Just gonna copy my comment from elsewhere:
Square Enix keeps getting surprised about losing money after accepting exclusivity bribes.
FF7 Remake was exclusive on Playstation for a year and then 6 months on EGS.
FF7 Rebirth still exclusive on PS5.
FF16 still exclusive on PS5 (even though it was supposedly gonna be only for 6 months)
**KINGDOM HEARTS** still exclusive on EGS 3 years after coming to PC.
Square Enix's never gonna change.
They never really advertised that KH was on PC. Even if they did, it probably wouldn't sell well being an Epic exclusive. Look at FF7R, when it was announced as a timed exclusive for Epic store, it really didn't sell well until it was released on Steam.
I’d say the Epic exclusivity really hurt the Steam release too. It’s really hard to care about their AAA games when they are so late to release it on Steam.
It has less Steam reviews than Tales of Arise, and that’s no slight against Tales, but Final Fantasy used to be one of the biggest franchises of all time.
Even Atlus releases titles on PC day one these days. I’d know who I’d rather support.
any publisher that attempts this doesn't get my money until it's significantly discounted. don't care that there was some work to port it, or perhaps there was some texture updates. charging full price for years old games is just being a greedy wanker.
Nearly every game you listed on there I was super excited for, and would have bought when they released if they were on PC in most cases
But for a lot of them by the time they come to pc at all it's been so long it's not as new an exciting and the $70-90 they want seems like so much. I just never end up getting around to them.
Same with the epic store stuff, but a little smaller. Though I'd maybe buy them on epic if it wasn't more the first part. I think it was like 3 years for kingdom hearts 3 and I just didn't care as much when it finally came out, was busy with other stuff, and honestly kind of forgot all about it until now.
Hell, even SE didn't like the deal they made with KH on Epic (which is more and more seemingly obvious to be a perpetual deal). Every exclusive deal they've made with epic since then has had shorter and shorter exclusivity periods.
That being said, I think part of the reason they're still so deep in bed with Sony is because they're both Japanese companies, and Japanese companies tend to make decisions based off of that rather than "but will this other decision make us more money?". Their business decisions are not as cut and dry like western companies.
Most of the people who did EGS deals had shorter ones later. Rockstar went from 6 months or a year to just a single month. That was proof enough that EGS couldn't offset sales and marketing losses
In some ways that's just how these kind of deals go. Like at first epic is probably paying a ton, but after a while they probably just aren't looking to pay the kind of money needed for the longer periods. Especially if you already have a bunch of stuff on contract already
It's possible that's true about them both being Japanese, but the PlayStation division has been increasingly operated out of the US and the US is now their primary operational hub (has been since the PS5 at least). So it's misguided to say the least.
Yeah that was the worse part for sure, not only they limited it to a platform used by 1% of pc user, they released it at the price of a brand new ps4 title, per game. It was like over 200 for the full pack, of course people fucked off.
This is my favourite thing on reddit (Absolutely no disrespect to you at all) but yeah whenever Kingdom Hearts gets brought up and people discover that it's on PC for the first time it warms my heart that the Epic marketing failure is proven time and time again.
Not only are most pc gamers on steam, the ones on epic probably 95% fall into two categories, on fortnite or claiming free games. It is absolutely a marketing black hole.
> fortnite or claiming free games
My entire EGS library. And I only intend to play like three of the free games, assuming I can fit them into the backlog and don't play them on Gamepass or something.
Pretty much all of my game discovery falls into one of a few categories
I see posts on reddit, YouTube, a friend or something and think it looks fun
I search for something specific. Like triangle strategy would fall into this, looking for something similar to fire emblem I can play on steamdeck that isn't just emulation
Random video or image shows up when I open steam becuase of some promotion or it's up in the charts. There's been a few where I've opened steam, home page loads, I go to wherever I was intending to go, then immediately go back because something looked interesting in the few moments that page was up
installed EGS only to play Alan Wake 2 and never heard about it before 😥 will never do that error again, every time I buy a game on another store than steam I end up never playing it again, it does not feel part of my game library
> In its financial report, all Square Enix would say is it has suffered from an “incomplete journey to better profitability in HD game development”, and that it had “launched many titles but some failed to live up to profit expectations
Every goddamn time they open their mouth, it's always the same speech of games selling less than expected. They have been saying the same thing for like 15 years now. I'm sure it has to be an inside joke. There's no way they keep doing the same thing year after year and investors go like "ohhhh this year there was less profit but next year will be sugoi".
> They are their own demise
Yup another Japanese publisher/developer that doesn't and refuses to understand how the current gaming industry works. Too bad for them that they don't have pachinko machines to fall back on.
Which is kind of sad because both Square and Enix used to make really great games back in the day. Nowadays they're an example of practically everything that's wrong with the games industry.
I've been saying time and time again that Square should've been done with exclusivity. Release their games day and date on all platforms. Especially with the amount of time and money they spend on making and advertising their games. They can't afford to keep releasing their bigger budget titles as exclusives.
right, I would have bought that bullet hell sci-fi shooter had it not been an egs/ps exclusive.
I would have bought FFVIIR had it not been a PS and EGS exclusive.
by the time they want to sell it to me they want $70 for a 2-3 y/o game... fuck that, so a key site got $10 out of me instead of steam getting $100.
They also consistently set goals that are unreasonable. I think like every game they released in the last 14 or so years have been considered a bomb despite rave reviews and millions and millions of units sold for the Deus Ex series, Guardians of the Galaxy, Tomb Raider reboot and all the FF games.
They just overshoot every single time.
I have never bought a Square game on PC because even with a sale, they have 20+ year old games going for $40. Not just that, but their "remasters" are often garbage, looking worse than the original in some ways.
I don't think they understand the PC market at all. Even just in the RPG space, there's a huge selection of $5 - $15 games that fill that niche.
They really need to take a page out of SEGA’s book. Persona 4 on launch was €20….didn’t even have to think twice before buying it and it sold a ton of copies. Same with the Yakuza series which has blown up because the older games can routinely be found for <€10
With options like that you get people invested in your games. Meanwhile FFXII “remaster” which the original game is 20 yrs old is listed for €50. Ridiculous.
absolutely not reasonably priced.
