Comparing a game like Octopath or Triangle Strategy to an indie game is extreme hyperbole and honestly pretty insulting to the developers.
Square Enix output strategy | Discussion thread.
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I'm sure @Tokuiten speculation on Sony and Square Enix will have this as evidence: Aniplex (which is owed by Sony Music) is producing the NieR Automata anime (which may be animated by Ufotable).
That may be more of a coincidence though. I still doubt NieR will ever be on a Nintendo platform. I guess we'll see if NierR 3 makes it to Xbox or not.
That may be more of a coincidence though. I still doubt NieR will ever be on a Nintendo platform. I guess we'll see if NierR 3 makes it to Xbox or not.
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It will be….
as a cloud versions lol.
but then yes, I fully expect Nier 3 to be Sony exclusive.
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More than ufotable(which doesn't really have any direct ties to Sony), the complete connection would be if one of the Sony-owned studios(A-1 or Cloverworks) animated the Automata project, which is much more likely than ufotable imo.
Huh, what did I do?
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I was merely referencing your Sony acquisition of Square Enix speculation. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ah, I see. I mean, it probably shows the continued closeness of Sony and SE, but an anime production doesn't really change the status quo in either direction. Afaik Sony's anime business is separate from SIE. "Sony" even produced the soundtrack for Xenoblade X afaik. This is this, that is that, I guess.
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Speaking of such, the manga has sold 1.5 million copies already in 2022. Square Enix publishes the manga in both Japan and the West. (I'll allow Square Enix manga sales discussions in this thread)
My Dress-Up Darling Manga Adds 1.5 Million More Copies Since Anime Premiered
Manga now has 5 million total in circulation // Aniplex announced on Tuesday that Shinichi Fukuda's My Dress-Up Darling (Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru) manga...
Well-deserved, the anime is fantastic.
First of all, indie studios aren’t releasing games with the scope of something like DQIII/Octopath/Triangle Strategy/Live A Live at a pace that would warrant this comparison.
Secondly, it’s unfair to ignore their output simply because they aren’t getting Square’s AAA RPGs (which regularly outscope Switch) on day one. The fact that some 3rd parties are finally green-lighting AA projects instead of simply killing off their non-AAA studios and firing hundreds of employees because one of their games underperformed is overall a good thing. Games like Bravely and the HD-2D titles were largely absent from the last generation of home consoles and now they’re back and more profitable than ever. As you can see, this has led to them pretty much stating outright that they’ll be investing even more into the system going forward.
Japanese publishers have been slacking when it comes to creating new IPs that resonate with the Japanese market recently. Octopath was very successful and Triangle Strategy will be too, with very high returns most likely. This WILL lead to more franchises being born and more being invested in the Switch ecosystem.
One of the defining characteristics of the Switch era compared to the PS3/PS4 is the visibility afforded to non-AAA projects. Square is capitalizing on that and establishing more active IPs than they have in a long time. That should be celebrated.
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User banned for 5 days: Continued hostility while and bad faith discussion despite prior warning and ban
Yeah, after 5 years of the console, am I supposed to start singing the praises of such a massive output of SNES games?
Why should it be unfair? They are one of Japan's biggest third-party manufacturers, so it is only fair to judge them accordingly at this level.
You, I've been waiting for something like AAA for 5 years and so far nothing has come from this direction for the Nintendo Switch, that's a fact.
While AAA games are released on other platforms without a hint of any consequences, why not on the most popular platform?
This is in no way an equivalent to Kingdom Hearts, NieR, Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, why should this be worth mentioning in any way? Is it because the Switch is a dumping ground for such no-names? In any case, I don't see any outcry about the loss of such games on other platforms.
Going forward? You talk as if there is still all the time in the world for this platform. The Switch has about 2.5 years to go and so far hasn't seen anything from this company in terms of support that even comes close to the PS4. You can keep coming up with cute AA games and HD 2D games from the last millennium.
