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Shachi posted:Maybe this is opening a can of worms but here goes: It really comes down to expectations. FFXIII took a very long time to develop and ultimately released with numerous problems from story, visuals, and game content. These problems arose from how FFXIII and various other Square Enix games are developed. If people had problems with a previous FF game's story, then they were mitigated by the gameplay, unique world design, or sheer content. FF12 has a story that suffers from pacing and focus issues but it has a lot of quest content, semi-open world environments, and possibly the best Japanese to English localization ever created for any piece of media originating from Japan (separate English accents for different regions, Sanskrit and Indus Valley influence that was not in the original Japanese release). While not everybody liked it, a great deal of care went in FF12's world design from its post 9/11-WoT political commentary to its themes of power (magic atomic bomb) being placed in the hands of a few people and used for revenge. In a roulette analogy, FF13 puts all of its chips in its story and fails to deliver on it by falling on black. The story of FFXIII's problems is the story of how Square-Enix failed to nurture their talent for the next generation, to manage their once powerful brands, and to adapt to HD game development. FFXIII encapsulates the journey of a once innovative and forward thinking company into a xenophobic and stagnate company. Square-Enix designs games in a waterfall methodology according to the various postmortems on their games. In other words, once part A of game development is complete the team then moves onto part B. The advantage in this is that the game has a shared vision and can feel like a cohesive product from music to visuals and game design. While this works well in small to medium scale games, it suffers from bottlenecks and undercooked gameplay systems when team sizes balloon to the hundreds. This is why many game developers in AAA development have moved to Agile and Rapid development. Agile development utilizes heavy prototyping in order to identify and fix gameplay or technical issues early in development. You'll notice that many people enjoyed SE's games on the PSP and DS. The low budgets and manpower requirements of these handheld games allowed their teams to experiment with gameplay and story, such as in The World Ends With You. However, this company faces severe project management and game design issues once it has to deal with HD development. Due to how the game was developed, FFXIII is content starved and what content was there isn't polished well. According to the FFXIII postmortem at Game Developer Magazine, they developed game assets, such as enemies and environments, before they had an idea of how the game would play in the end. Yes, they actually made the assets first and then tried string those together in order to make a game around the technical limitations they encountered with their game engine. The development team actually didn't have a shared idea of what the actual end product would look or play like until they started to develop the demo that came in the Japanese version of FF7: Advent Children on Blu-Ray. The game essentially had a little over a year of solid planning and development before its's Japanese release in December of 2009. The development team did not communicate with each other and created bottlenecks which led to delays and work being thrown out. This is how Final Fantasy games were designed in the past. A small group of people at the very top would design the game and direct the rest of the team through close scrutiny and micromanagement. This did not scale very well with FFXIII which had over 400 people working on it (not including PR, localization, etc.) The game's technical artists made assets that had to be thrown out or were mismatched with other areas of the game due to a shared vision that was established very late in the development cycle. For example, FFXIII begins with the genocide of a people in its opening scene. Normally, this Holocaust inspired imagery would be very emotionally powerful. However, the tone of the opening section is lighthearted and comical. Then there is the fact that the easy ability to identity the targets of the genocide by glowing tattoos undermines the whole motivation for 'processing' people. Oh, and the genocide victims wear expensive looking robes for some reason. You see issues such as this throughout the game. With how the game was designed, various 'cool looking' imagery is created before a final world design was agreed upon. You end up with a bunch of contradictory visual and story beats. It's the same problem that plagues the the Star Wars prequel films. The game and story are made to lead to a bunch of cool visuals rather than the other way around. FFXII (yes, that is FF12) suffered from issues that would go onto plague FFXIII (FF13). Point for point in their postmortems on Gamasutra, FF12's issues from poor development methodology to a lack of a shared vision would go on to be repeated during FF13's development. This tells you how bad the management is at the company. FF12 was when the company first encountered issues with their technology and game design. FF12 suffered from a lengthy development cycle and high development costs ($40 million) due to the sheer ambition of the game. Bottlenecks in development and a team comprised largely of people who hadn't worked on a big budget FF game before led to multiple delays. FF13/FFvs13 were actually announced before FF12's Western release. In fact, the game's moving release date delayed FF13 from the PS2 to the PS3/Xbox 360. FF12 also had various development hurdles due to its engine and development tool chain. The company had flirted with licensing Renderware middleware until EA bought out Criterion. This leads to my next point. The other issue is that their game engine, Crystal Tools, did not live up to the expectations of players and Square Enix's game designers. Many Western developers came from a PC background and were able to adapt to the GPU-centric nature of development on the HD consoles. However, many Japanese struggled to adapt to HD development and create an efficient development pipeline. Capcom (and maybe SEGA) was pretty much the only Japanese developer to keep up with Western developers due to strong planning. The Crystal Tools engine was meant to be used for FFXIII, the more action based FFvsXIII (now FFXV), FFXIV (a MMORPG). The broad scope of the engine meant it was not good at meeting any of their needs and the development pipeline was not efficient at all. FFXIII didn't have towns or large non-linear environments for most of the game because the development team struggled to create enough content for them and the engine struggled to render them. Then there is the issue of how the game was designed. The designers were limited in their vision due to team mismanagement and a problematic game engine. All of the eggs were put into the story basket. The game is designed to have the player connect with the story and their characters. Gameplay unlocks are tied to advances in story and even the character upgrade system is linear. With content starved game, a hastily written story and underdeveloped characters would be the nail in the coffin. At a surface level, FFX seems to share many of FFXIII's problems. It's a very linear game with a wacky story. However, FFX is more thoughtful in how it tells its story and develops its gameplay systems. For example, Tidus is a 'fish out of water' character that allows the designers to organically introduce the game world to players. He meets Rikku and the Al-Bhed early in the game which allows him to learn of the religious politics in the world in a safe environment. This also allows Wakka to be the humanized yet bigoted face of the Yevon religion in a subplot. Gameplay opens up at a much quicker pace and introduces concepts such as armored enemies, flying enemies, magic, summons, limit breaks, and environmental actions at steady pace. It has towns that help develop the game world. For example, the Crusader Lounge shown early on in Besaid ties into how desperate humanity's struggle against Sin is and how important it is for the Final Aeon to be summoned. This isn't done through lengthy cutscenes or an in-game dictionary but through they player exploring the town. FFXIII lacks this thoughtful story design and haphazardly throws neologisms such as Fal'cie, Lu'cie, Pulse Lu'cie, enemy of Cocoon, and Focus at the player. Its game systems expand up at a sluggish pace to the point that people say that 'the game opens up' after 30 hours. Is it right for a game to be designed around a story? Shouldn't it concentrate on having great gameplay first? I guess it depends on the game. Metal Gear Solid 3 has many of the same problems that affect FFXIII, such a lengthy tutorial and long cutscenes. However, MGS3 is one of my favorite games and that of many others due to how it ties its narrative to its gameplay. When the main character is grievously injured, you use the first-aid menu to use emergency medicine. Once the prologue chapter is done, the game opens up and regularly throws new environments, plot developments, enemies, weapons and tools at you. A player feels like they're on an epic journey due to how many novel gameplay segments there are in the game. You can tell that three years of development were well spent on MGS3 from its ambitious game design to its numerous Easter eggs. So there you have it. A lot of hype and development time for a game that ended up as very flawed and undercooked. From the time it took for Square-Enix to announce FFXIII and release it, a once fledgling company like CDProjekt Red made the Witcher 2 on a new, cutting edge game engine and received great critical and commercial success. CDPR did this on fraction of FFXIII's budget and manpower. FFXIII was a regression of FFX's solid game/story design and didn't match FF12's technical ambition/world design in spite of the stronger hardware it released on. Square-Enix seems to be attempting to fix the problems that plagued FFXIII (and FFXIV) but it will probably be a generation cycle before we see the results. It's why I don't understand why people are looking forward to FFXV for the PS4/XB1. Apparently, they're all excited that Tetsuya Nomura is behind the game. FFXII, FFXIII, FFXIII-2, FFXIV all released with various issues due to how SE develops their games and manages their development teams. FFXII (Yasumi Matsuno), FFXIII (Yoshinori Kitase), and FFXIV (Hiromichi Tanaka), all had experienced veterans behind them that could not address development issues when creating big budget games with extremely large teams. In spite of his work on the Kingdom Hearts series, I don't expect Nomura to be any different considering the long development cycle of the game and talk of how FFXV's game design is still not nailed down. For the time that it will take to make FFXV, Naughty Dog made the Uncharted Trilogy + The Last of Us, Rocksteady made two Batman games with extremely high metacritic scores, Bethesda grew Fallout and Elder Scrolls to sales and critical acclaim that rivals or even exceed that of Final Fantasy, Ubisoft made Five+ Assassin's Creed games, CDProjeckt Red will have made the Witcher trilogy + their own game next gen engine. This is a very troubled game and a couple of unplayable videos from E3 don't inspire much confidence. Then you hear about how their next-gen Luminous engine isn't optimized for game development (demo took a year to create and characters are rendered with toes inside shoes) and you have to wonder just how prepared they are for next-gen. That isn't to say I don't have hope for the future of SE. In spite of its relaunch issues, Naoki Yoshida has done a tremendously good job with repairing FFXIV. He is someone who never worked on the FF series but realized the technical and design problems that plague the game. This is someone who is relatively young and took initiative in modernizing FFXIV when heads rolled over its catastrophic launch in 2010. I feel that the company's stagnancy came from an inability for new, young to replace old, aging veterans. There has been a tremendous brain drain (Yasumi Matsuno, Nobou Uematsu, Tetsuya Takahashi of Monolith Soft) over the years but little in the way of new talent replacing it. It probably doesn't help that the next potential star for SE is busy being the low man on the totem pole of a 400 man project for a mismanaged game.
