3 Street Fighters as well really (II, IV, V). SF6 will get there too probably.
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Square Enix output strategy | Discussion thread.
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No Steam version for KH3 and the last update said that it sold 6.7M by September 2021, so you dont know.
You can find RE games much cheaper on Steam and PS Store, while Square its not a fan of putting KH3 for 5-10U$
The funny thing is that i can see Dragon Quest 12 coming to PS5 only as well. After all Visions of Mana will skip Nintendo so might as well make Dragon Quest 12 skip Nintendo as well. At least Switch 2 will have the new Bravely Default game that Team Asano teased recently.
After all Square Enix always seems to think they will be bailed out of their Japanese sales collapse by increasing sales WW, so they could think that Dragon Quest will become super popular in the west thus only needing PS5, that seems to be their mentality with every other title so could be the same with Dragon Quest.
After all Square Enix always seems to think they will be bailed out of their Japanese sales collapse by increasing sales WW, so they could think that Dragon Quest will become super popular in the west thus only needing PS5, that seems to be their mentality with every other title so could be the same with Dragon Quest.
considering they had to make a 3DS version of 11 to keep the IP from collapsing, I'm fairly certain the DQ team has enough intelligence to not make that move
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I wonder and sort of worry about Dragon Quest.
It's still a successful franchise and it's certainly in a better state than Final Fantasy in Japan, but all we have left of the original trio is Yuji Horii now. Dragon Quest 12 is going to be a notably more different game from the series already, but at least Toriyama must've contributed some character designs before his passing. After that? Things are going to quite literally look different. I wish the very best of luck to whoever steps into Toriyama and Sugiyama's shoes.
Or maybe I'm overreacting, but still. I feel as if Dragon Quest is in a really precarious spot as a franchise.
It's still a successful franchise and it's certainly in a better state than Final Fantasy in Japan, but all we have left of the original trio is Yuji Horii now. Dragon Quest 12 is going to be a notably more different game from the series already, but at least Toriyama must've contributed some character designs before his passing. After that? Things are going to quite literally look different. I wish the very best of luck to whoever steps into Toriyama and Sugiyama's shoes.
Or maybe I'm overreacting, but still. I feel as if Dragon Quest is in a really precarious spot as a franchise.
Enix didn't build a base on the Switch and then throw it away. It's easier for DQ 12 to be exclusive to the Switch. Putting the exclusive game on PS5 would only cause immense damage to the brand.
Is there a chance to repeat the success of Monster Hunter? Yes, but if not even FF managed to do that, what are the real chances of DQ?
Is there a chance to repeat the success of Monster Hunter? Yes, but if not even FF managed to do that, what are the real chances of DQ?
Horii's been pretty straightforward about the future of DQ being multiplatform. I don't see that changing outside the occasional kids oriented spinoff going Switch only (and later PC) due to market realities.
III Remake and XII will be on everything probably, maybe even Xbox.
III Remake and XII will be on everything probably, maybe even Xbox.
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I spent more on Rebirth than I have on the last 16 Resident Evil games I purchased combined, thanks to bundles. If Square Enix cares about raw sales numbers they should sell 10 FF Steam keys in a bundle for $25, but they care about revenue and they think they earn more over the long run with less aggressive sales and bundles.
7 Remake is like the one exception, hence why the raw sales total for the game is going to be higher than most other FFs over the long run.
Has Sony ever paid for a DQ exclusivity? Would they do it for a a JP focused franchise? Is there any indication that SE thinks Sony should be their focus here? Do you think that the creators are going to reverse course from their previous statements? Do you think a DQ game is suddenly going to be a graphical showcase?
I think you're just making up scenarios to worry about, and even if it is some type of staggered release, it could end up selling extremely well like DQ11 did over time.
Also, bold that you slipped in XSX into your list. Did DQ11 even sell 100k on Xbox? Xbox seems almost totally inconsequential to the turn-based JRPGs for both regional differences and skews, as well as just the style itself.
I really want to see specific XBox numbers for JRPGs. Lots of online discourse is "it did well on Game Pass", which is vague and mostly meaningless. My guess is that SE has multiple lower budget games that didn't even hit 10k on the platform.
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The reason why i see DQ12 being worth it for Sony is because they are desperate to take market share from Nintendo in Japan and removing DQ from Nintendo and only having it on Playstation is the only major card they can pull off in that direction. That could force some Japanese DQ diehards into getting a PS5 and get them into PS ecosystem and to remove one of the most popular third party games in Japan from their Nintendo rivals.
Nintendo should of course not allow that to happen if Sony tries to make it happen, but Nintendo seems totally unwilling to make such deals with third party developers and never enters into any exclusivity bidding wars with competitors.
Should Square Enix take such a deal from Sony? No, but their management with all their actions has proven that they are totally happy to sign exclusivity deals with Sony every game they make, if Sony offers them what they want.