No, they have largely ignored the Nintendo Switch and are now coming around the corner with pixel games and rehashed software to quickly capitalise on it, absolutely pathetic.
And leads to what? That the Switch ends up as a dumping ground for low-effort games.
In any case, I do not see any change in this course in the distant future.
As long as this does not lead to larger projects and only quantity is emphasised, this is in no way a reason to celebrate.
The problem is that you’re conflating budget with effort and completely disregarding some games just because they don’t have “Final Fantasy” in the title. And that is purely a personal problem. The games are themselves are polished and all very well received critically and commercially. Try them out if you get the chance.
There have been consequences already. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re down to ONE mainline Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts game per generation and AAA titles from all publishers are more safe and mechanically conservative than ever. In this regard, FF itself is something of an anomaly in the AAA space. That is the consequence. And that’s without getting into the frankly obvious reasons why they generally don’t choose to develop their high-tech games using Switch as the baseline.
They’ll have developed 4+ Dragon Quest games including spin-offs for Switch, they have more IPs than just these few, and NieR was a no-name too until it wasn’t. I frankly don’t even know why you listed it. At best its production values are LiS tier. The LiS games are on Switch now, go check them out.
Now the KH cloud ports have no excuse, but something tells me you wouldn’t count them even if they were native ports.
This is just disrespectful and incredibly dismissive of the talent and effort of the writers, directors, programmers, and producers who make them. I’m sorry that you can’t appreciate them, but again, that’s a you problem. The games sell and review well, and frequently place on best RPG year-end lists. They aren’t just some low-effort shlock and many of them they played a MASSIVE role in helping Square earn back some of the prestige that they lost during the PS3 era.
If the only thing that’ll satisfy you is a ~$80Million budget RPG that lets you see the characters’ clothing material in stunning, mind-boggling detail, you’ll be waiting until Dragon Quest XII.
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I've thrown a few other franchises into the mix that are still barely represented on the Switch, don't see how that should be a personal problem if it's a fact.
For that I still see enough upcoming spin offs of the respective series than what you write here.
They have to after the miserable attempt to bring it to the PS4 alone, but it also says enough about their strategy, don't bring it to the Nintendo platform until it's financially unsustainable.
Then porting that, as well as Replicant and the Drakengard series, shouldn't be a problem, should it?
Square Enix would have to make an effort but you don't see much of that.
It seems to me that you don't disagree, as they really can't be seen as the equivalent of the brands mentioned, and you're just confirming what Square Enix is more or less doing with the Nintendo Switch with their less budgeted and less elaborate games, which is rather disrespectful to such a successful platform.
Just ask yourself the question: The Nintendo Switch will probably reach the sales figures of the PS4 towards the end of the year. Compare the scale of the PS4 games to the Nintendo Switch games from Square Enix and tell me if it's really as much effort and budget as the PS4.
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Not really. Square Enix has the dev capability for multiple FFs, they just curate their titles and creatively choose to have their devs work on different franchises:
- FF16 team
- FF7R team
- Luminous productions (Forspoken)
- Heard stuff about Toriyama having a dev team in the AAA caliber (??)
I believe the rumour of another SE Sony exclusive that was not FF,KH or DQ is indeed Neir 3.
AA games aren’t less valid than AAA games and they aren’t less elaborate as a rule. It’s really bizarre that I need to explain this to you considering Nintendo themselves only makes a handful of true AAA titles per generation and the Switch is explicitly NOT sold as a AAA-driven console. If you’re going to suggest that games like Octopath are unworthy, I have to question what you’re genuinely looking for. I want you to define “effort” for me.
Again, effort and budget are not inherently the same. Considering Switch has hardware capabilities along the lines of “PS3 Pro,” the bolded will never happen. Not because Square hates Nintendo, but because literally doubling their AAA investment just to satisfy your desire to play only blockbuster games on a tablet is not viable.
What, would you prefer if for they established Asano as a AAA-capable studio and did away with the AA titles? If they did, their output would shrink drastically and their support of the Switch would be significantly worse as a result.
