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

[Snorky]

Absolutely. I don't have a PS5 and my FOMO was high enough that I almost considered buying one just to play FFXVI. I didn't because once I took a bit to think on it, it was a terrible return on investment decision during a time where money doesn't go as far as it used to.

If it had been on PC? I would have bought it without a moment's thought. I'm sure I'm far from alone there.

You are not alone, I had the same thoughts glad I held off

[Nebelheim]

I'm not a fan of FFXVI at all, but I have to laugh at the idea that it's the cause of these financial woes of SE.



so we have
- forspoken
- marvel avengers
- x amount of mobile game flops

Let's not put this on FFXVI, it's just SE being SE. FFXVI simply wasn't a seller enough to make up for their other failures.

That's something i noticed is all these financial articles on square enix is putting all the financial problems solely on ff16 and not accounting the massive flops of all there recent mobile games marvel avengers and forspoken. It just seems easier to put the blame on a recently released game that has only been out 2 months.

[Aldath]

That's something i noticed is all these financial articles on square enix is putting all the financial problems solely on ff16 and not accounting the massive flops of all there recent mobile games marvel avengers and forspoken. It just seems easier to put the blame on a recently released game that has only been out 2 months.

I think some readers are missing the point of the article and what investors said and end up spreading misinformation. Investots "blame" XVI not because it flopped, but because it was a very expensive blockbuster project that failed to cover for the other big eff ups of the company. They also mention not liking producers having so much creative control over the projects, and that's a long workplace culture issue SE has in particular.

I don't know exactly why XVI underperformed (again, it didn't flop, it's different). Some people say PS5 exclusivity, but that didn't seem to hinder the absolute pre sale success VIIR2 had some days ago. I remind people that XVI was outsold by Pikmin 4 in Japan, a niche title that doesn't has the brand power FF has.

But yeah, this year has been a big L for SE, just put this into perspective: people still remembers the absolute failure of Avengers and Forspoken, but do any of you remember Babylon's Fall? Let that sink in...

[Nebelheim]

I think some readers are missing the point of the article and what investors said and end up spreading misinformation. Investots "blame" XVI not because it flopped, but because it was a very expensive blockbuster project that failed to cover for the other big eff ups of the company. They also mention not liking producers having so much creative control over the projects, and that's a long workplace culture issue SE has in particular.

I don't know exactly why XVI underperformed (again, it didn't flop, it's different). Some people say PS5 exclusivity, but that didn't seem to hinder the absolute pre sale success VIIR2 had some days ago. I remind people that XVI was outsold by Pikmin 4 in Japan, a niche title that doesn't has the brand power FF has.

But yeah, this year has been a big L for SE, just put this into perspective: people still remembers the absolute failure of Avengers and Forspoken, but do any of you remember Babylon's Fall? Let that sink in...

I think square enix in general hasn't been doing good with producing games and trying to use final fantasy as a franchise to hopefully pull them out of the hole they created.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

FF16 is only on the PS5. Of course, it had an uphill battle. It's also much different from traditional FFs, so it ended up well liked by non-FF fans while mixed with FF fans.

[Vahlnir]

That's something i noticed is all these financial articles on square enix is putting all the financial problems solely on ff16 and not accounting the massive flops of all there recent mobile games marvel avengers and forspoken. It just seems easier to put the blame on a recently released game that has only been out 2 months.

By comparison, FF 16 performed pretty well given the circumstances. If it had been more widely available from the get-go, it would have done extremely well. It just wasn't good enough for SE and its shareholders, apparently. Either way, they are blaming the wrong...well, everything at the moment. The heart of the problem is corporate leadership. Their focus on NFTs will be the end of them at this rate. That market crashed and never really recovered. Most companies have moved on because gamers saw them for the scam that they are.

[Nebelheim]

By comparison, FF 16 performed pretty well given the circumstances. If it had been more widely available from the get-go, it would have done extremely well. It just wasn't good enough for SE and its shareholders, apparently. Either way, they are blaming the wrong...well, everything at the moment. The heart of the problem is corporate leadership. Their focus on NFTs will be the end of them at this rate. That market crashed and never really recovered. Most companies have moved on.

Square enix does have a lot of management issues and still making the same mistakes that they made that lead them to have to merge with enix in the early 2000's.

[Renathras]

Did no one read the article?
The "Losses" are from a dip in stock value. No, SE didn't lose any money, their stock is worth less for now because investors sold off.

