Their Plan Failed: Square Enix Is Abandoning Exclusivity 

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Wait... So your telling me... limiting where you sell a product... lowers the amount of sales? Holy sh*t Sherlock!

The best thing about Epic Exclusives is by the time the game releases on Steam I don’t even want to buy it anymore. Saves me so much money

If you can sell millions of copies and still consider that a loss, if a game studio can release a smash like Hi-Fi Rush and still close, the games are not the problem, the industry is.

When a game releases as an epic exclusive by the time it comes out on steam i forgot the game even existed

The purpose of CEOs setting unrealistic expectations is to deny bonus' to staff. If staff are meeting expectations they'd have to payout, but it's free to set ridiculous expectations you know you won't meet. And hey, if you do end up meeting them? They've already earned you many times what you'd pay out in that blue sky scenario. And you better believe the target will get much more extreme the following year.

AA games recently : let's release this cool game at 30 bucks, 40 with cosmetic DLC. Square & AAA publishers : pauper version 80 dollars! full version 150 dollars! AA games recently : oh man WTF all those sales we are drowning in money, help. Square & AAA publishers : sales fell short of expectations, we have no idea why.

They should have ditched exclusivity after the PS1 era, when hardware stopped being a limiting factor

they shouldve done that 10 years ago.

Lord Gaben: "You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me."

Exclusivity is the least of SE's issues.

Its worth noting just how hard Squre went in on NFTs, and crypto and how little those games made, if they even ended up getting released at all.

Meh, every Square games ALWAYS failed to met expectations according to their CEO.... IMO, they just want excuse to add mtx, Battle Pass, NFT etc to every games from now on.

Well i have to blame them for agreeing whatever exclusivity deal they did....they had to know making it ps5 only was going to limit sales if the money from sony could not offset then there was going to be issues

I’m not surprised. Both recent FF games would’ve been a day 1 purchase for me but I’m not going to buy a PS5 just to play them

to some degree it doesn't help that The PlayStation 5 was released worldwide on November 19, 2020, one week after its initial release in Australia, Japan, Korea, North America, and New Zealand on November 12, 2020. basically during the lockdowns with support chain issues and it took them a few years to finally catchup with the demand. meanwhile many gamers likely stayed with the older consoles or switched to pc.

If it wasn't for the XIV/XVI crossover event, I'd have forgotten XVI came out. I only learned Rebirth came out a few weeks after the fact. In my social circle, I am not alone in this. Exclusivity just doesn't work for third party titles.

I had a job once where the management would hold catered meetings. After the meetings were done, they'd have people bring the half eaten leftovers to the breakroom. All the sad little half platters or boxes of food now cold. This is what it feels like when exclusives get ported another platform as an afterthought once sales have stopped on its home platform. The hype has died, the taste has soured and the mood has changed in the interim anyhow. All I feel is a lot of nope.

whenever i hear or see creative unit business 3 i just think oh thats Yoshi p's studio

Hopefully this doesnt mean they stop making games like octopath and triangle strategy. Those were some of my favorite games of recent memory and i would love to see more "hd-2d" originals and remakes.

Bad news for the CEO that got money under the table from Epic. There's no sane reason for limiting yourself to a dead storefront like that, except for behind the scenes bonuses for the leaders paid from Timmy Tencent.

honestly i was sad with kh3, removing all the ff characters kinda killed it for me

Frankly, I think the next console generation should probably be pushed off for a good long while too. The systems are plenty powerful enough to realize any gameplay visions a designer may have in mind. The only thing holding developers back is their own desires to layer on far too many details. Make the games "uglier". Well, that's a strong way to put it, but what I mean is, not going for photo-realism. Go for a less detailed less realistic artistic style that requires less development costs and time to make. The best games I've played in the past few years are minimalist in that regard, like Obsidian's RPGs, or even Squeenix's oddities. But, wouldn't it be the mother of all loads if the third part of the FF7 remake was delayed indefinitely just like Half-Life 2 Episode 3?

_"...That's why Halo can still make me sad."_ By Sithis, ain't that the truth! Seeing what Halo has become is like somebody brutalising my inner child, that deep core of spotty nerd that adored playing Halo with my friends.

Square Enix on the verge of Bankruptcy: "No! No, I don't believe it!" The FF XIV Warrior of Light standing between them and the bank while wearing a dress and an angry look on their face: *Nods no*

Most people I know that wanted to play FF16 and 7 rebirth oddly don't have PS5, either they've kept their ps4 or play on pc.

