Former Square Enix executive Jacob Navok has shared his thoughts on less-than-expected sales of the latest Final Fantasy games. He also tried to explain why people mistakenly think that the Japanese publisher is simply setting unrealistic goals for its products.
Paraphrasing : those expectations are not too high, they’re the direct result of the games’ budget.
Yeah, okay, let’s admit that for a second. It’s not like they have no control over the scale and budget of their own games. Seems to me this still counts as unrealistic expectations…
The problem is that the first is easy, the later is hard, nigh impossible.
Software development is notoriously hard to predict. Specially features against time and cost of development. But video games are even harder to predict. It’s impossible to know how many copies a game will sell, you might as well hire a tarot reader. Specially if the game doesn’t exist yet.
This is not a justification of the AAA practices. Quite the contrary, things are this way because mid and high management refuse to do their job or plainly suck at it. I guess that the adage still rings true: I want smaller games, with worse graphics, made by well paid developers who work less hours. But this games have never sold billions of dollars or sparked billion dollar game as a service IPs. So executives think it can’t be done and keep expending more in a desperate chase of the golden eggs goose.
SQEX did have significant AA-sized development for a long while, although potentially less going forward until their flagship rights itself (or they develop a new one). It’s less risky, and the payoff can still end up highly successful like Life is Strange or Octopath Traveler.
I guess the silver lining for them here is that FF16 had much better management than 13 and 15. It would have been a real disaster if 16 went into the budget overruns those two games did. Being hitched to a low-market-share platform and being released in a crazy year for gaming was also bad luck. Granted, FF16 and Rebirth not being good enough to move PS5 units is its own problem.
Consoles shouldn’t tie their success to a single game. Nintendo, the creators of such model, ditched it almost immediately. After the Famicom. Volume of games + convenience is what move consoles, not a single game. Exclusives have diminishing returns and at the beginning of console sales cycle they’re more likely to hurt the game.
According to the article at least, that is essentially what they did. But their model was based on earlier years when there was higher projected growth, so the budgets were set too high as a result.
Personally, as long as the final installment in the FF7 Remake trilogy is made with the same budget as the first two and ends on a satisfying note, I’ll be happy. A good ending gives the trilogy as a whole have more lifetime sales than it would if part 3 makes the first two less good in retrospect, i.e. the Mass Effect 3 effect.
I will just agree to disagree on that front. Playing casually, I clocked over 100 hours on the 2nd game, which is more time than it took me to complete the original full game on PS1. I enjoyed basically every minute of time played (save for one particular mini-game that I didn’t care for), so I’d say I got a good value out of it for the cost. It is also hard to say that it is a cash grab when it provides a much fuller experience than most AAA games these days seem to have.
Basically, I don’t hate it any more than I hate the fact that The Lord of the Rings is three separate movies; it’s not like The Hobbit.
Foamstars was a new IP, so they didn’t count on brand name to carry this one.
Unless they thought “Square Enix” would be enough to hype it, and yeah, for a game that far away from their usual, that would be completely disconnected from reality.
Paraphrasing : those expectations are not too high, they’re the direct result of the games’ budget.
Yeah, okay, let’s admit that for a second. It’s not like they have no control over the scale and budget of their own games. Seems to me this still counts as unrealistic expectations…
They seem to have things backwards.
You don’t set expected sales based on the cost of development. You set the cost of development based on the expected sales.
The problem is that the first is easy, the later is hard, nigh impossible.
Software development is notoriously hard to predict. Specially features against time and cost of development. But video games are even harder to predict. It’s impossible to know how many copies a game will sell, you might as well hire a tarot reader. Specially if the game doesn’t exist yet.
This is not a justification of the AAA practices. Quite the contrary, things are this way because mid and high management refuse to do their job or plainly suck at it. I guess that the adage still rings true: I want smaller games, with worse graphics, made by well paid developers who work less hours. But this games have never sold billions of dollars or sparked billion dollar game as a service IPs. So executives think it can’t be done and keep expending more in a desperate chase of the golden eggs goose.
SQEX did have significant AA-sized development for a long while, although potentially less going forward until their flagship rights itself (or they develop a new one). It’s less risky, and the payoff can still end up highly successful like Life is Strange or Octopath Traveler.
I guess the silver lining for them here is that FF16 had much better management than 13 and 15. It would have been a real disaster if 16 went into the budget overruns those two games did. Being hitched to a low-market-share platform and being released in a crazy year for gaming was also bad luck. Granted, FF16 and Rebirth not being good enough to move PS5 units is its own problem.
Consoles shouldn’t tie their success to a single game. Nintendo, the creators of such model, ditched it almost immediately. After the Famicom. Volume of games + convenience is what move consoles, not a single game. Exclusives have diminishing returns and at the beginning of console sales cycle they’re more likely to hurt the game.
According to the article at least, that is essentially what they did. But their model was based on earlier years when there was higher projected growth, so the budgets were set too high as a result.
Personally, as long as the final installment in the FF7 Remake trilogy is made with the same budget as the first two and ends on a satisfying note, I’ll be happy. A good ending gives the trilogy as a whole have more lifetime sales than it would if part 3 makes the first two less good in retrospect, i.e. the Mass Effect 3 effect.
They really messed up with ff7 remake part 1. Don’t think I’ll be buying any of the others unless it’s used.
Also, said this before, but splitting it into three titles was an obvious cash grab.
I will just agree to disagree on that front. Playing casually, I clocked over 100 hours on the 2nd game, which is more time than it took me to complete the original full game on PS1. I enjoyed basically every minute of time played (save for one particular mini-game that I didn’t care for), so I’d say I got a good value out of it for the cost. It is also hard to say that it is a cash grab when it provides a much fuller experience than most AAA games these days seem to have.
Basically, I don’t hate it any more than I hate the fact that The Lord of the Rings is three separate movies; it’s not like The Hobbit.
I’m sure the second game is enjoyable. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. It’s still a money grab to split the game into three separate titles.
They also at least highlighted the platform locking was not a good idea for them, which I suppose most people will agree with.
Seems like they’re not aware of how much (or little) desire there is for their IPs.
Foamstars was a new IP, so they didn’t count on brand name to carry this one.
Unless they thought “Square Enix” would be enough to hype it, and yeah, for a game that far away from their usual, that would be completely disconnected from reality.