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1st AD posted:Why don't they just do another game with Unreal Engine? Last Remnant ran like rear end on the Xbox 360 (looked fine on PC though), but I'm impressed that their first time out they managed to make a game within 1 year. If they didn't skimp on programmers and gave the project a better budget and longer development timeline, I feel like they could develop a good game without spending a bajillion dollars developing on an inefficient system. They released a Unreal Engine game on iOS just recently; it's called Bloodmasque. It was supposed to be released on consoles as well but that was cancelled due to SE's many cost cutting measures. Will they release a AAA game with UE3 or any other middleware engine? Probably not for games developed within Japan. Eidos will probably use the Crystal Engine (The Tomb Raider Engine, not Crystal Tools) for future AAA games. The Japanese side of the company is heading towards heavy mobile development with the recent change in management. Mobile revenue has outstripped traditional handheld gaming revenue in Japan and will continue to rise worldwide. Even Eidos is dabbling in 'AAA' mobile games with their Deus Ex game. Even if they had the interest, the staff that worked on The Last Remnant is busy working on FFXIV:RR and its post launch content. In fact, FFXIV:RR cannibalized a lot of resources in Japan to the point that several Japanese games in development were cancelled. The success of FFXIV:RR/FFXV/KH3 will decide how SE Japan goes forward on AAA console development. We might end up in a scenario where SE Japan only makes mobile games of various budgets and Eidos makes AAA console games and the occasional 'AAA' mobile game. T.G. Xarbala posted:Much kudos, Sunning, and thanks as well. It's baffling how poorly managed SE is when development teams with only a small fraction of their size and budget could make several blockbuster games in the span of time it takes for them to make a single mediocre one. I think Square-Enix is similar to other Japanese developers in that they excel at mid-tier games with moderately sized budgets. By that I mean games that aren't AAA in production values or features but have enough to money to concentrate on a few ideas and do them well in a cohesive experience. It's a pretty wide range that could include games such as Vanquish, Dark Souls, or even various Nintendo handheld games. Many people hate SE's non-Eidos AAA offerings and bottom of the barrel mobile games but enjoy their various handheld gaming offers, such as The World Ends With You and Tactics Ogre PSP. They are reminiscent of the SNES-PS1 era in which development costs were low enough for them to experiment and give young designers a chance at creating their own games. This is how SE Osaka came into being. Unfortunately, the polarization of the retail market has made it difficult to get funding for this type of game. Due to their massive overhead, big publishers would rather bulk up the marketing/development budget of AAA games or explore the emerging mobile and social game market. We've seen a resurgence in these types of games through crowd funding or small publishers but Japan has been slow to take advantage of it. I don't expect a Japanese giant to concentrate on these types of games outside of maybe Namco-Bandai. As for Square-Enix, under Yoichi Wada, the company wanted to be a EA or Acti-Blizzard level AAA publisher. Wada aggressively expanded Square-Enix such as purchasing Eidos (who were actually months away from releasing the smash Hit, Batman: Arkham Asylum) and buying out Taito for a king's ransom of $409.1 million. Wada wanted to compete with the top tier Western developers but he was unaware of how cutthroat the competition was. To borrow a Game of Thrones quote, EA and Activision-Blizzard want to be 'king of the ashes.' They want to raise developments/marketing costs and force competitors out of the market to the point that it will eat into their own profits and cause damage to the long term stability of the market. THQ was a victim of this in addition to the bottom falling out of their children's licensed games and a disastrous attempt to expand their Upad to HD consoles. It's similar to Hollywood in that the big studios don't necessarily enjoy high production costs but want to force competitors out of the market. They will sacrifice profits for long term stability. This creates a prisoner's dilemma in that it's incredibly expensive and dangerous to take risks and innovate. If you're ever curious why big budget movies and games and are risk averse in regard to story/gender/race/politics, then this is your answer. The publisher that takes a risk and fails may not have enough money to stay alive during the next AAA showdown. We saw Activision and EA take divergent paths during this generation. EA tried a bunch of new IPs which were largely very expensive and unsuccessful. It's buyout of Popcap led to layoffs and restructuring because of the culture clash between a AAA publisher and a casual game developer. Activision was very conservative in what it green lit and cancelled many games when it merged with Sierra. The company killed Guitar Hero/Tony Hawk by burning out consumers and but succeeded in making Skylanders a huge hit that scales well with yearly releases. It has a steady blue chip in yearly Call of Duty/Skylanders games and several Blizzard games. EA now emulates Acti-Blizzard in cutting down the games it makes and concentrating on surefire hits. Under Wada, we saw game development cut down to the just surefire Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and AAA Eidos games. However, this didn't pan out well because of the development problems for Japanese AAA games, the high development costs of Eidos games eating into profits, and Warner Bros taking the Arkham games from them (Eidos still owns a portion of Rocksteady). Final Fantasy has suffered from diminished popularity and Dragon Quest has limited worldwide appeal. He needed a steady stream of AAA hits each year and his studios could not deliver. It's why FFXIII-2 and Kingdom Hearts 3D had shorter development cycles. I don't think Wada realized how expensive and dangerous it was to compete with EA/Activision until it was too late. Oh, and SE's headqurters moved from Meguro to Shinjuku, Tokyo way back in the day. It led to Nobou Uematsu's departure into freelance work because he was unhappy with the move. Wada moved the company because a fortuneteller told him to. Yeah... Electric Phantasm posted:
The tech demo of the engine was based more on rendering a traditional Visualworks CGI in real time as opposed to creating a tool chain for game development. It wasn't optimized for rendering a game. It's why I'm so skeptical of this next-gen engine in comparison to something like Kojima Production's Fox engine. Sunning fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 03:41
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What? Why would they do this? Why waste time on something so unnecessary?
