This Changes EVERYTHING With Square Enix...

square enx has done something they've never done before this past year they released two Mainline Final Fantasy titles within the same fiscal year with both of them being exclusive to PlayStation 5 with that in mind you would think that square would be reporting record profits instead unfortunately what I have today is mostly bad news and what they've announced today may change the trajectory of the entire company this is incredibly serious news and an absolutely piss moment for square enex so please go ahead and hit that subscribe button we are closing in on 98k hoping to reach a 100,000 by the end of the year and if you love Final Fantasy this is the place to be so starting out with a very big question we still do not have updated numbers on Final Fantasy 16 nor do we have numbers at all on Final Fantasy 7 rebirth however Mainline Final Fantasy is the bread and butter of square enex and usually just releases one of these in a fiscal year is more than enough for the company to usually have good news and the result of Final Fantasy 16 in reir together is that sales are up 1% yeah like I said things are not looking good with square and exciting the reason quote operating losses grew due to higher development cost amortization and advertising expenses as well as higher content valuation losses versus the previous fiscal year if I'm to make this more plain and simple the cost needed to develop and advertise these games was exceedingly high and it seems like the sales of their HD games wasn't enough to cover that this put their HD games division at an operating loss of 8.1 billion yen that is approximately $ 51.9 million ouch that hurts the MMO division also declined but that's to be expected as last fiscal year did not have a Final Fantasy 14 expansion things also aren't doing particularly High on the mobile division in the games for smart devices slpc browser Subs segment net sales and profits declined compared to the previous fiscal year as the June 2023 launch of Dragon Quest Champions and the September 2023 launch of Final Fantasy 7 ever crisis were unable to compensate for factors including weak performance by existing titles and to top it all off operating income has decreased by a 26.6% now some of their segments are up such as publication and merchandising which are performing very well and have had significant growth in sales and profit this is mostly pretty rough if course I know many of you want to talk about the elephant in the room squarex calls its three-year plan squarex reboots and awakens and it's a three-year plan for rebooting for long-term growth to be clear this is about rebooting square enex and not about rebooting video games this does not mean they're going to be doing a whole bunch of reboots of video games and shoving out a ton of remakes although they may be doing that anyways that's unrelated from this this plan is going to revolve around them rethinking their business strategy Chief among them is a shift to a multi-platform strategy squick says it will aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy that includes Nintendo platforms Playstation Xbox and PCs very interesting to note the wording Nintendo platforms as this doesn't just mean switch but it also means the switch's successor switch 2 something that just recently Nintendo has officially unofficially announced and the CEO says they'll be talking more about the switch successor very soon key to this multiplatform push squick says they will build an environment where more customers can enjoy our titles in regards to Major franchises and AAA titles including catalog titles to speak bluntly this means that there is a strong chance that Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 rebirth at some point in the future will come to Xbox with Final Fantasy 16 already being announced for PC I do believe the multiplatform push is a good thing however I don't think Xbox in particular is going to make a significant change I mean after all Xbox games are coming to PS5 now Xbox really ain't doing too great right now bro and I don't imagine that it's going to make a tremendous difference I pointed this out before and I'll point it out again Final Fantasy 13 was also multiplatform back when Xbox 360 was Absolut absolutely the dominant platform and it sold around 7 million units lifetime roughly the same as PlayStation exclusive Final Fantasy 7 remake while I do think it's important to have these available on all platforms not for existing Final Fantasy fans because let's be honest every FF fan knows that if you want to play the latest FF then you need to get a PlayStation and they're already doing that but so that they could potentially grow and expand to new fans that said I do think these games should be available on PC day one but I think the absolute biggest difference you can make here is having these games on switch 2 because that is going to change the situation with the Japanese Market Final Fantasy in Japan has been on decline for a very long time and went from selling roughly 2 million units each release down to Final Fantasy 7 rebirth selling only 300,000 and the big reason for this has been the decline of Home consoles in Japan and while the Final Fantasy brand is still popular in Beloved in Japan it is definitely on decline simply because the mainline games are on a platform that most people there don't own there's roughly 33 million switches sold in Japan and around 5 million PlayStation 5S the math there is pretty simple it's expected that switch 2 will also do extraordinarily well in Japan so while I don't think that Xbox will make a tremendous difference and I think the PC will make a decent enough difference I think the biggest Delta here will be having these games on switch 2 that's something that worked out really well for Dragon Quest 11 now this also means that for example the visual Fidelity of Final Fantasy 17 would have to be quite different than what we see in rebirth or Final Fantasy 16 we don't currently know what switch 2 specs are going to be but I don't know if it'll be able to stand toe-to-toe with these PS5 games though it's possible that these games could be downgraded to run on switch 2 I also couldn't help but wonder if they took the Dragon Quest 11 approach and used more stylized Graphics that would look good on switch's tablet hardware and look even better on a Home console but all that is just speculation but what we do know for a fact is that they are aggressively targeting multiplatform I do think that that is a good step but I also don't think that it is everything that Final Fantasy needs to do in order to really be a major sales player again but really when it comes down to it man AAA is just so bloated these games have to sell a ridiculous amount and that's just a break even so while I'm sure yes the checks that Sony were providing were very good guaranteed money that they were sure to get and it probably did look more appealing than making an Xbox port on day one compared to getting that guaranteed check this is probably something that is better for the long-term sustainability of the franchise and allows everyone who has current generation Hardware to hop into the franchise unfortunately there's even more bad news here this being the worst squarex is now now the next company to be impacted by a round of layoffs with Grant it's confirming that us and European layoffs are part of the restructuring publishing it and square nexas Collective indie games are affected in the past year and a half we have already had 20,000 video game layoffs according to an article on VGC those inact it will be informed this week staff were told in the UK employees will enter into a 1-month consultancy period as per local employment law while us Bas staff could leave their roles before June the game industry is so tiring at this point more and more people continue to lose their jobs again all of this talk about all of these great games that keep coming out and yet so many of the people making them aren't guaranteed to keep their jobs it's utterly ridiculous and my heart goes out to everyone who works at squarex and I hope that as many people as possible will be able to keep their jobs you know it really does feel like at this point there is just bad industry news every single day back to back and it just has not let up yet but hopefully at the very least squarex can turn itself around because right now things are not looking too particularly hot and I do want what's best for square and Final Fantasy but the decisions they make on the next Mainline final fantasies they'll have to be really careful about and really generate appeal and hype for the series in a way that we haven't had in quite some time but these are just my thoughts and I'd love to hear yours in the comments below and I will see you all in the next video

Channel: The Night Sky Prince

Views: 46,144

Keywords: final fantasy vii remake, final fantasy 7 remake, final fantasy 7 rebirth, final fantasy vii rebirth, ff7 rebirth, ff7 part 2, ff7 remake part 2, ff7 remake part 3, final fantasy 7, ff7, final fantasy 16, final fantasy xvi, ff16, ffxvi, state of play, final fantasy 7 demo, ff7 rebirth demo, ending explained, ff7 rebirth theory, ff7 ending analysis

Id: 6WzkYDaXM6I

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024