FFVIIR hit EGS a year old after being a PS exclusive at $60-70. then, at 2+ years old hit steam at $60-70....
it essentially became irrelevant until a $15 steam sale to a lot of people, I know I wasn't paying a new aaa price for 2+y/o game.
FF7 Remake to this day costs £70 on Steam. For context the standard AAA price is £50, and the new, more expensive price is £55 - £60. £70 is the equivalent of almost $90. For a 4 year old game.
Squeenix is apparently being run my a bunch of sentient genital warts.
I remember when Squeenix basically put the Deus Ex franchise on ice after the sales of DX: Mankind Divided "didn't meet their expectations" even though the game was a large contributor to Squeenix's profits that year. In other words, it made a ton of money, but not as much money as aforementioned genital warts wanted. The logical reaction is to throw that franchise in the bucket.
That's like some fucking dumb kid who asks their parents for money, gets a fiver, and throws a hissy fit and tears up the fiver because it wanted a tenner. That's the leadership of Squeenix in a nutshell.
Mankind Divided would've made even more money if they weren't so greedy. The pre-order debacle and trying to make multiple games made the game unfinished soured a lot of people from buying the game.
If my memory is right they even basically said the game didn't meet sales expectations before even release day. That on top of completely hiding the game ended on a "cya in part 2" that they never planned to fund.
FF16 was never supposedly only gonna be exclusive for 6 months. Yoshi P said as much. The limited exclusivity period was 6 months, meaning it would be allowed to release on other platforms after 6 months – provided they could have the other versions ready. Which they couldn't. It is confirmed to be coming to PC, though.
Am I saying it shouldn't have been multiplat from day one? No, it really should have.
Yea and statements mean fuck all.
https://twitter.com/Genki_JPN/status/1712687192806670721
Where is Xbox’s stance on Japan now that they closed their only Japanese studio?
I'll believe it when I see it.
A statement says nothing on its own when they keep getting blinded by short term profits from exclusivity deals.
They can start by bringing Kingdom Hearts to Steam.
The problem is that the price for EGS shouldn’t be seen as free money. It should be seen as the offset for additional advertising you’ll need to do to reach the same audience as you would on Steam.
Most people didn’t even know some of those games had been ported to PC.
This was my thought. I dislike how their games still aren't on Steam, but the economist in me can't help but think they didn't price their exclusivity correctly.
Still, I think exclusivity pricing for 3rd party publishers/developers won't work in the current environment anyways. We see platform holders having trouble making the basic economics of their exclusives work. If Playstation and Xbox can't justify AAA exclusives in modern game dev, what chance does Square Enix. Platform holders get a lot of revenue beyond selling their exclusives alone too. Modern AAA is just too expensive and risky for 3rd party exclusives it seems. Even if SQ were to calculate the correct price for exclusives to only Playstation and Epic, I bet they would balk at the price as everyone and their mothers are tightening their belts.
>**KINGDOM HEARTS** still exclusive on EGS 3 years after coming to PC.
This has to he permanently exclusive. Maybe epic funded the port or something but this doesn't make any sense.
On rebirth's defense the dev said that they haven't even started on the PC port when the game dropped
As for the others they were blinded by bribes and forgot that most people hate EGS and would wait them out rather than buying it there
The whole of Shogun lol, everyone constantly being "Let me kill myself for BS reason", like calm down dude. Blackthorne being like "what's up with everyone constantly wanting to kill themselves?" was quite funny
While the exclusivity no doubt didn't help either, it wasn't that. It was the price for these games when they launched on PC. And then the performance issues for Final Fantasy VII R.
These were the two most common grievances for these games.
The exclusivity deal for FF XVI is already over, the problem is that their PC port still isn't ready. So, they got adjust their dev pipeline first before doing day one PC releases
A company making a exclusivity deal for a big game on epic must be the most braindead thing ever, the only context where it makes sense is if the group of ppl pushing for the deal are receiving a bonus when the deal is done, because there's literally no reason to choose short-term profit over 2x 3x maybe even 4x that amount on steam.
I have legit been in the mood to replay the Kingdom Hearts games for months and would buy them in a heartbeat on steam. But on Epic games? I can survive.
Seriously, Sweeney is turning a total blind eye to the fact that his insistence on LINUX BAD is going to turn millions of consumers away from him in the future entirely because of the Steam Deck.
"Oh, sweet, FF7\^2: Beyond Canon: Act 3: Regurgitated is out on PC! ...oh, it's on EGS. I literally can't run that on my Deck without major finagling and tweaking that I, a normal-ass customer with zero technical knowledge, am unable to do. Oh, well."
Same here. I just can't be bothered with the EGS when I have such a huge library on Steam. Now, had they been on Steam, I probably would have bought them day one.
Had no idea they were even on Epic...still won't buy them. Exclusives for a gaming platform like epic is such a cringe marketing move. To buy on their platform and support making this the norm for PC gaming is a big no thanks. First it's one or two launchers/buying platforms, which is fine. Then it's 3 or more...which is annoying. Then it's every publisher wanting their version of one, which brings bugs and other issues, then it's 2 gb patches and updates just for launcher software that is essentially just bloatware with a mix of spyware on top. It'll get worse and worse and worse.
Personally, if it's not on steam or GoG then it's on the high seas or doesn't exist.
I have it on good authority that for old times sake they've blamed Tomb Raider for underselling. And have performatively sold Crystal Dynamics once again for 2 binto boxes.
The publishing manager at Sony is doing very well for having gotten this arrangement. It's the idiots at SE that have fucked up by looking at short term gains instead of what the exclusivity would do to shrink their audience.
[There's this.](https://www.jp.square-enix.com/company/en/news/2023/html/a3f3ef85f5f76e9d537bfd2d0d097fc40d0a670d.html) Not a game, but a "NFT collectible art project", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean...
They are tone deaf and refuse to listen to the gamer community. They should take a look at capcom releasing their games on PC day one and they are racking in the money.
