Square Enix Facing Big Losses For 2010

[jaxa]

Square Enix Facing Big Losses For 2010

 

"It's no secret that Final Fantasy XIV took a lot of heat early on, which required extensive damage control. And the Japanese tsunami (which appears to have added $7.5 million to their losses) certainly didn't help. But if what early investor reports are saying is true, then Square Enix is expected to report $148 million in losses for the closing fiscal year. Expect title cancellations (which might add to the hurt) and a very painful realization for the owner of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior (PDF). Perhaps a move to re-releasing classics will prove more fruitful than high development cost MMORPGs?"

 

http://www.videogamer.com/news/square_enix_cancels_games.html

 

Thief 4 and the other Eidos titles don't seem to be at risk.

[stumpy]

according to the page for the shareholders, 2 ip's games at eidos in canada will be worked on, deus ex and an unnamed one, along with 1 at crystal dynamics named as tomb raider, they also say there's been a shift in the way games work saying the big money is in things people make in a game world and then selling it in that game world, goes along the lines of they could give away games then make massive profit out of in game items. Either made by themselves or by others. I think they've been taking a look at the mod side of the steam platform where mod makers can sell their mods (eg gary's mod) on steam, and both valve and the person/s making the mod benefit from the sales. Also says something about focusing on games made for mobile devices like phones.

 

As far as I can tell the final fantasy game will be finished as its their biggest profit maker in japan. Most of the losses in japan were from the loss of amusement parks they had along the east coast of japan, either washed away in the tsunami or irradiated.

Edited May 14, 2011 by stumpy

[demagogue]

Means they'll probably want to be even more conservative with their investments. And they're like the EA of Japan so not even known to be all that edgy as it is. As long as the new Dues Ex, Thief, & Tomb Raider are on track I guess we can hope for the best.

[jaxa]

Well, pouring money into the latest Final Fantasy title was what was conservative for Square Enix, like EA's zillions of Sims expansion packs and yearly Madden titles. That may have to change.

[jdude]

I always wonder if the company is having losses as a result of bad performance or a result of the market shrinking the size of the corporation to an acceptable level based on a miniature economic bubble they had, ie: with the Sims.

[nbohr1more]

Final Fantasy is widely regarded to be a mixed-bag as of the latest releases.

 

Square Enix seems to be coasting on the momentum of the concept that Final Fantasy is an invincible money maker. If they retreat to improve FF, it's hard to say whether the efforts will payoff. They already pour tons of money into the production quality, the problem is that they have all but forgotten it's a game and care more for the cut-scenes than the story tree or player choice and consequence. If more budget is afforded to FF, I can almost guarantee that they will just make shinier more expensive cut-scenes and have no clue that this won't help.

 

If they were smart, they would take a hard look at things like Heavy Rain and LA Noire and see where the future of interactive RPG gameplay is headed.

 

I suppose they took a look at World of Warcraft and tried to follow that trend but MMORPG is too big a mountain to climb. FF was never deep enough to sustain the vast hierarchy of a hardcore RTS and thus does not have a fully tuned system to translate they way Warcraft turned into WoW. If they wanna go WoW they'd better explore RTS first and not in the paltry manner that was done for their shovelware DS title.

 

Again, a move to MMORPG is a betrayal of the core single-player RPG experience that the "FF series was once acclaimed for" so modern advances in single-player RPG narrative and play are a better route to take. (But rat-bastard corporate types probably have no concern about keeping a game franchise in a recognizable form for it's fan-base... cough TDS ?)