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Regarding DQ12, I'll just say that now with Toriyama's passing, I'd be sad if his last actively worked on DQ-game didn't day 1-release on the system that reaches the most Japanese people. DQ is an event for Japanese gamers and it shouldn't be part of platform shenanigans.
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The more sales it costs, the higher the price is for a deal. Like, Sony would need to pay probably $100M for a deal which I really don't see them doing. The FF exclusivity deals probably only cost them tens of millions, not a hundred million.
Theses deals don't exist on a void. Both companies are trying to map them to actual revenue gain over time, cost and benefit. There's wild difference in cost for short windows for lead platforms compared to windows on 3rd or 4th best platforms for a title.
An exclusive mainline DQ wont take any significant marketshare away from Nintendo though.
MH is another one. At this point though these games release so few and far in-between that never appearing on Nintendo consoles would have no significant impact on the market as whole.
That's essentially what SE and Sony has done with FF, how's that working out for them?
Why should they? They totally control the market at this point, if SE wants to make DQ into the next FF domestically that's their perogative.
The health of DQ is SE's responsibility not Nintendo's. They get plenty of support from publisher's not AAA offerings, fighting for Japanese AAA scraps is irrelevant, they're so few in number at this point so as to be irrelevant.
All this does is kill Dragon Quest in Japan. DQ is huge in Japan but Nintendo still has the bigger franchises, a single game doesn't make or break anything. It's the culmination of everything and SE knows this and everything they've done the past few years to course correct shows this.
Also, in the West, Dragon Quest is associated to Nintendo almost completely for fwiw and especially in Europe. A PS5 exclusive DQ12 would utterly bomb in Europe but we shouldn't worry as this isn't going to happen.
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I’m gonna be real Nintendo doenst need dq and dq isn’t saving Sony.
Ps exclusive DQ just kills the franchise that’s all.
Not much more to it.
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Is really in Europe?
I dont remember DQXI S breaking any records in Europe, not even showing up in the UK charts
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Yeah, I don’t live in Europe, but I’m not sure that’s quite accurate here in North America, either. At least, anecdotally, I’ve not known Dragon Quest XI to have done better enough on Switch to establish a serious identity element.
Mind you, I don’t know the numbers. It’s not a sentiment I recall, is all. If anything, Dragon Quest might still click in people’s heads as a PlayStation thing. Before XI, it was only VIII that did notably decently here.
Mind you, I don’t know the numbers. It’s not a sentiment I recall, is all. If anything, Dragon Quest might still click in people’s heads as a PlayStation thing. Before XI, it was only VIII that did notably decently here.
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Toriyama is irreplaceable, simple as that. I don't envy the job of the person who will decide who the "successor" will be and the job of the successor themselves with all the pressure that the mission entails.
I had to guess, I think Toyotaro, as Toriyama's chosen successor for the DB manga, would probably be the one getting the call... But it's so far away (and too soon, in a way) that it makes me feel kinda bad thinking about it. Toriyama's passing still doesn't feel real...
I had to guess, I think Toyotaro, as Toriyama's chosen successor for the DB manga, would probably be the one getting the call... But it's so far away (and too soon, in a way) that it makes me feel kinda bad thinking about it. Toriyama's passing still doesn't feel real...
Where Dragon Quest releases isn't decided by those Square Enix executives. It is decided by Horii. Mana doesn't have any kind of connection to Dragon Quest. Completely different developer and producer.
They've released several spin-offs exclusively on Switch recently, went to the trouble to quickly also make a separate very different version of DQXI for 3DS and made DQXIS timed exclusive for Switch.
There is a sub-zero percent chance of PS5 exclusivity for DQXII.
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Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth opened at number #10 on PS in the US, and #8 on Xbox.
PS5 is the bigger platform so it’s more valuable to chart on it than on Xbox. But relative to other games on Xbox there is nothing to suggest that a AAA game like Dragon Quest would find no audience just because it’s turn based. You’re confusing audience size being small for audience preferences being extremely dissimilar. For third-party multi-platform games Xbox is not competing against other platforms, it’s competing against the 0 units you get instead of being on Xbox.
This is not a sexy argument, but most rational businesses don’t give up 10-20 percent of revenue for no reason.
There are good reasons for not being on Xbox: development bandwidth, long term support cost, etc, depending on developer size. But the idea of a AAA game like DQXII being on Xbox if it’s multi-platform isn’t really that ridiculous. It’s what you’d expect from most competent publishers.
So you think something has changed on the Xbox ecosystem since back when Final Fantasy did these kind of numbers on Xbox?
