What word would you use??
I somehow feel like acquiring just fromsoft and maybe level-5 or something would do better than getting the entire Square Enix
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The one that said PS5 was like 15 Teraflops and that PS5 was the lead development platform for Starfield? That Foxy?? Lmaooo
Yeah the fraud himself, wonder who the foxy successor is though
Final Fantasy isn’t worth billions of dollars. I’ll parrot what @FindTheGamer said: build your own IP. Go out and acquire smaller Japanese developers for a fraction of what Square would cost.
Why does Xbox need to sway Japanese developers anyways? The platform gets the majority of their content now outside of Persona. Square is rotten to the core in my opinion, and I think they will end up selling… hopefully just not to Xbox because it’s a sinking ship that lacks an identity.
Look, Xbox is making moves:
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Tango is a AAA Japanese developer with pedigree
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Signing an exclusive with Kojima is a big deal
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Reaching out to smaller devs like WhiteOwl for Game Pass partnerships is a good strategy to build mindshare and good will
Xbox should approach Japan slowly and intelligently. Coming in and swinging their dick around to buy one of the largest publishers that can barely manage itself, let alone under foreign supervision, doesn’t sound like a good plan. I’m all for expanding Xbox presence in that region, just not with Square Enix.
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Although I understand where they are coming from with Square Enix, I for one would love to see the push for ID@Xbox to be done in Japan, the indie dev scene is the most untapped market with low cost. I was blown away by 12minutes, Planet of Lana and replaced. Plus we getting new games like tunic as well. Now imagine what indie devs in Japan can conjure up as well to add to the portfolio. It does not have to be Japan only, could be Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Whatever acquisition Xbox does will be with a goal in mind and if they did buy Square Enix, they will know how to make it work while avoiding things like stranger of paradise. Xbox ain’t stoping.
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I agree Square Enix is a bad company, but they got right FF14, which is objectively the biggest title Sony is witholding from getting an Xbox port (I don’t buy the content delivery issue bullshit). Single player games I agree are not a huge issue losing them, even if FF single player is still a big name, unfortunately if you look at japanese high profile IPs, I think the youngest one to become mainstream was Dark Souls, lmao, outside fanboys talk, japanese companies are not great in taking risks. These are the series from japanese publishers which got the most of their budgets:
- Square Enix (east): FF, DQ and KH.
- Capcom: RE, MH, DMC, SF, maaaybe they’ll try with a new Dragon Dogma after 10 years (they also ditcher their western arm).
- SEGA (east): Sonic, Yakuza, Persona/SMT, Phantasy Star Online.
- Bandai Namco: Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto, From Software Souls (Dark Souls, Elden Ring), Tekken.
- KONAMI: ditched away everything but PES
- Koei Tecmo: not many big games outside Nioh (Souls derivative), Musou, licensed stuff (from SE, Nintendo, anime stuff with and without Bandai) and DoA (before it died badly with 6, I doubt we’ll ever see another one).
In conclusion there is not much outside long running series in Japan and indie japanese games don’t really cater much interest outside there, so Xbox needs a real presence there to get more support. Even if they buy some small-mid tier dev outside Tango, I don’t think they’d make a dent. They need to act on every level: indies (so-so as of now), third party marketing deals (so-so either), GP deals (the best of their japanese strategy, Yakuza, DQ, FF, RE, etc…almost all high profile japanese games was/are in there), big third party publishers exclusives (none since forever, like early 360 days), third party devs exclusives (none since D4 and partially ReCore I think, we hope in this Kojima thing). They have much to do.
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Acquisitions are coming: Matt Booty said that.
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Outside of Square Enix and Atlus, who else is making AAA JRPGs? I don’t even care for Square Enix games, but from the perspective of market impact I don’t think any other acquisition compares. It is the one thing that Playstation gamers will have a hard time saying “Well, I just won’t play games from XYZ anymore” to.
Xbox needs to sway Japanese developers because there is a notable gap in 3rd party support and much of it is driven by lack of support from Japan.
