Square Enix's President Shifting Direction

[Fuzz]

Both myself and the staff will probably be posting more news lately to help freshin' things up... so bare with me if you see some mundane or unworthy news articles from time to time... Some articles may spark up a debate and some will be just for a quick read!


Square-Enix profits have gone down substantially in Fiscal '07...almost down 21%.


-----Original Article------

Square Enix President Laying Down The Law

Square Enix's 2007 financial statement indicates that the company is going through a rough patch. How bad are things? Apparently, there has been an internal shakedown going on. According to several company insiders, things are getting heated. Word has it that a fierce meeting was held over a month ago where the Square Enix honcho threatened to start axing employees if they didn't (and we're paraphrasing) "stop making games that only they wanted to play." Wada is supposedly worried that the company's games have become more and more insular, alienating itself from the mainstream. Granted, this is purely a rumor, but there does seem to be a huge dichotomy within the company's products. You've got very, very casual Japan-only DS titles on one hand, then largely an endless stream of Final Fantasy spin-offs and remakes. Not exactly a balanced portfolio! Sure, Dragon Quest IX and Final Fantasy XIII are going to be huge, but neither game has a firm release date. Putting all your eggs in one basket, no? That, or painting oneself in a corner.

Source: Kotaku.com

[You]

Well maybe this will mean an end to the slew of spin-off. One can only hope...

Or maybe it will be the end of single line posts. One can only hope - Djinn (Don't do it again )

[Unknown Entity]

Ah man! Thats pretty bad news... They do make good games, and I was looking forward to future developments by them. I'd have loved the opportunity to work with them (yep, I know its just a dream and will never happen in this lifetime, but...). Sounds like if they can't get back up on their feet, then... Nom they'll work it out! They worked it out when they made the first Final Fantasy right?

They are a good company, who will find a way - even if I have to go over there and do it all myself lol!

[Rocky]

Interesting news indeed, it seems that squaresoft is trying to appeal to more gamers now to boost sales? I wonder how that is going to turn out. Also, please remind me, what were some of the games that came out during the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, I bet there was probably some big selling game from the '06 year that made big money, which made some big shoes to fill for the next year. I hope the higher-ups realize this so maybe this could lead to us getting our games released in a faster manner!

[Dimi]

Originally posted by Fuzz
"stop making games that only they wanted to play."

That is true with what this article is saying. I'm not dissing franchises like FFVII but seriously, all these spin-offs are so overrated. And it's not just that but for the past couple of years, games like FFX, FFVII, FFXII, and FFT has had their own spin-off in another game. While games like FFI, FFII, FIII, FFIV, FFV, FFVI has had a remake.

Personally, I'm all for some of the things that Square has planned for FF fans but all these little side games are just a bit much and I'm interested to see what happens from here. And also a release date for FFXIII and Versus. That way I can a PS3 before it's released.

[Baneheart]

Honestly, I'm not all that surprised. With Square going all mainstream with transgendered villains, more typical stereotypes as heros, and a shit ton of pointless spin-offs they're really shooting themselves in the foot trying to milk everything till there's nothing left. I seriously believe they're having trouble coming up with new and better games to add to the franchise because years ago, they were making a sequel per year. FF7 in 97, FF8 in 98, and FFIX in 2000. They were doing incredible around that time, but now they only seem to create above-average trash with the same characters and the same stories. These profits are proof of that as more and more fans, like myself, are shying away from their mainstream antics. Shit man, I'm more interested in what Sakaguchi's company Mistwalker will be creating in the future than Square.

I've been saying it for years and I'll say it again, they NEED a new direction if they want to keep sales up while also creating memorable games like most of us have. I don't understand why I haven't seen anything like that since Squaresoft has made great games and Enix has made great games. The two companies should of wowed us a year after they joined together. 13 is their last chance for redemption and if it continues to be mediocre bullshit, I'm never buying their shit again.

[Silver]

Personally, I like the remakes to the extent that I can be lazy and not have to change consoles to play the games (that said I prefer the originals as the difficulty in remakes tends to get somewhat lessened most of the time).

