Square Enix Just Canceled a BUNCH of Games

we're getting busy today my friends it's a it's a busy kind of day yep yep smells like business let's talk business let's talk about Square Enix it seems that recently Square Enix has been seeing some losses it's not hitting the uh you know monetary goals that it would like to hit as many people have pointed out a lot of this has to come down to the fact that they spent an probably an enormous amount of money on Final fantasy7 rebirth and then just put it on Playstation so they're they're not hitting a very large amount of Their audience there that's got to have something to do with it but um it it's possible there's a lot of other stuff too games is a complated business I know and because they're not making the kind of money that they want to make they are seeing something of a restructuring within the company they announc to their investors that they are cancelling a bunch of games they're cutting their losses this will see them losing a lot of already invested money uh to the tune of about 22 billion yen or $140 million $140 Million worth of projects just down the toilet we have absolutely no idea what these projects might have been we probably will never know I know there were like some leaks that came out at some point we we don't really know if some of those games are represented here uh we don't know how many games are we looking at like a couple big ones or a lot of little ones or a mix of both um we really don't know and the reason they're doing us this that they said is they want to revise the group's approach to the development of high definition games not sure why they specified high definition a little weird with the intention of being more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources uh basically they want to focus on fewer higher quality games as far as I can tell it seems like they are still working on all of their previously announced games you know especially like big ones Dragon Quest 3 remake Dragon Quest 12 Kingdom Hearts 4 that kind of stuff is probably safe but there's just no knowing what other projects were in development and are now just completely scrapped and um it it is unfortunate the thing about this story is that I I can definitely see both sides I can kind of see how this could be a good thing and an understandable thing for them to do as a business but also potentially a less good thing it really could go either way let's start with the good side how this is potentially a good thing um I think it is really cool when a company can see that there is a problem and they decide to just cut right to the heart of the problem just nip it in the bud right away you know some companies they want a course correct and it takes them a while and they they initiate these like smaller more gradual changes that can kind of take years to kind of Swing the company in the right direction so it seems kind of Brave for a company to just be like no this is a change we're going to make and we are going to lose a bunch of money for doing it but we're going to do it right now because in the long term we know that this is the right thing uh the whole 3DS launch debacle comes to mind 3DS launch $250 Nintendo made a really big mistake the market was just not interested at that price so instead of kind of like well let's kind of let's drop the price little by little or like let's just kind of wait until the right Games come out instead they were like no this is a problem we need to solve right now they cut the price by like 70 bucks huge thing lost a whole bunch of money but in the end that ended up being the right thing to do and it was seen as a very very bold move that not every company would be willing to make especially because investors don't like losses they do not like losses at all they don't want to see it happen so like a big loss all at once you know they would commonly push against that kind of thing so so if you look at it that way I think it's kind of cool that Square Enix is seeing like this is a thing that needs to change let's just do it right now it hurts but let's do it and I have to admit that focusing more on games that they are like kind of more confident in could be a good thing because they have not they have not only been producing hits recently like Square Enix puts out loads of great games loads and loads of great games everybody's crazy about Final Fantasy they put all sorts of great RPGs on switch and all that um but they've also had some pretty big Duds in the last few years I would say the standout ones are foam stars and for spoken like those I I don't know if those were successful at all in any sense of the word successful and I feel like you know sometimes a game will come out and it might be a little bit divisive or something um but the immediate reaction to foam stars and for spoken was so like kind of negative to neutral just kind of in there that they seem like very big missteps on the part of the company I feel like if you reveal a game and just the overwhelming reaction is just kind of just nobody's really interested then that that is that means that you have made a very big mistake you know foam Stars it's kind of a cool idea I can see what it's doing it's it's not a bad thing to take a game that already exists and kind of do your own spin on it that's how genres evolve they wanted to do their own kind of version of Splatoon um but for whatever reason just it didn't really appeal to anyone that I that I have seen personally people just weren't that interested and it came and it went and that was it and then fores spoken like just I mean like do I even need to go into fores spoken this was a big game they spent a lot of money on this game this is a AAA big adventure game probably very very expensive and yet you H I mean it just it it shows a level of uh misunderstanding of your audience it feels like they were very detached from the wants of Their audience creating a game like this and thinking that we would like it when just the overwhelming reaction was just like this is cringe this is cringe to the highest degree that kind of like quippy Millennial kind of humor injected into every moment like it just it went over so poorly that I have to wonder who was making the decision to make this game I it's it's it's baffling that they could put so much money into something that could just just come out to such negative reception so like that's what I'm saying is these are the kinds of projects that like yes you really should be taking a much harder look at the projects that you are greenlighting you should not ever green light like it's okay to make a make a game and you put it out and it doesn't sell as well as you want it is not okay to make a game and immediately everyone's response is this looks aw we do not care about it you know what I'm saying like I know it's a little harsh but like I'm just I'm talking about the reception that I saw people just didn't care about these games not saying no one as always I'm sure there were people who enjoyed these games but I'm just looking at just the the broader the general audience and the reception it was not good like pretty across the board it was not good so if this kind of restructuring canceling a bunch of projects means avoiding disasters very expensive disasters like like those games then that's definitely a good thing like just try to pay better attention to like what the audience is actually looking for and what they might find actually kind of gross then a point that's kind of skirting the line between good and bad um sare Enix has been putting out a lot of RPGs like a lot of kind of smaller to medium budget RPGs many of which have been on the switch and they're all like really reviewing well they seem to