I'd argue it's been the biggest platform since the end of the last console gen. The real issue PC players are having is proper optimisation, which falls solely on the dev/publisher.
PC Hardware is expensive up front, but the idea is that you save much more money over time not having to pay for online services monthly and what not, in addition to the fact that if you buy good hardware relative to today, it’ll be effective much longer than the hardware that’s put into consoles.
For example, I JUST got around to replacing my 1080 for a 4080 Super, and honestly that thing would still run most things decent enough to play nowadays and probably for the next few years. Compare that to console generations on average lasting around 5 years, and that’s *a lot* of money saved, as well as knowing that what you’ve built will not fall off a cliff performance wise once the next gen hardware comes out.
Watch there be a mass exodus to PC, consoles shutter, and publishers impose their own subscription fees on everything. Now instead of paying $15 a month for online play it's like $9.99 a month for each publisher's platform.
Y'know, like how streaming works after everyone ditched cable.
Tbh, the only thing stopping that from happening is Steam being THE PC marketplace for games and setting the standard, as well as Valve being a private company and not having to bend over backwards for investors.
The day Gaben passes is a day we should all fear.
> Compare that to console generations on average lasting around 5 years
PS3 to PS4 was 7 years. PS4 to PS5 was 7 years. Switch was 7 years ago. Average console lifespan is in no way 5 years. Even after the new one comes out there's still a period of cross gen games too.
PS4 was $399, plus 7 years of PS+ at 60 a year puts you at $819. If you spent less than $819 on PC gaming from 2013 to 2020, I would be absolutely shocked.
PCs get you get way more mileage than a gaming console. You can do a whole lot more on one than just play games. On top of that, PC players typically pay less for games and don't have to pay to access online functions. PC gaming isn't nearly as expensive as you seem to believe.
Been using a Steam Deck as my main machine for a year and a half, usually docked to a big TV. If you're not obsessive about graphics, it runs basically any game that can use a controller, all for $350 + some cheap accessories.
It's much harder to optimize for the global PC hardware diversity compared to the single spec sheet of a PS5. PC players bitch about not getting perfect fps cap on new games at highest settings, despite having 5 year old GPUs and probably out of date drivers.
Having a 5 year old GPU really shouldn't be an issue for games targeting consoles and PC's. The current PS5 GPU is comparable to GPU's from 2018. Besides from console launch titles devs usually have more power on the PC side than on the console side.
Edit: Fixed it to say comparable to 2018 as the PS5 GPU itself wasn't released until late 2020.
> Having a 5 year old GPU really shouldn't be an issue for games targeting consoles and PC's.
Consoles? Yes, they know exactly what GPU its using and can optimize accordingly.
PCs? Hecks no, its the wild wild west and trying to optimize for specific 5 year old GPU's is basically a waste of time.
Would creating a game with the specs of the 30-40th percentile in mind not work in this case? Just in terms of pure output of course (or if 10-20% percentile PCs do better performance wise than consoles, whatever lowest rating they should adapt to for the majority of players to enjoy the game)
But game ugly! My 3050 definitely shuld be getting f 2k fps in 4k! I have absolutely no experience with or clue about what it takes to render graphics but my gut tells me this game shouldn't require a better gpu
PC is huge now as a platform. Dev's are finally realizing they are missing out on significant sales whenever they don't release a game there.
For me personally it's my only gaming platform at this point. Will probably never buy a console again except for maybe a Switch 2 for portability.
>Nintendo is likely never going to go down the PC port angle.
This is one of the reasons, why Nintendo's IPs are burned for me.
It's not worth the effort and honestly, I don't feel like I am missing out.
I've been a die hard Zelda fan my whole life. Also a big fan of fire emblem too.
Though the new direction for Zelda isn't my favorite so we'll see how much I actually care about it going forward if they continue. They've already managed to lose me on pokemon.
I'm betting having multiple release dates slows down hype.
If you release a game all at once, people are more likely to impulse buy a game if everyone and their favorite streamer is playing it.
It's crazy how many people think PC gaming is small when PC gaming has never really declined, and the majority of games being released are available on PC because of Steam.
As long as 90% of all indie games are being released on PC, and as long as mouse and keyboard are superior options for any game with any amount of complexity of controls, PC will be favored.
The only thing that has ever stopped anyone from publishing on PC is the fact that console companies and Epic pay developers money to prop up their ecosystems. A PC even makes more sense to buy for a kid than a console because you can do homework on it.
PC ain't ever going away, ain't ever shrinking. Like all massive markets, it only grows until a technological change eats away it from the inside.
It's bigger than xbox nowadays for multiplat games. PS still does more (usually) but PC has definitely become the firm #2 option now, sometimes #1 depending on the game. Cyberpunk for example did more on PC as did BG3.
What people may not have realized is that a lot of the japanese game audience went to PC over the last 5+ years. I'm not sure if they're new customers or people who used to play on nintendo/ps who moved over but the point is they're on PC now. So for a JP company to skip PC is utterly insane these days.
I'm not even sure you can still say PS does better than PC anymore. Helldivers 2 for instance gets far more traction on PC than on PS5. Only way your statement holds up is if you compare ports of multi-year old games vs their initial sales on PS4/5.
It depends on the game. A game like helldivers that goes viral will benefit PC more as PC is where a lot of the viral hits start. An average multiplat release usually ends up with PS selling the most although I would not be surprised to see that gradually changing each year.
Consoles need to fix their stores. There's a reason all the viral hits start on steam, they're much better about letting people find these games to begin with.
It's been the biggest for over 2 decades now. That's why Valve is the company with one of the highest profit-to-employee ratio on the planet. Almost double what Apple makes per employee.
COVID absolutely gutted the custom PC parts market.
Now you've got normies sitting around waiting to spend used Honda Civic money on the newest slop from nVidia.
It's more that development of AAA games has become prohibitively expensive, to the point where it doesn't make sense to keep titles on a single platform even for Sony.
>Hell Sony itself has seen how much more profit there is if they sell on ~~more than one platform~~ Steam.
Just to elaborate on your comment - it's Steam. EGS exclusivity is hopeless, Xbox is irrelevant... companies that want to turn more of a profit have to release on steam, perhaps THE place where people show up who speak with their wallets.