I like a lot of spin-offs in that they can be quite fun, and a diversion while I wait for bigger games. I actually find there's very few spin-offs I can't play a lot. Granted they may not be nearly as good as most of the mainstream Final Fantasies (with the exception of FFXII to me as it just seemed too easy, and it seemed to sacrifice characterisation and story for eye candy), but each still provides a memorable gaming experience. I even enjoyed Dirge of Cerberus and it's actually one of the games I found myself playing several times despite it's short time to finish.

Though I admit to not getting heavily into the original Crystal Chronicles on Game cube, I did enjoy the experience and I ended up buying the DS sequel which I really do love to play. Moreso than the original. Than we have games like Chocobo Tales. I started playing it and thought WTF?, in a good way of course. And as I progressed, I saw it stops being a kid's game after a while, despite the original feel. Some challenges I don't see many kids being able to beat.

And there's Revenant Wings. I LOVE that game. Despite it still not being all that hard, I liked it better than FFXII itself. it was fun, a good deal humorous at times and seemed to have a more solid story. And the Espers...
It was fun getting them all.

Yeah, they might not be as good as the mainstream titles, but some are still pretty damned solid.

[The Matrix CBC]

Really...no...I'm appalled at some of the games that Square-Enix has released. Call me old fashioned, if you will, but I actually ENJOY playing the remakes. Final Fantasy IV was my favourite game of the entire series, and I can't wait for it to come out.

And then...there are the spin-offs. Jesus...if I have to play another spin-off game like Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. Or Heroes of Mana. Or DAWN of Mana (which is one of the worst games I've played from Square in a LONG time). Crystal Chronicals (both of them) I could have lived without. Not to mention the Wii games. The story lines are so paper thin that you can't even pay attention.

Crisis Core was a beautiful game. Great graphics...fantastic CGI and FMVs. Storyline? I GUESS it filled in some holes in the FFVII mythos...kind of...who the heck was Cissnei, anyway? But, frankly, I could've done with fewer pointlessly repetitive missions, more character development, FAR less linear gameplay (I don't consider the ability to complete missions between chapters "exploration"...what about field time? What about exploring a world around you and finding new places and people?), the ability to adapt characters to your individual style of play, different weapons, different armour and accessories, not to mention actually feeling like you CARE about the character.

I guess that's my main sticking point. Most of the games that have been released in the past four years have had characters about whom I could not care less. Case in point: Final Fantasy XII. One of the most beautiful games I've ever played. Beautiful characters and creatures and landscapes and villains who make you want to kill them...but...what about the main characters? Yeah, they've each got a bit of a backstory...kind of...not terribly deeps ones, and not really stories that makes you want to care about them. And none of them have any individual characteristics. They can all use the same weapons, wear the same armour and accessories, use the same magic, use the same special skills...there's absolutely no strategy involved. You don't have to plan a battle...you just have to hack and slash until the enemy collapses. The same problem was there in FFX, but not until way later in the game, when you could afford to adapt them outside of their special skills and spells, but at least the characters had different weapons and strength levels.

So, when people list their favourite games in the series, you'll notice the games they keep going back to: IV, VI, and VII. Characters about whom you could care...worlds you could explore...secrets you could unlock. These are the things that make a great game. Yeah, the new ones are pretty, but they're empty, linear, and worst of all, they're just like every other game on the market (and not just in the RPG market. Dirge of Cerberus? Can anyone say "Hitman?"). No wonder they're experiencing losses when you can purchase virtually the same game from another company...and cheaper, at that.

Square-Enix needs to go back to what made their games great: a great story, deep characters, open gameplay that allows the player to explore the world around them, and THEN go back to the storyline, enemies that drop items and weapons that you can't get anywhere else...AH!!! I'm getting excited just THINKING about a game like that.

I'm not excited about FF XIII. I'm not. I expect it to be boring. And linear. And an exhausting exercise in typical gaming.

I AM excited about FF IV DS. Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, and IX. And that's about it. Four remakes, and ONE NEW GAME. Yeah. Exciting.

