-
Welcome to Install Base!
Join the Community and gain access to Prediction Leagues, Polls, specific answers and exclusive content now! -
Industry Q&A featuring Mat Piscatella
Q&A is now over. Check out a legendary 5-hour answering marathon here!
Square Enix output strategy | Discussion thread.
- Thread starter Abzeronow
- Replies 3,176
- Views 226,642
- Start date
- Official Hangout
Flash Memory and Solid State Drives don't have to seek data, so having duplicate assets on those kinds of media wouldn't be useful at all. Also, having duplicate assets to help mitigate seek times and dummy data are two completely different concepts, with the latter not really being applicable for games in a general manner.
And even your DQ11 example contradicts itself, as the S version was ported back as a 30GB game to PS4 with largely unchanged assets. I find it hardly to believe that they would purposefully unmake all the optimization they made on the switch version just to have a bigger file size. That just wouldn't make sense.
Uh, no, there are still seek times for flash storage. Why do you think SD cards have all these different speed ratings and gate improvements?
Read the actual article on DQXIS, it goes in depth about how SE shaved down the filesize and improved loading. Compression algorithms were key but also both automated (Simplygone) and by hand model and mesh optimization, plus things like reducing SSAO quality (without much visual impact).
DQXIS PS4 is also slightly smaller than the original (28.5GB) with significantly more story content, more than double the audio files and even a whole new 2D mode so yes, these optimizations still made a difference there too.
That one went from 39GB to to 28GB, it didn't shrink that much. A similar 25% reduction would still mean most current AAA titles would need a 128GB cart to work. So yeah, I guess Nintendo needs to work on either making those more affordable for publishers or the switch 2 needs to have a way bigger storage than what's currently on the Switch. I mean, even quadrupling what's on the OLED would be too small at this point... 512GB should be the bare minimum if they expect those ports to keep coming and selling well digitally too.
That's the actual read/write speed being improved, it doesn't have to seek anything on the media. Explaining it more simply: the game knows exactly where it is and is able to fetch it immediately, those improvements are in how fast the data is able to be transfered.
The seek times if basically the mechanical parts on an HDD having to physically go to the area the data is stored on the physical disk. For flash media the time it needs to access the data is negligible and measured in microseconds.
I never said it didn't, but it's still very minor in comparison to how much completely avoiding needing duplicate assets does.
Last edited:
I'm just saying solid state storage (including flash) isn't magic, there can be loads depending on the gate/setup. It isn't like old mask rom, which basically just expanded the circuit board.
Minor in comparison? Odd then that SE never mentioned it and attributed only asset/media/effect compression and optimization to going from 31GB (with less content) to 14GB (with more content).
So exactly how many GBs did dummy data account for in DQXI? Since apparently your technical expertise here supercedes Square Enix's? Or perhaps you have a verifiable source, that'd be fine too?
Lol, yeah this was my recollection of the original too. Hence why it became popular to say the game peaked in Midgar(ironically the first few hours). After that, you get lots of filler towns and shitty mini games for most of disc 1.
Someone got me Rebirth as a bday gift but I'm in no rush to dive back into a RPG universe I never really liked in the first place. The backlog I'm going through doesn't help either. It's too bad PS games don't retain their value like Nintendo games, or I might consider holding onto it and reselling it later. Instead, I'm might have to sell it now before they start discounting it due to disappointing sales.
I really wonder if it would be best for SE to divide it's efforts based on the platform involved. I mean would SE need to push FF mainline to the Nintendo platform when Bravely fills alot of those gaps while gearing the product to the audience found on those platforms? And while their is a far bit of overlap, the audience on PC isn't the audience found on Playstation or Xbox.
A push to multiplaform is going to come either way, but I agree with you that the benefit to that will likely be minimal without much of a plan to grow the series itself. I will be honest, I would prefer that publishers don't put all the eggs in a single basket.
FF16 DLC Director claims that game is reaching out to younger gamers.
www.pushsquare.com
Final Fantasy 16 Successfully Expanded the Series to New, Younger Players, Says Square Enix
Hot topic
www.pushsquare.com
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh goddamnit, I was just about to post that. XDFF16 DLC Director claims that game is reaching out to younger gamers.