Final Fantasy XIII [PS3] - 1.516.532 / 1.905.979
Final Fantasy XIII-2 [PS3] - 605.660 / 917.412
Final Fantasy XIII-2 [360] - 8.766 / 26.705
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII [PS3] - 301.181 / 427.498
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII [360] - 4.180 / 6.765
If that is the kind of ballpark figures for JRPGs on Xbox, no wonder most don't bother to put their games on Xbox at all. And that was before gamepass even existed.
What is killing Final Fantasy is not a lack of Xbox ports evidently, more a lack of Nintendo/PC ports.
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Is Dragon Quest even related to a certain system outside Japan? Last i remember DQ 11 sold like 6.5m with Japan alone selling around 3.5-4m physical add a bit of 20-25% digital and we could be looking at around 4.5-5m
If anything, considering how apathetic the west is regarding DQ... i'd say that, if they really care about the IP, they will NOT do a PS5 excluisive. Don't get me wrong, DQ 11 was a big step in the right direction regarding west sales, but around 70% of the sales still come from Japan alone.
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Yes, something changed. Xbox didn’t change, although it desperately tried to break into the Japanese market during the 360 days. PS changed by losing relevance in Japan, which was always the actual differentiator between the two consoles. For as much as both camps would hate to hear this, there is essentially no difference between Xbox and PS audiences in the west than size.
That ballpark you posted was accurate for Japan, but also becomes irrelevant once PS software in Japan collapses. At that point, where you’re mostly selling to the global PS audience as PS dominance in Japan has evaporated, the PS is a more successful Xbox and Xbox is a less successful PS with little to differentiate the two.
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Nah, I agree that at least in my experience here in the US, there’s no brand x console identity for Dragon Quest! I just meant that if there is even a trace of that, I might sooner be inclined to think it’s PlayStation.
Either way, if you want those games to succeed in the West, you certainly don’t do what Square has been killing FF’s native sales through (a PS5-exclusive approach). That would be so wild!
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The idea that 20% of revenue for Dragon Quest would come from Xbox is just totally unfounded. What is your estimate for Switch, PS, PC, and Xbox? For DQ11 it was probably something 1 or 2 percent coming from Xbox sales, and is mostly reliant on Game Pass.
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It’s just a rough percentage. Go ahead and delete that whole paragraph and respond the rest of what I posted if you feel like it, it’s still pretty coherent without that point.
You wanted an example of how a turn based game would do on Xbox for sales. I showed you a very recent example of how such a game did better on sales, relative to other games on Xbox, than it did on PS relative to other games on PS. Actual sales rankings, no vibes or “it did well on GP.”
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I think its important to note that MS had the marketing rights to Infinite Wealth and Persona 3. The latter was announced at an MS event and the former was shown at multiple Xbox events still has the entire Yakuza series on gamepass with getting Gaiden day 1. MS having the marketing to both of those games certainly gave them a revenue boost and I seriously doubt Square will give MS the marketing rights to DQ12, it would be just as dumb as making it a Playstation exclusive.
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I broadly agree that publishers should seek to release games on as many platforms as feasible, but Square Enix releases enough games on enough platforms to have founded estimates and informed decisions on release priorities. Capcom also tends to avoid Xbox with their turn-based games and adventure games, so it seems like there's more general trends that these companies see. The discourse here acts like Square Enix is some giant outlier with their RPG releases and they really aren't, hence why so many JRPGs come to Xbox when Game Pass pays for the port.
I can easily see some like Yakuza clearing 10% in a three platform release, but that is extremely optimistic for games where it is a distant fourth platform like Dragon Quest. I really think some of these minor releases from companies over the years solid literally thousands of copies on the platform, pushing publishers to be more judicious on what they release.
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considering smash was the first big moment for dragon quest in the west and considering the DQXI marketing its definitely Nintendo.
DqXI on PlayStation 4 did well enough I guess.
but i'd sooner believe in Nintendo being the prefered platform for it considering overall the switch is the jrpg platform.
its pretty much just FF clinging to playstation now.
the last major DQ moment on playstation was really 22 years ago, someone can go from birth to college in that time.
I think that DQ8 on PS2 has been a good exposure for the game/brand at least in the EU, but has been easily paired by DQ9 on the DS, probably even better in the US - but at a similar level I think
basically paired by DQ11, but due to the staggered release, only summing PS4 + Switch version, in a longer span of time
Surely DQ character exposure on a gigantic showcase as Smash is, both in the EU and in the US, helped it keeping the "baseline" momentum, despite SE management of the brand in the West (due to the different tenure of the 3DS between Japan vs West)
other non mainline episodes have been low profile in the West
so I'd say that outside Japan the brand awereness is not strong, and on par between PS and Nintendo brands - but with a caveat
It's Japanese potential in WAY bigger on a Nintendo console: that can't be dismissed thinking about DQ12 (and in Japan also the spinoff have been meaningful as both Treasure and especially Monsters demonstrated)
One thing Nintendo should do is enlist Square Enix to make an exclusive Mario RPG sequel for the Switch 2, with how well Mario RPG remake did it seems logical for both parties. The sequel could be more ambitious and a longer game than the original as well.
