Square Enix is “aggressively pursuing” a multiplatform strategy, including “Nintendo platforms, PlayStation, Xbox, and PCs”.
The company’s new medium-term business plan was shared today alongside its latest financial report, and follows news of both a review of its development system and the abandonment of £112m of in-development projects.
The multiplatform strategy is part of a move to “diversify earnings opportunities” and aims to allow more customers to “enjoy our titles in regards to major franchises and AAA titles including catalogue titles”.
As a PC gamer, I’ll tell you why sales would slump for me. I eagerly waited 2 years for FFVII to come to PC. Then, I paid 90 bucks for the game to include “all future dlc.” I assumed that was 90 bucks for the rest of the game. It was not. I will have to wait another 2 years (avoiding PlayStation spoilers), and then pay 70 bucks for the next disk. I’m gonna assume that pans out the rest of the way through the game, meaning I’ll have hundreds of dollars in the game over a decade. Nope, I’m good. I’ll dust off the emulator and just play old school.
In addition to everything you said, Square Enix has just been laughably behind the trends for a while. Turn based RPGs have been seeing a resurgence in popularity in recent years while they’ve been busy turning one of the most popular turn based RPGs of all time into an action RPG (with significantly too many cut scenes IMO).
They really have gotten as bad or worse than Nintendo with reselling old games. Final Fantasy 6 is my favorite game of all time. I’ve spent around $120 buying on different platforms in my lifetime. There’s no fucking way I’m spending another $20 on a pixel remaster that has a handful of upgraded animations and an expanded opera scene. Right now on my phone I can buy 2 versions of FF3 and 2 versions of FF4 all of which are $15+. FF7 almost feels like an experiment to see how far they can push before people stop buying.
Yh, because FFvii is a turn based battle / strategy game that we all know and love and they turned it into a fucking hack and slash game of which there are countless already available.
I literally would have bought a new console just to play the exact same game with updated graphics and music (maybe a few extra features thrown in). I was so disappointed.
The last final fantasy I played was 15, it was ok but I really wanted the original turn based combat from the final fantasy I grew up with.
I was worried when I heard they were bringing the same combat to the Ff7 remake.
I had similar thoughts to what you say here. Then I played the game anyway. I just finished the story last night at ~95 hours and I loved it. Battle changes took some getting used to, but it ended up being quite fun, and still required tactical thinking and planning. You still get to craft up materia combinations, etc.
I liked the combat. I fucking hated the mini games. The whole thing was a collection of games I sort of liked implemented poorly.
Chokobo racing, the stupid pirate shooting gallery, and the parade rhythm game soured me on the series to the point that I won’t buy the 3rd game.