Final Fantasy 16 Successfully Expanded the Series to New, Younger Players, Says Square Enix
Hot topic
Here’s the comment:
Well, uh, this is interesting. Because the sales feels like the exact opposite but if the majority of the people who bought FF16 are younger players then that’s a sort of win…? I dunno, man. How much more? Is it more in general or more compared to previous surveys?
I would like the numbers.
And at the same time, I still feel that even if the game has a sizable contingent of younger players, something about the game is keeping it from breaking out like previous installments.
And at the same time, I still feel that even if the game has a sizable contingent of younger players, something about the game is keeping it from breaking out like previous installments.
- Pronouns
- He
The way Apzonerunner said in Resetera( he have good sources and knows things about Square), the team from FF16 its going for another kind of project and not a new mainli FF game
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Did it say majority
Or did it say more in the article.
Keep in mind more can just mean 10% became 15%
We knew it grew but without knowing how much makes it kinda pointless.
It either barely grew amongst young gamers or it grew a lot and there’s no evidence to say either way.
(Though the sales point to not a lot imo)
I mean this should happen with the success of 14; I would love to know how the overlap of 7 and 16 looks. Are older players sticking with 7 and newer players drawn to the new numbered experience?
I suspect 15 based on its sales still had higher younger users but they now skew higher.
I suspect 15 based on its sales still had higher younger users but they now skew higher.
All Persona needs to cement itself as the premier JRPG franchise worldwide if for 6 to deliver and launch day and date everywhere, on every system and PC
FF16 DLC Director claims that game is reaching out to younger gamers.
Final Fantasy 16 Successfully Expanded the Series to New, Younger Players, Says Square Enix
Hot topic
Hopefully full interview will give update on sales.
- Pronouns
- He
Its not the first time they said something about younger people playing XVI, Yoshida something like that in the Interview with Shuhei Yoshida, i believe
Then I hope SE will actually mention the sales demographic in their next report.
- Pronouns
- he/him
I'm not saying it is this, but I'd laugh if this was a "our audience for this game is younger [because older people left and weren't replaced]" scenario.
It wouldn’t surprise me if XVI lost some veteran players and gained some newer ones. I mentioned at the reveal that XVI is jarring if you grew up playing the Nomura games.
I’m not talking about the action combat, just looking at the game and hearing the dialogue is completely different.
I’m not talking about the action combat, just looking at the game and hearing the dialogue is completely different.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, considering what we know about its sales versus previous titles, that's probably what actually happened, it is a nice way to put it tho lol.
yea, it definitely means that the audience overall didn't grow, just has been replaced. though that does extend the life more, giving SE more opportunities
Old heads play Rebith.
Young ones play 16.
The divide.
Young ones play 16.
The divide.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The primary issue is still in play, though: based on sales figures we know, that younger audience is not sufficient in volume to supplement the players the series is losing. It's a net loss whatever way you slice it. And the surveys that FFUnion has been doing really reaffirm that the FF IP has a problem of creating multiple distinct fanbases based on play style, which fragments a potential audience and drive them off if you leave them underserved or unserved.
Also, that video brings up some interesting things:
The fact that FFXV's FFUnion player rating is at least 10 percentage points lower than the other most recent FF titles is telling me that its high sales figures are only telling part of the story and it soured its fair share of potential future FF consumers.
Even among those currently buying, playing and enjoying FF games, that near 20% of them are saying "go back to ATB" should be a bit alarming, especially when you consider that this doesn't appear to include any responses from those who skipped the recent game(s).
That last point indicates some slightly flawed utility of the survey, in that (given the granularity of questions making it genuinely impossible to answer without having played the game) it's only capturing the opinions of the market it already has, which we can see is shrinking. But even in spite of that, it's still showing that fragmentation of fanbase issue they're struggling with, because the series' consistency is at best based on aesthetic alone since the late 2000s.