Why when Nintendo don’t need them? This is not the Square of 1996; it would be pointless for Nintendo who can make it themselves and for SE they are basically being hired by a publisher for a game…they don’t get to publish.
Just go straight to ArtePiazza. Unless Nintendo specifically wants SE staff, there's nothing SE offers that Nintendo couldn't get elsewhere
Given that Nintendo may miss out on some Square Enix RPGs even on the Switch 2 i think its a pretty good idea to try to get them to make a pretty ambitious Mario RPG for the Switch 2, in general i think getting the big Japanese studios to make some exclusive Switch 2 games is a pretty good way to have those studios support the Switch 2 even if they don't release all their games on the Switch 2, like when Capcom made Monster hunter for the Switch.
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Nintendo has been capable of making an ambitious mario rpg for decades now. What does SE give them?
This sounds like a similar deal with Bandai Namco, but I don't think anyone would call their work "support". It definitely doesn't replace their big games that skip Nintendo
Exactly! Reminds me of certain people years ago saying Nintendo should bring in Level 5 to "help" with Pokemon. Nintendo is a for profit corporation not a charity. What does SE bring to the table that Nintendo can't do themselves?
My idea is better to enlist these studios to do something for the Switch 2 if they don't want to port over their AAA games to Switch 2. And enlisting Bandai and Square is not that different from enlisting the likes of Grezzo only difference is the bigger studios can be enlisted to make more ambitious and bigger games for the Switch 2 and thus free up Nintendo resources to focus on their prioritities while still getting these third party exclusives at the same time.
Nintendo pipeline wouldn't function if Nintendo had to make Smash themselves without Bandai, and a Mario RPG is not a Nintendo priority so perfect to get the biggest JRPG developer to make that game instead.
Smash is an absolutely massive game and ip though. Bandai brings something to the table, manpower. What does SE bring that Nintendo can't get elsewhere? Like from the devs who actually made the remake?
SE would only really make sense if they wanted to make some gigantic Final Fantasy-scale Mario JRPG... for... some reason. Otherwise with the scope that Mario RPGs go for there's no reason to outsource to SE when they can just give the task to either internal developers or smaller studios that are both cheaper and can be overseen more easily.
Its different remaking an old game like ArtePiazza did and to make a new game from the ground up. I personally think its more likely that Square Enix would make a good, new Mario RPG from scratch then a studio that mostly make remakes.
Right. I can't see why Nintendo or SE would think such a project would be a good idea though.
Agreed.
You might be right but I don't really agree, with Nintendo's oversight I think any number of studios can do a good job. As Kirby64 and you previously said a big ambitious game would make sense to partner with SE, not sure that would make financial sense though.
If they want a large-scale Mario RPG, Monolith Soft is right there.
I never knew I wanted something like this. Imagine a story lite entry with huge focus on exploration like Xenoblade X......
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Why, they have monolith, hell they could just do it in house.
Square enix isn’t the only company in the world that knows how to make rpgs.
Why hire an outside dev when you could do it yourself.
Getting monolith seemed like another step in thier plan to not need 3rd parties at all.
Nintendo has become a small industry that can run it sound completely separate from the rest of the games industry if it needs too.
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The only reason I think Square would be brought in is if they are making a direct sequel to SMRPG and need to license those characters again.
However, I think perhaps the more likely option is they look ta the success of the remake and do a new game in its style but separate from Square.
However, I think perhaps the more likely option is they look ta the success of the remake and do a new game in its style but separate from Square.
I'll be very interested to see when the XVI and Rebirth ports come to PC. I'm guessing XVI will be some time this year but I wonder if it'll be before or after Dawntrail, since CBU3 is doing it. Rebirth, despite that exclusivity window lasting until the end of May, I feel won't come until next year.
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to be honest i think nintendo might just buy geno and mallow from all the owners worldwide so they dont have to deal with the licensing from them, the other characters arent important enough to bring back.
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Well, a lot of those characters exist because the Mario universe was not as fleshed out with established characters and settings as it is now. I’m sure people will miss Geno and Mallow, but it‘s fine that their stories were self-contained in that game and Nintendo can use the opportunity to expand an existing character or create another.
You know that Bandai's Tekken Team was mostly involved with 'balancing' and debugging work? Right?
Harada has been rather vocal about that.
I will be honest, I don't think that is the case.... It would mean that Nintendo would not have any control over the IP at all and that goes against the nature of the company.
I would suspect that most of the hesitation comes from Nintendo itself for.... reasons... I don't know, SE pretty clearly washed it's hands of the game prior to these days. These days, they need the money.