I recall looking up Square's dev groups a few years ago and there was like 15+ Creative Business Units. They've been releasing a massive quantity of games that were just not selling, either because of poor marketing or middling performance. While downsizing some clearly capable employees always sucks this could be the path to a stronger company in the years to come.

Harvestella's biggest issue is the price tag Like what in the world?

As a regular FF14 player on PC, I was bummed that 16 was only coming out on PS5. Not only that, but so were nearly ALL my FC mates. Very few of us have a PS5, and can't justify the purchase. We're all eagerly awaiting 16's PC release and will definitely be playing it when it finally is out.

I remember hearing the story that Final Fantasy 1 was named as such because it was their last attempt to make a game before the company went under.. Well, on the opposite end of the financial spectrum, I'm glad to see they're reembracing their roots and seeking to deliver stories and creative experiences again instead of gimicy and cheap attempts to follow trends.

I didn't know Kingdom Hearts was an Epic exclusive. The EGS really is a marketing black hole.

Their failure is catching up, and now, they need to distribute their slop on all platforms to survive. But it will still be slop because they are physically unable to learn anything and to listen to the voices of consumers.

I assume FromSoft's growth hasn't gone unnoticed, and people have realized it happened in large part due to Miyazaki's promotion to studio president. Since he became studio president, FromSoft has released banger after banger, success after success, not a weak game in their catalogue.

SQEX: "The sales did not meet our expectations" Me: And water is wet. At least they seem to have reduced their business units and create a more consolidated structure from the previous 12 BU?! But naming is still very creative like the mmo unit was Business Unit 05, changed to Creative Business Unit 3 and now Creative Studio 3

I actually LOVED Harvestella. It felt like I just picked up an old PS2 game I forgot to play way back in the day. Was it insanely innovative? No. Was it just a fun little jrpg romp? Yeah. While it was short is Was pretty enjoyable and it even had 3 different endings and a hidden real final boss in the hidden ending! I'd say it felt like when I played Radiata Stories on PS2. Which if you never heard of or played Radiata Stories grab an emu and play it. For real.

One-time payment isn't profitable for the company versus long-term growth. Exclusivity is a never good approach, unless you're Nintendo that has their very own ecosystem, which Square doesn't have.

As long as they mingle between studios and shoot the shit sometimes. I don't want the next Star Ocean game to be made by the same people. That also kind of goes for DQ. A bold take on DQ would be so refreshing.

Glad to see companies stepping away from exclusivity. I've been pc only since about 2 years into the life cycle of the Xbox 360. I despise consoles and exclusivity deals. To the point I've refused to buy the games of any company that participates in any form of exclusivity. Now if only streaming services could get their shit together and actually compete thru services rather than show exclusivity. Their ruining the whole concept of why streaming services worked in the first place.

I’ve not played FFXVI, but I do plan on buying FFXVI on Steam.

This brings to mind the sales flop known as NEO The World Ends With You. They had the balls to say the sales are not satisfactory when in fact the reason was it got shunted to the EGS, did they not learn the meme "oh EGS exclusive? That means 1 year delay"

Did you Talk about Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default or May other Games that we don't know so far. Why are you so focused on Tomb Raider and the other Big FF? I'm thrilled to see whats next especially for old school JRPGs.

That’s funny… I literally had no idea kingdom hearts was on pc. I just borrowed the disks from a friend for my PlayStation lmaoo

I saw a video recently that actually looked into the math behind SE's expectations for AAA titles tho, and it makes sense. Once you remove the 35% cut of sales from major retailers other than Epic Games, selling 3 million copies on a mainline FF game _doesn't_ make back the development cost, because development costs nowadays are just insane. Exclusivity deals can in some cases help pay for development costs, and make games less risky because said platform will just take all the revenue until the cost is paid back, meaning they don't really _lose_ money at least. So it makes _sense_ . Really even just a few Epic sales over Steam help them quite a bit, but tbh in the long term they'd end up making far more from Steam sales 'cause it's just a larger audience. I feel like when they do Epic exclusivity deals, by the time games make it to Steam, the hype is dead so they lose a lot of sales they'd otherwise have gotten

8:00 Thank you for catching yourself. Yes, it should be customers. One of the reasons why stuff in a state as it is in my opinion is the change in noun used. This lead to people internalizing the consuming part of their part of the equation and not demanding quality as a customer should. As far as the call to action questions: No and no. 🧡💛🧡

Not just the platform exclusivity is the problem. Also involvment of some unnecessary consultation groups did a huge part of the downfall.