- Pronouns
- Any/All
I agree generally—the post you quoted was about how I imagine the fanbase for FF is shrinking, bleeding older fans *really* fast if it's still contracting in spite of new players—but I might hesitate to take the survey too authoritatively, despite its sample size
FFU's survey responders are going to be self-selecting in the extreme, and I'd expect that they share certain values out of proportion to the larger population of RPG players, or even FF fans specifically. The general point that Square has fractured the fanbase too much is very likely true, but I think the underlying issue is probably something more broad and intractable than turn-based vs action-based
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Square Enix regularly tries to do FF spinoffs and reboots with turn based systems and they just don't sell super well. The Bravely series, which unambiguously uses the FF IP, did better than the FF Gaiden it spun off of. Dimensions was good but had a bad reputation. World of FF did okay.
They'll try again with HD2D. If it does well we'll get higher budget FF turn based spinoffs.
They'll try again with HD2D. If it does well we'll get higher budget FF turn based spinoffs.
Bravely seems to have made a rather clean brake of it, at this point I think that it stands alone as the spin-off that became a franchise unto itself.
What it has in relation to Final Fantasy isn't much and it happens to be IP that has laid dormant for years before Bravely put it to good use.
It's just a question of whether Square can manage that & allow Bravely to grow. That I am hesitated on.
I think in response to Bravely/Octopath/etc, it's worth noting they're new IP because that's what Asano Team wanted. They wanted to move past the FF remakes and spinoffs they were doing on DS and generally it's worked out quite well for them.
And honestly, FF had it pretty good the past year outside the new mainlines anyway with the console Pixel Remasters and new Theatrhythm. We're probably getting Tactics Reborn at some point soon too (don't believe Matsuno's lies). We'll see how the IX remake turns out too.
And honestly, FF had it pretty good the past year outside the new mainlines anyway with the console Pixel Remasters and new Theatrhythm. We're probably getting Tactics Reborn at some point soon too (don't believe Matsuno's lies). We'll see how the IX remake turns out too.
Do you happen to have links to those announcements?
Sorry, the industry does move fast.... want to catch up a bit.
That will be interesting, because honestly I feel like the Tactics games (especially the handheld ones) are rather missunderstood.
That is why the move into the C-suite for Asano feels odd to me. Sure that does mean that they don't have to struggle with shoestring budgets, but that did give them the time to add alot of charm to the team's production. Their popularity thrives on that. That promotion pushes him and his team into the limelight and I am not so sure that is a good thing.
- Pronouns
- Any/All
What
Is
Tactics Reborn
...Oh Final Fantasy Tactics, psh, all right, got it, thank you
- Pronouns
- he/him
This assumes it is representative, and if I've learned anything it's that Youtube channels rarely are.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, yes, the survey is self-selecting, that was largely my point in the last paragraph by mentioning its diminished utility, though I would disagree with it being wholly unrepresentative, it does represent a certain cross-section of current FF game buyers, you just have to weigh the results against that self-selection. That’s why I do not take the relatively low amount of people saying they’re new to FF with XVI in the survey at face value, but weighed it against how many new players are likely to participate in such a survey to begin with and how, with sales being lower than prior entries, there will simply be fewer of them overall. Likewise, when referencing the 19% who said they want the next FF to be ATB, I weigh that against the majority of survey respondents being under 25, meaning the oldest FF game they are even possible to have encountered marketing for is FFX, the last purely ATB title, and even that’s a stretch, since they would have been 5yo at the time. So that can only tell us that, even among this self-selected sample of people who are active and diligent buyers and fans of the franchise, either a fair chunk of the young buyers (who we know are not replacing lapsed fans at a high enough rate) are asking for ATB despite little to no nostalgia for that combat system in that age bracket, or an outsized number of older fans are still calling for a return to ATB and continuing to deny them will likely further fan attrition in those age brackets. Neither of those things is a positive for the current trajectory of a series seeing diminished sales.
And again, even with all that factored in, when almost half of respondents are saying “use Remake/Rebirth combat in the next mainline FF game”, we’re seeing the formation of a new fragment break off of the FF fanbase in real time, one that will also go underserved eventually like all the others have been, because Square Enix cannot seem to stop themselves from underserving their current audience by grasping at an audience they imagine they should have and reinventing the wheel with each subsequent game to try and find a game mechanic that draws new players in at far higher volumes.