Is one AAA per 3 years somehow better than 2-3 new games and multiple remasters per year? Or do you seriously think they can just put out twice as many AAA games as they’re putting out right now?
If I’m not mistaken their divisions break down like this:
BD1: KH, FF7R, SaGa, FFXIII
BD2: DQ, Nier, Asano
BD3: FFXVI, FFXIV, FFXI
BD4: Ports and mobile games
Luminous: FFXV, Forspoken
While they technically could make multiple FF titles per console again, that would come at the expense of other IPs. Once the FF7R saga is completed, we may go back to getting multiple 2-3 FF titles per console, but you have to consider that when dealing with high-end AAA games, the time and budgets required to squeeze the most out of a console increases exponentially every time we enter a new console generation. FF games have a reputation for being cutting edge for the eras they came out in. Maintaining that reputation while still releasing frequently and turning a profit just gets harder and harder with time. And this is an industry wide issue.
Wanted to piggyback off this and answer with a resounding NO. Third parties in general should discover the value and potential of AA releases, and encourage experimentation.
I’ll say that in my opinion Octopath Traveler kicks the ass of FFXIII and any Kingdom Hearts game.
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Excellent post. And I guess I'll also answer this question. No, I'd rather get as many games on the Switch that it can get. If Dragon Quest is the limit to the AAA games on Switch, then I'll accept that as Dragon Quest is an excellent series, one that I've had fond feelings about since 1989. I've bought a few Square Enix games digitally for my Switch: I Am Setsuna (I even wrote a page on the game in Jeffrey Wittenhagen's book The Switch Collector: Volume One), Lost Sphear, Final Fantasy IX remaster, Octopath Traveler, both Dragon Quest Builders games. I have no complaints about the quality of games available from Square Enix for the Switch, they're well made games. AAA is a measure of budget, not of effort or quality, and Team Asano makes high quality games as seen with Octopath. I love the music they put in that too.
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I'll also answer: no, it's not. But 2-3 new smaller-scale games AND 1 AAA game is best. It's just a shame that they're not all in the same places as the majority of consumers anymore, is all.
if they make a new one, will they keep it as a movie parody that will horrifically date itself?
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I jokingly said this on twitter to AbZero and to others, but imagine an HD-2D remaster of the original game over seen by the original developers and Team Asano.
Oh baby, it's tail kicking time, now in glorious HD-2D!
Oh baby, it's tail kicking time, now in glorious HD-2D!
Legit, even just an HD collection would be cool.
It is kind by of interesting that 5 years in, the only AAA they’ve made specifically for the system has been DQXI:S, a re-release.
Square’s AAA support could be much better imo. But the sheer volume of games they’ve been making for the system along with ports and the general level of polish and willingness to establish new IPs makes it hard to justify calling their support poor.
The new Star Ocean thats coming this year for PS/XBOX isn’t really AAA by those consoles’ standards, but it would be notable as a Switch release. This may sound like a cop-out but I think Nintendo’s next-gen device is going to establish itself as the leading development platform for games like that as well as more ambitious Mana and SaGa games, which as we know are in production right now. While they wouldn’t be close to mainline FF budget-wise, games like that are still major for the system.
Of course this is just speculation and Square could mess this up by signing more exclusivity deals with Sony.
Itadaki Street, Monsters, Mystery Dungeon, Slime Morimori, there are a lot of conspicuous subseries absences. I'm also surprised Builders 3 hasn't been fast tracked, with how loved DQIII is it'd be huge.
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Yeah they were all on the DS except a DQ Mystery Dungeon, but now they've all died off. Monsters is the only one they seem to have interest in still, but are struggling to get it on console. Builders 3 I imagine died when Kazuya Niinou took his team to make Type-Moon Studio BB, and I believe they put what was left of the team on DQX Offline.
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I don't agree with the idea of exponential increase. If anything, it has come to a plateau.
