Yoshi P - Your next live letter, DT msq and the damage to the brand

[Zuccubus]

"Damage to the brand" is such an overblown exaggeration lol. It wasn't great, but it was better than both arr and stormblood. They also had an insanely tough act to follow after shb and ew, especially since they need to restart more or less. Also it's looking like we may get the best savage raid series in the game, along with the other massively improved content.

[Eyrilona]

"Damage to the brand" is such an overblown exaggeration lol. It wasn't great, but it was better than both arr and stormblood. They also had an insanely tough act to follow after shb and ew, especially since they need to restart more or less. Also it's looking like we may get the best savage raid series in the game, along with the other massively improved content.

The lowest critic score since 1.0, the player base sharply divided, and coverage of the game has moved from almost universal praise to serious concern about its future. If this is not damage to the brand for you, then I am not sure if I can explain to you what damage to a brand looks like.

[Volgia]

The lowest critic score since 1.0, the player base sharply divided, and coverage of the game has moved from almost universal praise to serious concern about its future. If this is not damage to the brand for you, then I am not sure if I can explain to you what damage to a brand looks like.

Let's be real, cuz Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree also had that issue, and its brand is doing completely fine.

[Phaty]

"Damage to the brand" is such an overblown exaggeration lol. It wasn\\'t great, but it was better than both arr and stormblood. They also had an insanely tough act to follow after shb and ew, especially since they need to restart more or less. Also it\\'s looking like we may get the best savage raid series in the game, along with the other massively improved content.

We aren't talking about ff14 in a bubble, we are talking about square in general and final fantasy being what ppl think when they head square. And so far they haven't been doing well, ff7rebirth hasn't done well, ff16 didn't do well enough, other projects have bombed hard at square and now a lot of negative reception for their cash cow. It's not a good trend and squares financial situation is reflecting that

[DPZ2]

We aren't talking about ff14 in a bubble, we are talking about square in general and final fantasy being what ppl think when they head square. And so far they haven't been doing well, ff7rebirth hasn't done well, ff16 didn't do well enough, other projects have bombed hard at square and now a lot of negative reception for their cash cow. It's not a good trend and squares financial situation is reflecting that

I don't know where you're getting your financial information. It certainly isn't from the quarterly and annual reports generated by Square Enix. You've probably read about SE dropping a number of projects and taking a write-down against what was already spent. That does not mean SE is losing money. Fiscal year 2024 (which ended at the end of March) still had an operating income that was 3% lower than the previous year. It was still income.

FY2025/3 Q1 has not been posted yet. At a guess, I predict it will be much better than Q1 for the past several years. But we won't know how much better until mid-August, about 6 weeks after Q1 closed (end of Q1 was 30 June).

And again, since SE hasn't announced numbers since the end of May (based on March numbers), all else is speculation at this point.

[Turtledeluxe]

I don't know where you're getting your financial information. It certainly isn't from the quarterly and annual reports generated by Square Enix. You've probably read about SE dropping a number of projects and taking a write-down against what was already spent. That does not mean SE is losing money. Fiscal year 2024 (which ended at the end of March) still had an operating income that was 3% lower than the previous year. It was still income.

FY2025/3 Q1 has not been posted yet. At a guess, I predict it will be much better than Q1 for the past several years. But we won't know how much better until mid-August, about 6 weeks after Q1 closed (end of Q1 was 30 June).

And again, since SE hasn't announced numbers since the end of May (based on March numbers), all else is speculation at this point.

Could see a slight bump from the MMO segment. They will talk about it for like two releases before it tanks again. "Oh it's just declining faster because there's no expansion, no worries!!!"

Assuming the patch content doesn't absolutely keep the casual audience engaged for months, a huge if given their anti retainment strategy. "Please don't give us money!!"

[DaveFishnomer]

I don't know where you're getting your financial information. It certainly isn't from the quarterly and annual reports generated by Square Enix. You've probably read about SE dropping a number of projects and taking a write-down against what was already spent. That does not mean SE is losing money. Fiscal year 2024 (which ended at the end of March) still had an operating income that was 3% lower than the previous year. It was still income.

FY2025/3 Q1 has not been posted yet. At a guess, I predict it will be much better than Q1 for the past several years. But we won't know how much better until mid-August, about 6 weeks after Q1 closed (end of Q1 was 30 June).

And again, since SE hasn't announced numbers since the end of May (based on March numbers), all else is speculation at this point.

I don't know where they got it from, but you don't have to be a Google master to find that ff7rebith was a 140m investment from SE but only sold 2m copies. If you assume each copy was 60$, that's a profit of around 20m, so it's not a loss, but it definitely has not done well.

While we don't have a lot of info about the sales of FF16, it was a 300m investment and sold 3m copies in its first week but dropped fast. Assuming it sold 5m copies overall at 60$ a pop, that would be 300m, so breaking even at best, so ya, that is most likely a loss here.

Now, for Dawn Trail, the data is not out yet, but End Walker sold 2.5m in preorders alone, so let's take that as a benchmark. As of June 2024, there were 1.4m end game characters. Let's assume some duplicates and say there were 1m individual players here.

Totaling these numbers, that would be 150m in pre-orders and 15m a month from subs, not including fantasia addicts, moogle station store sales, and additional retainers, so even if SE spent 300m (doubt) on DW, it would take them a few months to close the gap.

[Astronema]

I don't know where they got it from, but you don't have to be a google master to find that ff7rebith was a 140m investment from SE but only sold 2m copies, if you assume each copy was 60$ that's a profit of around 20m, so, not a lose but definitely has not done well.
While we don't have a lot of info about the sales of ff16 - it was a 300m investment and sold 3m copies in it's first week but dropped fast, Assuming it sold 5m copies overall at 60$ a pop that would be 300m, so breaking even at best, so ya that is most likely a lose here.

Now for dawntrail, data is not out yet, but endwalker sold 2.5m in preorders alone so lets take that as a benchmark for dawntrail, as of June 2024 there were 1.4m end game characters, lets assume some duplicates and say there were 1m individual players here.

Totaling these numbers that would be 150m in presales and 15m a month from subs, not including fantasia addicts, mounts sold, and additional retainers, so even if SE spent 300m (doubt) on DW, it will take them a few months to close the gap.

Dawntrail is not going to top endwalker. Word is out it sucks and now we have a civil war between two groups of players trying to claim the game for themselves. It's a catastrophe...

They tainted the memory, legacy and nostalgia of final fantasy 9 by marketing it into dt. Dt has more to do with the movie district 9 than ff9. Having this crap expansion tied to ff9 is insulting to ff9. If anything ff8 makes more sense... The marketing dept wanted this bait and switch probably to increase sales based on nostalgia.

[DaveFishnomer]

Dawntrail is not going to top endwalker. Word is out it sucks and now we have a civil war between two groups of players trying to claim the game for themselves. It's a catastrophe...

They tainted the memory, legacy and nostalgia of final fantasy 9 by marketing it into dt. Dt has more to do with the movie district 9 than ff9. Having this crap expansion tied to ff9 is insulting to ff9. If anything ff8 makes more sense... The marketing dept wanted this bait and switch probably to increase sales based on nostalgia.

I did not say it did, which is why I only talked about pre-orders, I assumed in my post the same amount of pre-orders, if you can find more up to date info I'l update the calculation.

TBH, you can most likely assume it is larger than Endwalker because YoshiP did say that
"With your support, we were able to reach a record number of concurrent users we’ve not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013."