Besides the exclusivity I truly believe that the “abandon the JP market” strategy with XVI was a mistake. XVI sold 3 million… While TOTK looks like it sold 3 million in Japan alone, and Zelda was never big in Japan until now.
I think that XVII should go back to gameplay roots and be built to run on Switch 2 (not exclusive). DQ12 might be doing this exact strategy even and it may pay off more than FFXVI’s release.
Hopefully they use this as the motivation to finally stop the BS and start releasing their products everywhere and stop the stupid moneyhatting
It’s a business killer for their long term health and it’s not even working out in the short term, the other big Japanese publishers have figured this out so hopefully this performance is their wake up call
Also this just popped up, very timely article lol
Iv never quite understood the negativity some people think the term brings
Obviously there will be idiots who use the term to put down the entire genre or whatever but that happens with WRPG’s too
The vast majority of people aren’t using the terms to be disrespectful
Thats a very interesting forecast. Their margins declined a lot to way below 5 percent so i highly doubt these numbers for fy 2023.
At least SE can’t blame their western studios anymore for their own fails. Silver linings.
lol now we certain gamers can stop pretending SE was doing good business.
I you want to see good business, look at Capcom. Makes lots of good games, releases old and new games on everything under the sun, makes lots of money 
Let’s hope he understands it is not intelligent to ignore a party who is investing/has been investing almost $100B in the industry in just 3-4 years and to ignore PC.
I agree. I don’t see how they are going to turn things around for their FY23. They’re already two quarters in, so halfway done.
Maybe its sign of a larger and longer GamePass deal being done?
They do have 1 excuse they hadnt used yet, blame the last CEO… 
On Twatter many are still pretending and twisting themselves into knots to explain why this is actually a good thing and releasing games on more platforms isn’t the answer.
Besides the obvious flaw of not being consistently multiplatform, Square also need to actually make other IP than FF, they’re way too dependant on it. I don’t necessarily mean new IP but bring back legacy or cult classic IP in a big way like Capcom.
I’m not really surprised by that, the PS-fanboy relationship with Square is like that, remember when they hated the fact that FF was going to be on the 360, not exclusive or anything, just it existing on anything other than PS was a shock to that subset of fanboys, lol.
Capcom has doing many things right and trying out new things with learning lesson. Square should try more of that approach. Granted they have tried new things, but some choices aren’t the correct one, mainly live service. I often think Marvel’s Avengers could be really good if they didn’t force them to do live service. In campaign, you can really tell which sensation the gameplay flows under.
Basically, go back to what made them special.
Do you mean other genres? They have KH and DQ as well for heavy hitter IPs (DQ though they’ve kind of failed to make catch on big in the West) and publish a wide variety of smaller games (unfortunately, of a “dart board throw” quality). Forspoken was… an attempt to have a new “heavy hitter”, ended up being what may have played into the old CEO leaving as it was his “pet project”
For genres though they are essentially a JRPG company and not much beyond.
They share the revenue of those with licence holders so maybe the money they make off them is not that good.
I know but majority are small compared to FF to be honest. Maybe try to make another FF-level JRPG? I know it’s a risk but could pay off great
Yep…those exclusivity deals are really working out for Square Enix. lol
Hopefully, the new CEO not only releases their future games day one on Xbox but also PC, Switch and of course PlayStation because the IP’s will always be far more valuable if you grow them and the only way to do that is by having them on as many platforms day one as possible.
Actually, FF XVI didn’t sell 3m. It shipped and sold a combined 3m but since SE didn’t actually reveal the numbers for both, im willing to bet that it’s more shipped than sold.
I freaking love Capcom. Since 2017 with Resident Evil VII: Biohazard, they have given me 6 games where as in the previous decade, it was just 2 - RE Revelations 1 & 2.
Hoping to see more of that Path of the Goddess game at the Tokyo Game Show in September.
Given what the digital/physical split has been trending towards the last few years the distinction probably doesn’t mean much.
Perhaps. I simply would love to know the actual sold and shipped numbers for FF XVI.
But nobody in 2023 uses the word shipped. SE for some reason did.
Xbox has a significantly digital to retail ratio than playstation does. So I will say it its a significant portion.