Tim Schafer on Psychonauts 2, creativity and 20 years of Double Fine

lelo2play13h ago(Edited 13h ago)

Square should ask Sony for more money...

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Outside_ofthe_Box8h ago

Square should ask Microsoft to buy them out...

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FinalFantasyFanatic6h ago

@Outside_ofthe_Box,
So that Microsoft can close down the studio after doing nothing with them? Right...

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gleepot13h ago

Sad but true. It's the consequence of a shift in player habits, massive overhead, and out of control budgets across the industry.

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XiNatsuDragnel14h ago

Unfortunate man

blackblades14h ago(Edited 14h ago)

What did NA and EU did anyways? Just translate or something? I would say it might help them get back to there roots but DK.

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Hofstaderman13h ago(Edited 13h ago)

Actually, you are correct they play a hand in localization especially in Europe with the many languages. That and marketing.

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EternalTitan11h ago

They ate up salary.

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Workshyskiver14h ago

Industry is in the gutters.

Profchaos4h ago

Yup videogame crash 2024 edition

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Battlestar2313h ago

They should of never of made those exclusive deals with Sony. If SE made FFXVI/FFVIIRemake/Rebirth available on PS/PC/Xbox/Switch Day 1 they would of sold 20/30 million copies of each game and would mostly likely would not of lead to layoffs.

Exclusive games to any platform is not only anti gamer but they are toxic to the gaming industry. All games made by Sony and other companies should be made multi platform.

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CantThinkOfAUsername13h ago(Edited 13h ago)

20-30 million. Right. SE must be sleeping on Japanese CoD right here.

P_Bomb13h ago

Absolutely absurd estimate.

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neutralgamer199212h ago

Battle

lol are you serious? Let’s see

First game is on PC and so will the rest

Switch can’t run FF remakes

Xbox again I ask are you serious? Xbox game sales accounts for such little piece of the pie in overall gaming that there are publishers doubting if they could recover their development and porting costs for Xbox versions

The real issue here is square enix just can’t stop releasing 1-2 really bad AAA games on year basis

Babylon's Fall
Left alive
Marvel avengers
For spoken

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JEECE12h ago

Lol I love how the "Publishers can sell tons of copies of JRPGs on Xbox" myth won't die. The failure of exclusive JRPGs on 360 (by far the most popular Xbox) couldn't kill it. The low Xbox sales of FF games that launched on Xbox and PlayStation at the same time couldn't kill it. The fact that Gamepass has the few players on Xbox who actually play JRPGs conditioned to expect them for free can't kill it.

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Profchaos4h ago

Publishers aren't selling millions of anything on Xbox the fanbase has adopted the I'll wait for gamepass mentality so publishers are actually starting to skip the platform unless it's a garunteed hit like GTA

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RNTody12h ago(Edited 12h ago)

Are you insane? Final Fantasy has historically not really sold close to those numbers, those are God of War and Spider-Man numbers dude. Final Fantasy 15 sold 5 million at launch, on both PS4 and Xbox One and had the benefit of releasing three years into the console lifecycle with no cross gen releases slowing the adoption rates. It sold a lifetime of ten million copies. Yet, 80% of sales were on PS4 and only 20% on Xbox One.

Are you going to seriously sit there and tell us the Game Pass crowd are going to double the sales of these games?

Put your mind onto the real problems. It isn't exclusivity. It's out of control budgets, over estimated and unrealistic sales expectations, bloated game development and poor management.

The budgets for Final Fantasy 16 and Remake and Rebirth far exceed Final Fantasy 15, exponentially so, yet did the audience grow exponentially? No.

Don't make this about something it's not, and don't fall for the crap from publishers that triple A games are unsustainable. The next stop on the station is games need to be more expensive and we need more monetisation methods like adverts in games. The problem is with publishers, not us.

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shinoff21839h ago

It's like everyone just wants to hate on it. Fact of the matter is the install base for ps5 just isn't that big compared to ps4. Right now. I've read double packs weren't counted(remake, rebirth pack) I'm not sure if it's true, and then some are just waiting for the whole trilogy to be done. I know someone doing that.

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EternalTitan11h ago

"If SE made FFXVI/FFVIIRemake/Rebirth available on PS/PC/Xbox/Switch Day 1 they would of sold 20/30 million copies of each game"

Lmao.

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ocelot0711h ago

I like how a lot of people are blaming the Sony exclusive deals. Yet in the last 4 years they have released about 50 games. 70% of them being multiplatform, 20% being Nintendo Exclusives and about 10% PlayStation Exclusives yet lets all blame the Sony deals lol.

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shinoff21839h ago

Exactly. Where my dragon quest spinoff that only Nintendo do keeps getting. Stop crying about Sony. Hey Xbox players. Remember last remnant, squares exclusive Xbox 360 game Ms paid for, you guys were sht at supporting that. Same with lost odyssey, blue dragon, and infinite undiscovery. That's why Japanese devs don't wanna develop for it.