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, this is one of S-E's biggest problems. They do a lot better when they're making mid-tier games because it is a lot more what they are built to do. Their teams are clearly more comfortable with them and they can put out the games on a much more regular basis and with a higher overall level of quality. It's just that market doesn't really exist in the same way it used to and is becoming increasingly small. S-E kind of got lucky (to a small degree) that the PSP took off in Japan and they could basically create PS2-level games in a way that would sell. They'd have been a lot luckier if the PSP took off anywhere else. I don't think it's likely that they'll make many of these kinds of games in the future. The new management is belt-tightening and lacks domestic manpower due to FFXIV:RR. We'll probably see more AAA games from Eidos and an increasingly mobile based lineup from SE Japan. FFXIV:RR and FFXV have a lot riding on them in regards to how SE will go forward with domestic development. I thought the 3DS would become the platform of choice for them but they have slowly divested out of traditional handheld gaming. Mobile gaming continues to grow at a pace that outstrips dedicated handhelds. There's a chance we'll see more ambitious stuff like Chaos Rings or Bloodmasque but I think most of the games will be money grinds like FF:AtB and Wizardlings. Silly Voodoo posted:What? Gamasutra posted:Square Enix will relocate its main office to a new building (artist rendition of the building pictured) currently under construction in the East Side Square of Tokyo's Shinjuku ward. Construction is expected to be completed in April. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/128880/This_week_in_Japanese_news_Square_Enix_to_Otome.php
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Sep 6, 2013 19:27
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Azure_Horizon posted:I think the problem was that it didn't sell well enough in comparison to its production costs. Neither did FFXII, for that matter. Correct, their games are so expensive and take so long to make that don't make as much money off them as they should. This also creates long voids in their release schedule. Years ago, Square-Enix had a number of lower budget handheld games in order to pad out their fiscal year. These small games allowed Square-Enix to scout out talent, such as acquiring leads from Jupiter Corporation who collaborated on the World Ends With You, or allow novice designers to test out their skills on a low risk/budget game. However, the troubled development cycles of their big budget games, especially FFXIV, cannibalized these small teams. It's now similar to a feast and famine cycle in which a business has brief bursts of heavy business interspersed with periods of low activity. For example, Take2 concentrates on extremely high metacritic scoring games that can sell well over ten million copies. However, Take2 has had some troubled financial statements over the years in spite of multi-million sellers, such as GTA and RDR. Much of their profits are eaten by the massive budgets and the lengthy developments. DLC is critical is extending the sales life of the game and making money off the initial investment. A game which fails to meet expectations, such as Max Payne 3, is an incredibly costly failure because of how many resources were invested into their games. Take2 and their 2K Games subsidiary are interested into expanding into mobile gaming because of its low costs of development and high growth. Square-Enix games typically don't have the sales or critical acclaim of Take2 but shares many of their weaknesses. You need to be someone like Acti-Blizzard in order to survive in the AAA market. Acti-Blizz makes very few games except guaranteed hits they can ship every year. This minimizes their costs and allows them to pour their resources into yearly releases, popular Blizzard games, and 'safe' new IPs such as Bungie's Destiny. EA has struggled over the years because of their risky new IPs. The failure threshold for AAA games is just so high in today's market. Much of EA's profits from Battlefield/Madden/Fifa/Sims is eaten up by costly failures such as SWTOR and [insert failed EA new IP here]. Also note that much of the sales numbers touted for FFXIII are actually shipped numbers. Square-Enix loses money on unsold copies in non-Japanese retail stores. The company issues credit to North American/European retailers who slash prices of their games through something called price protection. Price protection allows publishers to ship extremely large amounts of copies into stores since retailers have reassurance that the publishers will compensate them for underperforming games. The retailer may have to make quick price drops to move copies of under performing games and require the publisher to make up the difference. In SE's financial statements they lost significant amounts of money on price protection for several of their domestically developed games and Eidos developed games. They also issued credit on unsold copies of the first release of FFXIV. That loving Sned posted:If Final Fantasy XV was the Resident Evil 4 of the series, I'd be loving thrilled. Like RE4 taking out the fixed camera angles, key hunting, and substantially improving the combat and inventory system, XV would replace random encounters, scaled-down overworlds, and menu-driven combat to make it feel like you're actually controlling a character, rather than just giving them advice. This was a problem in XIII and XIII-2, where the battle system was fully real-time, but the only thing you could tell your character to do was what attacks to do and in what order, with partners following one of six AI scripts and your movement being done automatically. Similar to Resident Evil's slow decline due to rising development costs (and Capcom's talent exodus), I don't have much faith in FFXV with where the company is headed. At least Resident Evil 6 could appeal to Western audiences who enjoyed shooters. I don't think Square-Enix's Japanese developers can successfully compete and create innovative AAA games in today's market without tremendous financial hardship (a la FFXIV: ARR). The company has a stifling development methodology and is unable to grow its dwindling pool of talent to offset a brain drain. They are very similar to EA (other than collaborating on a joint venture for EA LA) in that they're both extremely large and powerful companies with a crippling bureaucracy that is unable to readily identify shifts in the market and create quality games in time. EA usually uses its large wealth and manpower to brute force their way into a market. They allow other, usually smaller, companies to venture forth into unproven genres and then go in to conquer that market with their vast resources. You see this with God of War -> Dante's Inferno, Star Wars: The Old Republic -> World of Warcraft, and Dota 2/League of Legends -> Dawngate. For example, when DOTA was slowly gaining popularity, Blizzard didn't attempt to capitalize on its popularity until a decade later. Smaller companies such as Stardock and startups such as Riot Games were able to address the growing interest in MOBAs due to their small, focused teams. In spite of creating Warcraft 3, Blizzard entertainment didn't pursue DOTA since they were transitioning from an agile company to a slower, more powerful company during World of Warcraft's lengthy development. Instead, Valve Corporation, an agile company that limits their company size, hired Icefrog and made Dota 2. EA's large size prevents it from being an agile company. Instead, their sheer size allows them to have delayed responses to market trends backed up with a large array of resources. However, this method has gotten much more difficult to implement due to the costs of development and the sheer size of the company. For example, their World of Warcraft competitor, Star Wars: The Old Republic, took five years to make and arrived in a market that had changed drastically since the game's conception. The game's problematic development methodology led to a game with a bad launch and an inefficient content production pipeline. Sometimes market trends change and a game arrives as a relic of a bygone era due to a lengthy development cycle. EA's company culture is geared toward making annual releases that will go on to have a lion's share of the market. If you were ever curious why so many EA acquisitions end up destroying the company in question, then this is the reason why. Companies such as Origin Systems, Bullfrog, and Westwood, (and Bioware) faced strong internal pressure to conform to EA's company culture. Studios creating games for different genres for different demographics are constantly compared and critiqued under EA's management. This creates an invisible yet ever present pressure for studios to one up each other. This is why many of them fail in spite of the strong creative freedom and access to EA's vast resources they are promised. Some of these developers usually worked better when placed under technical and budget restrains. These new acquisitions need to justify their paychecks by making games for wider demographics under shorter development schedules. While quick development cycles work for EA Sports games competing in an oligopoly, they don't work as well for other genres experiencing fierce competition. This why many EA games, such as Dragon Age 2, are rushed out and designed to appeal to a much broader market than their predecessors. EA's acquisition of casual game developer Popcap for a billion dollars eventually led to a string of layoffs and the departure of Plants vs. Zombies designer, George Fan. Popcap's focus on experimenting with low budget casual games clashed with EA emphasis on big budget games. Similarly, Square-Enix's is a large company that is crippled by their sheer size and bureaucracy. A lot of their games, such as FFXIII and FFXIV, feel like they missed years of advancement in game design and shifts in consumer tastes. Their development methodology in Japan isn't able to create AAA games that can compete globally. I don't see the oldguard changing this without getting out of AAA. FFXIII-2 was heavily focus tested in order to fix FFXIII's problems but it suffered from a mixed reception and poor sales. As for FFXV, I think there is a reason why FFvsXIII constantly had its resources given to FFXIII and FFXIV. Those games were much more important and the management simply doesn't trust Nomura to create a AAA game in a timely manner. Considering how terrible FFXIII's development was, FFvsXIII's problems must have been extraordinarily bad. I think the only reason the made it is because they don't have anything else in the development pipeline that could qualify as FFXV. They can also plan out a monetization/DLC/sequelscheme for the game that they didn't have the foresight for with FFXIII. In spite of its extremely lengthy development cycle, the FFXV continues to suffer from scope explosion. For example, the game has had several real-time cutscenes changed