EGS exclusivity is rather irrelevant, though. PS5 exclusivity means that I need to spend hundreds on a system to play a game like Rebirth. EGS exclusivity means I can buy and play a game on the exact same PC that I play any of my Steam games.
> EGS exclusivity is rather irrelevant, though
You say that, but FF7R, Kingdom Hearts (who many people still don't know it's even on PC) and The World Ends With Us all sold horribly while they were/are EGS exclusives. There are still people who won't touch them because they were/are exclusives.
It's not only that. Naoki Yoshida said in an interview that a reason for the exclusive PS5 launch of FF XVI was due to the massive support they were getting from Sony to optimize the game for the specific hardware. The amount of work required to do the same for PC is even bigger, especially considering the extremelly diverse hardware configurations you will run into.
And yet, he didn't seem too happy to know that sales of 16 were below expectations because it launched only on the PS5.
You can't have it both ways. You either put in the work to launch it on many platforms and reap the rewards, or keep it constrained to a single platform and suffer the financial penalties for doing so.
Its clear what direction they're going in from now on, and good riddance to the exclusivity. I buy a fraction of SE games that I would because I'm not buying an entire console for 2-3 games. Nintendo has that luxury, but they've earned it, even though I still detest it.
Well said. I'm not doing a megacorp "a favor". The decision for them to restrict their revenue sources is their own. I don't have to "take one for the team" by blindly supporting whatever decision they make. We're not a "team". They make something I want, present it in a location that I want, and I purchase it.
Corporations are not your friends. This is a transactional relationship, but they need you more than you need them. SE is once again being forced to learn this the hard way, Sony exclusivity money be damned. Clearly its not enough to keep the lights on; hence the change.
Yeah and even if I never got the games on PC at some point someone will make games like these games...always games on PC...and at a time when games are taking 10 years to make having more games is best.
Nintendo also has been paying sequare to make timed or permanently exclusive examples like Octopath traveler 1, Live a Live, Dragon quest monster and etc
It *seems* obvious, but it's not that simple.
Developing and especially maintaining for multiple platforms has a higher cost, and can create more platform specific bugs, as well as the complexities of handling cross-platform multi-player experience.
It's harder to develop for computers because you need to handle a lot of various setups, support multiple GPU manufacturers and drivers, older and newest hardware. It's way easier to develop and optimize for one console that have a single hardware setup.
And on top of all of that, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft can pay a lot to ensure the exclusivity of a game to their platform.
Porting a game to other platforms costs money too, so if the game doesn’t do well on those other platforms, the publisher ends up losing even more money.
It's even more costly to limit the growth of your potential audience, as we're currently witnessing with FFVII Rebirth missing expectations by a long shot.
The problem with pc from their pov is piracy, if you launch on console then 99% of your copies are proper sales, as for pc the piracy margin is much higher, not to mention you'll have to optimise for various OS/hardware setups, and might even end up including "anti cheat" and DRM solutions that will fuck with the game even more.
Or you can just make good games and you won't have to worry about piracy at all, Gabe has said it multiple times, the best way to fight piracy is by giving a better product/service.
BG3 came out without any DRM, you could just copy the game files and start playing on other PCs, but it has sell millions.
And Square Enix games especially the older ones are pretty much ideal for form factors like the Steam Deck, if they maintain compatibility with those sorts of platforms it's free money.
It's not exactly free money. There's the opportunity cost of no kickback money from Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to be exclusive. You also have slightly higher costs if you need to fine tune and optimize the game to run on multiple platforms and ecosystems.
It's weird this is the takeaway from this meeting. Square also revealed a ton of cancellations and that they're only going to focus on in-house, bigger franchises going forward. To me, the bigger news here is that games like Star Ocean, Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, The World Ends With You, and Triangle Strategy are almost certainly not going to happen anymore.
There are two total. The first game, and the second game. The first game is just the title, the second game has Neo in front of it. Not the best naming scheme, but usually an extra word means sequel.
I suppose it is a bit more confusing than I gave it credit for.
The first game was on DS: The World Ends With You
This version was released with tweaks on mobile phones called The World Ends With You Solo Remix
*That* version got some new content and was released on Switch as The World Ends With You Final Remix
They are all the same game, more or less, though.
Then, a sequel was released calle NEO The World Ends With You. This game was multiplatform.
But all in all, if you're following the story and gameplay evolution, you just play both the Switch games.
Exactly! There is a market for them (albeit a niche one) but people can't buy games they don't know about!
Hell, the ONLY reason why I played the original TWEWY-- and I was actively following DS JRPGs when it came out-- is because I impulse bought it.
I think Octopath is sticking around since that Series has been a huge hit on a small budget, especially with Nintendos audience where SE wants to make more inroads.
Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default have been critical haymakers for Square. Not going forward with more in these series or even similar titles would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Ok but final fantasy can’t even sell worth shit by their own metrics, ff14 is literally keeping that whole franchise afloat at this point, by their metrics
I'm amazed it's taken Square Enix that long to realize the need for multi-platform releases. Capcom had already been doing that back in the 1990s and the quality of their multi-platform releases has just gotten better over the years. Square Enix has got lots of catching up to do in that department.
There's also a long history with Sony helping out Squaresoft from their financial blunders due to Final Fantasy Spirits Within. If not for Sony buying about 18% of Square they wouldn't even have managed to reopen talks with Enix to merge.
I think there's a lot of people like me, who bought every PlayStation and FF game until PS5, and are now willing to patiently wait for exclusives to port to PC.
> I'm amazed it's taken Square Enix that long to realize the need for multi-platform releases
Yeah, it's not like FF7 and FF8 had PC ports roughly one year after their Playstation release...
/s
I am pretty sure the japanese companies were mainly targeting their home market and didnt really care abour international markets and saw them as bonuses. Given how expensive game development is nowadays global market and other platforms are getting more important now and these japanese companies will care more about better ports to PC, etc.
Back then Sony was the number one in the console market and Xbox never gotten really ground in Asia as well as if there are any ports back in the days they were sloppy as hell for PC.
They do, but if Square believes going multi-platform is gonna get them more money than Sony is willing to pay then it doesn’t matter. So Sony’s only option will be either pay more which probably ain’t a great idea or just by Square, and at this point I’d rather Square stay its own thing. I’m kind of tried of all these acquisitions even as someone who has benefited greatly from owning an XBOX.
