Square Enix: Disc Based Sales Are Killing Us

[chozo_hybrid]

Lower your budgets a bit, and maybe you might make more money? Smaller companies like the guys who made Chivalry celebrated one million copies and gave out free stuff due to it. I know being a smaller business means smaller budget, but these big guys of the industry could learn some humility, and take responsibility for their mistakes.

 

[Funyahns]

Why not gear everything for final sales of 4 million copies? Cut back on a little advertising and may be reduce some graphics slightly along with reduced voice overs.

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

Something that has bugged me for quite some time whenever I see these game companies either accost physical retail stores or try to push digital distribution: Why not just sell the games from your own damn sites??? Would the cost of shipping these games across the country on demand REALLY cost more than what they're apparently losing by dealing with retail stores?

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Stop making expensive games then.

Another good idea would be to dial back the promotions for games they're working on. That was another problem Squenix had, wasn't it? Rampant, under-appreciated (or outright hated) promotions?

 

[Dante dynamite]

We didn't spend too much money consumers just didn't spend enough so we've decided to try nickeling and dimeing them with F2P titles

 

[Fifty-One]

Unless they plan on continually adding more content to their games, I don't see how they can justify F2P formats for single player games. I'd tell them where to shove it, but their head already seems to be there.

 

[Kittyhawk]

FU Square. The reason you are out of touch on projections, is that you expect the kind of sales the FF series got at its height pre 2000, way back when. You are investing far too much in the FF series, and taking far too long in making them. While the jury is out on if A Realm Reborn will pan out, this isn't the answer for all your games. I can picture some at other studios under Square rolling eyes.

I can agree that Steam might be the real answer. Make your game, get it to Steam and there's no printing discs. Only problem is that could be format restrictive. Square are banking too much on the F2P model, a market that's already flooded by better more inventive games. Not all game designs will play ball with this method. I just reeks of a huge developer like Square wanting their cake money before its cooked, while taking the piss out of smaller devs that need that money more.

Perhaps Square should consider letting Enix out of their stable through a sale, and save themselves some money. Enix in charge of their own destiny would be cool.

 

[Drejer43]

why is it all publishers these days look at F2P as some sort of magical chicken that lay golden egg and will save them of all their financial problems

 

[lapan]

Discs or retail aren't the problem, sales expectations 3 times as high as any reasonable amount and overblown PR are.

 

[Strazdas]

No ,square enix, bloated game budgets is what killing you.
Disc shelf space is expensive, and so are your games. you know how to make peopel buy digital? make digital actually cheaper than retail. but no, thats not possible apperently.

 

[havoc33]

Aaaaaaand cue millions of tears from the disc-or-die crowd.

Considering they're abandoning disc models because Tomb Raider only sold over four million (exact figure? I don't know) yeah, I think tears might be in order.

That's why I wrote the second half of my post.

Finally, and this could just be crazy talk but maybe, if they aren't selling enough copies to justify what they are spending to make these games then maybe they ought cut back on how much they are spending to make them. I'm sure Tomb Raider sold well. Hitman Absolution, I can't say. I know I got it recently for free on PSN+ and I really liked it and I've not heard too many bad things said about it so I imagine that it's sales weren't garbage. Same with Sleeping Dogs. It's a legitimately good game. If it had been a little longer it would have easily been my favorite game the year it came out. The fact is these games ARE selling well. It's the amount of money they are spending to make them that's the problem.

It's not that easy is it? Gamers expect the Tomb Raider series to be of AAA quality, hence the budget will be massive. This is the problem with HD gaming as a whole. If you guys have paid attention, it's not only SquareEnix that is having trouble making profit, there are several developers that suffer under the same fate. This is also the reason why we have seen talented developers like the Liverpool Studio (Psygnosis) close, as their games no longer make the necessary profit. Selling one-two millions of Wipeout on the PS1 was perfectly fine, but selling the same amount of copies of WipeOut HD was not, so Sony shut them down.

AAA HD gaming in it's current form is in many ways unsustainable.

 

[AuronFtw]

Graphics wise I'm not necessarily going back to SNES quality

Why the fuck not? Final Fantasy IV, V and VI were objectively the best games in the entire franchise

>IV
>Awful, forced love-triangle drama over a chick with no personality
>Characters nobody cared about because they were about as deep as Keanu Reaves in any film he's in, including a fallen paladin trying to redeem himself but it's still boring because he's as interesting as a french fry with no ketchup
>Hilariously limited character customization, with each one being locked into set weapons/armors/skills, and for most of the game they rotate in and out beyond your ability to control them
>Only ninja introduced most of the way through the game, is a joke, hits weak as shit, throw command mostly useless until way later when you can finally buy good throwing items
>Annoying twins kill themselves, all the characters in the game mourning, me rejoicing that I don't have to put up with them anymore
>A flying whale ship

>V
>King from another world, convenient amnesia after one meteor trip despite multiple meteor trips in the future doing nothing of the sort to anyone
>Dad was James McCloud Jecht Henry Jones a famous adventurer who faced off against the evil villain but you never really knew him
>Evil sorcerer with zero characterization, backstory and awful motive, less developed than the physical manifestation of religious oppression (Sin/Yu Yevon) and infinitely less developed than Sephiroth, only slightly better than Ultimecia from FF8 in terms of disconnection from the rest of the plot
>Every character and plot device taken straight out of the Book of Generic Game Cliches
>Grind-your-balls-off gameplay required for the few good abilities that all take 600 or 999 AP

>"objectively the best"

lol. that is all.