into CGI and vice-versa depending on what Nomura feels would be best. CGI scenes are incredibly expensive to make. For a point of reference, the CGI trailer for Deus Ex: Human cost over $2 million to make. So creating a ton of high quality CGI for the game that doesn't see the light of day is extremely wasteful. I should also mention that expensive CGI that is incredibly stupid in this age of cutting edge graphics. I can understand using a CGI trailer to build up hype, such as the infamous Dead Island trailer, but CGI that's embedded in the game for the player to find is a terrible waste use of money. SE makes a lot of CGI because they have an in-house CGI studio called Visual Works. Having a dedicated CGI studio can lower costs if you constantly use it to create CGI and spread out fixed costs over a lot of content. However, constantly creating expensive CGI that is attached to constantly delayed games in order to justify having a dedicated CGI studio defeats the concept in the first place. Then you hear stuff about how the decision to have a large overworld wasn't established until years into development. It's pretty clear that Nomura has a very inefficient game design philosophy that doesn't work in HD development as well as it did for PS2 games. However, he seems to be pretty good at nurturing talent since he established SE Osaka and oversaw several smaller projects to successful releases. I just don't have much faith in his ability to make a AAA game. I guess he is another symptom of how the Peter Principle affects the company hierarchy. I'd have much more faith in the game if there was some young, open minded, risk taker leading the project. There are a lot of younger names attached to FFXV, such as key members from FF Type-0, but I don't know how they'll handle HD development. You also hear a lot of speculation that the first e3 trailer for FFXV was largely pre-rendered due to how different the character models and assets look from the latter battle trailer (up rezzed PS3 assets vs target render assets). It wouldn't be the first time passed off a pre-rendered scene as gameplay. The original FFXIII trailer showcased gameplay that ended up as a cutscene in the final game. FFXIV: ARR experienced a turnabout due to Yoshida's strong planning for FFXIV 2.0 and the radical shift in the game's development methodology. Yoshida is completely different when compared to other SE designers/producers in how he addresses an unhappy fanbase and tackles develop problems. He plays a lot of competing games and has regularly scheduled roundtables where FFXIV development team members can freely discuss problems and goals. Just compare how Yoshida constantly interacted with fans on forums and at events in comparison to how the rest of the Square-Enix designers live in their ivory towers and rarely meet with the people who make their jobs possible. We'll have to see how a FFXIV: ARR (a subscription Wrath of the Lich King era MMO with FF production values) does in today's market. Nonetheless, Yoshida is an example of how the rest of the company should plan their game development cycle, address technological hurdles, and interact with their fans. In spite of his relatively young age (he's only about a couple years younger than Nomura), he's very experienced due to his work on the Dragon Quest games. I think Square-Enix was grooming him to take over the mantle of Dragon Quest from its aging creator, Yuji Horii. I don't know what he's going to do now after FFXIV. SE is very lucky to have him. I just realized how much I wrote so thanks for reading all of this.
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Sep 11, 2013 04:27
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ImpAtom posted:Man, you're giving good clear info. I don't think it matters that it's long. I think Nomura has done a lot for Square-Enix and is a big part why they're not doing as bad as they probably should be doing. While the brand has been heavily mismanaged over the past few years, Nomura has created another pillar in the company through the Kingdom Hearts series. Even taking the FFvs13/FF15 development hell fiasco into account, he still managed to oversee several KH spinoff ganes and scout enough talent to create SE Osaka. If you read about the making of The World Ends With, then you can tell why the game was so unique and why his bigger budget games take so long to make. The game was so unique and well-crafted because they could afford to make significant changes in design well into development. It also helped that the game's low budget allowed them a lengthy QA period in which they could address problems in the story and gameplay. Here is what they had to say about the story: Gamasutra posted:2. A story created by committee (and free of those pesky RPG plot holes)! TWEWY benefited from this collaborative scattershot approach because of the game's low budget and small scope. It was relatively easy to communicate, exchange ideas, and have a shared vision throughout the development cycle due to the low headcount. A development methodology such as this wouldn't work as well in typical AAA game. I always felt that Nomura was similar to Hironobu Sakaguchi in that he seems good in identifying and nurturing talent. I don't think he's as good as Sakaguchi when it came to making the company more well-rounded but he helps fill a void created by Sakaguchi's absence. After FFV's development, Sakaguchi moved from a hands-on project director to being a producer and company manager. This was around the time Squaresoft (as it was known then) experienced some of their most profitable and well-received years. They had a prolific release schedule and experimented with many of their games, such as Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, and Xenogears. Sakaguchi contributed a lot to Squaresoft's growing cache of talent and brands. He scouted out Yasumi Matsuno after the success of Tactics Ogre. He spearheaded Chrono Trigger and made it into a highly collaborative project alongside Yuji Horii and many others. The fertile creative groundwork for CT led to valuable experience for many promising designers and helped creates games such as Secret of Mana. Parasite Eve became an offshoot of Sakaguchi's original vision for FF7. He pushed for the creation of a Final Fantasy MMORPG after seeing the success of Everquest. He gave a lot of opportunities to young designers, such as Tetsuya Takahashi. I always felt Sakaguchi wasn't as good of a game designer as he was a producer. While he had his flops, Sakaguchi understood a company's greatest asset was its people. I feel that the loss of talent and the inability to readily replace it has further exacerbated the bureaucratic inertia within Square-Enix. An unfortunate reality about game development is that many studios have to relearn techniques due to constant turnover. Statistics show that many people in American game development usually don't stay at a company for more than two years. It's rare to find a AAA game company with extremely low turnover, such as Valve. The reason why Diablo III lacked many of the features in its predecessor, such as a ladder system, is because the veteran Blizzard North team was replaced by a team largely composed of people with a MMORPG and RTS background. A simplified stat system and skill tree may work in a MMORPG but would end up being shallow in a game centered entirely around combat and looting. A company shouldn't have to relearn how to pull off something that did in their past games but it happens more often than not. As for management, I don't know to much about Wada and the rest of the board of directors. From what I've read and learned from people who worked for Square-Enix NA, Wada was a was very ambition CEO and wanted to make the publisher into an international leader (a EA/Activision level publisher) rather than a regional power. He did this through a number of acquisitions and an aggressive push into AAA development in order to beat EA/Acti-Blizz. For example, FFXIV was rushed out in in order to beat WoW: Cataclysm's release and address boardroom criticism of Final Fantasy games taking too long to come out. FFXIV would release in the same calendar year as the NA/Europe release of FFXIII and this become a constant talking point on financial statements. His push towards AAA prevented the company from properly identifying and addressing the development/technical issues they encountered during FF12's development. Dragon Quest came out pretty much unscathed because its creator, Yuji Horii, had strong creative control due to his longstanding relationship with Enix and formed new, lucrative relationship with Nintendo. Again, I don't know much about the inner-working of the board of directors but this is what I have been told about him. The new guy, Yosuke Matsuda, seems to be interested in developing their mobile lineup and pursuing strong growth markets. T.G. Xarbala posted:Okay, Sunning, now you have* to tell us what your day job is. Because this is some comprehensive and informative stuff. I am none of those things. bow chicka wow wow posted:Might buy Platinum tomorrow just so I can find all the Sunning posts scattered across Games. If you don't get paid at least a little bit to write about the industry you probably should. Don't spend your money for just that reason. I haven't been here long and I haven't posted much.
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Sep 14, 2013 03:51
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I was a bit hopeful for FF13-3 but I think I'm less hopeful for it just reading what people are saying now (Never played 13-2). Call me crazy but it's the opposite for me. I'm actually kinda looking forward to LR. I've always enjoyed FF games that came later in the generation when SE got settled in with their technology and could concentrate on creative game design, such as FF6/FF9/FF12 (could be just Hiroyuki Ito's involement). This Taiwanese article mentions that development for LF:FFXIII is going a lot more smoothly than FFXIII/FFXIII-2 and they pulled off things in the game they couldn't before. I don't know how true it is but the game looks to be trying a lot of new things. It has only one playable character and has moved farther away from FFXIII's traditional FF design than even FFXIII-2. I always felt that FFXIII-2 was a hastily designed mishmash of the things people liked in FFXIII, trending gameplay elements in WRPGs, and had several rounds of heavy focus testing. For example, the lyrics to the song, Invisible Invader, had its lyrics removed from North American/PSN demos and the final release. They were available in the e3 demo which they probably used asa focus test. Ironically, the finished product came off as unfocused and paralyzed from a fear of failure. I don't plan on getting LR at full price but I'm interested in what they can do with the game. The Toriyama-Lightning love affair aside, it reminds me of the experimental games they did during the SNES-PS1 era. It also reminds me of a Valkyrie Profile game which is funny considering that Tri-Ace are possibly programming grunts for LR.