They’re also comparatively budget-starved, under-marketed and (especially in the case of Asano projects) under-shipped. You can’t plant a seed in a Dixie cup full of dirt and expect it to grow that far beyond its confines into a mighty oak.
Last edited:
It doesn't show anything other than FFU aren't using an even playing field for their scores, not to mention that their channel has grown considerably since 2016 and it's not necessarily the case that the same people are even partaking in the different surveys. I for one didn't even know they did a survey on XV.
If you want an actual gauge on fan reception then look to Playstation reviews which require actually purchasing the game to leave a review.
FFXV has a 4.63, with the various DLC scoring above 4.7 and even into the 4.8 range with thousands of reviews unto themselves too. The FFXV page defaults to "royal edition" so that is what the vanilla game is on the PS store now.
FFXVI has a 4.52.
Also FFU putting the cutoff for "young" players at 25 is pretty disingenuously skewing the results, when Yoshi-P is talking about wanting the younger audience he is talking about kids and teenagers, not adult people in their 20's.
- Pronouns
- Any/All
You know, you can draw a thematic and mechanical throughline with each of the early Final Fantasies, the single-player ones, for at least the first fifteen or twenty years. X was a very mindful change, because the turn order system made for a very different feel than ATB, but you could see how there was a through-line between "really fast characters take multiple turns before slow characters" and "really fast characters take multiple turns before slow characters, but you don't need to press the buttons as fast"
There was a point where the sense of continuity in Final Fantasy was broken; the effect of it wouldn't have been felt in the sales of the first game ot do this, which would still sell well, but it would be where continuity—mechanical and in terms of being an anthological series—was broken
It'd have to be a game set in a larger continuity, and it'd need to be a game where they really broke off from the feel of exploration and c—
Wait
Wait
Was it Final Fantasy 12? My favourite Final Fantasy? Did my favourite Final Fantasy start the problem?
....no. No, it was the Final Fantasy 7 compilation. It must have been....
There was a point where the sense of continuity in Final Fantasy was broken; the effect of it wouldn't have been felt in the sales of the first game ot do this, which would still sell well, but it would be where continuity—mechanical and in terms of being an anthological series—was broken
It'd have to be a game set in a larger continuity, and it'd need to be a game where they really broke off from the feel of exploration and c—
Wait
Wait
Was it Final Fantasy 12? My favourite Final Fantasy? Did my favourite Final Fantasy start the problem?
....no. No, it was the Final Fantasy 7 compilation. It must have been....
Interestingly, Rebirth has a 4.74 after 28k reviews lolIt doesn't show anything other than FFU aren't using an even playing field for their scores, not to mention that their channel has grown considerably since 2016 and it's not necessarily the case that the same people are even partaking in the different surveys. I for one didn't even know they did a survey on XV.
If you want an actual gauge on fan reception then look to Playstation reviews which require actually purchasing the game to leave a review.
FFXV has a 4.63, with the various DLC scoring above 4.7 and even into the 4.8 range with thousands of reviews unto themselves too. The FFXV page defaults to "royal edition" so that is what the vanilla game is on the PS store now.
FFXVI has a 4.52.
Also FFU putting the cutoff for "young" players at 25 is pretty disingenuously skewing the results, when Yoshi-P is talking about wanting the younger audience he is talking about kids and teenagers, not adult people in their 20's.
AruanaRiva
Member
Top JP Predictor
Enthusiast
Top JP Predictor
Atlus, Harada, Night game is the new Alliance!!!
The thing is, after gaining some newer ones. FF provide FF7R2 that does not click with newer and younger audience so they will have like 5 years gap before they can pick and choose which audience they want to please this time.