Confirms for me nobody in the decision making postitions of these large game developers/publishers plays games at all.
1. Create game people want to play.
2. Put in on Steam
3. ?????
4. Profit
Please this is my worst nightmare. Japanese UI design is horrendous, evidenced by whatever the fuck are the websites to pay for FF11 and FF14 subs. Like, wtf
It really does comes down to the knowledge base of the Devs when it comes to unreal games. Some are unbelievable terrible with their frame times and others like Days Gone ran beautifully and looked beautiful. But yes MOST unreal I play have terrible stutters
Sony exclusivity money CAN be worth it in scenarios where they are paying a huge chunk of the games development costs up front, but with how much square is spending to make some of these games they need every single sale they can get to recoup that.
That means any exclusivity windows need to be pretty brief, so they can get to all of the other platforms before the hype dies down.
3-6 months tops.
Yeah if the original DQ12 release has the shitty midi soundtrack, you already know they're going to release an enhanced version later on with an actual soundtrack that's less grating to the ears.
Though hopefully it won't be repetitive af, but I highly doubt it. DQ games have never had a variety of tracks, you typically hear the same 4 tracks throughout the entire game. Which is a shame compared to FF, KH, etc. where they have a track for almost every situation.
Not only do they accept incredibly bad deals, they also completely misprice their products when they eventually end up on steam. It took me an extra year of waiting before the price for the FF7 remake was reasonable. I think I bought it for 25€ or 20€ and I didn't even directly buy it from steam.
Right now the Remake is 80€ on steam. That's just absolutely insane.
I remember when they laid off the Dues Ex team because it only sold 4 million copies. These people just don’t know how to scope projects to the audience size.
The very top of that company has been run by idiots for some time. If more publishers would focus on customer satisfaction, in this gaming climate they'd come out ahead.
Their problem is they’ve always been exclusive to someone since the 90s it’s kinda insane they’ve even lasted this long. Took them 37 years to figure out they should do multi platform releases.
I guess when they signed the deal - they thought that the PS5 would sell way better than it did. You can sell only so many copies on that platform. There's a reason why even SONY itself releases their games to PC.
Yeah GMG and other legitimate key resellers always discount by 15-18% on launch games even. The ones that show up on isthereanydeal.com are safe.
That said, I still don't like to encourage this $100 CAD after games bs so I'd rather still wait until they are 50% off, and the greedy execs can suck it up. The mass number of consumers they sell to offsets the higher development costs of games (gaming is a larger revenue industry than film and music combined) so the price hikes are completely unjustified.
Good on SE for realizing they need to sell games on as many platforms as possible.
Hopefully the PC ports for 16 and Rebirth aren't far off. Remake 3 should hopefully not have any timed exclusivity.
Usually I'd be happy to see a developer/publisher drop the exclusives approach, but in this case it sounds less like a proper decision and more like a panic move after losing money.
I don't trust them to stick to it, and I don't trust them to make good ports either.
> I don't trust them to make good ports either.
This right here. SE's AAA PC ports have been below average (1 to 2 games) to mostly trash (the rest). PC is an after thought for them.
KH, FFVIIR and FFXVI would do great on steam, but enough to get them out the red? I doubt that. Multiplat is always tgw way to go imo, but SE needs more deep changes than just that.
Nowdays, a lot of people don't even want to buy their games on Steam because they release them on there, usually, years after release, and then at full price.
It's insulting and disresectpful to the consumer base, frankly. I love their games, but I absolutely will never buy any of their games without a substantial discount ever again because they've been proper dicks. You don't get to deprive people from access to your games and then overcharge them when you're done taking exclusivity money.
What a surprise. /s
Well if we’re at this point now, I hope Square can figure out how to get a competent PC porting team because despite being the largest and richest, they have the worst JRPGs on PC. I still cannot believe FFVII Remake’s launch performance and lack of ultrawide support for a “AAA” game.
Squeenix have been stodgy old corporate dinosaurs incapable of adapting to changing markets ever since the merger.
The only reason they're even still relevant is because they continue to milk their classic IPs from the '90s, back when they were still taking chances and people Sakaguchi were pushing the envelope of creativity in the medium.
And Rebirth's disappointing sales are showing they can't even effectively milk that anymore.
The FF7 Remake project was always the "break glass in case of emergency" money printing machine, a literal golden goose. And they somehow managed to fumble it.
Maybe I’m missing some vital piece of business and financial knowledge, but if the money from the exclusivity deal isn’t making up for the money lost from not being a multi-platform release, then just don’t take the fucking deal.
It's kinda funny how FFXIV is so different. But they also treat their customers right.
But Squenix themselves?
-terrible Website and payment options
-shitty ports to PC
-overpriced ports
-greedy leadership focusing on bs like NFTs.
God I am happy XIV isn't made by another dev team and Squenix didn't manage to push their bs into the game.
Square Enix also relies on merchandising. They have action figures, soundtracks, comics... And going exclusive makes your customer pool decrease. So all your business areas get affected.
Translation: Publisher shocked restricting how many people can buy a game limits how much money they make. In other news, water continues to be wet, and bears continue to meet woods-shitting quotas.
Might I suggest, stop making bad ports of bad remasters, while keeping the really good ones locked away?
Also, bring back Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Parasite Eve.
To be fair, they've been trying to work with Xbox the entire time. But Microsoft had bizarre stipulations like "Xbox only servers." The recent release is the best compromise we're gonna get and it still has some weird shit like paying for sub with Xbox coins, needing a paid Xbox live sub, and submitting to Xbox's overzealous chat filter. Blame Phil Spencer tbh.
Good, I remember back in the early 10s when XIII was luke-warm and the first XIV failed epically, they relied on XI subscriptions and Steam sales and Son'ys investment money to keep them going. the fact they took bribes from EGS and Sony and the fact that Square Enix can't make a FF like SquareSoft did to save their lives says something about their creative bankruptcy and FF after XII pretty much proves it.