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Sep 15, 2013 15:55
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That loving Sned posted:Which is the best RPG for someone who's never played one before? Mine was Super Mario RPG, which I forgot existed for ten years, but going back to it is absolutely amazing. If you enjoy SMRPG, then you'll enjoy the Mario & Luigi games. Many of the same people worked on SMRPG went on to form Alpha Dream. They're very easy to get into and have great writing by Nintendo's Treehouse localization staff. The Paper Mario games are similar but they are a lot more story heavy and have pacing issues. As far as the SNES era goes, Chrono Trigger is probably the best idiot proof JRPG that doesn't come off as condescending. There is a hub world which provides hints for players stuck on what to do. You can also avoid most enemy encounters. It's paced extremely very well and doesn't require a significant time investment.
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Sep 17, 2013 19:19
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Speaking of FFT, its creator, Yasumi Matsuno, is working a new Tactical RPG called Unsung Story. It's for mobile platforms and this specifice game will be part of a cross promotional universe by Playdek. Christophe Boelinger, a board game designer, is working on a card game that ties into the game's universe http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/09/19/final-fantasy-tactics-and-vagrant-story-director-introduces-new-project.aspx Considering Playdek's past works, it probably won't have microtransactions but instead have a core game have with DLC/expansion packs.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:26
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Fungah! posted:That might be the fastest I've gone from straight-up giddiness to feeling let down ever. I really need to get an iOS device. Matsuno has said in his interviews that this game and the accompanying card game are for hardcore players. Playdek's pricing model is that of a core game and a series of expansion packs. We need more games like this in order to create a market for these types of games on mobile platforms. Gologle posted:Now that I've taken a second look at the trailer, the game, while it does really look amazing, the in game graphics don't quite look like what I expected. Don't look like what you expected as in "We're so sorry for taking so long to make this game. In the time it will take to make FFXV, Naughty Dog would have have made four games with metacritic scores comprised of 88, 92, 95 and 96 and total sales of over 18 million. We can assure you that FFXV will be better than all those games combined. It will have a metascore of over 370.00% and sales of over 18 million. Wait, the game will be multiplatform so make it 36 million sales which the Assassin's Creed games accomplished in a fraction of our development cycle. Otherwise, the last eight years of our lives would be completely worthless because we're utterly incompetent when it comes to project management of big budget HD games. I promise you that the game's development is completely fine. We are in no way masquerading a hastily developed tech demo with up-rezzed assests and pre-rendered scenes in order to save face and appease an increasingly unhappy fanbase. Don't feel that we're trying to dupe you by only showing a handful of videos for a non-playable game that has been in development for nearly a decade. Please be excited!" Please don't be excited. Azure_Horizon posted:FFXV has always been in the FNC mythology umbrella since it was Versus XIII. I never understood the marketing strategy behind FNC. People generally liked the FF7 compilation because the games and movies had a shared universe. They took place in the same universe and had the same characters. It was easy for anyone to see that the games were linked through a familiar cast of characters and visual design. It's not anywhere as easy to see how the FNC games are connected. It's a concept that's not easily discernible to casual players and requires them to sleuth through the internet in order to find out the tenuous connection between the games. No wonder those games were renamed. On top of that, they needed FFXIII to be a FF7 level hit in order to buoy the entire concept. It was a terrible idea from the very beginning.
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Sep 20, 2013 19:31
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:People generally liked the FF7 compilation? Who are these people? Everyone I know thought Advent Children was kinda entertaining and the rest was awful. I never liked it myself but a lot of FF7 fans enjoyed the expanded universe and paid lots of money for it. They all performed well according to Square-Enix. Everything from Advent Children to Crisis Core and the subscription based Before Crisis sold well. They even got Dirge of Cerberus to sell over 500,000 copies in Japan alone. The original release didn't even have the improvements that came with the NA/EU versions. It highlighted a lot of the problems that would affect FNC, such as poor quality control and drastically different gameplay mechanics.
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Sep 20, 2013 20:14
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Mr. Maltose posted:Less necessary in-game encyclopedia. A thing I never hoped to say about Xenosaga. Are you sure about that?  
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Sep 25, 2013 16:46
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We should look at FFX as an example of how FFXIII could have been much better. FFX and FFXIII are both linear games that hold players by the hand. However, FFX is much more methodical in pacing its gameplay and story through the inclusion of towns and NPCs. FFX is much more thoughtful in how it introduces new gameplay mechanics and develops the game world. Each town builds the game world through a set piece event such as the importance of Summoners through the Cloister of Trials in Besaid, the Sending through Kilika, and the racial politics of the world through Blitzball in Luca. The story reveals that each town is a power boost in the form of a new Aeon which provides a goal for players. The main story is a mostly straightforward tale of acquiring the final summon in order to defeat Sin. In FFXIII, the player doesn't know what the goal is since the characters themselves aren't even sure what to do with Ragnarok. There's also thoughtful game design throughout the game. For example, the developers converged town services into the traveling merchant Rin. He's an Al-Bhed which means the player can still work with him after they are excommunicated by the Yevon Church (which prevents access to Blitzball and the Temples). Compare this to how FFXIII stars a band of fugitives that can use the internet to buy weapons and equipment. FFX is how a linear, controlled game can be a cohesive experience. It's plot is pretty stupid at times (a villain who wants to save the world from a monster by becoming the monster and killing all the people he's trying to save from the monster in order to save them from the monster?) but it has a much more coherent vision when compared to FFXIII. This where FFXIII's problematic development hurt the game's potential. Square-Enix haphazardly produced content without a unified vision of how the story would play out and how the player would progress through the game. The engine also couldn't support large towns (it's also why FFXIV had performance issues on) and you can see some attempts to create towns through assets on Pulse. They had to cobble all these assets together in order to crunch out a game. That is why in FFXIII you have several aircraft crashes or falls that send you into completely new environments. Or, you have characters split off and do their own thing in a new environment since those were the assets they had on hand. This is exacerbated by the game's geography. It is much more difficult to follow than in typical FF games since the game takes place on spherical world above a traditional flat RPG world map.
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Sep 25, 2013 17:30
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1st AD posted:What the gently caress is this poo poo? I played the game and had no idea any of this was going on. These are diagrams used to describe how the game has multiple planes of existence interact with each other through metaphysics. This isn't actually the first fan-made or developer created diagram I have seen for a game. The Tales games and Ar tonelico have some diagrams in their supplementary material.
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Sep 26, 2013 00:24
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That loving Sned posted:I played a bit of Lightning Returns at Eurogamer Expo, and it was alright. I liked how outside of combat, the attack button has been moved to R1, so you can still move the camera. The attacking isn't nearly as stiff as in XIII-2, where you're character would completely stop responding to input for about two seconds. Now you can turn Lightning while she's doing the attack, and the hitboxes are a lot better too. They even incorporated the sneaking up on enemies from the first game, so attacking an unaware enemy starts them off with 25% less health, rather than 10%. Thanks for your impressions. It too bad the game has performance issues but I guess that's Crystal Tools for you. I'll probably wait out a price drop as well. FFXIII-2 dropped down in price very quickly and I expect LR to follow suit.
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Sep 29, 2013 19:40
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I understand this isn't Final Fantasy but Dragon Quest 1-8 will be ported to Smart Phone (iOS/Android) along with a new game.Gametrailers posted:Square Enix has launched a site in Japanese revealing that the first eight main series Dragon Quest games will see release on iOS and Android later this Winter. The company will also be releasing a brand new title called Dragon Quest Monsters: Super Light for mobile.  http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/63098/dragon-quest-i-to-viii-goes-mobile Official Site: http://www.jp.square-enix.com/dqsp/ The last time a new platform got such heavy support, the message was clear; buy the DS if you want Dragon Quest 9. While I don't think they'll abandon the 3DS, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing cross-platform entries on smart phones. If you're curious about the portrait orientation, it's the preferred way of playing by Japanese phone users.