I can see 6 being a contender for best FF, but 4 and 5? Hahahahaahahahahha. VII was "objectively" better than both, with more characters with deeper stories, more development/background, the whole Materia system being hands down the best character combat customization in the entire FF franchise bar none, and a villain who is both tragically insane for understandable/explained reasons but also enough of a **** throughout enough of the story that the progression of the game flawlessly builds up to a final confrontation. Even Kefka, who was definitely an amusing/effective villain, was nowhere near as deep as Sephiroth. (He had a similarly developed backstory, but he was much less relateable and his insanity was often the source of comic relief - Sephiroth is never a comic relief character, which forces the player to take him more seriously throughout the game).

You've got some serious nostalgia goggles at work though, might want to get those checked.

Also...

>a flying whale ship.

 

[viranimus]

So wait... LESS points of exchange between the distributor and the customer is what is lucrative? I always heard the greater access to sell something will return greater range of sales in every business course ive taken or corporate lecture ive suffered through.

Now lets really think about this. SE thinks "discs" are the problem, but what exactly is the difference from the alternative?

Disc based recordable media
Logistics and distribution.

Thats it. They are trying to put the blame onto disc based media that raw bulk costs will put at pennies out of the products cost and bulk shipping that again puts a few more pennies into its cost. So are we really to believe that out of say 4 million failing sales, your profit margins are being "gutted" by those comparatively microscopic expenditures compared to the hundreds of millions that 4 million sales would create (hypothetical: "normalized" 30$ sale price for a game released at 60$ x Z number of sales)

No, lets be real. The problem here is pushing development beyond the point of diminishing returns.

I do understand. I saw people clamoring for a new console generation in 08-09 when the generation was only 2-4 years old. So I can see where it "seems" like you MUST keep pushing the envelope further. If the extra effort put forth cannot match the potential increase in interest that effort will generate then it is a waste of energy. That energy in effect partially represents the profits. In a way it is sort of a "pay to win" type of strategy that can only really offer short term gains.

 

[RicoADF]

Well Squeenix can now go and get stuffed, if they stop making games on disc I will stop playing their games, funny how that works aint it.

The problem isn't the sales, it's the dumbasses in the managers office that can't budget for a realistic level, oh what's that it made over 4 million and yet you can't afford to make another? Guess what, learn some accounting!!

 

[ngl42398]

3 things Squeenix can do to improve sales and/or profits:

1. Stop spending so much on games, Lara Croft didn't need Hollywood VAs.
2. Rerelease CT. Again.
3. Make Final Fantasy not suck anymore.

Super Mario RPG 2 when?

 

[Jodah]

Wow...


Let's totally blame the retailers for the faults of game sales and success shall we? I'm actually bloody well tempted to fly down to Japan, and with my grade-school equivalency of Japanese, tell the bugger off and make him watch the Jimquisition episode (among the other videos that state the same) so that some day they might understand the unnecessarily high budgeting for jack squat is the issue here.

In ONE month, it sold roughly 3.4 million copies. ONE FRAKKEN MONTH! And they decided that was an absolute failure. What game sells more than that in the span of a single month (Call of Duty being the exception here)? Within 48 hours it had a million sales easy. It had, bar none, one of the strongest launches a game could have. Yet because it didn't hit 5 million, it was a flop to them, and to boot now they are arguing that its all the physical media's fault.


Let me repeat what I said... Wow.

Well, he's not really disagreeing with Jim. His point is that discs cost too much to produce. Jim's point was that if you need to hit x million sales to break even, the game costs too much to make. Matsuda places the "costs too much" on the fact discs cost money to produce. Certainly, there are other areas to cut costs but he's not disagreeing with Jim's main point.

 

[Meister_Li]

I'm not surprised they would prefer digital sales, considering how shamelessly overpriced digital Square Enix games tend to be on Consoles and Mobiles. Oddly enough not really on PC, tho. There they are quite fair for some reason.

 

[digital warrior]

Yes blame the disk sales. Not the lackluster sales of your ff13 spin-offs (like it or not it really split the fanbase) that sit in used bargain bins. Its not your ballooning budgets on stuff that really doesn't matter (yes that hair thing with Laura in Tomb Raider on the pc may have been impressive but was it NECESSARY!), no its not the loss of customer trust with shit like all the bravest, or the just epic fail of ff14 (at least the first one) it's disk sales.

Ok square seriously know how do you function with your head so far up your own ass.

 

[twm1709]

"Not being able to see the forest for the trees" applies very well to Quare-Enix these days.
Also, they've proven what they can do with F2P before, and results can get ugly (FF:ATB anyone?).

 

[___________________]

Well, if they can't make things people want to buy, then they shouldn't blame physical copies.