370°

Square Enix Declares $140m Loss Amid Game Pipeline Shakeup

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth publisher Square Enix has declared a $140m loss based on a shakeup of its internal development pipeline.

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Community34d ago
Furesis34d ago

What are they doing over there? Sounds like they canceled something big. I read a rumor a while back about ff9 remake . Here "Final Fantasy IX has gone through a very challenging development, the game is still in progress but may undergo changes drastic enough that we won't hear about it for a couple of years."
This could be one of the reasons if the rumor is true. That was Silknight i don't know how credible he is but it's something and it would make sense.

-Foxtrot34d ago

I hope IX is still on the cards

Just a straight up remake which they expand a little bit nothing over ambitious

If IX dosent happen then VI and VIII will never be thought of.

Kakashi Hatake33d ago

6 and 8 were way more p popular games despite today's cult following of 9.

blackbeld33d ago

I want my FF8 remake! Can't believe they cancelled it.

TiredGamer34d ago

What are they doing? Sales are falling and the costs are out of control. Big releases need to be absolute sales home runs now, and Final Fantasy sales have stagnated.

Now we know why Square didn’t fall over themselves to remake the original FF7 all these years ago. It certainly wasn’t a license to print money, at least not with what the expectations were. Each of these full on remakes drains an enormous amount of company resources for a razor thin profit margin.

TwoPicklesGood34d ago

Breaking the game up into multiple parts was a mistake IMO.

blackblades33d ago

The loses came from cancelling games nothing else.

Tapani33d ago

They lost the magic in the remakes. And the story is incomplete. The original FF7 is still way better. The Remake / Rebirth are just fan service. Like an Anime/Manga with "optional" filler content. FF7 had pretty much zero filler, it was paced extremely well, and still today flows much better than the grindy story and spongey enemy battles in the remakes.

babadivad33d ago

If they released it at once on all platforms, they would have made all of their money back. Could have been on to an FF8 or 9 remake. Ready to cash in again on nostalgia like Capcom. This is their fault for trying to milk the title.

Once I head they were breaking it up into parts, I lost all interest.

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neutralgamer199233d ago

I hope people understand usually when a loss is declared it means a game which had been in development got cancelled. For example Sony Santa Monica before GOW-PS4 had cancelled a project which Sony had spent 7 figures on

As far as square is concerned they release a bad game once a year. Forspoken anyone?

For those making comments on remake not selling well, I hope y’all realize that Sony is the only reason this remake is happening. If Sony didn’t fund it the remake wouldn’t be happening. Just like Konami didn’t want to remake SH2 because development costs of 100 plus million

shadowT34d ago

Do not miss Final Fantasy 16. Great game!

raWfodog34d ago

I'm waiting for them to release the complete edition bundle, but it's definitely on my list.

PhillyDonJawn34d ago

Wth is going on with the gaming industry?

mandf34d ago

Corporate investors taking everything

TiredGamer34d ago

Not rocket science. Compare sales numbers, development cycles, and budgets to the previous gens. We are all collectively burning up the industry from the inside out. Expectations are ludicrously high now for every release and sales are dropping for even the most prestigious of series.

We used to be satisfied paying $50-60 for a game that took 1/100th the budget and staff to make. Now gamers feel cheated if they have to pay the same for a game that took 100x the budget. We may be reaching the end of the line for this model of gaming.

wiz719133d ago

@tiredgamer I think your point is one that ppl don’t understand and you hit it on the nose .. some gamers don’t want to take accountability but it’s some of the gamers fault the industry is where it’s at .. we as gamers set the standards for the industry not the shareholders , ppl forget that the shareholders and the industry want and need OUR Money. Both the Xbox and PlayStation are seeing a drop in hardware , the industry is very stagnant right now.

Tacoboto33d ago

Speaking to Square:

Turns out their mismanagement wasn't related to the western studios they dumped to Embracer, but their own fault.

With regards to Xbox - a good way to kill your brand is to pull support on high quality titles and only dump B and C-tier titles to it

With regards to PC - Epic Games Story exclusivity for any duration and piss-poor optimization will hurt you.

With regards to FF Pixel Remasters - y'all messed up by barely releasing them on physical, like wtf that was free money!

And lastly, you don't help a franchise by releasing a mainline title that undermines every title that came before it. FFXVI was a DMC-like with bottom-of-the-barrel side quests and I can't imagine that helping Rebirth at all considering its marketing is directly tied to how big that game is.