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Oct 8, 2013 21:51
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Overbite posted:Yes great, gonna play an 80+ hour RPG on my phone. Don't worry, Square-Enix has a number of alternatives for you to enjoy. They company is going to go heavily invest mobile gaming. There is no question about that. The only question is whether their mobile games will be F2P games tailored towards attracting Japanese 'whale' spenders at the expense of their traditional games. These ports and other games, such as FF:Agito and Deus Ex: The Fall, have a lot riding on them in regard to deciding the composition of the company's future software lineup.
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Oct 9, 2013 14:51
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I think the more important revelation is that FFVII and more could follow. FFV did pretty well at $15.99 and had a lot of good in-store reviews. Their target audience seems happy with the game. They're serious about establishing mobile as a platform for Final Fantasy games.Barudak posted:When he says graphics sharpened like FFV does he mean using the FFDimension's sprites which themselves are draw-overs of FFVI sprites and Amano character portraits? Think of the same love and care that went into FFV:  As for the grinding, it actually hurt you until you got access to stat boosting Espers. Maybe he's talking about the encounter rate?
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Oct 9, 2013 21:06
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Was anyone looking forward to Chocobo Racing 3D on the 3DS? It's been canceled. quote:Years before Square Enix revealed Bravely Default or Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, they showed a short video for Chocobo Racing 3D. We haven’t heard news about the game since it’s initial announcement so Siliconera turned to the creator of the original Chocobo Racing for PsOne, Takashi Tokita, to get some answers. http://www.siliconera.com/2013/10/10/chocobo-racing-3d-one-square-enixs-first-3ds-projects-will-never-leave-coop/ So... when should we expect the iOS port? In all seriousness, I think Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call came out for the 3DS because the project was so far ahead in development. CR3D may not have been developed beyond a tech demo for various reasons. Their DS/PSP support stand in sharp contrast to the 3DS/Vita. They really want to get out of packaged goods.
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Oct 10, 2013 14:21
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ImpAtom posted:I think it's more likely the project was just quietly canned some time ago. I get the narrative you're interested in but there actually isn't anything backing this one up. It was (barely) announced at E3 2010 as part of the initial leadup to the 3DS's launch (along with games that never materialized like Persona 3DS) and nobody said anything about it since. I doubt we'll see anything from the game at all. I even asked about it at E3 in 2011 and they implied without directly stating that it wasn't coming out. Yeah, it was one of the 3DS games, such as Assassin's Creed (went on to be Revelations) and Saint's Row (cancelled), that were just there to build buzz and show support. I think a bunch of different factors, especially FFXIV's relaunch, affected its development. Many of the names in their handheld departments went to fix up that MMO. Miyamotos RGB NES posted:I absolutely adore FFVI even though I am not a big fan of other games in the series. I cannot wait to play this, even with the knowledge that it'll look like a crummy Flash game at best. Theoretically, the tools are there to help port their games, especially for Playstation systems. However, you can play other versions of the mainline FF games on those systems. I think they released nearly a dozen different versions of FFIV between all those systems. I don't think we'll see a fully 3D remake on the 3DS either. They've made a lot of money off smaller, less expensive 2D updates. You can check sale rank databases, such as Annie App (free registration required), to see that they've had very consistent sales. Getting a high rank on even the Kids chart is a pretty big deal.
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Oct 10, 2013 23:47
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1st AD posted:Cyan is cool if you save that one sword that casts Wind Slash and then give him the Offering and Genji Glove, then he hits 8 times and does Wind Slash maybe 2 or 3 times. His ability sucks though and the only time it's not as insufferable is when you set ATB to wait (but it still sucks because it slows the game down). I hope whoever does the port just makes it an MP driven ability. I think it's a 1/16 chance of activating in a near death state. It's probably not unusual to go through the game without ever having seen one. There isn't anything like FFVIII's Hero medicine to force it out. My very first Limit Break/Desperation Attack was Relm casting Death on a target who was immune to death.
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Oct 11, 2013 14:17
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It appears that Square-Enix has formed a committee centered ensuring the quality of future Final Fantasy games. Now who are the highly qualified people behind this esteemed committee?quote:In an effort to bolster the quality of the Final Fantasy series going forward, Square Enix has deemed it necessary to bring together some of the franchise’s top creators in what they’re calling the “Final Fantasy Committee.” http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/10/square-enix-has-formed-a-final-fantasy-committee-to-ensure-series-quality/ https://twitter.com/aibo_ac7/status/390744585380442113 (original) FF-Reunion is a Japanese Final Fantasy fansite that keeps up to date on FF news and attends local Square-Enix events. They broke the news on Agito for iOS/Android.
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Oct 17, 2013 22:26
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No Tetsuya Nomura on the committee. I guess you have to fully direct and ship a Final Fantasy game in order to get on board.Barudak posted:Screw making this one of influence; Yoshida needs to be made Dictator of Final Fantasy. Yoshida is the type of guy who is worried about losing customers and will work tirelessly to address their concerns. He doesn't have much of a future in SE's upper management. In all seriousness, there has been very little in the way of new blood entering the company. Yoshida and SE Osaka have come the closest to taking over the reins of the old guard. Nonetheless, they've lost a lot of promising talent over the years, such as core members of the Dissidia team leaving for GREE Inc.. Toriyama is often decried as the root of the company's problems but Square-Enix management and the politically well-connected Kitase seem to like him and his work. They keep giving him the resources to keep on making the games. However, I don't know what will happen under the new management which is focused on profitability and high growth markets.
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Oct 17, 2013 23:24
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It's easy to be cynical about the formation of this committee but I think it's an improvement over their previous attitude. According to Yoshida, the company had become complacent after FF's success and the thinning of their Japanese competitors. They let FFXIV release in its original state because they thought the strength of the brand would overcomes any criticism of its archaic game design. Sometimes, a company's worst enemy is itself as it becomes drunk on past successes and fails to better itself. A committee dedicated to quality assurance is a huge step forward from this mentality. Nonetheless, there a chance of the committee being a microcosm of the nepotism and stagnancy affecting the entire company. While younger insight would a good addition, I think there are a few more veterans who could help establish a system of checks and balances. I'm curious to what Hiroyuki Itou is up to. He's a very talented, open-minded, and experienced developer. He may have been working on a project that was cancelled by Square-Enix after their financial problems.
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Oct 18, 2013 02:35
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I played through FF8 last year and I don't think any part of the game makes sense once you enter the Fire Cavern. I guess that makes practically the whole game nonsensical. It's a mishmash of different influences, such as popular Japanese high school dramas, to create set piece moments and surprise twists. What occurs between these moments usually doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, you have a group of teenage mercenaries who have never fully completed an actual mission attempt to assassinate a powerful sorceress. This group is comprised of various individuals who either disobeyed orders during their final exam, were demoted due to poor leadership skills, or don't understand sexual harassment policies. In fact, Irvine doesn't appear to have ever assassinated a person before in a high profile mission. Quistis also leaves her post during the mission because she feels sorry for insulting Rinoa. The defeat of the sorceress is SeeD's number one priority according to various SeeD personnel. However, they can't spare their best and most experienced mercenaries for this vital mission which could have dire political consequences. It's not like there was a time limit on the mission since you're forced to enter some ruins to retrieve a key code. It's as if the decision to put all of these inexperienced people with emotional baggage together was a bad idea gone haywire. These scenes can create good drama but what leads up to these situations doesn't make much sense.
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Oct 18, 2013 19:59
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Doesn't mean it's not stupid. Who was it that left SE citing this incident as one of the reasons why? I forgot who it was exactly. It was Nobou Uematsu. quote:1UP: What made you finally decide to leave Square altogether? Was it just that you wanted more creative freedom or you didn't want to be tied down to Final Fantasy projects specifically? Or maybe you didn't like the direction the company was going in when they merged with Enix? What made you want to break out and form your own company like Dog Ear Records and Smile Please? http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=6&cId=3166165 He left because he was unhappy with the move. Or he realized that Wada's new healthcare plan only covered homeopathy and other alternative medicines. I can't imagine why he wouldn't look forward to balancing his four humors with a free colloidal silver enema.