Literally the WoL from 14 has been single-handidly stopping them from bankruptcy. It is almost as if it a calamity in game, the Wol does what they do best and save the day. If that doesn''t speak about the powerhouse of 14, the fact that it was SO SUCESSFUL that they had to stop selling it, nothing else does. I would have loved to have 16 on pc before the x-over on 14 but I am still happy KH is finally coming to steam.

2:57 As someone that loved Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2 as a kid and always wanted to play the whole franchise through, I indeed had no clue Kingdom Hearts was ported to PC.

I have been telling my friends I think we are on the cusp of a renaissance in gaming. They kind of doubt it. BUT, things like square pulling their heads out of their nugget holes, people being fed up with the uglification of gaming art and story, and the simple fact that AAA gaming is too dense to see that gaming is not failing, but they in fact are failing by not making good engaging stories, I think are going to lead us out of the dreary garbage we have been seeing.

They do things that are baffling to me. They used to be the studio that did their own thing better than anyone else with turn based, amazing looking RPGs with very strong stories and design, then they started chasing trends trying to appeal to the West when the West was already playing FF and loving it. So many throw away games, the horrible NFT stuff, and now FF16(I will die on the hill that FF should have stayed turn based and they should have made a related spin off series for action instead of splitting the player base every entry), and FF7 honestly got screwed by exclusivity. I and most of my friend group, don't have PS5s, it was basically a unobtainable myth for years and then inflation hit so it seemed like such an obvious bad choice to lock it to PS5 users if they wanted those sales numbers. It's so obvious that it's baffling.

square-enix doesn't even own the rights to Kingdom hearts, Disney does, so it was obviously Disney's decision for Kingdom hearts to be multi-platform, the only things in Kingdom hearts that square-enix owns are the characters from Final fantasy and the world ends with you, everything else is owned by Disney, including all original characters made for Kingdom hearts, including sora

Remember the days of FF13 trilogy and failed launch of FF14 1.0? It’s all relative - I think Square Enix has delivered some excellent games last couple of years! Wish them all the best and that multi platform works out good for them

I have a bit of a hypothesis when it comes to what's going on with them right now. It's not only the money and financial management I think it's also the direction of the games. Don't get me wrong they have well dedicated fans and I think that's really good. But going into the future as their fan base are getting older and different games are coming out that cater to different audiences people who may not follow the traditional route of fantasy that they their cells have established it does become more harder to get hype or want to buy a game that really isn't going to allow you to be yourself or live your fancy in a way you want to in the game. And the reason why I say this is look how big their MMO is doing. Going through all the different servers even the different data centers has shown me there is multiple different types of players in tone people role-playing their fantasy. And before anyone goes if you see some of the role playing worlds in ffxix you would understand. And this is not me saying that they make s***** games they make really good games, it's just sometimes some of the stories the characters the archetypes that they use feel a bit dated. And I mean I was just looking at the new Monster Hunter Wilds trailer and I can't help but notice how excited everyone is Don't get me wrong You have some people who don't like that the characters look more modern or that it looks a bit different than how it usually is. But it's good that they're expanding on their world and adding some new features and and some different archetypes. I think that's very important as a times change you have to evolve with it that doesn't mean you have to get rid of everything that made you unique and forms of your games but there should be a level of progression I shouldn't pick up a game and it feels like I'm playing something from 2017 or 2012. With prettier graphic they should be a bit more bolder and not be afraid of changing starting a new chapter in their gaming series. I think something refreshing but something more advanced taking elements from other games that they have seen do popular within their company might be one of the best things for the franchises. I don't want to see them think I don't want to see no become a legacy company not able to keep up with today's ever-changing gaming scene. But that's what it feels like sometimes, I enjoy playing the games but you can't say that they don't follow a set formula at times. They do they always have The stories are beautiful the graphics are beautiful, the characters are often beautiful but at the end of the day we usually know what we're getting when we pick up a final fantasy game. Hopefully we'll see something that they feel comfortable with releasing and that's a bit different that makes not only the old fan base want to come back and play it but new people as well some that have never thought about picking up a final fantasy game.

Creative business unit III, Creative studio III. Doesn't matter what the name is they have the best employees there.

i didnt know kingdom hearts was on pc until the steam announcement. it was stuck in the egs store for 3 years wtf?

