Square Enix Financial statement: DT 42m USD DOWN

[ReynTime]

Yoshida has said in the past that he would like to do a new mmo that is pure high fantasy and does not have any sci-fi elements like ffxiv does and since ffxiv is leaning incredibly hard into sci-fi these days, way more than fantasy, it's not surprising he is bored if he is just not a fan of sci-fi. I get it, i am not a fan of sci-fi either and all these things they are adding like modern clothing and now Solution 9, just makes me crinkle my nose up like I smell whats on the bottom of Kiryu's shoes. I would leave xiv in a heartbeat if Yoshida was put in charge of a good purely high fantasy mmo.

I'd love this because hot take or no, I liked it more back pre Shadowbringers when the modern/futuristic elements were isolated to allag/garlemald or silly sidequests/event quests. The game looks almost like Second Life or VR Chat now with clashing designs and clashing settings.

[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

[Ilisidi]

High-fantasy or not, if they lose my sub for FFXIV, they'll also lose my sub for FFXI and I have no interest in getting invested in another MMO, NFT or Gatcha game.

[BabyYoda]

They do have an NFT game in the works, it's actually been in the works for like a year now... Symbiogenesis is it's name, and it's likely going to end about as well as every other NFT game project does...

I just searched for this junk game it look absolutely horrible.. I would play forspoken rather than this dumb project

[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.

[ZXN]

So they'll keep funneling FFXIV money into more failed projects. Not very surprising.

Those projects don't have to be failures... But as long as Square keeps going down it's current path, they will be...

One thing that backfired spectacularly was the PS5 exclusivity... But they did say they're going back towards being multi-platform... Next step would be nuking the ethics department, then their company might start to heal.

I'm gonna bite the bullet here: I don't mind if Square funnels money into other games. The issue is for the past several years they have tried to funnel money into WAY TOO MANY games. All you have to do is look at all their live-service mobile games that barely lasted a year or two before getting the axe. There are like dozens of them that seemed to have just been made to get cash fast then scoop. They essentially for the past several years have spread themselves, both employee wise and money wise, too thin trying to do a ton of things all at once and going "This is fine" when it's clearly not fine. It's up to personal debate if you think Endwalker/Dawntrail also suffered from this mindset since Yoshi-P and other devs of 14 worked on 16, and as announced they are working on several projects now. Sure Yoshi-P said they were "small", but that could mean anything. Last thing anyone wants is FF14 to get a sideline because Square wants Yoshi-P and creative studio III to focus on making 3 or 4 or more throwaway live service mobile games for them that'll survive less then a year or two before they get scraped for a few quick bucks. This "Quantity over Quality" mindset they seemed to have pushed themselves into needs to get thrown in the garbage.

They do have an NFT game in the works, it's actually been in the works for like a year now... Symbiogenesis is it's name, and it's likely going to end about as well as every other NFT game project does...

Still working on it is indeed correct...well, half correct. It's out. In fact, it "officially" released Last December. Hell, they announced at the beginning of August they're already working on Chapter 3. Even more hell: it'll even be shown off some at the up-coming Tokyo Game Show.

Tweet here: https://x.com/symbiogenesisPR/status...93922033406303

So yeah, Square is absolutely dedicated to this decision.

[Morphiana]

Not surprising. Endwalker was the wrap up of a ten-year story, everyone knew this expansion good or bad would be a slow burn in preparation for the next big thing so there wasn't as much hype, and Yoshi said his team was going to try new things and some may fail while other ideas may thrive.

DT's MSQ wasn't great, sure. They tried something different, and it received a mixed reception, people liked some things about DT and disliked others. I hope they learned from this and the next time they try something new it works because in Endwalker people were getting bored with the game, Yoshi acknowledged people were getting bored which means their sub numbers likely reflected that sentiment.

Putting it another way, WoW had Shadowlands which tanked so badly it forced their team to re-evaluate their approach to the game. Their next xpac was nothing like Shadowlands and the game recovered, resulting in their audience getting to enjoy a great new experience. While DT is nowhere near as bad as Shadowlands, it is hurting SE, and if SE learns from this they may be able to build off what did / did not work and make us something great in a couple patches or by the next xpac. Here's hoping.

[Palladiamors]

To clarify, the issue isn't spending the money from XIV on other games. It's not paying enough attention to XIV. It's letting a mixed bag like Dawntrail slip out the door at a crucial time. It's appropriating the staff that made XIV good or great and replacing them with unproven rookies.

Reinvesting profits into other projects is an important part of business. Starving the goose to feed the calf on the other hand is a good way to wind up broke. Hopefully they figure this out before the fallout hits.

[Catwho]

I worked at another game company that did this pre-pandemic. Our CEO went as hard as he could with blockchain projects despite having 0 longterm plans for profitability utilizing them. We suspect he planned on getting dudebros onboard to invest because "blockchain bro" and "crypto bro" and trying to figure out monetization later. We had multiple very successful mobile games which were each pulling in over $1m revenue daily and all that money was being dumped into failed crypto projects. To keep the projects going, he pretty much demanded players be milked for every last cent they had, causing them to eventually all quit within a few short months. The stupid blockchain stuff didn't stop until he was finally ousted by the board, but by then the damage had been done.

As far as Square goes, my guess is that they have some people in management that initially directed the company towards NFTs and other stupid projects and are so heavily invested in them, they refuse to change course because it would be their heads/jobs on the chopping block. So they'd rather run the ship onto the reefs, get canned and (probably) get some sort of golden parachute.

So many mobile games are overworked, overthought, overgraphical pieces of junk that aren't any fun to play and don't do anything new or interesting. I get bored after 5 levels. The new Monster Hunter Now is a prime example.

In the meantime, I'm playing a Chinese grinder called Fitness RPG from an actual indie game studio that feels like if someone took FF1's core battle design, wrote a new story for it, hooked it up to Fitbit/Apple Watch, and let 'er rip. It's a freemium game that isn't in your face. The ads are voluntary and unobtrusive. I've enjoyed it so much that I've actually sent them $10 for their little monthly "battle pass" a couple of times. Did I mention you level grind your characters by walking? It's the most fun I've had with a mobile game since Pokémon Go first came out in 2016.

[BabyYoda]

Not surprising. Endwalker was the wrap up of a ten-year story, everyone knew this expansion good or bad would be a slow burn in preparation for the next big thing so there wasn't as much hype, and Yoshi said his team was going to try new things and some may fail while other ideas may thrive.

DT's MSQ wasn't great, sure. They tried something different, and it received a mixed reception, people liked some things about DT and disliked others. I hope they learned from this and the next time they try something new it works because in Endwalker people were getting bored with the game, Yoshi acknowledged people were getting bored which means their sub numbers likely reflected that sentiment.

Putting it another way, WoW had Shadowlands which tanked so badly it forced their team to re-evaluate their approach to the game. Their next xpac was nothing like Shadowlands and the game recovered, resulting in their audience getting to enjoy a great new experience. While DT is nowhere near as bad as Shadowlands, it is hurting SE, and if SE learns from this they may be able to build off what did / did not work and make us something great in a couple patches or by the next xpac. Here's hoping.

Yeah they tried new things like how summoner behemoth now become solar behemoth..
for real what did they change?
increase damage received by 10%?
new animation?

they didn't add anything to the table it is just a nightmare version of FFXIV
if you tell me how they can ruin FFXIV before DT release I wouldn't thought it could be this bad