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Oct 19, 2013 19:17
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The basics for the battle system were solid but it needed a lot of fine tuning and interesting content in between battles. The last year of development of the game was a Hail Mary pass that involved stringing together whatever assets they had on hand and shipping it in Japan by December. It why so much of the game involves going to completely different environments through vehicle crashes or freak falls. They didn't have a template for how the final game would play until the demo that came with Advent Children on Blu-Ray. The engine also had a lot of problems during development, especially when rendering large environments. The game feels rushed and underdeveloped because the game was rushed and underdeveloped.Barudak posted:We'll only stop talking about FFXIII when the new consoles are out and have replaced the old ones so people aren't buying it because its the one mainline FF game of the generation. Which will last until the digital re-release of XIII. They also tried to put Lightning in everything from FFXIV to Prada clothing.
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Oct 25, 2013 23:35
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1st AD posted:Honestly, I don't know how Square is still in business because they spend a million years in development hell and don't seem to respond well to criticism about games (or reach the wrong conclusions). They have taken steps to address FFXIII's problems. Unfortunately, this is done through focus groups rather than fixing problems on the development side. FFXIII-2 was an attempt to micromanage what people hated and liked about the first game, such as the lack of towns and battle system respectively. They even took out vocals for a song after it was negatively received by the press at e3. The thing is that they identified problems in their development methodology as far back as FF12's production. They knew that the FF games were becoming more and more difficult and more expensive to make. They also had management issues in that the senior staff would micromanage a large staff. Their teams themselves had began to incorporate people who had limited experience in working on big budget games. The series faces a conundrum in that their customers enjoy high quality productions values which are becoming increasingly difficult to create. There was a great opportunity ten years ago to poach the right kind of talent and experiment with cost saving middleware. BioMe posted:FFXIII was inspired by Call of Duty or something. I'm just liberally paraphrasing funny poo poo the guy said. I don't think it was meant to be serious. It was probably an attempt to piggyback on that series' success and create buzz for FFXIII. SE published Call of Duty in Japan under their Extreme Edges label. That loving Sned posted:
There is a very real possibility of FFXV coming out with great production values but aged game design and a lack of quality content. It's something we've seen plague several of SE's big budget games this past generation. Nomura's team seems directionless and hasn't been able to produce a playable demo after years of development. I have to wonder how much money has gone into the game. The CGI alone must cost a fortune.
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Oct 26, 2013 16:12
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Barudak posted:I don't know if I'd go with solid. I mean, I haven't rewatched it since my I saw it a week before it released in theaters and thought "this is poo poo." What I remember most clearly about it other than the main character looking worse than everyone else because they had wrinkles and she didn't is that its a Sci-Fi film that seemed totally unwilling to engage with its core conceits. Like, anything interesting about the ghosts, the war, the way in which they are stopped are all peripheral to the mcguffin quest the plot revolves around. Similar to FF7 and Lost Odyssey, the movie was influenced by Sakaguchi's spiritual awakening after his mother's death. However, it underwent a number of rewrites in order to make it more marketable since a lot of money was riding on it. You end up with a story that mishmashes the traditional Hollywood action-adventure structure with a JRPG quest and Japanese melodrama. This is a movie where soldiers wear bulky armor against an enemy that can quickly phase through walls and steal their souls. A lot of people in game development and CGI studios look up to the movie. It's not so for the story as it is about the movie's art direction. For example, the omni-tool in Mass Effect was influenced by the technology in TSW.
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Oct 28, 2013 23:35
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OXM Interview posted:Square Enix has "discussed" letting Eidos work on Final Fantasy - could be "very interesting" http://www.oxm.co.uk/65029/square-enix-has-discussed-letting-eidos-work-on-final-fantasy-could-be-very-interesting/ The idea isn't anything new. SE previously worked with the now defunct GRIN on a FFXII spin off before cancelling development. Going further back, Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy IX were collaborative efforts with developers in America. While I'd like the bulk of the development to stay in Japan, I think working alongside Western studios would help in creating game that appeals to multiple regions. In more practical terms, the development costs would be higher if the grunt work was done in America/Canada as opposed to Japan. Early testing by Western studio could help identify issues that affected the development and reception of the previous games. The Luminous Engine had input from Crystal Dynamics since their previous engine suffered from being tailored to one particular style of game.
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Oct 30, 2013 19:24
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1st AD posted:Why? SE can't produce AAA games on any reasonable time scale, if anything the bulk of development should stay in the United States with art/story management/direction coming from Japan. Almost all of SE's of big budget games have problems from both sides of the map. Thief 4 was stuck in development hell and rebooted several times. Tomb Raider/Hitman/Kane and Lynch failed to meet expectations due to their high costs of development. The new Legacy of Kain game was cancelled late into development and rebooted as a F2P multiplayer game. These big budget games take so long to make that the market and company's needs will have changed dramatically by their time of release. Even a well-disciplined team can falter when budgets and team sizes balloon past their comfort zone. While their Western studios get games out at a steadier pace, they still suffer from management issues and high costs of development. A Final Fantasy game developed by Eidos could run into same issues as their previous AAA games while being a much more expensive game than what it would be if developed domestically. In spite of its lengthy development, a Realm Reborn shows that a focused core Japanese team under a well-rounded designer can create a globally minded game with the subsystems typical of their Japanese games. Of course, this is assuming Square-Enix has the moxie to pursuit as opposed to some PR Talk. FFXII was probably the closest they got to pulling this off and that took four years and $40 million to make on the PS2. That loving Sned posted:I wonder when the Luminous Engine is going to be finished? We saw a tech demo at E3 last year, but apparently XV still hasn't shifted entirely to it, and is still using the part Luminous (for lighting), part middleware, and part bespoke engine from the PS3 version. This could mean that the final game could absolutely blow away what's already been shown of the PS4/X1 version, but also that it's still nowhere near finished. The engine was still a work in progress when last shown since the toolset focused running a typical Final Fanatasy CGI in real time as oppose being optimized for game development. That's why you had toes rendered in shoes. The initial plan was to leverage the strength of the Visualworks CGI studio in creating game assets. Crystal Dynamics was involved in the development on Luminous Studios right from the very beginning. However, I think one of the leads on the Luminous development team was recently poached by Kojima Productions to work on the Fox Engine. Arbite posted:Wait what? What happened here? You can read about some of their contributions here and at the links at the bottom.
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Oct 30, 2013 21:10
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Defiance Industries posted:Tomb Raider didn't fail to meet expectations due to high development costs, they failed to meet expectations because the sales expectations for Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and Sleeping Dogs were "make up for all the money the Japanese branch is losing on FF13 and 14," and so in typical fashion, rather than say "we lost money because the Japanese studios are a sucking chest wound" it was "we lost money because Eidos didn't meet our ridiculous expectations." It's not Eidos' fault that their high-quality games that were received well both critically and financially can't prop up Square-Enix from failing. Tomb Raider was in development for four years, received an extensive marketing campaign with a Visualworks trailer, involved hundreds of people, and had multiple development teams working on it. If it wasn't going to hit multi-million sales out of the gate, then SE was stupid to have continued to develop such an expensive game after their acquisition in the first place. It costs a lot of money to have hundreds of people work on a game for several years. People have this narrative about SE Japanese studios being a money vortex while Eidos is some gold mine keeping the company afloat. However, Eidos got the resources to make their games because SE bet big on these games becoming huge hits. This came at the expense of their Japanese development when $55 million/4.5 billion yen worth of games were cancelled in Japan in 2011. During this time, they bulked up the headcount at Eidos for Thief and other games. They spent a lot of money on their Eidos games and made lavish CGI trailers for them. They thought AAA games in North America/Europe would grow to counteract the contraction in the Japanese console market. The company tried to compete with the big four publishers + Bethesda but failed to duplicate their success since the failure threshold for AAA games is so high. They realized their focus on packaged goods for consoles was a bust and have now shifted their focus on mobile gaming. Most of their money comes from intensive cost cutting measures in Japan (now in Eidos as well) and the growth in their mobile division.