Why? The article says 'The root of the problem, sources told Bloomberg, is that producers were given “full reign” over the scope and direction of projects, whose goals can shift “without warning”. The upshot of this is volatility in the quality of the final product.'
The investors think developers, and in particular Yoshi-p who falls under "Producers", have too much say in the direction of the product. They want more stable, highly monetized games that are the stable minimum viable product, which they think SE is less likely to give them now.
That's the opposite of what gamers want. Acting like this should be a lesson learned for SE you should be aware what they're would take from this, that they need to make more bland live service games with heavy microtransactions to keep investors happy.

Exactly this.

It's consistently amazing how people wanting to be right about things will latch on to anything they think supports their view of them being right...but how few people scrutinize that to be sure it DOES.

Investors aren't looking at SE "making FFXIV braindead" and thinking "Oh no! We must pull our money!". They're looking at SE doing a lot of random things and their game producers and devs taking risks and going "Oh no! I don't want to risk my money, I want my money to go to routine, tried-and-true blandness with microtransations so I can be guaranteed a consistent profit!"

If SE "learned a lesson" from this, it would be to make bland games with more microtransactions. Is that REALLY what you want them to do? Isn't that the complaint about FFXIV now? The "lesson learned" here would be to DOUBLE DOWN on EW and the Mog Station. The exact opposite of what OP and those in agreement want, I'd think...?

.

EDIT:

Right about what, exactly? This thread is about the way internal perceptions of SE's ongoing struggles and FFXVI's underperformance may influence FF14's development going forward. It's just a place to speculate; My initial thoughts were optimistic that XIV might receive more internal attention because it's a consistent earner that the new CEO seemingly has an affinity for. I understand that every single thing you do and say is just a contrivance created to serve your weird internal narrative, but you need to understand that not everyone operates like you do.

Not going to waste a separate post on this other than to say:

That's a pretty antagonistic reply. Not everyone operates like you do, either, friend.

[Aldath]

Investors aren't looking at SE "making FFXIV braindead" and thinking "Oh no! We must pull our money!". They're looking at SE doing a lot of random things and their game producers and devs taking risks and going "Oh no! I don't want to risk my money, I want my money to go to routine, tried-and-true blandness with microtransations so I can be guaranteed a consistent profit!"

If SE "learned a lesson" from this, it would be to make bland games with more microtransactions. Is that REALLY what you want them to do? Isn't that the complaint about FFXIV now? The "lesson learned" here would be to DOUBLE DOWN on EW and the Mog Station. The exact opposite of what OP and those in agreement want, I'd think...?

I agree, that's what they might try. The only "possitive" I see coming out of this mess is that Investors also mentioned SE should consider giving less creative control to Producers because, honestly, some of their bigger games could have come better if it wasn't because they bend over backwards towards the preferences of the producer, like, how Nomura games will end up featuring cloaked guys, time travel and multiverse even if he's not part of the writing team of the game, or how Toriyama couldn't help but to include girls changing clothes (or losing them) as a mechanic.

That said, SE is as infamous as Namco Bandai for making absolute trash mobile games that close in less than a year at most. I know it's the most souless, profitable trend in the gaming industry, but it's hilarious SE can't even seem to get that right. They have good mobile games like Another Eden and Octopath, which have less restricvite monetization and thus seem to be less profitable, and then you have stuff like Brave Exvius which I swear most have less than a thousand concurrent players but all of them are whales. It would be funny to see them crash and burn because of it.

[LittleImp]

Exactly this.

It's consistently amazing how people wanting to be right about things will latch on to anything they think supports their view of them being right...but how few people scrutinize that to be sure it DOES.

Right about what, exactly? This thread is about the way internal perceptions of SE's ongoing struggles and FFXVI's underperformance may influence FF14's development going forward. It's just a place to speculate; My initial thoughts were optimistic that XIV might receive more internal attention because it's a consistent earner that the new CEO seemingly has an affinity for. I understand that every single thing you do and say is just a contrivance created to serve your weird internal narrative, but you need to understand that not everyone operates like you do.

Investors aren't looking at SE "making FFXIV braindead" and thinking "Oh no! We must pull our money!". They're looking at SE doing a lot of random things and their game producers and devs taking risks and going "Oh no! I don't want to risk my money, I want my money to go to routine, tried-and-true blandness with microtransations so I can be guaranteed a consistent profit!"

If they're smart, they'll look at the content model that was in play when the game generated the hype that actually helped drive EW's initial boom. EW itself is a risk they've taken; They've substantially slowed down the patch schedule while replacing a few popular systems with demonstrably less popular ones.