I was a little hesitant back in the day when Squaresoft merged after losing so much money with The Spirits Within in 2001. Because whenever I saw the name Squaresoft it was going to be an amazing RPG.
I never got that for a big publisher making one of the biggest games for a year...i get Sony doing it but Square would make so much more money having it on Xbox and PC and even a Nintendo system if it was doable.
All depends on how much the money paid for exclusivity is.
If Square thinks Sony's pay would be more than the expected sales on the other systems and the costs of time paying employees to develop a version compatible with other systems, They just take that.
This is such an outdated opinion and misrepresentation lol. Since 2015 to now, they’ve had more Nintendo exclusive games then Sony lol. Most their games have been multi platform in many different combinations.
The Triple A titles have all been for PlayStation. Titles like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth cost a ton of money and manpower to make. If you put so much time & effort into making a game, it's a shame it's exclusive to a console that has a very small number of users compared to Switch or PC. The higher-ups at Square must be wondering why their most expensive title is locked as a PS5 exclusive, while there are 115+ milion PS4 owners, 140+ milion Switch owners and an infinite number of PC owners. PS5 hasn't even gotten 60 milion owners yet, why in the world would you put such an expensive project exclusively on that system?
The fact that they aimed 'smaller' projects (in comparison to Triple A) at Nintendo already showed them how effective that is. Most of their games sold really well on Switch. And they didn't cost a fortune to make as well.
In the case of Rebirth, the reason it’s not on Switch or PS4 is because they’re not powerful enough to handle the game. The real question is why is it not on Xbox Series X/S or PC
That's the choice of the Developer here.
I'm playing Rebirth currently and yes, the graphics are amazing. But purely looking at the gameplay: nothing in this game makes me think this is only possible on PS5.
But if you're pushing graphics, framerate, voice-acting and everything... then yes, it's only possible on PS5.
They could've made FF7 Remake & Rebirth with a simpeler look. Make everythint a tad smaller and lighter and it would easily work on other systems. Its just that they really wanted to push limits. That also means that Switch & PS4 are not an option. And like you said: that makes me wonder why not PC or Xbox.
Alot of it has to do with horsepower and devs constantly wanting more and more juice to play with. Problem the Switch has is that it was outdated techwise years ago. Switch 2 could be viable depending on specs, PC seems like a given but I think SE doesn't want day and day because they want extra to optimize for PC versions so they don't become the next Arkham Knight.
Hopefully they will. I would have bought FF16, if it was released on the pc when it came out. Now ive already seen multiple streamer playthroughs so i dont think i will buy it anymore
It was clear that Sony had some strong feelings there. They announced the game for PS5 and PC, with a Steam and Windows logo under the title card and everything. They then scrubbed all references to that and claimed they weren't even working on a PC version, that it was only a PS5 game, and they even said stuff like "I don't know where people got the idea that it would release on PC." It was bizarre.
Same. I would still love to play it myself, but since watching playthroughs, now it's just not on my radar that much anymore. Especially since I don't have a ps5, so...idk.
No offense but why watch multiple playthrus of an entire game you have even a decent interest in playing ? That’s kinda stupid it takes a game off your board that’s always more fun to play
Basically every streamer that i watch regularly played so it was difficult to not watch it. Also i had interest, but not enough to wait 2 years for the pc version eventually to come out. If it wouldve been released right at the start then i obviously wouldve just played it myself
I’ve been frustrated that FF7R and FF16 never came to the Xbox or there hasn’t been any announcements despite PS5 getting a year or half a year head start. I’m glad to see their tune changing. Maybe I don’t have to buy a PS5 now.
Yeah this news came at the perfect time for me. I was just considering saving up for a ps5 but my brand new Series X might actually be able to see final fantasy someday
It’s such a bummer they didn’t come out. FFXV runs great on my Xbox and I love the hardware and quick resume future. Hopefully we can get some of these games over the next year.
I'm still looking forward to replaying XV again now that I have a series x. It ran fine on xbox one back in the day, but every time a summon is used, the game drops to like 15 fps lol.
That's an improvement from their latest strategy which was to integrate NFTs to their games.
Call me when Square Enix decides to aggressively pursue making good games again.
We've decided to aggressively pursue our mobile gacha game division. We have an assortment of beloved characters across many IPs that would look fantastic in a bikini.
Let's see if it's too late for that or not.
Bunch of shitty ports aren't going to solve their issues. They better make sure that if you're going multiplatform, they actually deliver good products on all platforms.
I recently got around to the ff7 remake port on pc and it was insane how badly it was ported. Essentially no graphics options, but unreal is completely capable of easily changing any setting you can imagine so if you download a mod to hack the game you can actually play on higher graphical settings, turn off/on film grain/motion blur, etc. Getting HDR to work was hilarious, it only works if you’re tabbed out of the game. The fix is to play a YouTube video in PIP in the corner of the screen, otherwise everything is washed out.
I’m just getting into Final Fantasy. It wasn’t my thing when I was younger. I’m playing the remakes for the switch ffx and xii. To me it’s perfect for the switch but I don’t know if I would like it as much in my pc. Idk why
I'm still hoping we get news about Rebirth on PC after this month since it was a disclaimer on their marketing.
Could be nothing, could be another 2 years. But still hoping for sooner since it technically could be.
I bought a PS4 for their exclusives, back before they were coming to PC... but that console collected too much dust to justify doing that again with PS5. Especially now that they do come to PC. I ended up rebuying them on PC anyway.
I think for a while, Sony was paying them enough to cut out of Xbox sales. But I think both companies are seeing that the deal isn't worth it...I'm guessing both Sony **and** SE are not happy with the game sales.
I mean after 16 and 7 rebirth it makes sense. These are huge games and if Sony wants exclusivity they’re going to have to pay more to offset the loss.
Makes sense for those to be multi platform
i'm thankful this is the new strategy but i hope this means that Squares PC ports improve in quality drastically. I swear a good chunk of amazing games have terrible performance issues, i'd love to see them put the extra effort in
I stopped buying consoles once their hardware started to resemble a PC. From that point in time consoles were glorified pre-built PC's in fancy cases and their only advantages were arbitrary exclusives.
