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

[Aldath]

I wouldn't put the 2 billion in loss on ff16. It most likely has to do with lots of flops and various other issues that have been building up for years. Selling various studios at a loss making horrible games like forspoken and continuing to invest in the failed nft market is what's causing there losses.

That's the issue, FFXVI didn't fail as a standalone title, it failed to compensate for SE's other failed projects.

Put this into perspective: FFXVI has sold less copies in Japan than Pikmin 4, a semi obscure title without the name power the FF brand had. Pikmin 4's numbers are considered surprisingly high for a niche title, and although XVI's numbers are still good in paper, they couldn't compete with a game that gave Nintendo the equivalent of cash for a nice meal for a company their size.

SE can't come out and outright say FF didn't live up to what they needed, I bet investors are already with a rises eyebrow when their supposed big contender lost to a bunch of funny plant dudes and failed to help the company recover from the game of the snarky New Yorker that caused the closure of a studio and the failed FF Battle Royale tie-in, and SE must be sweating cold because they're already spending big cash in VII-2 which if Nomura taught me something is that it might leave some players dissatisfied with the direction he's taking the franchise to, and remember they're gonna launch yet another tie in game that will either close next year or become a deserted whale farm like BE.

This spells nothing but bad news for us, as I really doubt the measures taken to recover players will be aimed towards improving, but attracting new blood and creating a base that can be farmed for profit on cash shop items, make players feel like you're in a second life, create attachment, and keep that smaller playerbase invested enough to cover for the rest.

[Nebelheim]

That's the issue, FFXVI didn't fail as a standalone title, it failed to compensate for SE's other failed projects.

Put this into perspective: FFXVI has sold less copies in Japan than Pikmin 4, a semi obscure title without the name power the FF brand had. Pikmin 4's numbers are considered surprisingly high for a niche title, and although XVI's numbers are still good in paper, they couldn't compete with a game that gave Nintendo the equivalent of cash for a nice meal for a company their size.

SE can't come out and outright say FF didn't live up to what they needed, I bet investors are already with a rises eyebrow when their supposed big contender lost to a bunch of funny plant dudes and failed to help the company recover from the game of the snarky New Yorker that caused the closure of a studio and the failed FF Battle Royale tie-in, and SE must be sweating cold because they're already spending big cash in VII-2 which if Nomura taught me something is that it might leave some players dissatisfied with the direction he's taking the franchise to, and remember they're gonna launch yet another tie in game that will either close next year or become a deserted whale farm like BE.

This spells nothing but bad news for us, as I really doubt the measures taken to recover players will be aimed towards improving, but attracting new blood and creating a base that can be farmed for profit on cash shop items, make players feel like you're in a second life, create attachment, and keep that smaller playerbase invested enough to cover for the rest.

That's one problem square enix has is they expect ff14 and the various final fantasy spin offs and mainline single player games to get high numbers to compensate for all there other failures. Then they set super high unobtainable sales figures for each game hoping they recover all there losses from games like forspoken. Then they get quiet when a game doesn't meet expectations or consider a game a failure when it doesn't meet there obscenely high expectations because they hope there next game will recoup losses from other failures.