|
Something that's not immediately super obvious about Necron is that he's a Demon and Aerial-type enemy, so equipping one of those two Killer abilities along with MP Attack means your normal attacks nearly break 9999 damage with decent weapons. Necron's easily the nastiest FF boss in the series offensively between his normal attacks and Grand Cross slowing you down to heal all the time, but 66,000 HP is pretty terrible when you're doing 10,000 damage an attack.
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 08:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 00:00 |
|
|
THE AWESOME GHOST posted:There was an interview with her where he started talking about Persona and then cut himself off and I really want to know what he was gonna say. I think Troy Baker 2014 can actually be picky with his roles and he doesn't want to do Kanji for the 6th time or whatever They don't even need Troy for future persona roles, Matthew Mercer is a perfect clone of his voice (and literally replaced him in the anime and no one noticed).
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 09:01
|
|
|
There are a lot of people who noticed actually, Mercer's voice is not a perfect replication of Baker's. This is not even spergy voice actor poo poo, there is a noticeable difference in their voices.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 09:03
|
|
|
Baker's Kanji sounds more adolescently awkward and less gruff tuff guy. Mercer is close but not perfect.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 09:11
|
|
|
So uh, why did Baker get replaced in the anime?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 09:12
|
|
|
Volt Catfish posted:So uh, why did Baker get replaced in the anime? He was on his honeymoon.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 09:13
|
|
|
Is there an exhaustive list somewhere of everything that changed or was added in the X/X-2 remakes? I can only find some news articles that give a small overview of the changes, but this is the Internet -- surely someone made an absurdly vast list of the changes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:04
|
|
|
Saoshyant posted:Is there an exhaustive list somewhere of everything that changed or was added in the X/X-2 remakes? I can only find some news articles that give a small overview of the changes, but this is the Internet -- surely someone made an absurdly vast list of the changes. Try the Wikia: FFX FFX-2
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:07
|
|
|
Saoshyant posted:Is there an exhaustive list somewhere of everything that changed or was added in the X/X-2 remakes? I can only find some news articles that give a small overview of the changes, but this is the Internet -- surely someone made an absurdly vast list of the changes. FFX:
FFX-2:
And then there's the really really bad epilogue-sequel audio drama. I think that's about it. Instant Grat fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Aug 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:09
|
|
|
Instant Grat posted:FFX: I was confused for a moment because I had all these a decade ago until I remembered there was a version without these things released in some backwater land.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:12
|
|
|
Kanfy posted:I was confused for a moment because I had all these a decade ago until I remembered there was a version without these things released in some backwater land. Yeah, the PAL release of FFX was so delayed that we actually ended up getting all the International Version extras 
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:14
|
|
|
Pesky Splinter posted:Try the Wikia: Exactly what I wanted. Thanks.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:19
|
|
|
Schwartzcough posted:I want to see some bold casting decisions in FFXV. Let's get Gilbert Gottfried as Noctis. Steven Wright
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 11:22
|
|
|
Tae posted:They don't even need Troy for future persona roles, Matthew Mercer is a perfect clone of his voice (and literally replaced him in the anime and no one noticed). I only knew Mercer as the guy who replaced Paul Mercier as Leon in the last RE game. Does anybody know why hey did that? Paul was great. In fact they replaced all the old VAs didn't they?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 15:56
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:I only knew Mercer as the guy who replaced Paul Mercier as Leon in the last RE game. Selecting voice actors has a lot to do with the location and availability of both the voice actors and recording studio. It can get expensive to fly in voice actors, especially if they have to do retakes. In the past, Capcom did most of their voice recordings in Canada and used local actors, such as Sally Cahill for Ada and Paul Haddad for Leon in Resident Evil 2. Richard Waugh, the voice actor for Wesker, is another Canadian actor. Since then, they've gradual moved their voice recording operations to Los Angeles and used actors based around in California. The replacements for Leon, Ada, and Wesker (Matthew Mercer, Megan Hollingshead, and D. C. Douglas) are all actors based in Los Angeles. Furthermore, Capcom has also moved into utilizing performance capture so they probably considered past experience in motion capture and vo-cap when selecting voice actors.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 16:25
|
|
|