- Pronouns
- he/they
X was definitely a break from tradition in certain ways, but it still "felt" like Final Fantasy to me. Some people didn't like the linear map or other changes, but to this day it's still a common pick for the best/most popular Final Fantasy. Whereas 12 and on have all had some degree of lingering controversy.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is actually just as self-selecting as the FFU survey, because it only records digital buyers who bothered to leave a review, while also providing even less information than the survey does.It doesn't show anything other than FFU aren't using an even playing field for their scores, not to mention that their channel has grown considerably since 2016 and it's not necessarily the case that the same people are even partaking in the different surveys. I for one didn't even know they did a survey on XV.
If you want an actual gauge on fan reception then look to Playstation reviews which require actually purchasing the game to leave a review.
FFXV has a 4.63, with the various DLC scoring above 4.7 and even into the 4.8 range with thousands of reviews unto themselves too. The FFXV page defaults to "royal edition" so that is what the vanilla game is on the PS store now.
FFXVI has a 4.52.
Also FFU putting the cutoff for "young" players at 25 is pretty disingenuously skewing the results, when Yoshi-P is talking about wanting the younger audience he is talking about kids and teenagers, not adult people in their 20's.
I mean... FFXII is a fine game, but yeah, it was kinda how this ball really started rolling in terms of Square Enix's desperation toward constant and drastic reinvention. Sorry to break the bad news to you.
12 is also my favourite and I think I agree. Ivalice/Matsuno-related works should probably have been its own subseries rather than something that is arbitrarily included and excluded from FF, in hindsight.
FF really needs to solidify a both mechanical and aesthetic identity for itself. There are elements common to so much of the series that are often completely missing (either in the game or the marketing) from the modern games. Personally I'd reduce it down to:
-Some form of turn-based ATB combat
-Iconic jobs/classes
-Prog-rock album cover/Rock Opera musical/graphical aesthetic (you can almost always see consistency when it comes to portraying this via particle effects, but the surrounding world and character design is often completely disjointed from it)
-Recurring mascot monsters/summons that are front and centre
-Airship travel over a large overworld (I'm not saying this means "open world" in a modern context, either)
-Crystals and their magic as a constant element of the world, even if they're not plot-central.
Regarding ATB - I think part of the reason they keep abandoning it (or changing it beyond recognition) is because so much of the non-boss ATB combat in prior games is grindy time-wasting that is often little more than attack/heal. SMT/Persona and even Pokemon have at least some strategic element that is present even at the lowest level encounters (press turn/weaknesses and the type chart). Ideally you'd tie this into making optimal use of the ATB and Job mechanics and create obvious rewards for players who do so.
I don’t care what they do as long as they stick with it. They’ve been reinventing the wheel for 25 years and sales just go up and down and haven’t really grown since.
Rebirth is the first time they had a big budget sequel that allowed them to build upon a foundation and it’s an all time great game, I think there’s a connection there maybe, but I’m not a scientist or anything.
Rebirth is the first time they had a big budget sequel that allowed them to build upon a foundation and it’s an all time great game, I think there’s a connection there maybe, but I’m not a scientist or anything.
Personally, I think if they build upon what they've learned with the FF7Remake Trilogy and use it to make an original and excellent FF (and they release on all relevant platforms) they'll do well for themselves. I dunno if it will "break out" or anything, but I can hardly imagine it doing poorly either.
Man FF16 fans are really pathetic they in the last 3 days just review bombed FF15's userscore on metacritic from 8.5 to 7.5 with over 300 negative scores being added from after Apriil 21st only AFTER the FF16 DLC released a few days ago, which had a low userscore of 6.4, and a bunch of 10/10 spam FF16 user reviews added in the last 3 days are all just complaining about only Forspoken and FF15 in a single sentence review. They even review bombed the Forspoken DLC out of nowhere which had a 6.9 userscore which had only 16 negative reviews up til 3 days ago, now suddenly only within the last 3 days there's 40 new negative reviews out of nowhere for it all just to drop its userscore below what FF16's DLC userscore was.
I'm not sure how to process all this words salad except that it seems to be about petty people being petty and that giving them any attention is giving credit to their action and probably empowering them even more.
Ignore them really, you, we, should be better than that.
There’s no reason to generalize an entire fan base like this even if you provided any type of evidence whatsoever that it was true, and it also has nothing to do with the thread topic.