https://www.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-maker-square-enix-will-aggressively-pursue-a-multiplatform-strategy-after-profits-tumble
Final Fantasy maker Square Enix has announced a company reboot amid tumbling profits.
Great, can we get FF7 Rebirth on PC now?
"After" profits tumble? We haven't even had a chance to buy FF16 or Rebirth yet, and if they're like Remake there'll still be a year to wait for it to get off Epic and onto Steam. Just sell us the damn game if you want money.
Japanese companies and making your product impossible to purchase. Name a better duo.
Imagine Japanese board execs as you do republicans. They can only understand what they can physically see or physically happens to them. Aka. Everything outside of Japan is inconceivable.
Japan actually has a rather conservative culture, particularly in politics, so comparing them to US Republicans os very apt
Who would've thought that making your product more readily available would increase sales? That's so much more counterintuitive than "double down on NFTs and release schedules that require knowledge of calculus to figure out."
SE releases have been all over the place recently. Sometimes it's PS exclusives, sometimes Nintendo exclusives, sometimes console exclusives, sometimes they release on PS and Nintendo but not Xbox...
I was an XOne user a few years back and it was exhausting. PC side it's a bit better, except that their flagship series is locked on PS for who knows how long, and then locked on Epic Store for one more year.
As a potential customer, I didn't feel exactly welcomed. I was interested in FFXVI, but didn't have a PS5 (I still don't). Now I don't have the time to play long-ass games anymore, which means that by the time it will finally be released on PC, I won't probably buy it.
I was someone who was willing to give them money, and they refused it time and time again. I'm sorry for their difficult situation, as Square has created some great games from my childhood that I will forever cherish (both as Square Soft and Square Enix), but let's be honest, this is their fault.
I hope they follow through with this decision, though. I doubt I'll be a customer, but maybe they'll make some kids as happy as I was when I was their age and playing those old FF titles. People deserve to play those games without being told to buy two different consoles and/or wait an eternity and a half for exclusive deals to expire.
This is very true. And it’s interesting in that generally Ubisoft has been fine across all platforms. And yet Japanese companies seem to CRAVE exclusivity. Have they not seen franchises like Assasins creed and Far cry and thought. Yeah I want that money too?
You hear that PCMR? They're not coming to us because it's the obvious and right things to do. They're using us as a fallback! Do you wanna be the side piece? Buy games from real developers who aren't licking publisher boots!
So, uhhh... Buy Stardew Valley like 4 more times I guess.
I just look for people in my friends list that don't have it yet and curse them with owning a copy, knowing I won't hear from them for like 2-4 weeks.
Maybe they can stop changing the story of beloved remakes. That might help too. I didn't buy rebirth, and I won't buy it unless it's used. The only way I can voice my disapproval of what they've done with the ff7 remake and the bait and switch they did with part 1 is to not give them my money.
I mean, you do you, but for anyone else reading this who is on the fence, I adore the 1997 original (and am in fact replaying it right now), and I loved Rebirth. Solid 9.75/10 game for me, with the only detractions being constant interruptions by Chadley if you're doing a 100% run.
The gripes about the story being changed and stuff just don't hold up to me. The remakes are actually, by and large, very faithful to the original with a ton of fan service. They have some some new stuff with the remakes that I'm personally enjoying, and keeps me on my toes.
If I wanted the exact same story, I'd play the original, which, I am lol.
These new games actually make me like the OG FF7 more, if that’s possible. Or, at the very least, make me like the world and characters more since they aren’t just cuboid freaks. 7 was never my favorite of the bunch even though it’s the most popular, but I sure as heck spent 100 hours in Rebirth doing most of the side content.
It’s a very good game hindered only by the fact they there’s not a minigame Square said “No” to.
My partner was watching me play through Rebirth and commented on the number of mini games, and I said "honestly, that's pretty faithful to the original too" lol
Yeah there's definitely more, but the original has tons.
The story changes are, to me, some of the most interesting parts of remaking this game in the first place.
My issue is less around changing the story, more around incompleteness.
They’re making the turnout of certain events hazy and mysterious to allow for multiple future turnouts, and let them keep merchandising certain characters. And, they’re letting the conclusion keep going for multiple games.
It’s more of a monetary strategy than a storytelling one. Notably, FFXIV sells each of its expansions, but each one has an ending that feels like a victory and a satisfying conclusion to a story even when it sets new things up.
I’ve played FFVII remake and I’ve played 45 hours of rebirth and I’m enjoying it so far.
Maybe less than the original but I guess I’ve changed in 25 years and I want more mature and less japanese dialogues.
For what it's worth, Rebirth is an amazing game that I would honestly consider to be the gold star of anyone making a AAA experience today. If the goal is truly quality, I don't think it's feasible to try to make every game better than Rebirth given the breadth of content in it and its overall production quality.