I really wish the guy behind FF9 Unleashed would publish a complete list of changes. I really want to know what he did with Odin because I was consistently slaying Grand Dragons in a single attempt for several battles and then suddenly it stopped working. It's possible it was just a fluke that he downed them for like ten consecutive battles, but it's hard to tell. For those wondering, he changed the Grand Dragon's level so Lv5 Death abuse no longer works 
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 17:35
|
|
|
Sunning posted:Selecting voice actors has a lot to do with the location and availability of both the voice actors and recording studio. It can get expensive to fly in voice actors, especially if they have to do retakes. Something that always impressed me about Capcom games during the PS2/Gamecube generation was how much better their lip-sync was than in Square Enix or Konami games. It's because they would record the English dialogue first and the Japanese afterwards, or even not bother with it at all. Kingdom Hearts is an exception, since when they actually use the high quality character models, the lip-sync is fantastic. Even a good Japanese to English dub might still have awkward pauses between lines, or body language that doesn't match up with what's being said, so I really appreciate them focusing on the English voice acting. Like you said, they didn't record the voices and the motion capture at the same time back then, and I think they often had Japanese actors for the motion capture. I wish more effort had gone in to the HD remasters of Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 3 to make the lip-sync more accurate, especially since the tools have become so much better. I'm not expecting L.A. Noire, but it's even more distracting now than it was back when they were released.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
That loving Sned posted:Something that always impressed me about Capcom games during the PS2/Gamecube generation was how much better their lip-sync was than in Square Enix or Konami games. It's because they would record the English dialogue first and the Japanese afterwards, or even not bother with it at all. Kingdom Hearts is an exception, since when they actually use the high quality character models, the lip-sync is fantastic. Many of Capcom's games, such as Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Dragon's Dogma, keep their English voice-overs for the Japanese versions and for other localizations. They typically use Japanese subtitles because the designers think the Japanese voice-acting doesn't work for a game set in middle America or they're presenting the game as a kind of a Hollywood blockbuster from America. Team Silent thought the same when they kept English voices for the Silent Hill games outside of some Easter Eggs. Likewise for Rule of Rose by Punchline which is set in England. It probably helps to keep costs down if you can just get by with English voice-overs. Nevertheless, Resident Evil 6 had Japanese voice-overs released as post-launch DLC. I remember when Square-Enix charged $30 for Japanese language support for Tomb Raider on Steam. It had a really strange and bizarre story behind the handling of that game's localization. In April 2013, Square-Enix released the Japanese edition of Tomb Raider on PC for $80+ which is not an unusual price for PC games in Japan. So Japanese players had to pay a premium to play it on PC in their native language. However, the Japanese steam users have been able to purchase international editions of Tomb Raider since March at around $50. In addition to being available a month before the official Japanese release, this edition came with full Japanese text and voice-overs. So they get full Japanese support at $50 and a month before the official Japanese launch. Furthermore, this version of the game lacks the censorship in the official Japanese version of the game. So, Square-Enix realizes this loophole and closes it through a patch. Now, Japanese players who bought the game at $50 are left with a copy of the game that no longer has access to Japanese language support. On the Eidos Games forums, a representative from Nixxes Software said that it was a mistake made by Valve. The Japanese language support was part of an internal testbed for Steamworks and was accidentally released at that time. So do they leave it at that? No, SE wants to make up for this by offering $30 Japanese language DLC to anyone who took advantage of the loophole to get the game early and at a cheaper price. So these players would have to pay the difference between the $50 version and the official $80 Japanese version in order to have access to Japanese language support. While it was supposed to be a way for Japanese players of the $50 edition to get access to Japanese language support, it comes off as price-gorging after they patched out Japanese support. Talk about a PR disaster.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 20:20
|
|
|
Beef Waifu posted:No voice actress cares about sexual poo poo they work on. Hell, one of Tara Strong's favorite roles is Toot from Drawn Together and that is something of a role. The only time I've heard a voice actress struggle with a scene because of the content was a scene in Death Note that is REALLY showing how dissonant the values of Japan are when it comes to a married couple. Which scene in Death Note was that?
