Square Enix, it's time to come clean about your plans for the future

[Heroman3003]

Endwalker really wasnt a success past the intial hype from angry ex-wow players. Steamcharts tells us all there is to know. And you are absolute on copium if you think they plan 6-7 years into the future. If they planned that far ahead ARR wouldnt been such a messy codebase.

I do remember game outlets reporting, shortly prior to Endwalker, that internal roadmap was extended as far as 9.0. In recent interview, Yoshida pretty much confirmed that, saying they have plans for 'at least two more expansions after Dawntrail'. Frankly, until those recent news, it was kinda hard to believe those older reports myself, but now I have no reason not to, regardless of what that means. And also, it is entirely possible they DIDN'T plan that far ahead back in ARR, but are now. Or maybe they have plans longterm that are constantly changing and shifting to accomodate things, and nothing is concrete beyond 'yeah we think we can keep it going up until 9.0'. But either way, with those types of projects, at least financially, the plans DO have to be WAY ahead of time, with how long development cycles can be, at least one full expansions ahead. Just didn't expect them to be three, but again, who the hell knows how much of those plans is actually, well, planned.

[Shinkuno]

I do remember game outlets reporting, shortly prior to Endwalker, that internal roadmap was extended as far as 9.0.

Yoshi is a PR person when appearing in public / interviews. People like you need to get that through their thick skull. He will lie if that gets people hyped. You can just look up the amount of things YoshiP said that ended up not happening. No gaming company will plan 8 years into the future, becuase if the next 4 years the game dies out, what you gonna do? Throw money away? LOL

[Nebelheim]

Yoshi is a PR person when appearing in public / interviews. People like you need to get that through their thick skull. He will lie if that gets people hyped. You can just look up the amount of things YoshiP said that ended up not happening. No gaming company will plan 8 years into the future, becuase if the next 4 years the game dies out, what you gonna do? Throw money away? LOL

Yeah i think it makes bad business sense to plan 8-10 years in advance. Yoship saying he has plans for the next 10 years is pr speak to keep people hopeful. But with mmo's you never know how the game or market will be that far in the future.

[Raven2014]

Yoshi is a PR person when appearing in public / interviews. People like you need to get that through their thick skull. He will lie if that gets people hyped. You can just look up the amount of things YoshiP said that ended up not happening. No gaming company will plan 8 years into the future, becuase if the next 4 years the game dies out, what you gonna do? Throw money away? LOL

Yeah i think it makes bad business sense to plan 8-10 years in advance. Yoship saying he has plans for the next 10 years is pr speak to keep people hopeful. But with mmo's you never know how the game or market will be that far in the future.

While small businesses may work on a year to year planning, or at most 2 or 3 years. Most institution and corroboration will always have something call a "strategic" plan for at least 5 years. The place I'm working at both have a short term 5-years strategic plan, and a long term 10-years strategic plan. If you have paid intention to companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel .etc. you will regular hear them talking about their "strategic" plan, and they will be all ways on the order of 6 or more years. In another word, what Yoshi said is completely "normal" in the actual working world once you get above certain size.

Of course, having a plan that far doesn't mean it's rigid, that's why you have the term "robust planning". For example, I just finished a meeting today where we evaluated where we are in our 3rd years of the current 5 years plan. We also reviewed where we are currently at in respect of our 10 years goal. With the COVID hit, we admit it will be difficult to reach all the goals we set for the 10 years, but we still acknowledge that the direction we want to move toward to, it's just the matter of adjust expectation and changing the method of getting there.

And simply put, a large company with large staffs need that kind of planing to keep the workflow coherent and "focus". I don't know how you interpret Yoshi's word, but it's not like he meant SE is start putting money in the bank to make the game last another 10 years no matter what. It simply mean he and his team has an "idea" of where they want to take the story and the game into the future, maybe how it will pan out and end. That means his staff know that whatever work they're doing in 7.0, 8.0 will be not just about those expansion, but also about laying foundation and lead to a certain conclusion in 10.0. That's how you can develop a "coherent" story over time. An example is G'ahara Tia, a character who was seal away in the original game and brought back as the central character nine years later.

