Former Square Enix exec on why Final Fantasy sales don’t meet expectations and chances of recouping insane AAA budgets

The problem is that the first is easy, the later is hard, nigh impossible.

Software development is notoriously hard to predict. Specially features against time and cost of development. But video games are even harder to predict. It's impossible to know how many copies a game will sell, you might as well hire a tarot reader. Specially if the game doesn't exist yet.

This is not a justification of the AAA practices. Quite the contrary, things are this way because mid and high management refuse to do their job or plainly suck at it. I guess that the adage still rings true: I want smaller games, with worse graphics, made by well paid developers who work less hours. But this games have never sold billions of dollars or sparked billion dollar game as a service IPs. So executives think it can't be done and keep expending more in a desperate chase of the golden eggs goose.

According to the article at least, that is essentially what they did. But their model was based on earlier years when there was higher projected growth, so the budgets were set too high as a result.

Personally, as long as the final installment in the FF7 Remake trilogy is made with the same budget as the first two and ends on a satisfying note, I'll be happy. A good ending gives the trilogy as a whole have more lifetime sales than it would if part 3 makes the first two less good in retrospect, i.e. the Mass Effect 3 effect.

Foamstars was a new IP, so they didn't count on brand name to carry this one.

Unless they thought "Square Enix" would be enough to hype it, and yeah, for a game that far away from their usual, that would be completely disconnected from reality.

I was going to re-buy the OG ff7 just to play on my steam deck using all the awesome mods that it has to balance things and improve the looks.

Well I nixed that idea. Fucking square requires an active internet to play their 28 year old single player RPG. I may just pirate the thing, but then I can't use all the mods that have been made.

US animation existed for the sole purpose of merchandising and advertisements. Back in the 80s when transformers were all the rage (the cartoon existed for the almost sole purpose of selling the action figures) they released a movie that killed off most of the transformers (children cried) and they did this so they could bring in all new transformers to carry on the battle, so that kids would have to go out and buy more new toys.

I literally saw Animal Well for the first time on the sale page on PSN just before it launched. I thought about buying it because it looked good.

Meanwhile, I saw a ridiculous amount of hype for XVI every time news or a trailer dropped for it. The demo convinced me to pick it up, and I'm so glad I did. It sucks because it's the first mainline single player game since XII (or maybe X) that lives up to the brand.

I’d love to play XVI, the story sounds amazing and the graphics are cutting-edge Square but two things keep turning me off:

• The fighting system is way too close to DMC which I absolutely hated, I want a JPRG not an action game
• it’s platform exclusive, talk to me when it’s on Steam

So really they’re doing it to themselves here. Their comment about “we’re modernizing the game to bring it to more people” just rings of BS, especially with their sales recently, and if they really cared about that they’d be fast tracking and announcing a date for XVI on the PC.

Well, yeah, XIV as an MMO is a different thing. But that one also doesn't have revenue issues afaik.