Really what this announcement boils down to is that they won't be making more games like Harvestella, Valkyrie Elysium, Diofield Chronicle, and Foamstars, and they aren't keen on keeping things platform-exclusive anymore. And maybe they'll also be a bit more mindful of the budgets of their AAA games like Rebirth instead of taking the "spared no expense" mindset like they have been, which could come at the cost of quality, but I hope that's not the case.
I can't get over just how much better Remake is compared to the original, so you do you, I guess. I was incredibly pleasantly surprised to see the ways they're engaging with telling a different story and taking the name "remake" very literally. I was seriously concerned they were just going to sell the original story again in three seperate parts as full-price titles.
That's why it's called an opinion. I think the story pacing is garbage compared to the original. Introducing Sephiroth into the beginning of the game made zero sense, and then fighting him as one of the bosses really took away from the mystery of what made the original reveal of him as the real villain all that much better.
And the whispers were an absolute stupid choice to put into the game.
The endgame Sephiroth fight was definitely forced. It reeked of "well, he's been the secret antagonist all game, so we can't just disclude him from the finale" kind of thinking.
I liked the more persistent villain lurking in Cloud's broken mind, but they shouldn't have felt the need to try and put a pseudo capstone on that story thread.
Fr. Calling FF7R a "remake" of FF7 with its significant story changes and shift from perfect turn-based combat to the most mind-numbing half-measure "action RPG" combat is like saying you're going to remake Tetris but now it's a first-person shooter
Calling the new game's combat "mind-numbing" compared to a random encounter turn-based system is both peak irony and peak rose-tinted glasses.
I can only speak to my experience. I love the depth of FF7's turn-based strategic combat, meanwhile I literally haven't finish the first FF7R entry yet because I keep literally falling asleep during combat. I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm not being facetious, I literally have fallen asleep dozens of times during combat trying to finish that damn game.
If the combat speaks to you and you enjoy it, that's awesome and I'm glad it can deliver to you what you need. But for me, I think it's even worse than the combat in Tales of Berseria and I hate the combat in the Tales of series.
I love action games and I love RPGs, I just personally rarely find half-measure crossover gameplay styles satisfying.
That's so fascinating, tbh. I mean, different strokes, so I can't judge, but it's the impressively deep strategy they've baked into Remake's combat that I am particularly impressed by. That said, it makes sense though that if you dislike Tales combat, you'd dislike Remake's combat. They're not the same persay, but they're cut from the same cloth imo.
Yep, that's why I brought Tales of up in the discussion; glad you agree on the similarities despite their differences too
I was fine with the change from turn based combat. I fully expected that even with them trying to hook in newer fans of the series with modern mechanics.
But there really was no reason to change the story. It was obvious they did it as a business decision when they turned the first 5 hours of the game into 40 hours of fluff.
I wasn't even upset with the story additions for the extra character. It was kinda nice even to get some background on the characters before we leave Midgar without them.
It's the fundamental changes to the story that really bothered me, that they made for really no reason.
I agree with all of that. My personal biggest issue is the combat, but it isn't the only issue and it isn't the biggest issue with the idea of the game as a concept.
But unfortunately SqEnix recognized FF7 for the cash cow that it is, and seem fully-devoted to milking it for every last drop it can offer
I haven't played the remake, but I've seen scene snippets on youtube.
The conversations always seemed awkward, and the audio mixing was awful.
Maybe they can just stop doing re.akes and actually be original again....
Lol @ everyone who wants the exact same stuff as 20 years ago, but more broken and jank. Hey at least it's got prettier pictures...right?....
FF16 to me is paper thin in every regard. I would rank it last among all the FF games I've played. The combat is especially bad. You can basically button mash your way through all of it. Dodge a lot, that's it.
It's a good time to be a PC gamer, this is a good move for Square Enix. I really like how even games from decades ago are still playable and very affordable. There's a big market for quality single player RPGs as evidenced by the success of Baldurs Gate 3 and Persona 5 Royal.
So happy that Persona lit a fire under their asses. They need it.
Best thing that could happen to the genre would be Metaphor selling 10mil copies.
Just a thought, remakes like this tend to appeal to people in the PC crowd. We've all moved to PC for various different reasons. Better games, better prices, better hardware? Emulation and software preservation is the name of the game for a lot of people. Those people are working everyday to make things like the steam deck the dream game console they always wanted. That's the kind of person who will go back and replay Final Fantasy 7 four or five times.
I’m fine with this as long as I’m still getting FFVII part.3 on PlayStation.
To be honest I don’t really care about exclusives and I think it should just be for first party developers.
Although I wouldn’t mind getting Gears of War on PlayStation.