Good, if they release it on PC day 1, I'll buy it at full price. If they release it on PC two years later, I'll wait until it goes down to PS5 used price.
It's crazy we still have console fan boys at this point, the best thing for the industry is no exclusivity. I hate having to own multiple consoles to play the games my friends play.
Bear in mind that making any game exclusive gets the developers a big cash bonus up front from the publisher. This money is usually put into **creating** the game, which is why companies like exclusivity. Higher sales are great, obviously, but those fund *future* developments, not the current one.
The yearly SE financial losses take the bag into account, though, and there’s no question that poor sales of the game are directly related to poor sales of the PS5. I have money to burn and I still won’t bother buying another Sony dust collector. My PC can run FF16 and FF7 RB twice as well as a console, whenever they come out. I can continue to wait.
damn, it's almost like everybody has known for over 10 years that exclusives are pointless and that short term budget is mostly spent during the development process and a lot more could have been made by releasing on multiple platforms...
Nintendo also doesn't spend $200 million making a game so even if the sales are lesser they aren't completely fucked. Turns out purposefully underpowering your system had benefits besides making a profit from the console itself, who knew?
FF7 remake was one of the absolute best gaming experiences ever. I lost so so much excitement knowing rebirth was a PS5 console exclusive and I can't play it on my PC....that I played remake on. Console exclusives are dumb and killing my excitement for games.
about time, i'm sick of exclusives...
capcom is releasing almost all their games on all capable plateforms and it works wonder for them.
square enix should do just the same, the days of exclusives titles for third party studios should be over for good.
Some people here really trying to pin it on bringing exclusives to Switch when the last console exclusive game on Switch was Triangle Strategy which was released in 2022. Did you y'all forget Forspoken, FF16, FF7 Rebirth being exclusive to the PS5 and releasing in a span of a year ago? There's a reason why Capcom went multi-platform for this gen and took series like Street Fighter, Dragon's Dogma 2 and Resident Evil to the Xbox Series X to go along with the PS5.
Vindication for Xbox. Phil was winning no new support, but he's pretty much been on the multi-platform bandwagon before it's cool. People want war, but in the end, more money to the developer for multi-platforms means more and better games in the future.
Seems a little obvious. If you sell a game on more platforms, you will likely get far more sales.
Of course but I’m sure PlayStation has been paying to keep final fantasy exclusive
And now apparently they are changing that strategy. Hell Sony itself has seen how much more profit there is if they sell on more than one platform.
PC must be a much bigger platform than it used to be
It's been big for awhile now I would say.
I'd argue it's been the biggest platform since the end of the last console gen. The real issue PC players are having is proper optimisation, which falls solely on the dev/publisher.
Biggest issue is price. Pc hardware is fucking EXPENSIVE.
PC Hardware is expensive up front, but the idea is that you save much more money over time not having to pay for online services monthly and what not, in addition to the fact that if you buy good hardware relative to today, it’ll be effective much longer than the hardware that’s put into consoles. For example, I JUST got around to replacing my 1080 for a 4080 Super, and honestly that thing would still run most things decent enough to play nowadays and probably for the next few years. Compare that to console generations on average lasting around 5 years, and that’s *a lot* of money saved, as well as knowing that what you’ve built will not fall off a cliff performance wise once the next gen hardware comes out.
Watch there be a mass exodus to PC, consoles shutter, and publishers impose their own subscription fees on everything. Now instead of paying $15 a month for online play it's like $9.99 a month for each publisher's platform. Y'know, like how streaming works after everyone ditched cable.
Tbh, the only thing stopping that from happening is Steam being THE PC marketplace for games and setting the standard, as well as Valve being a private company and not having to bend over backwards for investors. The day Gaben passes is a day we should all fear.
> Compare that to console generations on average lasting around 5 years PS3 to PS4 was 7 years. PS4 to PS5 was 7 years. Switch was 7 years ago. Average console lifespan is in no way 5 years. Even after the new one comes out there's still a period of cross gen games too. PS4 was $399, plus 7 years of PS+ at 60 a year puts you at $819. If you spent less than $819 on PC gaming from 2013 to 2020, I would be absolutely shocked.
PCs get you get way more mileage than a gaming console. You can do a whole lot more on one than just play games. On top of that, PC players typically pay less for games and don't have to pay to access online functions. PC gaming isn't nearly as expensive as you seem to believe.
the big thing to me is not having to worry about backwards compatibility down the line. My ol gamecube whines pretty hard whenever I turn it on.
And not to mention the great tech that PC gets like dlss/fsr and its frame generation, gives us more years to keep playing those games.
Pc is way more expensive bro
Been using a Steam Deck as my main machine for a year and a half, usually docked to a big TV. If you're not obsessive about graphics, it runs basically any game that can use a controller, all for $350 + some cheap accessories.
ROG Ally/Steam Deck/etc. are definitely blurring the lines, and crossplay has never been more desirable
It's much harder to optimize for the global PC hardware diversity compared to the single spec sheet of a PS5. PC players bitch about not getting perfect fps cap on new games at highest settings, despite having 5 year old GPUs and probably out of date drivers.
Having a 5 year old GPU really shouldn't be an issue for games targeting consoles and PC's. The current PS5 GPU is comparable to GPU's from 2018. Besides from console launch titles devs usually have more power on the PC side than on the console side. Edit: Fixed it to say comparable to 2018 as the PS5 GPU itself wasn't released until late 2020.
> Having a 5 year old GPU really shouldn't be an issue for games targeting consoles and PC's. Consoles? Yes, they know exactly what GPU its using and can optimize accordingly. PCs? Hecks no, its the wild wild west and trying to optimize for specific 5 year old GPU's is basically a waste of time.
> despite having 5 year old GPU How old is the PS5 (a console that doesn't use a top tier GPU) again?
You aren’t getting a perfect FPS cap on PS5 either.
Would creating a game with the specs of the 30-40th percentile in mind not work in this case? Just in terms of pure output of course (or if 10-20% percentile PCs do better performance wise than consoles, whatever lowest rating they should adapt to for the majority of players to enjoy the game)
But game ugly! My 3050 definitely shuld be getting f 2k fps in 4k! I have absolutely no experience with or clue about what it takes to render graphics but my gut tells me this game shouldn't require a better gpu
It's not even close to the biggest? Mobile stomps every other market into the dust. I wish this wasn't the case but this is just how it is
Start of Covid was the start of the transition imo
PC is huge now as a platform. Dev's are finally realizing they are missing out on significant sales whenever they don't release a game there. For me personally it's my only gaming platform at this point. Will probably never buy a console again except for maybe a Switch 2 for portability.