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 20:26
|
|
|
Sunning posted:So do they leave it at that? No, SE wants to make up for this by offering $30 Japanese language DLC to anyone who took advantage of the loophole to get the game early and at a cheaper price. So these players would have to pay the difference between the $50 version and the official $80 Japanese version in order to have access to Japanese language support. While it was supposed to be a way for Japanese players of the $50 edition to get access to Japanese language support, it comes off as price-gorging after they patched out Japanese support. Talk about a PR disaster. Wow, SE is so bad at what they do.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 20:41
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:The best spell name in the series will always be ZAP! BANE forever. Kanfy posted:The BoF IV localization also censored the fact that Scias was an alcoholic and thus had slurred speech instead of the sort of adorable stutter we got. As if Ryu's other half didn't make that abundantly clear? Or that there's an empire that uses humans to power their WMDs? I never finished BoF4 because of distractions but I really wonder about the mental state of the team when they were writing the story. Were they just trying to one-up the (near) total genocide of BoF3's dragon clan or what? Beef Waifu posted:No, it's Final Fantasy. Noctis will either be voiced by some dude in a lot of American cartoons, video games, or a failed actor, maybe all three at once. The secondary characters will be the usual suspects. The important question is which one will sound like Spike from Cowboy Beebop, and who will sound like Major Armstrong from FMA? Million Ghosts posted:Baker's Kanji sounds more adolescently awkward and less gruff tuff guy. Mercer is close but not perfect. Like when Mako died and they had to get a new voice actor for Iro in TLA. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 20:41
|
|
|
Sunning posted:Team Silent thought the same when they kept English voices for the Silent Hill games outside of some Easter Eggs. Man, that was awesome. For those who haven't seen it, one of the secret endings in Silent Hill 2 has James Sunderland discover the true mastermind behind Silent Hill, a Shiba wearing headphones, and clumsily pushing and pulling levers. James says, in Japanese, "So it was all your work!", which makes it feel like you've stumbled into something that wasn't finished, or you weren't meant to see. He falls to his knees, the Shiba licks him, and a special version of the ending credits plays.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
That loving Sned posted:Man, that was awesome. For those who haven't seen it, one of the secret endings in Silent Hill 2 has James Sunderland discover the true mastermind behind Silent Hill, a Shiba wearing headphones, and clumsily pushing and pulling levers. James says, in Japanese, "So it was all your work!", which makes it feel like you've stumbled into something that wasn't finished, or you weren't meant to see. He falls to his knees, the Shiba licks him, and a special version of the ending credits plays. ...I think I need to play Silent Hill.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 21:13
|
|
|
Don't get the HD Version. While we're on the topic of Troy Baker, he takes over as the main character of SH2 but both he and Mary-Elizabeth McGlynn, God bless them both because they are talented in so many ways, were total assholes to the guy who originally voiced James. He had the audacity to want credit and payment for his work but they said nope and just redid the whole thing with a new cast. Now I'll be the first to admit SH had RE-level voice-acting until way later but there's a quaint charm to the original SH2 cast and they weren't THAT bad. They're closer to Resident Evil 2 or 3 than RE1 levels. (Now the first Silent Hill...that was RE1 levels) But yeah, besides all that behind-the-scenes info, the HD version hosed up a lot of actual things in-game to boot so you'd be better off just playing the original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LB7LZZGpkw It really is a perfect game. Except for the gameplay but who cares about that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
Super Ninja Fish posted:Which scene in Death Note was that? It's the opening scene of Episode 5 where Penber is talking to Naomi and instead of listening to her warnings about stuff (As she was an ex-investigator) he says she shouldn't concern herself with it because she's his wife now and when they have kids she won't need to be worrying about thinking like an investigator anymore. Personally, looking at the scene it's not like SUPER bad, but I can see why someone would see it another way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
Beef Waifu posted:It's the opening scene of Episode 5 where Penber is talking to Naomi and instead of listening to her warnings about stuff (As she was an ex-investigator) he says she shouldn't concern herself with it because she's his wife now and when they have kids she won't need to be worrying about thinking like an investigator anymore. Personally, looking at the scene it's not like SUPER bad, but I can see why someone would see it another way. To me, it's more about the reaction to it. Basically the wife goes something along the lines of "OK" instead of "gently caress off" and we're left to accept that Japan is apparently just that hosed up. It's uncomfortable.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 00:18
|
|
|
