin FFXIII when he didn´t even participate on that game as he was doing Versus XIII.

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Without Nomura, FF7 is going to be full on multiple timelines, time travel, and raise from the dead shenanigans. It's quite sad.

Thinking back on it, maybe it was writing on the wall that they were legitimately trying to turn FF11 (what they consider a mainline FF game) into a mobile game. Plans ultimately fell through, but the mere thought is kind baffling when you really think about it.

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Originally Posted by KitingGenbu

Thinking back on it, maybe it was writing on the wall that they were legitimately trying to turn FF11 (what they consider a mainline FF game) into a mobile game. Plans ultimately fell through, but the mere thought is kind baffling when you really think about it.

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For me it was when they did that awful movie that almost erased the company from existance. Since then they have come dangerously close multiple times but keep getting saved by some genius who will eventually turn into yet another madman.

It had its merits though, SE inadvertedly wanted to create the first Vtuber before Youtube was even a thing, they had more plans for Aki than people had for Max Headroom.

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Originally Posted by KitingGenbu

Thinking back on it, maybe it was writing on the wall that they were legitimately trying to turn FF11 (what they consider a mainline FF game) into a mobile game. Plans ultimately fell through, but the mere thought is kind baffling when you really think about it.

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Or because nexon is a horrible mobile game company with predatory practices and made no progress in over 5 years of developing ff11 mobile and square dropped them and decided to keep supporting the pc version for there current players instead.

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Originally Posted by Nebelheim

Or because nexon is a horrible mobile game company with predatory practices and made no progress in over 5 years of developing ff11 mobile and square dropped them and decided to keep supporting the pc version for there current players instead.

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Sounds like Square Enix with their various FF7 mobile games. :)

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who liked XVI.... The game was a flawed masterpiece in my book. It had a lot of problems, but when it hit its highs, it was absolutely peak video gaming.

Hell, I'm planning to cosplay Jote (the Attendant) and making my husband cosplay [Redacted] since we've got the perfect height difference to pull them off.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who liked XVI.... The game was a flawed masterpiece in my book. It had a lot of problems, but when it hit its highs, it was absolutely peak video gaming.

Hell, I'm planning to cosplay Jote (the Attendant) and making my husband cosplay [Redacted] since we've got the perfect height difference to pull them off.

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You forget that our beloved aveyond is a big fan of the game too.

I also enjoy FFXVI but couldve used more meat and bones in a lot of areas, that many of the previous FF games had. Its a visual feast for sure tho

The problem wasn't really XVI itself - it was a modest success, but SE wanted a Grand Slam and what they got was a home run. It still hasn't hit PC either, which will help boost sales (though not necessarily profits).

The problem is that SE made a lot of bad business decisions under Yosuke Matsuda. From the investment in NFTs (which are all virtually worthless now), going with the much reviled "Games as a Service" model that doomed XV to being only half-finished, flops nobody asked for like Marvel's Avengers and Forspoken (the former also suffering from the "Games as a Service" model), their projects taking forever to see the light of day and having a boatload of cut content, and how they're now following trends (FFVII:TFS being an attempt to ape the rising Battle Royale genre) instead of making them... people have just lost faith in the company to deliver quality products in a reasonable timeframe. The reality is that Final Fantasy and Squaresoft (not necessarily Enix) had its golden age during the PSX era, with its twilight being the PS2...

The only things they got in the pipeline I'm looking forward to now is the VII Remake stuff and XIV expacks, but really, the losses are a culmination of long-term issues.

If you wanna get technical, the real root of the problem are the investors that are in it for the money on a very much greedy scale affecting Square Enix Corp, and that in turn affects how the games are made.

There is a reason why Gacha mechanics are a thing.

I know these Developers of SE and other companies don't want to talk about it, but they know its the truth.

The only reason I still keep supporting SE Devs and others because I know it was not truly their decision to make, I still appreciate their attempts at making a fun game, and/or adding lore to existing material.

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Not to say all Divisions of SE are like this, but some of them seem more investor/corporate minded in the wrong kind of way.

Companies have always been beholden to the interests of their investors (shareholders), and those are typically to make money; gacha mechanics are just the most recent (and probably exploitative, being gambling by another name) expression of that.

SE's flagship titles are actually very light to non-indulgent in gacha mechanics (b.k.a. lootboxes), though like all mobile games the ones it produces are very heavy with them.