Again, samething about real life workplace, the strategic plan is to let the staffs know that whatever they're working on and accomplish this year is also a milestone toward the long term goal, it means their works have a focus. Which is something absolutely important in larger organizations.


And lastly, if you still want to by cynical about his words, then there is actually a physical proof for you: SE just upgrade all the data centers hardware this years, that's NOT the kind of investment you would make if you already plan an exit in the near future. That doesn't mean SE will keep the light on even if everything goes wrong in the future, but right now, both their word and action does indicate they have a long term commitment in FF14.

[Rolder50]

While small businesses may work on a year to year planning, or at most 2 or 3 years. Most institution and corroboration will always have something call a "strategic" plan for at least 5 years. The place I'm working at both have a short term 5-years strategic plan, and a long term 10-years strategic plan. If you have paid intention to companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel .etc. you will regular hear them talking about their "strategic" plan, and they will be all ways on the order of 6 or more years. In another word, what Yoshi said is completely "normal" in the actual working world once you get above certain size.

I'd imagine they have a rough outline of where they want to go in the next 10 years. But I doubt it's more then "Expansion 6 sometime in 2026, Expansion 7 sometime in 2028" and so on. I'd be amazed if they have actual storyboards and in depth plans for those expansions. At the same time, plans that far out are extremely subjective to change.

[Raven2014]

I'd imagine they have a rough outline of where they want to go in the next 10 years. But I doubt it's more then "Expansion 6 sometime in 2026, Expansion 7 sometime in 2028" and so on. I'd be amazed if they have actual storyboards and in depth plans for those expansions. At the same time, plans that far out are extremely subjective to change.

The point is, the admission of "no plan survive contact with enemy" doesn't mean you shouldn't have a plan. Like I said, the long term goal is there to set a focus and maintain coherent. And speaking from experience, working in a large organization it it an absolutely nesseccity. We had hit a few rough patches where we didn't know what was our long term goal is and it was a terrified feeling. Even when I got a raised, even when I have no reason to doubt my job security, when you're working a flux you would constantly question "what am I doing? what gonna happen next? What we will do after this project? Where this company will be in a few years?!?" It's only when the leadership set out a long term goal that you have that peace of mind. Even if after 10 years you don't end up where you want to be, still at the moment you have an idea where you will want to be.


And 10 years may sound like A LOT, but if you think about the game developing cycle, it's not that much. Mst triple A game - and by that I don't mean the FPS that pump out yearly, but stuffs like Elderscrolls from Bethesa, GTA from Rock start ...etc... look at the gap between their flag ship tittles, then safely assume their next tittle should already be in the pre-production cycle even before the current tittle is shipped out. The time line is not that much when you take the whole pipeline into account. Like right now with 7.0 is probably less then a year away, the reproduction and planning phase for 8.0 should already been at least half done. After all, you need to know already what you want to have in 8.0 before you can write how 7.0 gonna end. And if you want 10.0 (assuming that's where they gonna end the story arch) to have a good impact, the team need to at least have a vision so they can start building up the suspend and story momentum now.

Again, 8 to 10 years is not exactly a large time span in term of strategic planning. That doesn't mean it set in stone or gospel, but that kind of goal has to exist. In fact, if Yoshi doesn't think that far ahead, he wouldn't be deserved of his job.

[AwesomeJr44]

Yoshi is a PR person when appearing in public / interviews. People like you need to get that through their thick skull. He will lie if that gets people hyped. You can just look up the amount of things YoshiP said that ended up not happening. No gaming company will plan 8 years into the future, becuase if the next 4 years the game dies out, what you gonna do? Throw money away? LOL

More people need to hear this. He's not our friend. He's a businessman.

You don't even know a single raider, so why are you even talking about this lmao

People who don't raid and having strong opinions on raiding, name a more iconic duo.