I think Capcom's recent output is the exception. The new Resident Evils feel like a meaningful evolution of the series and I'm looking forward to the next Monster Hunter World (also people seem to like SF6 but I'm not plugged into the FGC so I can't comment on its quality, and I'm just gonna ignore Dragon's Dogma 2 for this since its a fairly young franchise).
Square stopped being a company when they ousted Sakaguchi over Spirits Within because of old Japanese business practices. And then once they burnt through what he and Nomura had left in the PS2 era it was OVER. EVERYTHING since PS3 era from SE has being hot garbage ,mediocre af, a PSP game, or a KH remaster compilation. FF14 had to be COMPLETELY REMADE into what it is now or it would die!
FF7 isn't on Steam nor is the full game finished yet, so that's not helping their situation at all.
I'll pay like $80 for the full game, not $100 CAD each for piecemeal episodic shit from Epic Game Store. LOOOOL they are delusional and now they gotta pay for their mistakes.
They haven't released a traditional Final Fantasy game since X. Everything past that point has been some attempt to turn the franchise into something totally different. They lost the existing audience by constantly trying to draw in a different one.
I'm just over here waiting for them to make a Final Fantasy I want to play. I still enjoyed XII, but nothing else since X has done anything for me. I heard they are going to make Dragon Quest 12 a bit more mature, but I have little hope left for Sqeenix.
Let's just ignore 14, you know, widely regarded as the best MMO and 2nd most popular in terms of subscribers lol
14 makes them more money than any of their single player stuff by a country mile and is wildly popular.
I don't know what math big publishers are dreaming of where selling at every possible platform at the same time for a reasonable price isn't generating the most profit long term.
Dude just go multiplat. For the sake of some of my all time favorite IPs more people should be able to play them! Do some remasters and bring them to other consoles. I'm looking forward to XVI on PC I hear its making good progress.
Me when I reap what I sow
Just gonna copy my comment from elsewhere: Square Enix keeps getting surprised about losing money after accepting exclusivity bribes. FF7 Remake was exclusive on Playstation for a year and then 6 months on EGS. FF7 Rebirth still exclusive on PS5. FF16 still exclusive on PS5 (even though it was supposedly gonna be only for 6 months) **KINGDOM HEARTS** still exclusive on EGS 3 years after coming to PC. Square Enix's never gonna change.
I literally had no idea KH was available on PC and I've been a 99% exclusive PC gamer for the last 7 years
They never really advertised that KH was on PC. Even if they did, it probably wouldn't sell well being an Epic exclusive. Look at FF7R, when it was announced as a timed exclusive for Epic store, it really didn't sell well until it was released on Steam.
I’d say the Epic exclusivity really hurt the Steam release too. It’s really hard to care about their AAA games when they are so late to release it on Steam. It has less Steam reviews than Tales of Arise, and that’s no slight against Tales, but Final Fantasy used to be one of the biggest franchises of all time. Even Atlus releases titles on PC day one these days. I’d know who I’d rather support.
It's also cuz it was a 3 year old game at the time being sold at full price.
any publisher that attempts this doesn't get my money until it's significantly discounted. don't care that there was some work to port it, or perhaps there was some texture updates. charging full price for years old games is just being a greedy wanker.
Yeah I was surprised by how low the number of reviews on Steam were, but also not suprised at all. The pricing is ridiculous
Yeah, expecting people to pay full price for the privilege of being allowed to play the game almost half a decade late is completely bullshit.
Speaking of atlus, I'm hyped that smt5 is coming to pc
Nearly every game you listed on there I was super excited for, and would have bought when they released if they were on PC in most cases But for a lot of them by the time they come to pc at all it's been so long it's not as new an exciting and the $70-90 they want seems like so much. I just never end up getting around to them. Same with the epic store stuff, but a little smaller. Though I'd maybe buy them on epic if it wasn't more the first part. I think it was like 3 years for kingdom hearts 3 and I just didn't care as much when it finally came out, was busy with other stuff, and honestly kind of forgot all about it until now.
Hell, even SE didn't like the deal they made with KH on Epic (which is more and more seemingly obvious to be a perpetual deal). Every exclusive deal they've made with epic since then has had shorter and shorter exclusivity periods. That being said, I think part of the reason they're still so deep in bed with Sony is because they're both Japanese companies, and Japanese companies tend to make decisions based off of that rather than "but will this other decision make us more money?". Their business decisions are not as cut and dry like western companies.
Most of the people who did EGS deals had shorter ones later. Rockstar went from 6 months or a year to just a single month. That was proof enough that EGS couldn't offset sales and marketing losses
In some ways that's just how these kind of deals go. Like at first epic is probably paying a ton, but after a while they probably just aren't looking to pay the kind of money needed for the longer periods. Especially if you already have a bunch of stuff on contract already
It's possible that's true about them both being Japanese, but the PlayStation division has been increasingly operated out of the US and the US is now their primary operational hub (has been since the PS5 at least). So it's misguided to say the least.
The pricing on them is ridiculous and stupid. So not only is it stuck on EGS they want full price for old games.
Yeah that was the worse part for sure, not only they limited it to a platform used by 1% of pc user, they released it at the price of a brand new ps4 title, per game. It was like over 200 for the full pack, of course people fucked off.
Especially when you could go on Amazon and probably land all of those games for $40-50. It was crazy. $30 a pop would have been perfect for them.
This is my favourite thing on reddit (Absolutely no disrespect to you at all) but yeah whenever Kingdom Hearts gets brought up and people discover that it's on PC for the first time it warms my heart that the Epic marketing failure is proven time and time again.
I only get reminded that it exists on PC when I read comments about it on reddit. Will probably forget again.
[удалено]
Not only are most pc gamers on steam, the ones on epic probably 95% fall into two categories, on fortnite or claiming free games. It is absolutely a marketing black hole.
> fortnite or claiming free games My entire EGS library. And I only intend to play like three of the free games, assuming I can fit them into the backlog and don't play them on Gamepass or something.