Anyway...that's my first post. I'll try not to make them so...prolific, in the future. I'm just really passionate about it.

-The Matrix

[Silver]

The Matrix CBC, I have to admit I found that first post of yours very interesting AND in most ways completely right.

And I'm ashamed to admit that I forgot Crisis Core in my 'good spin-offs' rant. It was a beautiful game. As far as the limitations in what the game allowed a person to do, it couldn't be too free as it was merely the backstory to an already established game.

Personally, I wouldn't really lump the Mana games with Final Fantasy, especially the later ones which have gone down quite a different path. As for Revenant Wings, while nothing like the mainstream titles, it was tongue in cheek and there was something of a decent story accompanying the game. Unlike the somewhat political plot I barely got at times in Final Fantasy XII...

Crystal Chronicals (both of them) I could have lived without. Not to mention the Wii games. The story lines are so paper thin that you can't even pay attention.

As far as I've heard there's only one. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King and though my Wii is offline so I cannot play it (they only released Final Fantasy in Western countries I haven't played), I have heard some rave reviews about it, citing the only disappointing thing is that it has you ordering adventurers around when other games had the player controlling the adventurers.

What you say is mostly quite true though, the Final Fantasy series has lost a part of it's soul. With that said, I've still gotten a lot of playtime through spin-offs. They're usually nothing on the real thing, but they're still a lot better than some games on the market.

[T.G. Oskar]

Am I the only one that feels this is a joke of some sort? I mean, the article itself doesn't look like an article, and more like a personal opinion based from the personal belief of the writer and some catched expressions of the head honcho of Squeenix, which seems to be the prez's personal opinion as well.

Dunno. Just took me a bit off when I read it. Assuming it's real...let's get into business.

Indeed, as of late, Square-Enix feels way off from the two massive companies they were before. While moving from Nintendo into Sony was a bold move, replacing Sakaguchi with Nomura certainly was not (OK, this is a bit personal: aside from Shadow, I ain't a fan of Nomura's characters or stories). Then, the foray into online gaming with Final Fantasy XI (emphasis on the numbering, as it meant it is part of the official line, a game few are ever willing to play because of the fee, which many parents or savvy savers aren't willing to part with). Then, attempting a sequel with FF X-2. Then, absorbing Enix only to focus on Dragon Quest.

Honestly, they have done very subtle mistakes, and since fans cared not to mind, they are now finding the results of their endeavor. Lesser known companies are now shaving off huge profits off them, and they as the "company to take down" have received loads of attack from both fans and the quality of other companies' games.

Now, I don't say Squeenix hasn't tried to improve their quality: they have done every once in a while (the DS remakes are very pretty and improve the originals, they have reinvented the Final Fantasy series almost every single time), but perhaps they have lost their north.

First and foremost, remakes and sequels. Remakes I like, since those are the originals upgraded to newer people. I still am playing FFIII and I love every bit of it, something the original couldn't do. And I look forward to FFIV, and I wish for FFVI upgrading. Sequels...that I don't. Let me be precise: no to Final Fantasy direct sequels, or spin-offs. I liked FFVII when I played it, but I wouldn't invest more money than I already invested on it: hence, no interest for neither BC, CC, or DC. And let's not get started on the Mana series: Secret of Mana is awesome, Seiken Densetsu 3 was near-godlike, and Legend of Mana was wonderful. I weep for the rest: they are giving slow, sweet arsenic to a loved series. Maybe if they looked into their past and see why the first three games were so liked, and maybe they could do something good.