Tacoboto33d ago

Sony is getting their best titles and with the most polish, so what about it? Nintendo gets their top properties too, for titles that can run on Switch hardware.

It's the other fanbases that get the second- and third-class treatment from Square. If that's due to agreements with Sony, that's not a Sony issue but a Square one for accepting those terms. Sony is doing its best to look out for Sony.

wesnytsfs33d ago

sales and stupid practices like exclusives.

TiredGamer34d ago

The industry implosion is continuing. Sky high budgets, prolonged development windows, stagnant sales numbers, and falling currency values (inflation) are wreaking havoc on the legacy industry. AAA games will slowly become the rarity.

CS734d ago

Sad. Rebirth was one of my favorite games in a long time. Should have sold more.

CrimsonWing6934d ago

Oh I’m with you. What’s worse is they can say, “Well we tried to make this amazing game and spend all this money on, but not enough people showed an interest. So no more of these since we can’t take a hit like that.”

The industry is going to take a dramatic shift. Mark my words on this.

rpvenom33d ago (Edited 33d ago )

I think there is quite a large portion of individuals like myself who held out on buying it on PS5 because I can get it on PC eventually. To be able to mod the game and also have custom graphical settings to my liking

gold_drake33d ago

same

but im not sure if it matters at all. im sure they made sony pay a hefty sum for the 3parter to come on ps5 exclusively. so watever they made in sales, might have come bk in profits for square, but i dont know
and we dont know what "underperformed" even means for square.

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70°

Interview: Winifred Phillips Discusses the Wizardry Soundtrack -- Gamerhub UK

The talented music maker discusses her process, challenges and, of course, magic!

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200°

The Status of Every PlayStation Franchise

Sony owns a fair few iconic franchises - many dating right back to the original PlayStation. But while we’re pretty familiar with the likes of ongoing series such as God of War, Horizon, and Gran Turismo, there are plenty of PlayStation franchises that haven’t seen the light of day in a long time. So in this video, we’re going to be taking a look at the status of PlayStation’s many IPs, and checking in on when we last heard from them.

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Skuletor9h ago

A 20+ minute video? Just include the written list in the article.

DarXyde5h ago

Status in one word:

Underutilized.

The end.

anast5h ago

Which ones should they utilize more?

BehindTheRows4h ago

Indeed. We hear this “underutilized” talk as if every old franchise should have a comeback or reboot.

I_am_Batman3h ago(Edited 3h ago)

When new IPs start looking like Concord, you can't blame people for wanting another Resistance or Killzone instead.

anast2h ago(Edited 2h ago)

J&D and Resistance are good ones. As much as I love these, though, I'm not sure they would payoff without an enormous marketing push. Younger gamers today do not have taste and the older gamers that would appreciate these might not be enough. But yeah, I would day 1 Resistance.

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Hotpot1h ago

Well that’s just the consequence of consistently producing new IPs isn’t it. Not all studios can be or want to be like polyphony digital who made gran turismo all the time.

Abear213h ago

Here lies The Infamous Series; once a shining beacon of free flying, lighting bolt sniping, and wire riding amazing gameplay, it has been laid to rest and be forgotten for what seems like forever despite being loved by millions. Plot next to Wipeout across from NBA Jam.

Lightning7711m ago

Still baffling they cancelled Twisted Metal, Factions 2 and Spider-Man Multiverse LS game but thought Concord looked good enough.

250°

Take-Two CEO Doesn’t Think AI Will Reduce Employment or Dev Costs; “Stupidest Thing” He’s Heard

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick doesn't think AI will reduce employment or lower development costs, and calls it "stupidest thing" he's ever heard.

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Community1d 2h ago
lodossrage1d 4h ago (Edited 1d 4h ago )

They already have AI trained to do coding.......

How he thinks it's stupid is beyond me, Especially since we see it happening in real time.

CS71d 1h ago

Company A has 300 employees and lays of 200 to replace them with AI to release the same quality game.

Company B has 300 employees and keeps all 300 but instead uses AI to release a game with dramatically larger scale, scope, complexity, short dev cycle etc.

Company B would release a dramatically better product by using humans + AI and consumers would buy the better game.

I actually agree with this concept.

Huey_My_D_Long1d 1h ago (Edited 1d 1h ago )

This is key facet. Its how the AI is used. It's actually is impressive as is and really would make an amazing addition to alot of people in their jobs, not just tech. It also has the potential for businesses to use to lay off large amounts of people, as much as they could to save money on labor. I hope too many companies don't go with the latter. But since usually companies are worried about bottom line over people...we will see some try and hopefully fail. But yeah, if its to help workers like in your company B scenario I'm totally down...Just scared Company A may be too enticing to some ceos and businesses.