bloodychill posted:To me, it's more about the reaction to it. Basically the wife goes something along the lines of "OK" instead of "gently caress off" and we're left to accept that Japan is apparently just that hosed up. It's uncomfortable.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:17
|
|
|
Endorph posted:To be fair I haven't watched Death Note in like 8 years but it's kind of a hosed up show so it's possible it was meant to be those specific characters being weird people with rear end-backwards views and not the author inherently supporting those views. No, the author is a proud sexist, as shown in Bakuman.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:17
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:No, the author is a proud sexist, as shown in Bakuman.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:25
|
|
|
Endorph posted:Welp, nevermind that then. The best (worst) part is when you have the mangaka characters creating their next female character and all agree that girls should be meek and passive and to do otherwise is super wrong.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
Schwartzcough posted:Wow, SE is so bad at what they do. It just that there were so many better ways to handle it, such as grandfathering players in through an unintended bonus, and they chose probably the one that would cause the most backlash. It's pinching pennies that lead to lost dollars. I suppose this is a good time to talk about Square-Enix's direction for the future and the trends going on for the Japanese console gaming publishers in general. You've probably heard about the next Tomb Raider game will be timed exclusive for Microsoft consoles. Many people think it was due to Microsoft needing more exclusives for 2015. Personally, I believe it is largely due to financial pressure from Square-Enix's shareholders to cut costs and, more importantly, the company's inability to successfully launch games in North America and Europe. To clarify, I don't think it's a lack of confidence in Crystal Dynamics to deliver a quality game with a high metacritic score but rather one about their them successfully promoting an action-adventure game without the help of a strong publisher partner. My evidence largely comes from slide #9 of this report and other sporadic statements about ensuring a strong launch for future titles through partnership deals. The ability to successfully and consistently launch a game on your own is the basis of being a publisher but SE wouldn't be alone in this regard. It seems to be part of a growing trend of old stalwart Japanese publishers not only having difficult adapting to the changing market but also losing confidence in their ability to independently promote games. They're facing competition from both AAA publishing giants in the West and younger, rising mobile publishers in Japan. Assuming that they even have console games in development, we've seen many of them partner up first parties to produce and promote their games, such as Capcom working with Sony and Microsoft for Deep Down and Dead Rising 3 respectively. We've also seen rather odd publishing deals where large Japanese publishers who are known for traditional console gaming work with smaller mobile publishers to launch mobile games for the seemingly larger, more powerful console gaming partner. The strangest partnership seems to be about SEGA working with a little known Japanese mobile/social gaming company called Gumi. To summarize, SEGA has agreed to a publishing deal in which Gumi will publish and launch SEGA's mobile games in the West. Despite Gumi being smaller than SEGA and only launching their first game in the West only this year, SEGA is willing to give up publishing rights so Gumi can successfully launch their games in the West. Essentially, they're willing to forgo some of the profits so a smaller but more skilled publisher can help them successfully launch mobile titles. To put it in perspective, it would like Capcom giving Dead Rising/Resident Evil to a smaller boutique publisher like Deep Silver to publish because they did such a good job with growing the Dead Island brand and promoting Dying Light. Or MTV Games/Microsoft Game Studios giving Dance Central to Ubisoft because they've done a better job with Just Dance. Or Square-Enix, despite being a larger company by almost all metrics, having Bethesda/Zenimax handle their RPG releases in the West because Skyrim was a mega-hit. Gumi is a growing social game publisher who has successfully transitioned from feature phone games (based on popular Japanese social network GREE) to smartphone and web based apps/games that aren't as reliant on GREE for revenue. However, Gumi does not have a large Western publishing branch like SEGA and have just now entered the Western markets with their mobile games. On the other hand, SEGA has restructured over the past few years to be a digital publisher and has been a part of digital distribution platforms like Steam. Nevertheless, they lack confidence in their ability to support/market/grow their mobile titles in the West and are willing to pay Gumi to do it for them. Typically, the larger company would be the one to take publishing duties from the smaller one. While they haven't done anything like the SEGA/Gumi deal, we've seen Square-Enix hand over development/publishing duties to Japanese mobile publishers, such as Circle of Mana by GREE, because they don't have the in-house expertise to consistently launch mobile/social games. Going back to Square-Enix, it's not just Eidos's action-adventure games they're having troubles with; they've struggled launching games in their core competency, JRPGs, in the West. On one hand, FFXIV: ARR's promotion, communication with fans, and the general interaction with consumers after a disastrous