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notachance7h ago

this. many people didn't realise switch had more square exclusives than sony.

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shinoff21839h ago(Edited 9h ago)

You mean pc

Wouldn't have sold sht on Xbox, and the switch couldn't hang

Xbox accounted for 9 percent of ff15 sales. Lol. Xbox ain't doing sht

CrimsonWing698h ago

What JRPG has ever sold 20 - 30 million?

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+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 4h ago

13h ago

Replies(2)

DOMination-13h ago

To put it into perspective, take a studio like Black Box who went through a spell of churning out half decent Need for Speed games annually.

Need for Speed: Underground - 15 million+
Need for Speed: Underground 2 - 11 million+
Need for Speed: Most Wanted - 17.8 million
Need for Speed: Carbon - 15.6 million
Need for Speed: ProStreet - 10.9 million
Need for Speed: Undercover - 8.9 million

This was the norm for the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era.

A Need for Speed game now requires more employees, considerably more time than one year to develop and absolutely a whole load more capital to fund development, let alone the extra costs of developing Frostbite and adapting it to a racing game (if that's still a thing). And at the end of it, it will likely never sell anywhere near even the worst game in that list above.

In that same era, Rockstar Games (albeit, various Rockstar studios) released GTA3, GTA VC, GTA SA, State of Emergency, Manhunt, The Warriors, Red Dead Revolver, three Midnight Club games and Bully. We're lucky if we even see a single game from them this generation.

In summary, committing to making a big AAA game now is barely worth it. Unless you are lucky enough to be sat on a mega IP like CoD or GTA, it's a huge gamble. Games simply take too long, require too many employees and cost too much. Unless AI or Unreal Engine can fix this and QUICK, the industry is going to be reduced to mobile-like experiences.

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Profchaos4h ago

That era is one of my favourites but let's face it games were different back then at the time underground felt like a revolution so did the GTA trilogy and even shooters like halo changed the way we play.

I honestly believe that generation laid the template for how most of our modern games worked but development times were like 12 months for a decent project the budgets were far lower and publishers could freely experiment.

Since that generation we are playing mostly the same ips and most have anywhere between 5 to 10 sequaks since that point so many of these IPS are classics but are getting stale who even cared the nfs heat came out. Halo 2 was a mega event and a global phenomenon but haloe infinite got a decent amount of buzz but was gone off the radar in a month.

RNTody13h ago

The gaming industry needs to learn just like Hollywood. You cannot sustain "more, more, more" indefinitely if your sales are not increasing in line with your costs. But no, every sequel needs to be three times the size of its predecessor, have twice as many staff, have monetisation systems and 100 hours of padded content and six year development cycles. But are these sequels ever twice as good?

Godzilla Minus One, on a poultry budget of $15 million, blew anything Disney has done out of the water since 2021 in terms of visual effects and created the best monster movie I've seen in my life.

Asobo made A Plague Tale Requiem for $25 million and its visuals, writing and quality rival games with ten times its budget.

Am I against big production values? No, God of War, The Last of Us, and so on justify their budgets and sell ridiculously well. But I am against unrealistic excess. If a game sells two million copies, tripling its budget isn't going to get you six million copies.

Square Enix is facing the reality that Final Fantasy sales are in decline and have been since FF15, yet they seem to be ramping up their development costs exponentially. It's hard to find facts but word seems to be FF15 had a budget of $50 to $100 million and FF16 had a budget of like $250 million plus. Same goes for FF7 remakes.

Yet other factors affected their market potential, like years of cross-gen releases slowing the PS5 adoption rate.

These lay offs will keep happening until publishers make their costs sustainable and stop trying to make it seem like triple A development is impossible or that we need more monetisation and higher priced games to account for their hubris.

Petebloodyonion12h ago

Talk about a sound explanation instead of it didn't sell well because it releases at the same time as X game or it's because it's only digital.

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Chocoburger10h ago(Edited 10h ago)

I've been saying this for a long time, game budgets have ballooned out of control. We don't need better graphics, we need FUN GAMES that feel complete and satisfying to play. But publishers have a one-track mind, they've all been convinced that better graphics and bigger and more detailed worlds are required or people will pass on their games. This logic obviously doesn't apply to Nintendo which sells games in excess of 15 million copies, with out-dated visuals.

Publishers need to lower the budgets, and stop killing themselves off, its pure insanity.

RNTody9h ago

I actually don't think it's because they're pushing graphics, I mean, these massive budget titles are not actually that much greater visually or technically than smaller games these days. The talent of the graphics artists matters an enormous amount. Take the movie scene with Disney, their budgets are twenty times that of smaller films like Godzilla Minus One or Monkey Man, and more than double larger productions like 1917, yet they're outclassed by these lesser movies.