Darkegg1d 1h ago

Value of AI and value of humans will both be increased with human-AI complex. Each, by themselves, will not be independently better than the other. Whether AI will ever be independent from humans is the fear question of humans, ironically because of our doing. At this stage, most of the doing is because of humans, not because of AI. AI is doing exactly that by our design, until we have failed ourselves with an AI development that went awry. The biggest take is that humans have only ourselves to blame when things become wrong, and we have to decide what is the ultimate goal with AI we want to accomplish. It would take a person with high morals and high ethics to make right of AI. I would not want businessman to decide what AI should do or what capabilities it can have. AI should be in the hands of people with high moral fiber, or those operating on love, kindness, and compassion.

BlackOni1d ago

AI is SUPPOSED to be used as a tool, not a replacement. It's designed to do two important things artists can take advantage of immediately.

- Make the ideation/reference imaging process much quicker and easier (basically using it as a google search)
- Make mundane and time consuming tasks faster and easier so more time is spent on creation.

Unfortunately, what many have done is used it as a way to replace rather than supplement.

Einhander197221h ago(Edited 21h ago)

CS7

In the ideal world yes.

In the real world where companies have shown little desire to innovate and spent every effort to maximize profits the end result will be the same quality games (if were lucky) made by less people and more AI.

Company Real World: Fires 200 people and makes the same game cheaper using AI and the executives get record bonuses.

Edit:

Lets look at history, specifically auto manufacturing.

In the 70's and 80's the auto unions tried to oppose automation of jobs (robots) stating that they would take peoples jobs. And the people in charge who wanted to make more money said the exact same types of things that are being said about AI. But we can look at history and see that countless types of jobs were in fact replaced by automation, that was of course even compounded upon by computers.

The net effect was that the rich got richer less jobs were needed so wages were forced down by competition for the jobs that were left.

hombreacabado3h ago

that concept works in the initial beginning phase of AI but once AI learns and surpasses the knowledge and coding expertise of even the best human employee than this CEO will no longer need competent humans in that line of work.

Extermin8or3_1h ago

@Hue_My£D_Long

Yes but that is a choice then by massively increased productivity and this greater income and wealth and stagnating with similar levels of productivity and output and not creating much wealth. Usually the option that creates wealth prevails because a rising tide raises all ships.

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Number1TailzFan1d 1h ago

You can already make your own SFX with text prompts now as well, of course it will lower development cost and time

1Victor1d 1h ago (Edited 1d 1h ago )

WARNING WARNING ‼️ SARCASM AHEAD
Sure Strauss and robots didn’t take jobs from car factories.
Edit:Sad thing is he believes it and unfortunately he won’t be replaced for a long time by AI

senorfartcushion1d ago (Edited 1d ago )

He doesn't, he's just lying. These people lay people off so they can get bonuses. If AI takes jobs, their bonus goes bigger and the workforce goes smaller.

porkChop22h ago

Because he sees AI as a tool to aid development. He wants to use AI to help make bigger and better games in the same timeframe. Other CEOs want to replace devs with AI to cut costs and make lifeless games faster for a quick buck. Strauss has the right idea, this is how AI should be used. To extend and expand the capabilities of devs.

neutralgamer19922h ago

There will be few companies who will go overboard and try to replace their employees with AI tech. The ones that will make the most money will be the ones that utilize ai, along with their employee talent, to make the best product possible

AI could handle some of the most time consuming processes. To expediate the development, so in return, costing the publisher's last money end time.

Extermin8or3_1h ago

Not reliably they haven't. Coding done by ai is generally abysmal for all but the most generic tasks.

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jambola1d 3h ago

Ceo says stupid thing
Part 5837384

Zeref1d 2h ago (Edited 1d 2h ago )

I think maybe sometimes we give people in these positions too much credit when it comes to intelligence.

DarXyde6h ago

I think you mean candor, not intelligence.

If you take him to mean what he's saying at face value, sure.

I don't. And I think he's clearly lying.

romulus231d 2h ago

As long as it doesn't effect his inflated executive salary or his ridiculous bonuses I'm sure he's fine with it.

RNTody1d 1h ago

Hahaha yeah trust the CEO suit over the actual developers making the games. Good one.

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