There was a massive jump in budget and development time/effort during the HD generation, as real time rendering pipelines and asset creation was completely changed to accommodate HD visuals and the new architecture of consoles, however the increase doesn't seem to be nearly as substantial in forthcoming generations (PS4,5):
- PS360 AAA games already had dev times of 3-6 years and budgets of $200M+
- PS4 AAA games are in a similar time scale of 3-6 years and at the top end, budgets are $200M or so
- GaaS has changed the economics of budgets. With revenues of $1B a year, and software dev that needs to be in constant production every year, budgets are far higher and for longer. Again makes sense as the return is far higher and for longer.
- Game development tools have rapidly grown, making it easier for many devs to achieve what they desire.
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AbleGamers' Steven Spohn and 'Dragon Quest' Creator Yuji Horii Honored at GDCA 2022 | News | GDC | Game Developers Conference
AbleGamers' Senior Director of Development Steven Spohn will receive the Ambassador Award, and 'Dragon Quest' creator Yuji Horii will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Yuji Horii receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Game Developers Choice Awards.
I know I have been holding off buying it expecting it to drop. Will be interesting to see if Square release any Gamepass stats post this.
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This was posted to the last week's Media Create thread.
square-enix-games.com
It took a whole year to port Life Is Strange True Colors to Switch. It was also a team of 30, which definitely is small when talking about video games. Article goes into detail about the things they did to make it work for Switch, it's definitely not as easy as pushing a few buttons.
A deep dive into the development of Life is Strange: True Colors on Nintendo Switch | Square Enix Blog
What went into making Life is Strange: True Colors on Nintendo Switch and how does it look so good?
It took a whole year to port Life Is Strange True Colors to Switch. It was also a team of 30, which definitely is small when talking about video games. Article goes into detail about the things they did to make it work for Switch, it's definitely not as easy as pushing a few buttons.
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Babylon's Fall has a 6 months console exclusivity contract
Money well spent here.
Should be Day 1 Game Pass in late September 2022 or October 2022.
I just realised Babylon's Fall isn't even available to purchase on Steam in my region, despite the fact that it's apparently a global key that could be bought from key sites regardless.
...Not that I particularly care about BF, but I hope SE isn't this stupid with releases in future.
...Not that I particularly care about BF, but I hope SE isn't this stupid with releases in future.
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I just realised Babylon's Fall isn't even available to purchase on Steam in my region, despite the fact that it's apparently a global key that could be bought from key sites regardless.
...Not that I particularly care about BF, but I hope SE isn't this stupid with releases in future.
The fact Square Enix continues to region lock some content on Steam continues to astound me. They're far from the only publisher to do this, admittedly, but ugh.
That reminds me, I also remember suspecting Kawazu wasn't aware that the Steam release of SaGa Scarlet Grace was going to be region locked, since he put out a warning to International gamers the Steam release would not launch with a localization. It ended up being region locked.
Forspoken delayed to October 11, 2022
Forspoken delayed.
They drastically need to change their marketing strategy. Babylon's Fall is a bad game but it should at least have some interest from Platinum Fans. Forspoken is in danger of getting missed.
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Yeah (and I know you mean Q4 CY2022. It would be Q3 FY3/2023 for Square Enix's investors). FFXVI could have been originally planned for 2022 but that six month developmental delay probably pushes it into FY3/2024 or after March 2023.
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Forspoken delay is interesting - the game was described by some insiders as the "pet project" of Square Enix's CEO, so it makes sense that they'll put as much as time and resources as possible to get it right. It has potential when looking at a worldwide perspective, but I'm not expecting much from its performance in the jp market.
Also it seems pc gamers are not fans of the $70 price tag.
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Let this guy do the art design for a new MonolithSoft action jrpg then.
Sword and shield(pause on the scifi stuff) with the story coming from the TriStrat writing team.
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Square Enix Music now has an official YouTube channel. (Nintendo should also do this).