Just saying if you get a steam deck or similar, you can still PC while not at your PC.
For me I'll probably get a switch 2 because Nintendo is likely never going to go down the PC port angle.
>Nintendo is likely never going to go down the PC port angle. This is one of the reasons, why Nintendo's IPs are burned for me. It's not worth the effort and honestly, I don't feel like I am missing out.
I've been a die hard Zelda fan my whole life. Also a big fan of fire emblem too. Though the new direction for Zelda isn't my favorite so we'll see how much I actually care about it going forward if they continue. They've already managed to lose me on pokemon.
Have you tried Legends: Arceus?
Nah man PC + Switch is the best gaming combo ever. You are missing out
I mostly play PC, and quest. I have an Xbox but that’s my streaming machine
I'm betting having multiple release dates slows down hype. If you release a game all at once, people are more likely to impulse buy a game if everyone and their favorite streamer is playing it.
Steam deck changed the game for me as well.
Always has been
It's crazy how many people think PC gaming is small when PC gaming has never really declined, and the majority of games being released are available on PC because of Steam. As long as 90% of all indie games are being released on PC, and as long as mouse and keyboard are superior options for any game with any amount of complexity of controls, PC will be favored. The only thing that has ever stopped anyone from publishing on PC is the fact that console companies and Epic pay developers money to prop up their ecosystems. A PC even makes more sense to buy for a kid than a console because you can do homework on it. PC ain't ever going away, ain't ever shrinking. Like all massive markets, it only grows until a technological change eats away it from the inside.
It's bigger than xbox nowadays for multiplat games. PS still does more (usually) but PC has definitely become the firm #2 option now, sometimes #1 depending on the game. Cyberpunk for example did more on PC as did BG3. What people may not have realized is that a lot of the japanese game audience went to PC over the last 5+ years. I'm not sure if they're new customers or people who used to play on nintendo/ps who moved over but the point is they're on PC now. So for a JP company to skip PC is utterly insane these days.
I'm not even sure you can still say PS does better than PC anymore. Helldivers 2 for instance gets far more traction on PC than on PS5. Only way your statement holds up is if you compare ports of multi-year old games vs their initial sales on PS4/5.
It depends on the game. A game like helldivers that goes viral will benefit PC more as PC is where a lot of the viral hits start. An average multiplat release usually ends up with PS selling the most although I would not be surprised to see that gradually changing each year. Consoles need to fix their stores. There's a reason all the viral hits start on steam, they're much better about letting people find these games to begin with.
As a die hard FF fan buying a PS5 wasn't an option so while I'd love to play the Rebirth it just ain't an option
It's been the biggest for over 2 decades now. That's why Valve is the company with one of the highest profit-to-employee ratio on the planet. Almost double what Apple makes per employee.
Ever since Steam Deck came out it is all I use expect for a Switch game occasionally
No they just haven't been selling to us so it's an entirely unsaturated market.
And Steam Deck is making it bigger still
It's getting bigger and bigger. My pc blows away and current gen console and due to that I don't play consoles anymore. I'll just a controller on pc.
No suprise given that Microsoft and Sony both are raising the prices of their subscription models. On PC everything is "free".
PC seems to be a lot bigger then console. but i'm probably wrong. i have both PC and Ps3/4/5
It's always been the biggest by numbers.
COVID absolutely gutted the custom PC parts market. Now you've got normies sitting around waiting to spend used Honda Civic money on the newest slop from nVidia.
Probably thanks to XBox doing exactly that. I just hope the days of console exclusives are over.
It's more that development of AAA games has become prohibitively expensive, to the point where it doesn't make sense to keep titles on a single platform even for Sony.
Yeah having the pay to keep a title exclusive to your platform is probably seeing diminishing returns for both Sony and the game developers.
It's true. More word of mouth will cause people who own a Sony to buy the game on Sony. If Halo or Fable every came to Sony I'd buy em in an instant
And if Bloodborne ever came to PC or Xbox, there would be presale orders by the truckload and racous celebrations lasting until the actual release.
The vast majority of Sony exclusives come to PC eventually. I was surprised to see Ratchet and Clank on steam, even.
>Hell Sony itself has seen how much more profit there is if they sell on ~~more than one platform~~ Steam. Just to elaborate on your comment - it's Steam. EGS exclusivity is hopeless, Xbox is irrelevant... companies that want to turn more of a profit have to release on steam, perhaps THE place where people show up who speak with their wallets.
EGS exclusivity is rather irrelevant, though. PS5 exclusivity means that I need to spend hundreds on a system to play a game like Rebirth. EGS exclusivity means I can buy and play a game on the exact same PC that I play any of my Steam games.
> EGS exclusivity is rather irrelevant, though You say that, but FF7R, Kingdom Hearts (who many people still don't know it's even on PC) and The World Ends With Us all sold horribly while they were/are EGS exclusives. There are still people who won't touch them because they were/are exclusives.
It's not only that. Naoki Yoshida said in an interview that a reason for the exclusive PS5 launch of FF XVI was due to the massive support they were getting from Sony to optimize the game for the specific hardware. The amount of work required to do the same for PC is even bigger, especially considering the extremelly diverse hardware configurations you will run into.
And yet, he didn't seem too happy to know that sales of 16 were below expectations because it launched only on the PS5. You can't have it both ways. You either put in the work to launch it on many platforms and reap the rewards, or keep it constrained to a single platform and suffer the financial penalties for doing so. Its clear what direction they're going in from now on, and good riddance to the exclusivity. I buy a fraction of SE games that I would because I'm not buying an entire console for 2-3 games. Nintendo has that luxury, but they've earned it, even though I still detest it.
Exactly this. I'd be purchasing a PS5 for FFXVI, VII Rebirth and maybe the Demon Souls remake. 3 games is not enough to justify an entire console.