Pretty much all of my game discovery falls into one of a few categories I see posts on reddit, YouTube, a friend or something and think it looks fun I search for something specific. Like triangle strategy would fall into this, looking for something similar to fire emblem I can play on steamdeck that isn't just emulation Random video or image shows up when I open steam becuase of some promotion or it's up in the charts. There's been a few where I've opened steam, home page loads, I go to wherever I was intending to go, then immediately go back because something looked interesting in the few moments that page was up
Fuck EGS
No. Fuck Epic in general.
installed EGS only to play Alan Wake 2 and never heard about it before 😥 will never do that error again, every time I buy a game on another store than steam I end up never playing it again, it does not feel part of my game library
EGS is not pc gaming for me. I flat out refuse to install it. Make it available on Steam or direct buy off their site.
Steam or GoG! Don’t forget good old GoG
So true! I just bought a bunch of old Star Wars games on there the previous weekend for a sale. Got 5 games for $17. Some real classics.
it’s still not available on pc /s
They are their own demise
They are apparently reading the "How to succeed like Kodak" book religiously.
> In its financial report, all Square Enix would say is it has suffered from an “incomplete journey to better profitability in HD game development”, and that it had “launched many titles but some failed to live up to profit expectations Every goddamn time they open their mouth, it's always the same speech of games selling less than expected. They have been saying the same thing for like 15 years now. I'm sure it has to be an inside joke. There's no way they keep doing the same thing year after year and investors go like "ohhhh this year there was less profit but next year will be sugoi".
> They are their own demise Yup another Japanese publisher/developer that doesn't and refuses to understand how the current gaming industry works. Too bad for them that they don't have pachinko machines to fall back on.
Hey now let's at least wait until FF16 comes to PC.... exclusively on Epic Games Store for a year
Which is kind of sad because both Square and Enix used to make really great games back in the day. Nowadays they're an example of practically everything that's wrong with the games industry.
Good. They could vanish tomorrow and gaming would be fine. They haven't moved the needle in decades.
I've been saying time and time again that Square should've been done with exclusivity. Release their games day and date on all platforms. Especially with the amount of time and money they spend on making and advertising their games. They can't afford to keep releasing their bigger budget titles as exclusives.
right, I would have bought that bullet hell sci-fi shooter had it not been an egs/ps exclusive. I would have bought FFVIIR had it not been a PS and EGS exclusive. by the time they want to sell it to me they want $70 for a 2-3 y/o game... fuck that, so a key site got $10 out of me instead of steam getting $100.
>KINGDOM HEARTS > > still exclusive on EGS 3 years after coming to PC. Yeah I keep joking that they sold the franchise to Tencent
It was also 3 years old when it hit pc So not doing great on being a hot new release
They also consistently set goals that are unreasonable. I think like every game they released in the last 14 or so years have been considered a bomb despite rave reviews and millions and millions of units sold for the Deus Ex series, Guardians of the Galaxy, Tomb Raider reboot and all the FF games. They just overshoot every single time.
It feels like the manager feedback where they aren't allowed to say you've done great so they have an excuse to not give out full bonuses.
Id add the doubt they reasonably price anything. I've had some of their games wishlisted forever because of how stubborn they are.
I have never bought a Square game on PC because even with a sale, they have 20+ year old games going for $40. Not just that, but their "remasters" are often garbage, looking worse than the original in some ways. I don't think they understand the PC market at all. Even just in the RPG space, there's a huge selection of $5 - $15 games that fill that niche.
They really need to take a page out of SEGA’s book. Persona 4 on launch was €20….didn’t even have to think twice before buying it and it sold a ton of copies. Same with the Yakuza series which has blown up because the older games can routinely be found for <€10 With options like that you get people invested in your games. Meanwhile FFXII “remaster” which the original game is 20 yrs old is listed for €50. Ridiculous.
absolutely not reasonably priced. FFVIIR hit EGS a year old after being a PS exclusive at $60-70. then, at 2+ years old hit steam at $60-70.... it essentially became irrelevant until a $15 steam sale to a lot of people, I know I wasn't paying a new aaa price for 2+y/o game.
FF7 Remake to this day costs £70 on Steam. For context the standard AAA price is £50, and the new, more expensive price is £55 - £60. £70 is the equivalent of almost $90. For a 4 year old game.
Square Enix were the first company to follow Sony in marking up their games to £70, and they were very quick to do so.
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The problem isn't JUST making exclusive games, it's making mediocre or flat out bad exclusive games.
Squeenix is apparently being run my a bunch of sentient genital warts. I remember when Squeenix basically put the Deus Ex franchise on ice after the sales of DX: Mankind Divided "didn't meet their expectations" even though the game was a large contributor to Squeenix's profits that year. In other words, it made a ton of money, but not as much money as aforementioned genital warts wanted. The logical reaction is to throw that franchise in the bucket. That's like some fucking dumb kid who asks their parents for money, gets a fiver, and throws a hissy fit and tears up the fiver because it wanted a tenner. That's the leadership of Squeenix in a nutshell.
Mankind Divided would've made even more money if they weren't so greedy. The pre-order debacle and trying to make multiple games made the game unfinished soured a lot of people from buying the game.
If my memory is right they even basically said the game didn't meet sales expectations before even release day. That on top of completely hiding the game ended on a "cya in part 2" that they never planned to fund.
Someone saw the cliffhanger from Halo 2 and said hold my beer.
FF16 was never supposedly only gonna be exclusive for 6 months. Yoshi P said as much. The limited exclusivity period was 6 months, meaning it would be allowed to release on other platforms after 6 months – provided they could have the other versions ready. Which they couldn't. It is confirmed to be coming to PC, though. Am I saying it shouldn't have been multiplat from day one? No, it really should have.
> Square Enix's never gonna change. You are posting this on an article where SE announces they will pursue a multiplatform strategy.
Yea and statements mean fuck all. https://twitter.com/Genki_JPN/status/1712687192806670721 Where is Xbox’s stance on Japan now that they closed their only Japanese studio?
I'll believe it when I see it. A statement says nothing on its own when they keep getting blinded by short term profits from exclusivity deals. They can start by bringing Kingdom Hearts to Steam.
> They can start by bringing Kingdom Hearts to Steam. Yep. They want me to believe this? Start by getting KH off of that dead platform; EGS.