Second, they are killing and shaving their works of art. Since apparently they cannot find the Dream Team anymore, they murdered Chrono in cold blood. I almost thought they were gonna finish SaGa once and for all: Romancing Saga remake saved its life, but I feel it's on an indefinite hiatus. And, well, Ehrgeiz was not a gem, but Bushido Blade and Einhander were, and there's no focus on reviving such series. Specially, Einhander: if the Touhou games and Ikaruga showed something, it's that people still love overhead shooters, and given the shiny graphics of Squeenix, they can do more than that. One thing I do congratulate S-E is in pushing Valkyrie Profile: maybe giving the next Final Fantasy to their group would be a great move on their part (and having Motoi Sakuraba composing Final Fantasy music would be the icing in the cake)

Third, new and fresh material. I haven't seen new and fresh material. Mistwalker just swept the world with Lost Odyssey, reminiscing to the old days of epic storylines with a bang second to none. Maybe getting new ideas would revive the interest. Hey, it's not like there's no material elsewhere: they have thousands of ideas running out there. I do always try to remember Final Fantasy drew heavily from Dungeons and Dragons, and there are many other RPG genres to study out. Golden Sun from Camelot worked around Alchemy and Psionics; Squeenix could work out with concepts such as truly supernatural creatures as PCs, four-color superheroism, and even painstakingly accurate historical stories. If The World Ends With You tells something, it's that Squeenix isn't running out of ideas.

Fourth, rotate the directors once in a while, if the series seems to fall off. Kingdom Hearts was awesome, even though it was mainly Nomura work, but somehow, I do not feel as identified with KH as I would for another set of series, like Breath of Fire, or Tactics Ogre. Mostly, I can't help but see the original characters of KH as a bunch of emos (yeah, sounds a bit spiteful, I know. Usually I don't like to insult people or make them feel bad, but it's something I don't work around very well, trying to understand them. Just don't try to take this as an insult, alright?). I loved the reimagining of Disney staple characters, but perhaps a change in focus could work for the best. Final Fantasy could work this out as well: look what Matsuno did for FFXII, which is considered between the best around there.

Fifth, please revive some series. Enix has a wonderful gem with the Ogre Series, given the fact it still retains the original director of the series, and I still haven't seen any game that fell short of the standards. Absorbing it into Final Fantasy Tactics was a very bad move, I feel. Separating both series and giving both more mature themes would rescue some of the lost fans, shifted into Nippon Ichi (who is feeling what Squeenix is feeling right now)

Sixth, some of the resentment comes from the harsh measures Squeenix takes on fan material. It perhaps was meant to protect their money, but given what they have done with the series, what they did to Chrono Trigger Resurrection went beyond unforgivable. Something that the creators of the remake did as a project of love, which gave the idea that people loved the series and WANTED TO SEE MORE OF IT. Result? Cease and Desist order, and a series that can only live in our memories. Granted, you would like to protect that which you made with all of your heart, but consider the following: if it was a fan material, done not to gain profit, very close to the original, and given the time and the effort done, the best S-E could do is to offer them work in their company. And, let's face it: even the best writers can accept fan canon. That is why sometimes the mains die: so that there can be no more tampering.

I see this as a desperate plea from a powerful company to regain its former status. A desperate cry from its owner to reconsider what they have done. Let's just hope they reconsider and do what it's right. Maybe, maybe then, the producers can get what they want, once they have proven the fans they can do what the fans want.

[Andromeda]

I'm actually afraid of what this could mean to the series that I love so much if any bit of this is true. I do not want them to make games for everyone, RPGs are not meant for everyone they are a niche audience already. And aside from the insanely fanatically, pretty much all RPGs fans already play the FF games. If they start trying to go more mainstream or try to fit their games to Western audiences to get in more numbers it is going to kill the remaining unique and quirkiness that the RPGs from them have. FF is the most mainstream of RPGs in Japan so their quirkiness is not as high as a games such as Disgaea and things from Atlus or Nippon Ichi, but even still FF has been fine where it is at. It is really going to ruin them if they try to make changes to just simply pull in bigger numbers.

But it was also mentioned before but I'm pretty sure their last year sales were higher because FFXII came out then in the US and Europe. I remember the exact time but it was like 2006 August or something like that. Either way they had huge sales because their flagship franchise released another mainline title. When FFXIII comes out and DQIX comes out they are going to see huge sales from them. Apparently they are looking at 10 million for DQIX, so I don't really see why the President should be getting so angry with them.