The reasons for the development costs ballooning in my opinion, is far too many staff working on projects leading to inefficient production (i.e like what we heard about Starfield), forced monetisation systems which eat up development time and resources and push for engagement in the hope of an uptake with in-game purchases, bloated game design and world building which increases time required to playtest and code all the filler content, prolonged development periods and repeated delays where the quality doesn't come close to the time spent (see Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League), mismanagement, excessive spend on advertising beyond what the title is reasonably expected to sell, lack of focus in game development.

Dead Space remains the best example I can ever use. The original sold a million copies and was a breakout success. Dead Space sold two million copies but EA was disappointed in its performance. They then lost their minds and ramped up again for Dead Space 3, with an unrealistic sales target of like 5 million to breakeven. Of course, it crashed and burned, because they forgot their original audience was between one and two million. Exponentially increased their budget, unrealistically increased their sales expectations, kept adding more and more costs and unnecessary excess until it became completely unsustainable.

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VersusDMC7h ago

No way FFXV had a budget to 80 to 100 million...that was probably it's marketing budget. FFXV has 3 versions. Versus 13, Nomura directed XV and after taking nomura off the project the rushed and downdraded final version of XV.

Those numbers come from a random message board.

https://www.ffxivpro.com/fo...

Here's a message board speculating it had a budget of 600 million based on financial statements if this is the kind of accuracy were going for.

https://www.ffxivpro.com/fo...

TiredGamer13h ago

It's the implosion I keep talking about. Expectations and reality in the industry are no longer aligned. This will continue until some sort of market equilibrium is reached.

Hofstaderman13h ago(Edited 13h ago)

Agreed, this cannot continue and something has got to give. I miss the old days where development costs and time were managable and SquareSoft released hit after hit. Vagrant Story, Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7 to 9 released ONE year apart and all of them were critically acclaimed.

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13h ago

Exvalos13h ago

The facts are the time and money needed to make games has gone through the roof and we as gamers just aren't buying enough. These games are costing 100 of millions to make and even games rated highly are doing good to get 3 or 4 million in sales. Something has to give.

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P_Bomb13h ago

Raising prices has failed. Seeing games go from $89 CAD to $94 in some cases. I’m just not buying those games.

neutralgamer199212h ago

We all can see the days of square enix being 3rd party are coming to an end which is really sad because they have so many valuable IP’s only if they manage them properly.

kaos8912h ago(Edited 12h ago)

Layoffs = Bidenomics, folks!

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Reaper22_12h ago

Like I said before, it's not just Microsoft laying people off. It's happening throughout the industry.

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shinoff21839h ago

Ms has come under fire because they have recently dropped so much money on studios and publishers. That's people's issue. That and the highest rated game they've released in years seeing its studio closed. That's why there's a difference.

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-Foxtrot12h ago(Edited 12h ago)

Are we sure, and I mean super sure, fanboyism aside and the like that maybe Final Fantasy XVI and especially VII Rebirths sales weren’t at least a tad disappointing for them?

We keep fighting about it but if freaking VII, Square Enix’s Golden boy and it’s hype of us begging for a remake for almost 15-20 years didn’t set the world on fire like Square Enix wanted then what else can they give us product wise at this point high expectations and all.

I’m not saying it would have stopped this and everything would have fixed its self if they launched on more platforms since the industry seems like it’s imploding within itself at the minute but it could have given them a little leg room.

Maybe it’s time to admit, regarding your feelings on the games, and this has NO impact on the quality of the games, that XVI could have felt more FF like being more that a simplistic hack and slash game and VII’s remake should have just been a single, less ambitious game just telling the original story over reimagining it?

Even Kingdom Hearts III felt shallow, look at how convoluted it’s become and they are still doing that with all the Missing Link / Union X shit before Kingdom Hearts IV even comes out.

EternalTitan11h ago

Looks like after the disaster of 16 they are shaking up.

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ROCKY2811h ago

this is beginning to look like 83 crash :(

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PhillyDonJawn11h ago

Wth is going on!!!!?

rlow110h ago

What’s new? The whole industry is in an upheaval and this isn’t the end of it. I really think the pandemic poisoned the industry as a whole. Big profits, everyone playing games during the pandemic. Now it’s back to normal and they’re trying to regain those pandemic numbers numbers. Our hobby hijacked by a bunch suits.

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meatnormous10h ago

Release more copies of FF pixel remaster on physical discs for ps4. Idiots

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shinoff21839h ago

Fking word. It's fk up how they just raised the middle finger to ps4 players. I'm still peeved about this

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thesoftware7309h ago

This is not limited to any one company, the industry is in a major change, for better or worse. Game budget and time for development have skyrocketed, and the industry is trying to find it's balance again, it will level out, it's just a matter of when.

Restructuring come with layoff 90% of the time.

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