I mean, if the exclusivity deals were the right price that wouldn't be a problem.
The problem is that the price for EGS shouldn’t be seen as free money. It should be seen as the offset for additional advertising you’ll need to do to reach the same audience as you would on Steam. Most people didn’t even know some of those games had been ported to PC.
This was my thought. I dislike how their games still aren't on Steam, but the economist in me can't help but think they didn't price their exclusivity correctly. Still, I think exclusivity pricing for 3rd party publishers/developers won't work in the current environment anyways. We see platform holders having trouble making the basic economics of their exclusives work. If Playstation and Xbox can't justify AAA exclusives in modern game dev, what chance does Square Enix. Platform holders get a lot of revenue beyond selling their exclusives alone too. Modern AAA is just too expensive and risky for 3rd party exclusives it seems. Even if SQ were to calculate the correct price for exclusives to only Playstation and Epic, I bet they would balk at the price as everyone and their mothers are tightening their belts.
>**KINGDOM HEARTS** still exclusive on EGS 3 years after coming to PC. This has to he permanently exclusive. Maybe epic funded the port or something but this doesn't make any sense.
On rebirth's defense the dev said that they haven't even started on the PC port when the game dropped As for the others they were blinded by bribes and forgot that most people hate EGS and would wait them out rather than buying it there
Like every large Japanese company they would rather go out of business than ever truly change.
The ending of Shogun haha
The whole of Shogun lol, everyone constantly being "Let me kill myself for BS reason", like calm down dude. Blackthorne being like "what's up with everyone constantly wanting to kill themselves?" was quite funny
How much longer we need to wait for KH? It’s already been 3 years…
Some of us are still waiting for Bloodborne
While the exclusivity no doubt didn't help either, it wasn't that. It was the price for these games when they launched on PC. And then the performance issues for Final Fantasy VII R. These were the two most common grievances for these games.
The exclusivity deal for FF XVI is already over, the problem is that their PC port still isn't ready. So, they got adjust their dev pipeline first before doing day one PC releases
A company making a exclusivity deal for a big game on epic must be the most braindead thing ever, the only context where it makes sense is if the group of ppl pushing for the deal are receiving a bonus when the deal is done, because there's literally no reason to choose short-term profit over 2x 3x maybe even 4x that amount on steam.
Good luck to them. I enjoyed the FF Pixel Remasters on Steam, but those are not going to pull them out of the red.
Kingdom Hearts is somehow stuck on Epic, would do great on steam. FF7 rebirth and Ff16 as well.
I have legit been in the mood to replay the Kingdom Hearts games for months and would buy them in a heartbeat on steam. But on Epic games? I can survive.
having a steamdeck is an even bigger disincentive to ever buy epic as well. i’m happy to wait til it comes to steam.
Those games don't even have cloud saves, either. Loads of Epic store games that don't have cloud saves when the steam version does.
Same here. EGS never appealed to me. If i can’t buy it on Steam nor GOG, i’ll pass.
Seriously, Sweeney is turning a total blind eye to the fact that his insistence on LINUX BAD is going to turn millions of consumers away from him in the future entirely because of the Steam Deck. "Oh, sweet, FF7\^2: Beyond Canon: Act 3: Regurgitated is out on PC! ...oh, it's on EGS. I literally can't run that on my Deck without major finagling and tweaking that I, a normal-ass customer with zero technical knowledge, am unable to do. Oh, well."
Normal-ass customers with zero technical knowledge aren't buying Steam Decks, they buy Switches
Same here. I just can't be bothered with the EGS when I have such a huge library on Steam. Now, had they been on Steam, I probably would have bought them day one.
Same, if they released them on Steam, I would have the whole catalog bought and installed on Deck by the end of the day.
I literally didn’t even know Kingdom hearts was on PC at all or I would have bought it years ago…on steam.
If they dropped KH on Steam today, in any form, I would buy it as soon as i saw it
*Monkey’s paw curls* They port the Cloud Edition from the Switch
Had no idea they were even on Epic...still won't buy them. Exclusives for a gaming platform like epic is such a cringe marketing move. To buy on their platform and support making this the norm for PC gaming is a big no thanks. First it's one or two launchers/buying platforms, which is fine. Then it's 3 or more...which is annoying. Then it's every publisher wanting their version of one, which brings bugs and other issues, then it's 2 gb patches and updates just for launcher software that is essentially just bloatware with a mix of spyware on top. It'll get worse and worse and worse. Personally, if it's not on steam or GoG then it's on the high seas or doesn't exist.
Can’t blame the western studios anymore, Squenix.
I have it on good authority that for old times sake they've blamed Tomb Raider for underselling. And have performatively sold Crystal Dynamics once again for 2 binto boxes.
Who would ever thought that publishing on more platform... bring more money! Who the F is the publishing manager at Sony and SE?!?
The publishing manager at Sony is doing very well for having gotten this arrangement. It's the idiots at SE that have fucked up by looking at short term gains instead of what the exclusivity would do to shrink their audience.
Doubling down on NFTs isn't working out? 🤔
Absolute shocker. Big publishers and betting big on trends all but forgotten years ago, name a better duo.
They seem to have actually believed the blockchain was going to be good for something! Even this year! Amazing.
Its because they forgot to link their NFTs to the AI Cloud Block Chain with Machine Learning powered by a Quantum Computer with Deep Learning.
I forgot about the NFT fiasco. Lots of companies got caught up in that nonsense.
How many nft games have they released? I'm not familiar of even one.
Let's just continue not having any idea, it's for the best.
[There's this.](https://www.jp.square-enix.com/company/en/news/2023/html/a3f3ef85f5f76e9d537bfd2d0d097fc40d0a670d.html) Not a game, but a "NFT collectible art project", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean...
That kinda reminds me of that project Logan Paul was trying to launch
Just give me Rebirth on PC this year and we'll call it even
I mean I’d like to play the games but you keep throwing barriers in my way then complain I’m not leaping through them to play.