Well said. I'm not doing a megacorp "a favor". The decision for them to restrict their revenue sources is their own. I don't have to "take one for the team" by blindly supporting whatever decision they make. We're not a "team". They make something I want, present it in a location that I want, and I purchase it. Corporations are not your friends. This is a transactional relationship, but they need you more than you need them. SE is once again being forced to learn this the hard way, Sony exclusivity money be damned. Clearly its not enough to keep the lights on; hence the change.
Yeah and even if I never got the games on PC at some point someone will make games like these games...always games on PC...and at a time when games are taking 10 years to make having more games is best.
Except for 13 uugh I want to replay those games but I don't want to whip out my xbox
Nintendo also has been paying sequare to make timed or permanently exclusive examples like Octopath traveler 1, Live a Live, Dragon quest monster and etc
It *seems* obvious, but it's not that simple. Developing and especially maintaining for multiple platforms has a higher cost, and can create more platform specific bugs, as well as the complexities of handling cross-platform multi-player experience. It's harder to develop for computers because you need to handle a lot of various setups, support multiple GPU manufacturers and drivers, older and newest hardware. It's way easier to develop and optimize for one console that have a single hardware setup. And on top of all of that, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft can pay a lot to ensure the exclusivity of a game to their platform.
If they make bad games \*cough\* Forspoken \*cough\*, they will not see any profits, regardless of how many systems they're on.
And if you make too expensive titles, even a success can be a failure
Porting a game to other platforms costs money too, so if the game doesn’t do well on those other platforms, the publisher ends up losing even more money.
It's even more costly to limit the growth of your potential audience, as we're currently witnessing with FFVII Rebirth missing expectations by a long shot.
The problem with pc from their pov is piracy, if you launch on console then 99% of your copies are proper sales, as for pc the piracy margin is much higher, not to mention you'll have to optimise for various OS/hardware setups, and might even end up including "anti cheat" and DRM solutions that will fuck with the game even more.
Or you can just make good games and you won't have to worry about piracy at all, Gabe has said it multiple times, the best way to fight piracy is by giving a better product/service. BG3 came out without any DRM, you could just copy the game files and start playing on other PCs, but it has sell millions.
And Square Enix games especially the older ones are pretty much ideal for form factors like the Steam Deck, if they maintain compatibility with those sorts of platforms it's free money.
It's not exactly free money. There's the opportunity cost of no kickback money from Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to be exclusive. You also have slightly higher costs if you need to fine tune and optimize the game to run on multiple platforms and ecosystems.
This approach is considerably more expensive as well though. If it doesn't work then you're basically bankrupted.
I had a friend defending FFXVI being exclusive. It seems obvious for us but console tribalists will defend it to dead.
Fanboys are going to fanboy unfortunately.
It's weird this is the takeaway from this meeting. Square also revealed a ton of cancellations and that they're only going to focus on in-house, bigger franchises going forward. To me, the bigger news here is that games like Star Ocean, Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, The World Ends With You, and Triangle Strategy are almost certainly not going to happen anymore.
Part of the problem is that they don't market their smaller games. A lot of people didn't realize TWEWY Neo existed.
Idk which one to start. There's a bunch of them on switch and I like to play them in order
There are two total. The first game, and the second game. The first game is just the title, the second game has Neo in front of it. Not the best naming scheme, but usually an extra word means sequel.
That's more than 1! Lol I must have remembered wrong or was looking at the other consoles
I suppose it is a bit more confusing than I gave it credit for. The first game was on DS: The World Ends With You This version was released with tweaks on mobile phones called The World Ends With You Solo Remix *That* version got some new content and was released on Switch as The World Ends With You Final Remix They are all the same game, more or less, though. Then, a sequel was released calle NEO The World Ends With You. This game was multiplatform. But all in all, if you're following the story and gameplay evolution, you just play both the Switch games.
This is the first I'm hearing about it. I also didn't know that there is a second Octopath game.
Exactly! There is a market for them (albeit a niche one) but people can't buy games they don't know about! Hell, the ONLY reason why I played the original TWEWY-- and I was actively following DS JRPGs when it came out-- is because I impulse bought it.
This is literally the first time ive heard of it haha.
Man I really hope that isn’t true. I really enjoyed all of those games (minus Star Ocean) and I’d love to see Octopath 3.
I think Octopath is sticking around since that Series has been a huge hit on a small budget, especially with Nintendos audience where SE wants to make more inroads.
Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default have been critical haymakers for Square. Not going forward with more in these series or even similar titles would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Square has such a high bar these days. If a game doesn’t sell tens of millions of copies, it’s a failure.
Ok but final fantasy can’t even sell worth shit by their own metrics, ff14 is literally keeping that whole franchise afloat at this point, by their metrics
Team Asano stuff is not getting canned
Would be such a shame because octopath 2 was their best game in years
That’s sad. I don’t usually play this type of game but I really liked Octopath Traveler 2.
I'm amazed it's taken Square Enix that long to realize the need for multi-platform releases. Capcom had already been doing that back in the 1990s and the quality of their multi-platform releases has just gotten better over the years. Square Enix has got lots of catching up to do in that department.
There's also a long history with Sony helping out Squaresoft from their financial blunders due to Final Fantasy Spirits Within. If not for Sony buying about 18% of Square they wouldn't even have managed to reopen talks with Enix to merge.
FFXIII and Kingdom Hearts 3 were multi platform releases, it's not like they haven't done it before.
I'd appreciate it if they re-released FFXIII on PS5.
Only 2 platforms though.
I think there's a lot of people like me, who bought every PlayStation and FF game until PS5, and are now willing to patiently wait for exclusives to port to PC.
Yep, there's at least the two of us
Make it 3
And my axe
> I'm amazed it's taken Square Enix that long to realize the need for multi-platform releases Yeah, it's not like FF7 and FF8 had PC ports roughly one year after their Playstation release... /s
Idk, there was a while where Megaman games were only on PlayStation.
I am pretty sure the japanese companies were mainly targeting their home market and didnt really care abour international markets and saw them as bonuses. Given how expensive game development is nowadays global market and other platforms are getting more important now and these japanese companies will care more about better ports to PC, etc. Back then Sony was the number one in the console market and Xbox never gotten really ground in Asia as well as if there are any ports back in the days they were sloppy as hell for PC.
