Square Enix Financial statement: DT 42m USD DOWN

[BabyYoda]

It's smart for a studio to diversify product offerings, but it should not come at the expense of the flagship product.

I understand that the internal prior leaders of XIV maybe even wanted new experiences with new platforms and forms of storytelling, so it's possible/probable they could have just left the company entirely at some point if they were not offered professional growth.

What should have happened instead, is that XIV's budget should have allowed for:
1. The hire of proven writers that could handle a complex story, not someone who at best had a few short side quest experience;
2. More developers to keep our content schedule as quarterly, not 4 months or more.

XIV is NOT in maintenance mode, and anyone who claims that doesn't understand what that term actually means. But we are experiencing both a stagnation in the lack of creativity, and a regression in the amount of content we are being offered. It flat out feels insulting to the supporters of the flagship product to see the money they spent just being funneled away to products they are not interested in. I'm sure people like me are fine with this - but only if the product I do pay for improves and does not suffer as it has.

it is clearly they reduce the budget compared to ShB and EW

[CaptainLagbeard]

it is clearly they reduce the budget compared to ShB and EW

I don't think they reduced the budget all that much, they just moved everyone who's been doing a really good job onto other less lucrative projects much to the game's detriment...

[BabyYoda]

I don't think they reduced the budget all that much, they just moved everyone who's been doing a really good job onto other less lucrative projects much to the game's detriment...

their time is part of the budget.. they count employee cost per hour so they 100% reduce the budget when moving talents across organization

[ZephyrMenodora]

I don't think they reduced the budget all that much, they just moved everyone who's been doing a really good job onto other less lucrative projects much to the game's detriment...

I feel that moving release schedules from 3 months to 4+ is an indication the budget - particularly for staff, has decreased. We also seem to now have B and C team talent, with their A-listers spending their time on new projects.