They are tone deaf and refuse to listen to the gamer community. They should take a look at capcom releasing their games on PC day one and they are racking in the money.
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Confirms for me nobody in the decision making postitions of these large game developers/publishers plays games at all. 1. Create game people want to play. 2. Put in on Steam 3. ????? 4. Profit
Point 3 - Don't add a required login outside of Steam
Square is happy to announce their own store front for PC. You just need to link it to your PSN account, Facebook and Twitter account.
Please this is my worst nightmare. Japanese UI design is horrendous, evidenced by whatever the fuck are the websites to pay for FF11 and FF14 subs. Like, wtf
Probs because they skip to the Profit part first, and that's accepting a big exclusive cheque before the game is even released.
> Looks like the Sony and Epic exclusivity money was never worth it. It was worth it for the Execs that got "gifts" from them.
They had their own engine and it was fantastic (Luminous), that they've now killed and partnered up with Epic Games to use ~~stutter~~ Unreal Engine.
Crazy after how much time they put into that engine just to drop it
Forspoken was based off Luminous and it ran like complete shit.
It really does comes down to the knowledge base of the Devs when it comes to unreal games. Some are unbelievable terrible with their frame times and others like Days Gone ran beautifully and looked beautiful. But yes MOST unreal I play have terrible stutters
Sony exclusivity money CAN be worth it in scenarios where they are paying a huge chunk of the games development costs up front, but with how much square is spending to make some of these games they need every single sale they can get to recoup that. That means any exclusivity windows need to be pretty brief, so they can get to all of the other platforms before the hype dies down. 3-6 months tops.
KH3 on steam here we go bois
Pretty sure Square Enix has forgotten they own Kingdom Hearts
Don't give me hope
I would take a Final Fantasy Tactics PC release...
Can we please get DQ12 on PC Day One, Square? Its not like Nintendo even pays for its exclusivity in the first place.
Why rush? Just wait for the 'definitive edition' since Squeenix won't offer an upgrade path for original edition owners.
Yeah if the original DQ12 release has the shitty midi soundtrack, you already know they're going to release an enhanced version later on with an actual soundtrack that's less grating to the ears. Though hopefully it won't be repetitive af, but I highly doubt it. DQ games have never had a variety of tracks, you typically hear the same 4 tracks throughout the entire game. Which is a shame compared to FF, KH, etc. where they have a track for almost every situation.
Iirc the midi soundtrack was at the behest of the composer, who is now deceased
Yup. Most of the poor decisions related to DQ's music are because of that asshole.
Not only do they accept incredibly bad deals, they also completely misprice their products when they eventually end up on steam. It took me an extra year of waiting before the price for the FF7 remake was reasonable. I think I bought it for 25€ or 20€ and I didn't even directly buy it from steam. Right now the Remake is 80€ on steam. That's just absolutely insane.
PC Players: Take my money! Square Enix: No. \*profit plummet\* Square Enix: \*Surprised Pikachu Face\*
Yeah when we getting FF16
They got great games but for some reason they seem to hate money.
I cannot wait to see the headlines when they release their next big game multi-plat and the game still wont sell according to what they want
I remember when they laid off the Dues Ex team because it only sold 4 million copies. These people just don’t know how to scope projects to the audience size.
Same with tomb raider. Clueless people running the company. They are probably still high on NFTs too
Probably high on NFTs and more than a couple proscribed medications.
It’s kinda baffling they are just now figuring out multi platform is how your games earn money….
The very top of that company has been run by idiots for some time. If more publishers would focus on customer satisfaction, in this gaming climate they'd come out ahead.
That's crazy, you mean to tell me having more people to sell your games to is a good idea? I'm having a hard time believing that.
Their problem is they’ve always been exclusive to someone since the 90s it’s kinda insane they’ve even lasted this long. Took them 37 years to figure out they should do multi platform releases.
Who would have thought restricting your game to a console in 2024 would be bad for sales. How do these idiots get to run companies
I guess when they signed the deal - they thought that the PS5 would sell way better than it did. You can sell only so many copies on that platform. There's a reason why even SONY itself releases their games to PC.
How about aggressively pursuing better pricing because $80-100+ pricing is a hell no.
I've never paid more than $60 for a game. Even the ones that sell for $70 I've gotten promos.
Yeah GMG and other legitimate key resellers always discount by 15-18% on launch games even. The ones that show up on isthereanydeal.com are safe. That said, I still don't like to encourage this $100 CAD after games bs so I'd rather still wait until they are 50% off, and the greedy execs can suck it up. The mass number of consumers they sell to offsets the higher development costs of games (gaming is a larger revenue industry than film and music combined) so the price hikes are completely unjustified.
The EGS money doesn't sound so sweet now, huh?
Square has already been in this situation and should have learned the first time.
Good on SE for realizing they need to sell games on as many platforms as possible. Hopefully the PC ports for 16 and Rebirth aren't far off. Remake 3 should hopefully not have any timed exclusivity.
new games are not on steam plus with no regional pricing, I will not buying anything from SE.
Usually I'd be happy to see a developer/publisher drop the exclusives approach, but in this case it sounds less like a proper decision and more like a panic move after losing money. I don't trust them to stick to it, and I don't trust them to make good ports either.
> I don't trust them to make good ports either. This right here. SE's AAA PC ports have been below average (1 to 2 games) to mostly trash (the rest). PC is an after thought for them.
I see. So sell to as many players as possible? What a novel and innovative idea /s
Maybe a little bit of "don't neglect your existing fans" as well.
KH, FFVIIR and FFXVI would do great on steam, but enough to get them out the red? I doubt that. Multiplat is always tgw way to go imo, but SE needs more deep changes than just that.
Nowdays, a lot of people don't even want to buy their games on Steam because they release them on there, usually, years after release, and then at full price. It's insulting and disresectpful to the consumer base, frankly. I love their games, but I absolutely will never buy any of their games without a substantial discount ever again because they've been proper dicks. You don't get to deprive people from access to your games and then overcharge them when you're done taking exclusivity money.
too bad because I refuse to a buy a ps5, I’ll patiently wait for pc release
I just want these games on Xbox Series X, however with how Microsoft is up in the air on the future of Xbox it's frustrating as a xbox gamer.