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Oct 31, 2013 03:21
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Schwartzcough posted:But they did have multi-million sales right out of the gate. They were good, polished games, but if they sunk so much money into them that selling 3.5 million units in the first month is a huge failure then, once again, their structure and production methods are deeply flawed. The difference in production quality between Eidos games and other Western games isn't so vast that there should be this weird huge expectations (or spending) gap. You don't see other publishers crying big salty tears and pointing fingers at development houses for games that "only" sell 3.5 million units in a month. Defiance Industries posted:All those games DID become multimillion sellers, though. Even Sleeping Dogs moved like 2m. Tomb Raider sold over a million in 24 hours, something like 7m in the first couple months. Square-Enix utilizes price protection in order to ship more copies to retailers. Price protection is an agreement between the publisher and the retailer (in North America and Europe) about how the latter would be compensated if the game in question underperforms. The retailer will order more copies of the game under this agreement. In exchange, the retailer will be compensated for quick price cuts that are needed to move inventory. Square-Enix has repeatedly said they lost money on poor upfront sales and price protection:  This is a common issue for publishers who publish AAA games. For example, a game that ships millions of copies may not make much of a profit for the publisher since price protection required them to reimburse retailers. Some publishers, such as Nintendo, do not engage in this but many others do in order to ship a lot of copies to stores. It's how several publishers tout how many copies they've shipped when they actually lost a lot of money on price protection due to poor sales performance. This is why SE is pulling out of packaged good and AAA game development. We'll see sequels to Tomb Raider and Hitman. However, we saw that the company cancelled several projects at Eidos due to poor sales. The cost of competing with Ubisoft/EA/Take2/Acti-Blizzard is extremely high. For example, Watchdogs, a new IP by Ubisoft, was slated to sell over 6 million copies and its delay was a major factor in Ubisoft going from a profitable year to a loss. Back in 2012, Max Payne 3 underperformed expectations in spite of shipping 3 million copies out of the gate because of price protection and high development costs. It takes a lot of money to compete in the AAA market beyond just throwing a lot of money at game development.
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Oct 31, 2013 15:43
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Paracelsus posted:Is price protection why I saw new copies of FFXIII-2 in GameStop for $20? It's highly likely that SE channeled stuffed FFXIII-2 which underwent quick price cuts. They probably expected it to sell in line of the first game's sales. The alternatives were to ship it back to the publisher for a refund or to destroy units. At this point, the publisher has sunk costs in the form of manufacturing/shipping costs and the licensing fees paid out to platform holders. They would rather accept the price protection expenses than offer to take back the game. The original FFXIV release was a rare instance where retailers were given credit for destroying copies of the game. Price protection is practiced in many different industries. Due to how it works out in accounting, a company can ship a lot of units in one quarter to record a profit and then write off price protection expenses in the next. In the game industry, it is usually written off as credit on future invoices. It's part of the reason why we have seen more and more exclusive pre-order content for games and a move toward digital platforms. When a game publisher sets up a sales target, it's usually under the assumption that those sales would occur at full price. This is why worldwide shipment numbers can be misleading because a bulk of those shipments could have occurred under heavy discounts. A game like Call of Duty probably had the vast majority of its shipments occur at full price but that isn't the case for the vast majority of games at retail. Nintendo is one of the few big publishers that doesn't practice price protection. This is why some of their games suffer from shortages. Retailers are reluctant to stock games they may not be able to sell without incurring a loss. They can only return defective products. However, price protection can create a downward spiral in which a company overships a product in one quarter in order to cover past price protection expenses and in turn creates expenses for the following quarter which requires even more overshipping. It's uncommon for some companies to end up in this cycle by attempting to keep each quarter as strong as possible.
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Oct 31, 2013 18:10
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You'll probably see them emulate Skyrim over GTA. Several Square-Enix producers said it was their favorite game of 2011/12 and it made a lot of money without costing over $200 million to develop.
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Nov 1, 2013 01:04
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Defiance Industries posted:I would be kind of surprised, considering that Toriyama's whole thing is "we can't tell a good story This time, however, he's looking to go head to head against Skyrim with Lightning Returns. Skyrim was a big game changer for the RPG scene considering that the people behind LR, Monolith Soft's X, Witcher 3, and Dragon Age Inquisition have talked about it has influenced them.
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Nov 1, 2013 04:16
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I've said it before but the management and Kitase seemed to like Toriyama's work and keep giving him money. I don't know how the new management will treat him and his pet projects, especially if Toriyama doesn't enjoy the budget cuts. Nonetheless, the management appears to have made changes to how producers promote their game. For instance, they had several senior staff members, such as Nomura and Toriyama, go in person to Japan Expo in France in order to promote their games and speak with fans. It's pretty rare for someone who wasn't Yoshida to show up at such an event. I think they've started to realize their radio silence and lack on involvement in the community has had deleterious effects on their fanbase.
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Nov 2, 2013 21:35
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Barudak posted:He's... ok? I mean his voice is fine for him up until the farplane realization but after that it just doesn't work at all. Auron is pitch-perfect though. The voice actors had to match their voice overs to the pre-programmed animations. I thought James Arnold Taylor did a good job with this limitation and even made his voice sound more somber as the story progressed. You can tell he's much more comfortable narrating the story than he is during animated cutscenes. That loving Sned posted:Birth by Sleep is amazing, and so is Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix if you play it on Proud or Critical. We'll probably see more HD ports of PS2 games. Kingdom Hearts 1 HD sold very well and provided HD development experience for programmers at SE Osaka. I read that it was more involved than a usual HD port since they lost the original assets for KH1. It's not too unusual for that to happen to a game company due to mergers or office relocation.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:11
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quote:Final Fantasy XIV’s Exceeds Square Enix’s Expectations, Prompts Earnings Forecast Increase http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/0...28Siliconera%29 Who knew that communicating with your target audience and looking at competitors could pay dividends? These sales obviously don't include the PS4 version which will release in February. Considering the extraordinarily high opportunity cost, it doesn't come off as much of a financial success as it should. A lot of games were cancelled and many development resources were cannibalized to revive an MMO that should not have been such a disaster in the first place. However, the major takeaway is that they are serious about the FF brand. The right talent and leadership can revive it. Oh, and 80-100 hour work weeks. We'll still have to see how the subscription numbers pan out. The subscription MMO landscape has changed dramatically over the years but the game's console friendly design should help it attract a different audience.
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Nov 5, 2013 17:09
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Come to think of it, the belief that beating up your friends will make them stronger explains SE's business strategy for the past decade.
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Nov 5, 2013 20:48
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:23 |
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Square Enix and Ubisoft team up for cloud computing:quote:Project FLARE: Square Enix's Cloud Gaming Service Revealed http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/05/project-flare-square-enixs-cloud-gaming-service-revealed http://jp.square-enix.com/flare/pdf/Project_Flare_20131104.pdf (Original) Demos included a Deus Ex physics demo, Agni's Philosophy, and FFXI with real time views of a friend's instance. Oh, and Wada is involved in this. I think some of you might want him back after you hear the next piece of news.    http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/14q2slides.pdf This isn't to say that they're cancelling all their AAA games and making them into F2P online games. They just have an increased emphasis on online play for all of their games. For example, the next Tomb Raider game will now have its multiplayer developed in-house. The Sleeping Dogs sequel, Triad Wars, will probably have a big emphasis online multiplayer. Presumably, they want to monetize online play and treat some games as a service. The general trend would be that Eidos games incorporate more online content and Japanese developed games will concentrate mostly on mobile and other digital platforms. I wouldn't be surprised if FFXV and KH3 have significant online content and microtransactions. MMOs and other online service games, such as Million Arthur, will be a big part of their strategy going forward. FFXIV did well after its release and has already broken FFXI's peak player count. They plan on focusing on the Asia with these online games.
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Nov 6, 2013 15:27
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