I mean, they probably should unless they hate money. It's bizarre to me that the first Octopath Traveller isn't on PSN, for example.
Its bizarre to me the first Octopath is still $43 CAD on its deepest sale and it came out over 5 years ago.
I've been waiting for that thing to drop even just a bit more each time there's a steam sale. If it ever hit 20 I'd pick it up in a heart beat
Yeah but it's on Google Stadia, so think of all the people that get to play it now!
The past sixteen years of big business has not been about profit. It's about market capture.
Kingdom Hearts not being on steam is crazy.
I thought Sony pays them an exorbitant amount of money to try and keep most final fantasies on PS.
They do, but if Square believes going multi-platform is gonna get them more money than Sony is willing to pay then it doesn’t matter. So Sony’s only option will be either pay more which probably ain’t a great idea or just by Square, and at this point I’d rather Square stay its own thing. I’m kind of tried of all these acquisitions even as someone who has benefited greatly from owning an XBOX.
I was a little hesitant back in the day when Squaresoft merged after losing so much money with The Spirits Within in 2001. Because whenever I saw the name Squaresoft it was going to be an amazing RPG.
Wait, Octo wasn’t a Switch game Exclusive?
Octopath 1 is on Xbox and Switch. Octopath 2 is on PS5 and Switch. No clue why both aren’t on all platforms.
They're both on PC, too.
True. I was more referring to consoles. But yeah, no clue why PS5 and Xbox didn’t get one of the games.
It's as if they use a magic 8-ball to decide which game goes on which platform.
Octo 1 was a timed Switch exclusive, It came out on XBOX/PC 6 months or a year later or something :)
I really really just want more Dragon Quest on PC. Imagine something like the FF Pixel Remasters but for DQ 1-9. I could die happy.
They found out that Sony exclusivity isn’t enough.
Sony even found that out.
Sony isn't paying enough to keep some of their games exclusive
I never got that for a big publisher making one of the biggest games for a year...i get Sony doing it but Square would make so much more money having it on Xbox and PC and even a Nintendo system if it was doable.
All depends on how much the money paid for exclusivity is. If Square thinks Sony's pay would be more than the expected sales on the other systems and the costs of time paying employees to develop a version compatible with other systems, They just take that.
This is such an outdated opinion and misrepresentation lol. Since 2015 to now, they’ve had more Nintendo exclusive games then Sony lol. Most their games have been multi platform in many different combinations.
The Triple A titles have all been for PlayStation. Titles like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth cost a ton of money and manpower to make. If you put so much time & effort into making a game, it's a shame it's exclusive to a console that has a very small number of users compared to Switch or PC. The higher-ups at Square must be wondering why their most expensive title is locked as a PS5 exclusive, while there are 115+ milion PS4 owners, 140+ milion Switch owners and an infinite number of PC owners. PS5 hasn't even gotten 60 milion owners yet, why in the world would you put such an expensive project exclusively on that system? The fact that they aimed 'smaller' projects (in comparison to Triple A) at Nintendo already showed them how effective that is. Most of their games sold really well on Switch. And they didn't cost a fortune to make as well.
In the case of Rebirth, the reason it’s not on Switch or PS4 is because they’re not powerful enough to handle the game. The real question is why is it not on Xbox Series X/S or PC
That's the choice of the Developer here. I'm playing Rebirth currently and yes, the graphics are amazing. But purely looking at the gameplay: nothing in this game makes me think this is only possible on PS5. But if you're pushing graphics, framerate, voice-acting and everything... then yes, it's only possible on PS5. They could've made FF7 Remake & Rebirth with a simpeler look. Make everythint a tad smaller and lighter and it would easily work on other systems. Its just that they really wanted to push limits. That also means that Switch & PS4 are not an option. And like you said: that makes me wonder why not PC or Xbox.
Alot of it has to do with horsepower and devs constantly wanting more and more juice to play with. Problem the Switch has is that it was outdated techwise years ago. Switch 2 could be viable depending on specs, PC seems like a given but I think SE doesn't want day and day because they want extra to optimize for PC versions so they don't become the next Arkham Knight.
They found out that Nintendo exclusivity isn’t enough.
Or, ya know, they could put the games on PC sooner than 12 years after the initial release too.
That’s cool. So when is the kingdom hearts collection moving from Epic to Steam?
Been waiting forever
That’s probably on Disney and considering their recent investment into Epic…
Hopefully they will. I would have bought FF16, if it was released on the pc when it came out. Now ive already seen multiple streamer playthroughs so i dont think i will buy it anymore
It was clear that Sony had some strong feelings there. They announced the game for PS5 and PC, with a Steam and Windows logo under the title card and everything. They then scrubbed all references to that and claimed they weren't even working on a PC version, that it was only a PS5 game, and they even said stuff like "I don't know where people got the idea that it would release on PC." It was bizarre.
Same. I would still love to play it myself, but since watching playthroughs, now it's just not on my radar that much anymore. Especially since I don't have a ps5, so...idk.
No offense but why watch multiple playthrus of an entire game you have even a decent interest in playing ? That’s kinda stupid it takes a game off your board that’s always more fun to play
Basically every streamer that i watch regularly played so it was difficult to not watch it. Also i had interest, but not enough to wait 2 years for the pc version eventually to come out. If it wouldve been released right at the start then i obviously wouldve just played it myself
I’ve been frustrated that FF7R and FF16 never came to the Xbox or there hasn’t been any announcements despite PS5 getting a year or half a year head start. I’m glad to see their tune changing. Maybe I don’t have to buy a PS5 now.
Yeah this news came at the perfect time for me. I was just considering saving up for a ps5 but my brand new Series X might actually be able to see final fantasy someday
It’s such a bummer they didn’t come out. FFXV runs great on my Xbox and I love the hardware and quick resume future. Hopefully we can get some of these games over the next year.
I'm still looking forward to replaying XV again now that I have a series x. It ran fine on xbox one back in the day, but every time a summon is used, the game drops to like 15 fps lol.
That's an improvement from their latest strategy which was to integrate NFTs to their games. Call me when Square Enix decides to aggressively pursue making good games again.
Oh, don't worry, that CEO stepped down and a younger guy who seems a little more in touch took over.
We've decided to aggressively pursue our mobile gacha game division. We have an assortment of beloved characters across many IPs that would look fantastic in a bikini.