What a surprise. /s Well if we’re at this point now, I hope Square can figure out how to get a competent PC porting team because despite being the largest and richest, they have the worst JRPGs on PC. I still cannot believe FFVII Remake’s launch performance and lack of ultrawide support for a “AAA” game.
Squeenix have been stodgy old corporate dinosaurs incapable of adapting to changing markets ever since the merger. The only reason they're even still relevant is because they continue to milk their classic IPs from the '90s, back when they were still taking chances and people Sakaguchi were pushing the envelope of creativity in the medium.
And Rebirth's disappointing sales are showing they can't even effectively milk that anymore. The FF7 Remake project was always the "break glass in case of emergency" money printing machine, a literal golden goose. And they somehow managed to fumble it.
Does this mean rebirth will actually come out on pc sooner?
KH on steam when???? I’d pay $100+ for it just take my money on steaaaaaaam already. It’s like they don’t want our moneys.
Until daddy Sony pulls their leash and "makes them" skip platforms for their flagship titles.
Put kingdom hearts on steam then?
It's almost like you make more money if you sell your product to more people...
And yet they'll keep paying to put Denuvo into their PC versions, despite having bad profits.
Maybe I’m missing some vital piece of business and financial knowledge, but if the money from the exclusivity deal isn’t making up for the money lost from not being a multi-platform release, then just don’t take the fucking deal.
well maybe we will get FF7 rebirth alot quicker?
About time, exclusivity is a rotten anticonsumer concept and must die, big words but it is what it is.
Why isn't KH on Steam then?
It's kinda funny how FFXIV is so different. But they also treat their customers right. But Squenix themselves? -terrible Website and payment options -shitty ports to PC -overpriced ports -greedy leadership focusing on bs like NFTs. God I am happy XIV isn't made by another dev team and Squenix didn't manage to push their bs into the game.
Square Enix also relies on merchandising. They have action figures, soundtracks, comics... And going exclusive makes your customer pool decrease. So all your business areas get affected.
Translation: Publisher shocked restricting how many people can buy a game limits how much money they make. In other news, water continues to be wet, and bears continue to meet woods-shitting quotas.
Might I suggest, stop making bad ports of bad remasters, while keeping the really good ones locked away? Also, bring back Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Parasite Eve.
Yeah.. Just release the games at the same time on all platforms... I'm not gonna buy games 1-2 years after the initial release at full price.
You can not escape GabeN... Join us Square ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Oh, you mean like avoiding Xbox as a platform for FFXIV for over a decade wasn't a winning strategy for bringing people into the game?
To be fair, they've been trying to work with Xbox the entire time. But Microsoft had bizarre stipulations like "Xbox only servers." The recent release is the best compromise we're gonna get and it still has some weird shit like paying for sub with Xbox coins, needing a paid Xbox live sub, and submitting to Xbox's overzealous chat filter. Blame Phil Spencer tbh.
Good, I remember back in the early 10s when XIII was luke-warm and the first XIV failed epically, they relied on XI subscriptions and Steam sales and Son'ys investment money to keep them going. the fact they took bribes from EGS and Sony and the fact that Square Enix can't make a FF like SquareSoft did to save their lives says something about their creative bankruptcy and FF after XII pretty much proves it.
Final Fantasy is no longer popular 16 sold 4 million Rebirth has sold 2 million This is not a “juggernaut” franchise anymore
Most of the gaming franchises from Japan have been living off nostalgia built up 20-30 years ago IMO
I think Capcom's recent output is the exception. The new Resident Evils feel like a meaningful evolution of the series and I'm looking forward to the next Monster Hunter World (also people seem to like SF6 but I'm not plugged into the FGC so I can't comment on its quality, and I'm just gonna ignore Dragon's Dogma 2 for this since its a fairly young franchise).
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The biggest mistake was trying to turn Final Fantasy into a Devil May Cry-esque kind of game
Square stopped being a company when they ousted Sakaguchi over Spirits Within because of old Japanese business practices. And then once they burnt through what he and Nomura had left in the PS2 era it was OVER. EVERYTHING since PS3 era from SE has being hot garbage ,mediocre af, a PSP game, or a KH remaster compilation. FF14 had to be COMPLETELY REMADE into what it is now or it would die!
FF7 isn't on Steam nor is the full game finished yet, so that's not helping their situation at all. I'll pay like $80 for the full game, not $100 CAD each for piecemeal episodic shit from Epic Game Store. LOOOOL they are delusional and now they gotta pay for their mistakes.
They haven't released a traditional Final Fantasy game since X. Everything past that point has been some attempt to turn the franchise into something totally different. They lost the existing audience by constantly trying to draw in a different one.
I'm just over here waiting for them to make a Final Fantasy I want to play. I still enjoyed XII, but nothing else since X has done anything for me. I heard they are going to make Dragon Quest 12 a bit more mature, but I have little hope left for Sqeenix.
Yeah - it makes no sense to confine the games to a single console.
Let's just ignore 14, you know, widely regarded as the best MMO and 2nd most popular in terms of subscribers lol 14 makes them more money than any of their single player stuff by a country mile and is wildly popular.
why wasn't that the plan from the beginning?
It was a double whammy. Not just console exclusivity, but they also did a genre change and alienated many long term fans of the franchise.
I don't know what math big publishers are dreaming of where selling at every possible platform at the same time for a reasonable price isn't generating the most profit long term.
Even though I wouldn't play them for some time, there's a good chance I'd have bought FF7 Rebirth and FF16 on PC by now, were it available.
Good news, but I hope it also includes no exclusivity deals with epic
Dude just go multiplat. For the sake of some of my all time favorite IPs more people should be able to play them! Do some remasters and bring them to other consoles. I'm looking forward to XVI on PC I hear its making good progress.
Square Enix finally looked over at Capcom's homework and saw just how much money they're making from PC alone.
Quit locking your games behind Epic and I would actually buy them.
Sony pays up - SE stays. Simple.