I’m not saying it is a move the best move or a move they should make, but you implied they’d be morons for doing it lol.
They should start by gettin Atlus games, now that they are even on pc it’s really annoying they are still not here, I’m hoping after the first port we’ll get a non stop stream of Atlus games like the Yakuzas (I think 10 games in 2020-21 with Lost Judment, almost unbelievable). SE games are tricky, there are Sony money involved and historycally SE has always been Sony aligned (they even said that directly years ago) so they’ll support Xbox but there’ll always be lines in the sand with them unfortunately, it’s mind boggling they have still not ported FF14, there is no actual reason outside shady business tactics.
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I think getting Tomb Raider alone makes SE worth more than those two.
You know what would be one of the craziest acquisitions ever?
Gamefreak.
Without Pokémon it’d be kinda pointless, but still. Could you imagine?
Technically it’s a jrpg, lol. People would freak out, but the games would be more accessible (and better overall) than ever not being locked on crappy Nintendo hardware.
I stand by my moron comment. But I’ve been thinking about how to answer you because you pose a really interesting question: who else is making AAA JRPGs and how important is this genre relative to the market at large?
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We’re not seeing new IP blow up in this genre
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Most JRPGs are lower budget and waifu crap
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Major Japanese publishers like Capcom and Bandai don’t offer or only dabble in it
I mean, Final Fantasy is a legacy brand with nostalgia and a long history, it’ll always be prominent. Dragon Quest has a cultural significance but even that IP will never go exclusive due to its ownership group. Nier is both hot but also niche and doesn’t even get a half decent budget.
Final Fantasy has been locked down to PlayStation more or less for some time now. The world keeps spinning and Xbox consoles continue to sell out. Game Pass is still growing. Maybe… JRPGs just don’t really matter as much as they used to. Mistwalker got out of the game, I think No no Kuni II wasn’t a breakout success for Level 5 and even as revered and talked about as Perosna 5 is, it’s sold what—maybe 5M copies over two releases in four years? Monolith didn’t even sell many copies of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on the Switch.
If Phil and Xbox felt like they needed JRPGs, they’d just outspend PlayStation or whomever and build or acquire a smaller team. How do we go from doing fine without any (exclusively) to needing most of them via acquiring Square? Are you saying Xbox should just buy them all and put the squeeze on PlayStation? I don’t think it’s financially worth it. You can bolster your offering of games that most people want to play anyways, leverage value, and bait them to Xbox that way. Fallout and TES respectively are bigger than any JRPG franchise while simultaneously having huge followings on Xbox. We’re getting the best of both worlds in the Bethesda acquisition comparatively.
In conclusion:
JRPGs don’t really matter. Most people go to PlayStation for them anyways, exclusive or not. It largely doesn’t move the needle for Xbox’s audience. PlayStation users can still be flipped through various other means. Also, again, Xbox already has the majority of Japanese support from the major players. I’m down to have more JRPGs, I think Xbox needs to provide that variety to some degree as cloud takes off and they get more people wanting different experiences, but Square is both overkill with a ton of baggage.
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Miriad of reasons why that will never happen but Ill give you mine: they stink.
Like Capcom mostly. A lot of their stuff seems Western oriented.
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Good point, but I’d say that most sales of major Japanese games come from outside that region anyways. It’s less about the content, somewhat, and more about the format to attract the Japanese audience in my opinion.
Also, Xbox doesn’t have to be in a rush. Japan is largely irrelevant to the brand and platform right now. Make smart moves and not reactionary ones which I think they’re doing. You aren’t going to flip Japan overnight.
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I’ve taken everyone’s feedback into consideration. My stance:
Fuck it, Microsoft has trillions. Buy who you want. I’ll play it in Game Pass anyways.
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MS should approach devs like Tri Ace , JP Games or Level 5. That last one may be harder because of the whole “True Fantasy Live Online” Fiasco, but that was like 20 years ago under a different regime. Maybe start investing in Mistwalker again.
The only value Square has is to cripple Sony. Nothing else.