launch was very well done. They did a great job identifying the game's problems, addressing feedback, and getting back all the good will they lost. Unfortunately, it seems that was the exception rather than the norm in that none of their other Japanese RPGs have the same level of discourse when they're facing similar problems. The heart of the problem is their inability to successfully manage large teams without burning through their money, cannibalizing smaller teams, or repeatedly missing deadlines. However, they seem to have an equally difficult time addressing the changing consumer tastes and demographics of North America. They've tried various methods to appeal to the shifting demographics the West, North America especially, but it hasn't been very effective. FFXIII had a sponsorship deal with the 2010 NBA All-Star Game. FFXIII-2 got DLC costumes from Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed to appeal to those fanbases. In particular, they spent a lot of time focus testing FFXIII-2 and added what they believed to be popular features at the time, such as a dialogue wheel and multiple endings. A vocal song was even removed from the North American/European release of the game because journalists at e3 didn't like it in the demo. It seems as though they're grasping onto every trend in hopes that it helps their JRPG title have mainstream success. A game like Bravely Default was a success overseas but it was Nintendo who handled the publishing in North America and Europe. This isn't to say that Microsoft is going to snatch up FFXV/KH3 as timed exclusives (well, they might if SE runs out of money). Instead, I think these co-publishing deals with various partners are going to become common in all aspects of its business as the company tries to find its footing. Historically, they usually relied on a strong publishing partner, such as Sony or their joint venture with Electronic Arts, to help grow the company, promote their lineup, and publish major titles. Over the past two generation, they've slowly tried to ween off relying heavily on publishing deals in order to become a self-sufficient publisher but the results haven't been very good. Their stock today as Square-Enix is actually worse than it was for Square LTD. after The Spirits Within bombed. I can see them going back into developing games and managing IPs while AAA publishers and mobile publishers help manage risks through partnerships. At least for a little while. Nevertheless, I think they'll continue publishing smaller projects by themselves, such as their publishing of Life is Strange by DONTNOD. I'd like for them to become more of boutique publisher.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 14:47
|
|
|
So Sunning, let me ask you a question. Do you think that the merger between Enix and Squaresoft should have been done at all? I've always had this feeling that Squaresoft's products, with some exceptions, had always been at least fun to play, and both companies did well enough that the merger wasn't necessary and that somehow the combined talent managed to some how downgrade from what they were instead of improving, although that could be because, as you've said before, changing times and markets.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 15:10
|
|
|
Gologle posted:So Sunning, let me ask you a question. Do you think that the merger between Enix and Squaresoft should have been done at all? I've always had this feeling that Squaresoft's products, with some exceptions, had always been at least fun to play, and both companies did well enough that the merger wasn't necessary and that somehow the combined talent managed to some how downgrade from what they were instead of improving, although that could be because, as you've said before, changing times and markets. It's a very complicated question to answer in that hindsight is 20/20. At the time, the combined power of two leading Japanese publishers seemed like a surefire way to not only dominate the Japanese gaming industry but also become a global publisher who compete with EA and Activision. However, I think there were clear signs that the synergy was not there between the two companies and that a change in company culture was occurring which would affect the quality of their future output. I don't think the merger was necessarily a bad idea but the internal politics leading up to the merger negated much of the benefits and drove them down a very dangerous road. I'll try my best detail the environment in which the merger occurred and why it had a drastic impact on the future of the company: It started when Enix approached Square in 2000 about a possible merger. The motivation for Enix (a much smaller publisher, yet productive, relative to Square at that time) was that many of their games were developed by external developers, they had a hard time consistently creating hits outside of the popular Dragon Quest games, and they weren't able to easily launch in overseas markets. On the other hand, Square was in a very strong position. In their financial statements, Square felt that they would domestically overtake Dragon Quest in the future because Final Fantasy was developed in house and had global appeal. Nevertheless, they were open to the idea of a merger. Naturally, they argued over the specifics of the proposed merger for a better part of a year. Square was in a dominant position in that they were growing consistently and going from strength to strength. The year 2000 was a very strong year for them in that they launched several successful games and announced several key games at the Millennium Event. Nonetheless, there were some internal issues regarding the