The big telling moment for me will be if we see Kingdom Hearts 4 on the Switch successor. That's the only way I can really see this boosting them, especially by getting back their Japanese base. Do we really think being on Xbox at launch will help? Especially with now poor stand alone game sales are there?

The future is creative indie games. That being said, lets not kid ourselves thinking Square is ever going to die. The problem isn't even that their games are doing poorly, just less well than they had hoped.

I put in about 80 hours into my playthrough of XVI including all side quests hunts and dlc, but haven't gone through final fantasy mode or a ng+ playthrough at all yet. I can't wait to get it on pc and do it again, I usually consider the pc version my go-to once it's launched for these kinds of releases.

2:10 Very brief note - its been shown that a lot of the textures have been touched up and made higher resolution as well in the steam port coming - they had not done this for the previous HD rereleases, not even the Ps4 version - so I suspect to get Next Gen Kingdom Hearts All in one package, with all the bells and whistles and HD texture upgrades for next Gen consoles (Ps5/ XBX/ PC / Switch 2) to probably release shortly before we start to hear more and more KH4 news, I feel like they are gonna try to get the entire series on next gen hardware, like they did with the PS4.

If FF16 is able to release a solid PC version, I think we could see a huge resurgence of the game. It has the potential to be one of the best looking games out there and has the most appeal of any FF game for non-FF fans.

I've been waiting for XVI to come out on PC. I don't own a PS5 and given that they still have a monthly subscription model for even getting online, I have no desire to purchase one.

I'm so shocked that limiting the amount of people that can buy your product would have a negative impact on sales. Who knew?

I was on PS4 but scalpers, duel shock 4 problems and console limitations brought me to PC with FF14, I want to play FF16, I want to play FF7 remake and rebirth, just not on console anymore and surely I'm not the only one feeling this way and thats one of the reasons why.

I honestly never knew it was on Epic, but i DID hear about it coming to Steam!! They have GOT to learn to Advertise their GOOD games better!!

FF7 Rebirth just feels bad, if their most beloved title getting a modern remake doesn't hit sales targets then you know your business strategy isn't working. Its a shame because honestly its one of the most feature complete games to be released in a long time. No microtransactions, with a pretty solid 100+ hour playthrough. Definitely a GOTY contender

Square Enix is so frustrating. They immediately set a ceiling for sales by limiting where a title is sold... and the back catalog??? Who here would gladly pay for a re-issue(on modern hardware) of Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Parasite Eve, and countless other titles?

With the departure of Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Atlus's Persona, I've no reason to own a playstation (and hell, persona hopped ship all the way over to game pass). Very pleased with that.

Oh my god, Kingdom hearts coming to Steam is actually such a relief to me. I thought it was never going to happen. 😭

The thing about what a game needs to earn to be a success financially is that you can just think about it versus how much they would have made if they had just tossed all that money in the stock market. At 6 mill, assuming 30 dollars of profit on average, it commes to 180 mill. That number is meaningless without a point of reference. Assume a budget of 100 mill for the sake of argument and that they would have doubled that over the same period in the stock market to 200 million... suddenly they've actually lost 20 million dollars. THAT is the difference between personal finances and a publicly traded business. You can think of it like getting an 8% raise when inflation has made everything 10% more expensive.

every time these days corpo puts out a mission statement it usually means they have no clue what they are doing. 'mission' usually is not set up internally with procedures and a clear understanding of what to do to achieve what was in the nice power point slides for bosses and investors. im not holding my breath.

Harvestella is such a bizarre case, you would think a big jrpg dev making their own rune factory would be a slam dunk, but instead nobody remembers it...

Less likely people didn’t know and more of I don’t wanna engage the epic platform for whatever reasons.

I'd love it if there was a super close up on the faces of, say, PalWorld, Helldivers, Baldur's Gate 3, Balatro... Basically just a bunch of fun games...

I didn't know Kingdom Hearts was brought to PC lol I seriously thought "about time" only to be "wait , what?"

I use the youtube app, watch your channel regularly, and never see ads. Same with many other channels. I usually only see ads while listening to music.

If we can get the Dragon Quest back catalog on Steam, I'd be all for it. Aggravating playing through the series and having to jump through consoles just to play the entire series. Not to mention give us 10 already you got an offline version, translate it and release it. Would make a good stopgap to keep western fans happy till 12 comes out.