[The Matrix CBC]

In response to why the President is getting angry with the staff, I think the answer is considerably obvious. The Japanese audience is not the American audience. If you look at all of the S-E games that have been released since the merger they have virtually FLOODED the Japanese market with loads of games, not all of which were very good, while at the same time almost taunting the American and PAL market by both refusing to release certain titles outside of Japanese soil and by releasing a lot of titles that are of dubious value. More to the point, S-E has always seemed a bit reluctant to listen to their American fan base. For YEARS we campaigned to get Final Fantasy III onto American soil, a game that was released for Japanese audiences in 1990 and ROMed to death for us until 2006. That's a sixteen year lag time. We'd been BEGGING for that release for nearly two decades, before they got wise and released it (though persisting with the use of those dreadful Friend Codes and Nintendo's less-than-stellar WiFi support gave me such a migraine that I got fed up and simply borrowed my friend's DS, went to Game Stop, and purchased a used copy of the game so that I could exchange Mognet Mail in the comfort of my own apartment).

I have absolutely NO complaints about remaking games, as it exposes a new and younger generation to the games that made my childhood and adolescence tolerable and, dare I say, enjoyable. Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and the Mana series were the games that helped me get through my formative years, and shaped a lot of the music that I was writing at the time. I'm actually more excited about the rerelease of those more substantial classic RPGs (I nearly wet myself when I found out the Final Fantasy IV and Dragon Quest IV-VI were being released for the DS) than I am about YET ANOTHER spin off, sequel, or (sadly) a new title that I lose interest in before I even get near finishing the game.

I was REALLY excited about Dawn of Mana. I was prepared for a great experience, and all I got was vertigo and motion sickness. All I wanted to do was temper my weapons with orbs to get them to the next level, or strategise the placement of different artifacts on a map to unlock different monsters or items, or find some creepy cactus creature that turns into a hot house, writes its own diary, and to meet a talking tree that would grow oddly phallic and truly disturbingly shaped fruits and vegetables. Instead, I had to climb pencil-thin trees to get coins, and beat the crap out of familiar creatures (that was fun) all in an effort to grow a whip on my arm and TEMPORARILY increase my strength. That sucks. I couldn't even figure out where I was half of the time, and I had the GUIDE BOOK with MAPS!!! I sold it to pay rent.

I've just stopped getting excited about S-E releases...for they all seem rather lamentable. As for when I'll be purchasing a PS3, from what I've seen of FF XIII, unless the FF VII for PS3 materialises, I guess I'll be waiting to buy one until they release a game that grabs my interest and keeps it. Maybe by that time, they'll be affordable enough to obtain one.

[Eternal Anomaly]

All I can say is that Square is loosing its intelectual resorce. That would explain the fall of game quality. Maby its not that they make games only they like but that they need a break or somthing. I would say that ff12 was the main teams break. I agree with most things people say about ff12, but to say the truth I was ready for a result like that, because I knew that it would be a FFTactics sequel. I enjoyed the gameplay change and got very used to it, but as most I realy wanted more of an inside story.
I think that FF13 is going to be ok, at least I hope so! But stil a sparkle of dought hides in my believe.
All I can say is that shoughting at peolple never made good games, only teamwork and fresh ideas! I realy wish Square would realise that their first mistake was leting go of Uematsu and Sakaguci. I think that their main team was broken and now neither of them would manage to make a good enough game, at least not like in the good old days!
If Square keeps losing its inovative ideas and team members or doesent asemble a new team its going to fall soon enough and trust me its not going to be a prety picture!

[Refieth]

Nooo! Square, don't do this! *Surface World (engulfed in darkness) FFII theme begins to play in background* Don't sacrifice the needs of us diehard fans! *deee, de-de-de-da-deee...* I know the mainstream market would get you more profit at first! But you gotta realize that to mainstream gamers, you'd just be a toy manufacturer! Toy! Something to be picked up, played with and put away, that's all games are to them! To us, they mean a lot more! Don't you realize that the mainstream lot would just... just stop buying them eventually?! Whereas our love of Final Fantasy will go on forever! Square, don't do this! We need you... *deee, de-de-de-da-deee... etc.*