Final Fantasy brand. FFIX had not performed as well as the previous FF game. FFX was initially headed to be a PS2 launch window title with Playonline functionality but would miss the ambitious deadline and lose its online functionality. FFXI, an online MMO, was a big gamble in that they went on a huge hiring spree to get the necessarily talent and technological know-how for the game and the Playonline network. At the time, Playonline was supposed to be a social network linking all of their future games which made it a very significant project. So there was motivation to merge with a rival and pool their resources since game development was becoming more risky. Of course, the fact that Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within severely underperformed expectations changed the dynamic of the merger. First of all, the failure of Square Pictures/Spirits Within did not cause Square LTD to agree to merge with Enix in order to save the company. The merger was going to happen anyway and TSW's failure actually delayed it. Instead, we can say that that the failure of TSW lead to heated politics within Square which had a drastic impact on the company's management, business strategy, and how they approached the merger. Square was actually back to profitability (fiscal year 2002) before the merger occurred. This was due to several reasons. Strong sales of FFX in North America/Europe and the release of Kingdom Hearts helped them beat their forecast. The partnership between EA and Square continued to be a success with Square publishing EA games in Japan. Sony brought a roughly 20% non-voting stake (worth over $130 million at the time) as a cash injection to help jump start their R&D. It was mutually beneficial since Sony was reliant on future Square titles to boost PS2 sales. In addition, Yoichi Wada, who joined in 2000 as the CFO, took over duties of then CEO Suzuki at the end of 2001 in order to get them back into profitability. Wada moved up the ranks since Square's management had lost faith in Suzuki and Sakaguchi's decision making. I should mention that the board was largely trying to get the blame off themselves for approving this catastrophic plan. Sakaguchi could not get approval of an expensive movie studio in Hawaii and the development of a feature length CGI movie without the full support of the board. All of them got sucked into the late 90s hype about digital actors replacing live actions. They thought a game company would have an advantage over movie studios i nthis regard. Namco was another company at the time that was looking entering production of feature length digital movies. So the blame was disproportionately leveled against Suzuki and Sakaguchi but that's corporate politics for you. Wada implemented a number of cost cutting measures behind the scenes. Games were cancelled, resources were consolidated around key brands, there was a push toward re-using game assets to save costs (FFX-2), and a significant restructuring happened. There were probably other drastic measures we’ll probably never know about. Suzuki lost his position as CEO but remained within the company (and after the merger) with a powerless role as 'special director.' He would leave Square-Enix in 2005 and later taunt his former company on twitter for being a failure. So I guess he got the last laugh. Sakaguchi must have known the direction management was going towards since he registered Mistwalker as a company in May of 2001. He probably didn’t want to spend his twilight years as a powerless figurehead in the company he helped create. While the failure of TSW was significant, Sakaguchi was largely the driving force in Square being a competitive and forward thinking company. I believe the loss of Sakaguchi and the lack of suitable replacement is largely why Square-Enix had such a difficult time competing and retaining their talent. For example, Sakaguchi poached Yasumi Matsuno from Quest and let him make Final Fantasy tactics. After playing Ultima Online and other Western MMORPGs, he pushed to make FFXI into an online RPG. He and Shinji Hashimoto also took the risk of giving Tetsuya Nomura the director role for Kingdom Hearts and supporting his vision. He was behind many of the company partnerships with American publishers which lead to a sharing of technological know-how, localization deals, and other benefits. In short, Sakaguchi had an eye for talent and managed them very well by giving them opportunities. He also made sure the company was up to date on technological and gameplay advances. He may not have been the best game designer but he was a very experienced producer who could serve as the link between the business aspects of game development and the actual creation of games by development teams. I always found it to be an interesting coincidence that the main FF games started undergoing severe development problems around the time he left. In the chaos of TSW's failure, the balance of power in the proposed merger shifted away from Square and caused internal conflict within the company. There were already disagreements over stock ratios and prices but the TSW's failure gave leverage to Enix in this deal. So, the fear of Enix backing away led to a lot of power being consolidated around Wada as CFO who would quickly get them back into an attractive stock. It wasn't enough just to be profitable since they lost the image of a strong growth company after shuttering Square Pictures. When Wada came into power as the new CEO of Square-Enix, he wanted the company to be a global publisher on the level of EA and Activision. His planned involved having 8-10 big titles simultaneously in development at a time so each fiscal