all be very very good games but they are just not selling well they're really not selling well it feels like every single one of the like especially on on the switch all these great Games octopath octopath 2 triangle strategy and all this they never seem to sell much more than like a million units and that's really not great just considering how expensive it is to make even a smaller budget game like this especially because these are very high quality they're very well polished and you know they're full of voice acting and all that stuff they're probably barely making any money on any of these games and it is okay to have smaller projects that make a less amount of money you know making any money at all like is is fine not every game has to make a ton um but at the same time I can see their perspective just like again as as a company with investors and all that stuff it's an opportunity cost thing yeah it's okay to make a smaller game with a smaller budget that makes a little bit of money but like we could be using that money those resources we could be putting that into something that could potentially be more profitable and they are seeing that this whole thing where they're pumping out a bunch of smaller RPGs it's just not giving them the profits that they want and like you know the player us like we can see like no we love it just keep giving us these little RPGs I can't necessarily blame them for wanting to slow that down and not wanting to keep that up cuz it's it's just not giving them what they want sad to see it go if they stop doing that but a little bit more understandable so yeah like this restructuring canceling games and stuff it could ultimately be a good thing for them and maybe even for the players too if it means you know fewer higher quality titles or whatever it would be sad to see all of these smaller RPGs go but it could just be they're going to do just less you know just not quite as many that would still be fine but then on the other hand this whole restructuring thing we don't know what's getting cancelled and that's that's the scary part you know for all we know a bunch of really great games have just been cancelled really really terrific titles just went down the drain we we just don't know and that's the scary thing about a company making a big shift it's it's not always a good thing they they uh they feel like they've learned a lesson and they are thus changing their strategy but big companies have a pretty poor track record when it comes to taking the right lessons and making the right changes do you know what I mean especially if a company has been making some questionable decisions up to this point they decide to make another really big decision and course correct you don't know if they're going to make the right decision in this case either and if that course correction is drastic that could lead to drastically bad outcomes and and you know with a big company making games that take years to make if ends up being a bad thing this could negatively impact them and the games that they produce for a long time a big company decides to cancel a bunch of projects and refocus what kinds of games they want to do they could be getting smarter they really easily could be just like genuinely like no like we're going to do these games right here we're only going to do a handful of them a year and they end up being great and this whole thing and they end up being a healthier company more successful we get better games cool or they could be doubling down on everything that we don't want to see I mean we've seen this with actual other companies before they they restructure and when they say we want to focus on fewer higher quality titles often what they mean is we want to chase Trends even harder we want to double down we want to Triple down on creating you know schlocky open world games or live service games or just whatever is popular at the moment that's what we're going to do and that's not what we want to see that is obviously absolutely not what we want to see and I will say it is a little bit worrisome some of the other stuff that Square Enix has been saying like their whole stance on AI everybody is pushing back against the use of AI in games generative AI to to create assets to create art for games nobody wants that and yet Square Enix keeps insisting nope that is the the future we are using AI we are increasing the use of AI all the time it is going to be an integral part of our business that does not necessarily give me a ton of confidence about this decision like I'm I'm all for making fewer games it's true they have been putting out a ton just an absolute ton make fewer absolutely but I don't want them to stop making smaller games smaller to medium budget games or more creative experimental games Niche games like these these cute little RPGs I don't want them to stop doing that all together like I are is that what they're axing is that like is that specifically what they are axing is all of these little RPGs and Niche games that would be bad scale it back that's okay I I you really don't want it to turn into you know Square Enix is just a handful just a tiny handful of big AAA Trend chasy games per year year and that's it that's what Square Enix is now and they cuz like their identity is in RPGs you know like that's that's their thing and anytime a company moves away from making smaller and more interesting games that's just a bad thing that's PlayStation right now I have no love at all for PlayStation right now all of the decisions that they have been making they're terrible they are they are jettisoning everything that used to give them personality and make them feel charming and experimental their legacy is built on this weird experimental stuff you play uh what is it Astros playroom on PS5 and just the whole thing is so charming and it's just like it's just a love letter to all these weird experimental colorful cartoony fun games that PlayStation has put out over the years and Playstation has decided they they just don't want to do that anymore they don't do that anymore they are focusing on big AAA Prestige titles and live service games and all that stuff it's like you can have a happy medium and I don't want to see Square Enix become PlayStation in that regard ultimately though we really just don't know what they're doing we don't know what they've canceled we don't know what the future looks like um I'm yeah I'm kind of on the fence about this it really just comes down to what they end up doing what games they end up focusing on and I guess we're not really going to know what all of this means um for a few years you know three four even five years from now is when we might actually start to see the real uh fruits of this decision and until then we are just left guessing I suppose which is frustrating but uh that's business I guess that's that's Vig games I think a big tell is going to be whether or not we see a good like exclusive even like temporarily exclusive RPG title for the next Nintendo system like within the first few years of its life if we get another you know octopath 3 or something similar a new Bravely Default something along those lines if we get that within the first few years of switch 2 or whatever um then that's going to be a pretty good indication but if we don't then that might just be like oh that that nice little period where Square Enix wanted to make a bunch of cool little stuff for Nintendo system uh not going to happen anymore so I don't know that's another thing we just got to wait and see

Channel: TopicArlo

Views: 72,433

Keywords: square enix, final fantasy, dragon quest, nintendo, switch, rpg, cancelled, games, arlo

Id: deXWZlXGKkY

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2024