So much this. Once devs and publishers see you can extort Microsoft for ports. Then what’s going to stop indies and other Asian developers from doing this?
You do make a very good point there. So I guess in this case it IS on SE. Jez is saying it’s not their fault, but how is it MS’s fault? If we assume this is the reason, then it’s SE being unreasonable. Hopefully the new CEO sees more reason and sense here. I mean, it’s not a whole lot by SE that we’re missing these days, but as long as Sony hasn’t acquired them (if they ever will) we should get these games too that come to Switch as well.
I see your point now, if MS were to give in, Bandai Namco could start asking money too and more of them. But that’s assuming it’s about this, this bad blood.
Dragon Quest doesn’t actually belong to Square Enix; they just publish it which is why Nintendo publishes it on their own platforms. There is a chance Microsoft could go to the developers and ask to publish it on their own platform. Xbox already chose to go light on marketing deals and that could be a problem. Certainly, Xbox marketing Square Enix games is a huge gain for SE but not Xbox if it isn’t going to Gamepass.
2 Likes
And I think that’s exactly what happened. Before, there were far more Square Enix games on Game Pass than Bandai Namco or SEGA: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest, Nier… Microsoft paid for all these franchises and set a dangerous precedent and now Square expects Xbox to pay for everything. Perhaps Microsoft expected by helping Square games gain traction on Xbox through Game Pass it would help publish games on Xbox more easily, but in the end, it just convinced it to wait for a Game Pass check.
1 Like
Square Enix both internally develops and publishes DQ, but yes they don’t own it. But the “developers” are Square Enix.
DQXI S was published by Nintendo on Switch outside of Japan as a part of Nintendo’s usual Square + Nintendo marketing/exclusivity deals like they do on the HD2D games which are also published on Switch by Nintendo outside of Japan.
According to Wikipedia SE has only developed X and XI while the previous ones were developed by other studios. I can understand their funding in the matter. In any case it is not like FF that is owned by SE.
Microsoft shouldn’t pay for any more ports or Game Pass deals with Square Enix. There’s no point. content removed by moderators.
Imo they should pay for ff16. Other than that, they should leave it tbh.
1 Like
Perhaps this is a chance to have someone else take SE’s place. If they can get a solid rpg development team to develop exclusive JRPGs for them it could maybe turn the tide in their favor, Certainly SE is not growing from jumping around.
But Sony so clearly has FF in their grasp. You can forget about FF16 or FF7R on Xbox.
I’m not sure how much exclusivity is on ff16 tbh.
Some community manager or something confirmed it was 6 months off PC and 12 months off other consoles (and it was recently clarified that the PC version will not be ready 6 months after the PS5 release lol).
I don’t expect FF7R on Xbox till all the games are released nor FF16 until all it’s DLCs and updates are finished (if even then). Really I expect them on Switch 2 sooner lol.
Making a “FF competitor” is always an extremely tall order because Square is the only AAA JRPG developer. Whatever MS’s “answer” would be just isn’t gonna have the production values of FF. Even when people say they should remaster Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey I scratch my head on who would actually remake them. Some people say Marvelous because that’s where a lot of the dev teams on both of those games ended up, but modern Marvelous games feel like they have even lower production values than the original 360 LO.
I suppose maybe Cyberconnect2 could handle an LO remake in an action style, they were the original FF7R dev team till it got switched to an internal Square thing. The production values won’t match FF7R/FF16 though.
The situation with FF7R seems odd, the only scenario I could see where it’d still be under timed exclusivity is if they renegotiated the timed exclusivity for another 2 years with the release of Intergrade. Which isn’t impossible given they did have 2 years of exclusivity on Forspoken as well.
If it’s not that then I can only assume whatever problem there is between Microsoft and Square that Jez alluded to is affecting this too. In which case we may indeed be waiting a while
1 Like
The production values for those games aren’t anything special compared to other AAA games though?
Arguably even some AA games. Granted those are upper-tier AA games.
1 Like
I think the production values are special relative to the genre and the studios that develope games in that genre.
2 Likes
Might as well close this thread lol.
1 Like
No way, then this discussion would bleed into way too many other threads.
4 Likes
Hopefully we might rename this thread in the future to „Square Enix joins Xbox“ 
5 Likes
Or even “Square Enix IP acquired by Microsoft at bankruptcy auction”…
1 Like