quarter would have a major title buoying it. In order to do this, he looked for any major growth opportunity that appeared and seized it. For example, he brought arcade company Taito for $500 million. It was an incredibly expensive acquisition and did not synergize well with the company. While the purchase of Eidos brought a lot of Western talent and technical know-how, they lost a key piece of the deal. The Arkham series went to Warner Bros. Games who was one of the prospective buyers for Eidos. So SE lost Eidos’s biggest IP after paying a premium on the acquisition to beat Warner Bros. He also consolidated resources around a few key brands in order to spread the expenses of the larger marketing budgets he approved. I feel this is why the Final Fantasy brand slowly lost its prestige over time since quality control was not strong as it used to be. A lot of people think Wada was some tyrannical CEO who constantly interfered in the development of their games and caused problems for its designers. However, much of the evidence we have suggest he was fairly hands-off and gave bigger and bigger development budgets to the producers/directors who built the company. Essentially, Wada gave them the rope which the development teams used to hang themselves. He didn’t start getting heavily involved in pushing deadlines until 2009-2010 when projects were going off the tracks and he faced constant pressure from investors to deliver results. Even if he didn’t come from a game development background, a good CEO should be active in addressing the challenges his developers face rather than just throwing more money and manpower at it. The problem of not being able efficiently manage large teams happened during FF12’s development but it continues to plague them to this day. Maybe Wada was needed to help cut costs after TSW’s failure but his strategy as CEO of SE was incredibly risky and the company paid a heavy price. Analysts at the time saw the merger as inherently advantageous to Enix. Enix would greatly benefit from the international distribution, internal resources, and access to their partner's know-how. On the other hand, Square would benefit very little in addressing strategic weaknesses through this merger. As with any merger, there would be a period where company cultures would clash, productivity would slow down due to poor communication, and the inevitable redundancies would take place. However, it seems they never properly synergized after being together for years. Enix hasn’t been able to take advantage of Square’s resources and successfully transform Dragon Quest from a regional powerhouse to a strong global brand. So to summarize, while the merger sounded good in concept, the actual implementation was flawed. They lost one of their most experienced and forward-thinking producers and did not replace him with a suitable talent. The strengths of each company didn’t necessarily complement each other. They added a lot of bulk to the company that made it slower and able to readily identify trends. Their new CEO came from a business background and may have been unable to address the technological challenges of an entertainment company. He aggressively grew the company and did not consider factors such as project management, ballooning development costs, changes to company culture, and talent retention. In short, they overestimated the strength of the merger and underestimated the human cost of becoming a mega-publisher who could compete globally.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
SE goes bankrupt, sells the Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest IPs to Nintendo, everyone wins and skips off happily into the distance, the end E: More seriously, I would like to see a collaboration between Nintendo & SE sometime to make up for the lack of FFXV/KH3 on the Wii U. Bravely Default was sweet but how about something for the Wii U? Any chance of that happening? Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Aug 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 18:32
|
|
|
Sunning, if you wrote a book about everything you knew about the game industry, I'd buy it immediately.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 18:49
|
|
|
Captain Mog posted:E: More seriously, I would like to see a collaboration between Nintendo & SE sometime to make up for the lack of FFXV/KH3 on the Wii U. Bravely Default was sweet but how about something for the Wii U? Any chance of that happening? Are there any RPG's on the Wii U? For that matter, were there any on the Wii, aside from Virtual Console etc.? Non-portable Nintendo systems tend not to be the target platform for RPG's these days.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 18:51
|
|
|
Wii had Xenoblade, The Last Story and Fire Emblem (also Arc Rise Fantasia lol). Wii U will have Xenoblade X and SMT x FE. e: So basically the only RPGs are Nintendo's own RPGs, since they own Monolith now.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
Wii also had Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, Pandora's Tower, some FF side games, one of the Valhalla Knights games, and Opoona. And Baroque and Shiren the Wanderer, if you count them as RPGs. Probably some others I'm forgetting.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 19:19
|
|
|
Sunning posted:lots of words So what you're saying is that Yoshi-p should be CEO.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 19:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 00:00 |
|
|
Sunning posted:So many words Your talents are wasted on a message board man you need to get a job dealing with this
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 19:25
|
|