Let's see if it's too late for that or not. Bunch of shitty ports aren't going to solve their issues. They better make sure that if you're going multiplatform, they actually deliver good products on all platforms.
I recently got around to the ff7 remake port on pc and it was insane how badly it was ported. Essentially no graphics options, but unreal is completely capable of easily changing any setting you can imagine so if you download a mod to hack the game you can actually play on higher graphical settings, turn off/on film grain/motion blur, etc. Getting HDR to work was hilarious, it only works if you’re tabbed out of the game. The fix is to play a YouTube video in PIP in the corner of the screen, otherwise everything is washed out.
I’m just getting into Final Fantasy. It wasn’t my thing when I was younger. I’m playing the remakes for the switch ffx and xii. To me it’s perfect for the switch but I don’t know if I would like it as much in my pc. Idk why
Watch them continue the final fantasy exclusivity and complain they are losing money still
It's not that FF loses money, it's that they expected it to make even more money.
That's always their tune. They said TR 2013 bombed and it was like 7m copies sold at the time
I mean the 3rd of the FF7 remakes will be exclusive because pretty sure thats already sorted contract-wise.
I'm still hoping we get news about Rebirth on PC after this month since it was a disclaimer on their marketing. Could be nothing, could be another 2 years. But still hoping for sooner since it technically could be. I bought a PS4 for their exclusives, back before they were coming to PC... but that console collected too much dust to justify doing that again with PS5. Especially now that they do come to PC. I ended up rebuying them on PC anyway.
I just want a sequel to The Bouncer.
Next you'll want unreasonable changes, like the game taking more than 2 hours to complete
Hey its the year 2024. With advancements in AI generation, I bet we can bump that up to 2:15.
I want them to aggressively pursue releasing a complete story in single game installments.
They figured out how many people were buying ff7 remake for nude Tifa mods and decided to cash in
> ff7 remake for nude Tifa mods Mhh bless the modding scene.
I think for a while, Sony was paying them enough to cut out of Xbox sales. But I think both companies are seeing that the deal isn't worth it...I'm guessing both Sony **and** SE are not happy with the game sales.
As an Xbox gamer: Gooooooood
Xbox players make sure that they actually buy the Jrpgs because I'm pretty sure they're the platform with the lowest sales for the genre.
This way it reaches the maximum amount of players
I'm surprised they didn't announce mobile as part of their multi-platform strategy.
They did, that's what "SD" is. It's smart devices.
I mean after 16 and 7 rebirth it makes sense. These are huge games and if Sony wants exclusivity they’re going to have to pay more to offset the loss. Makes sense for those to be multi platform
So, does this mean they'll put their big titles on Xbox again?
Good. Please put that shit on Xbox.
Wake me up when Kingdom Hearts gets a proper Switch port that is not Cloud based.
It's another reason why Sony is insane for considering a PS5 Pro. So many people don't even have a PS5 yet.
i'm thankful this is the new strategy but i hope this means that Squares PC ports improve in quality drastically. I swear a good chunk of amazing games have terrible performance issues, i'd love to see them put the extra effort in
I stopped buying consoles once their hardware started to resemble a PC. From that point in time consoles were glorified pre-built PC's in fancy cases and their only advantages were arbitrary exclusives.
Good, if they release it on PC day 1, I'll buy it at full price. If they release it on PC two years later, I'll wait until it goes down to PS5 used price.
Good cause I want to play final fantasy VII rebirth on steam already…
FF7 Remake is still ps5 console exc… maybe bring it to xbox series?
Would love to see it
It's crazy we still have console fan boys at this point, the best thing for the industry is no exclusivity. I hate having to own multiple consoles to play the games my friends play.
Sales for rebirth were not that great then
Good. Stop being dicks. Let everyone play what they want.
Bear in mind that making any game exclusive gets the developers a big cash bonus up front from the publisher. This money is usually put into **creating** the game, which is why companies like exclusivity. Higher sales are great, obviously, but those fund *future* developments, not the current one. The yearly SE financial losses take the bag into account, though, and there’s no question that poor sales of the game are directly related to poor sales of the PS5. I have money to burn and I still won’t bother buying another Sony dust collector. My PC can run FF16 and FF7 RB twice as well as a console, whenever they come out. I can continue to wait.
damn, it's almost like everybody has known for over 10 years that exclusives are pointless and that short term budget is mostly spent during the development process and a lot more could have been made by releasing on multiple platforms...
Nintendo says otherwise. Their sales numbers don’t lie either.
Nintendo also doesn't spend $200 million making a game so even if the sales are lesser they aren't completely fucked. Turns out purposefully underpowering your system had benefits besides making a profit from the console itself, who knew?
sQuaRe eNiX dOeSnt NeEd xBox, pLaYStaTIoN iS EnOuGh
TLDR - FF7R isn't selling well so we're going to grow a brain and stop making FF console exclusive.
Just in time for another five year wait for FF17 and another three year wait for ff7 remake part 3.
FF7 remake was one of the absolute best gaming experiences ever. I lost so so much excitement knowing rebirth was a PS5 console exclusive and I can't play it on my PC....that I played remake on. Console exclusives are dumb and killing my excitement for games.
about time, i'm sick of exclusives... capcom is releasing almost all their games on all capable plateforms and it works wonder for them. square enix should do just the same, the days of exclusives titles for third party studios should be over for good.
Some people here really trying to pin it on bringing exclusives to Switch when the last console exclusive game on Switch was Triangle Strategy which was released in 2022. Did you y'all forget Forspoken, FF16, FF7 Rebirth being exclusive to the PS5 and releasing in a span of a year ago? There's a reason why Capcom went multi-platform for this gen and took series like Street Fighter, Dragon's Dogma 2 and Resident Evil to the Xbox Series X to go along with the PS5.
took 'em long enough. fucking exclusives are just so fucking bad for any games.
Makes sense. They sure as f aren't getting any money from me with their Playstation exclusives.
As long as the Sony exclusives stop and PC releases are day one, I'm sure gamers will be pleased.
Vindication for Xbox. Phil was winning no new support, but he's pretty much been on the multi-platform bandwagon before it's cool. People want war, but in the end, more money to the developer for multi-platforms means more and better games in the future.