I won't give squeenix my money anymore after being treated as a peasant only because I didn't own a PS5. After being happy for years of taking sony money now they suddenly realize the PC market is viable. Screw you SE!!

With the exception of FF VII Remake, i don't buy games that were exclusive on Epic Store, and this is not to be petty or anything. Is just that you have that moment of hype and then "just on epic", when I just bought a Steam Deck to play while I have free time during work, and have most games on Steam (only Fortnite with friends o Epic). And well the hype dies off when more things come out, i don't even know how many sales have passed and games like borderlands keep popping up but I'm already busy with other games.

Their PC releases NEED to be legit PC versions with all the expected PC settings natively in the game! The options in 7R were abysmal. Which is crazy given that 15 actually did a good job in that department

So SE is gonna force Yoshi P to watch over and consult on everything?

I wouldn't buy any previous exclusive game unless it was heavily discounted on launch. At least 80%. It's years old game anyway. And since I wasn't able to play it for years since the launch, it doesn't really matter if I could ever play it or not.

This is how i feel about exclusivity. If you are going to actively participate in the implementation of a system that prevents me from playing your game at release then dont expect me to pay full price when you finally decide im allowed to play your game.

Wait. They literally named their teams stupid dystopian crap like, "Creative Unit 3"!? Next step? Barcodes. Printed on the shaved heads of their Creative Units.

I do not have a PS5, so I've had no choice *but* to wait for FF16 to come to PC. It needs to get here!

I was today years old when I learned Kingdom Heart's been on PC for the last 3 years

Gee, who knew that a Japanese company hitching the exclusively wagon to a console that stopped caring about the Japanese market a decade ago would lead to underwhelming sales?

So Wise , Thank You. I personally have 1 Non Pc game . Phantasy Star on the Master System . If it's not on Steam ?

with FF16, i saw the trailer at E3 or whatever and then never heard about it again until now. Crazy

"We developed our game for a single console, locking it out from over 2/3 of possible sales because we were told exclusivity is good" -no smart developer ever. I love FF but will not buy a PS5 purely for it. Gonna wait for PC version of pretty much all SE games. (Harvestella is pretty fun btw, yall should play it)

I can't remember the SE subsidiary that makes them, but I do quite enjoy their 2.5HD titles like Octopath and Triangle Strategy. Hope to see more of those in the future, with less awful names.

I did not know Kingdom Hearts was available on PC This is also the first I am hearing of FF16 even existing

8:22 Anyone else notice Takashi Mochizuki's handle is @mochi ?

who would've thought restricting accessibility to your product to a tiny group of audience on launch day(after spending millions to market it) would affect sales negatively.

I haven't even heard a word about harvestela... And I am kinda looking for new games constantly

I will never buy a game thats gone/been epic exclusive. They didnt need my money then they dont need it now since epic paid upfront for it. This reminds me of when the witcher writer took the money upfront which was less then what he would have made in royalties. Always good to see companies suffer for their short sightedness.

Couldn't you possibly say that them taking the money back when was the long-term play? If you are getting paid to develop something, and then you get to generally release it later, you are essentially getting a free influx of cash at the cost of time.

It’s funny that that MMO is also having a huge payment issue where Visa cards are not accepted and we FFXIV players cannot even GIVE them money.

Closer to release, I'd have bought FF XVI on PC if it ran well, especially if it worked on my Deck. If they port it now, it'll get put on my "eventually" list because usually ports of big games don't get the space on the release calendar that the original launch did. Like, I've been playing Hades 2 and Stellaris. Going to be playing ER. So FF would be one of many games I might grab during the next slow period.

I remember when the CEO said NFT's were the future and they were going all in. That failed spectacularly.

Actually started playing FF16 again this weekend after stopping about halfway or so at its initial release. Enjoying it more this time round with different expectations after almost a year. Rebirth I'm interested in, but figure I'll just wait till third game eventually releases and play all three on PS6 or PS7 at that point. Had played remake on PS4, but didn't have PS5 for the DLC at the time, and feels like I'm missing part of the story to continue, and wasn't a fan of combat in remake either.

Having bought a PS5 specifically for FF16 and 7 Rebirth, I’ll be overjoyed when both come to Steam, and especially if FF7R Part 3 gets a day and date release on Steam alongside the PS5. I’ll probably still buy a PS5 collectors edition, just to add it to my physical FF collection, but I always prefer playing games on PC.