Bob- You missed my point. Yeah 14 wasn't f'ded up last year but they spent lots of time & money fixing and getting set to relaunch 14 in those 9 months. How is that the console game market's fault?
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Bob- You missed my point. Yeah 14 wasn't f'ded up last year but they spent lots of time & money fixing and getting set to relaunch 14 in those 9 months. How is that the console game market's fault?
With the length of development cycles as they are, it's not fair to point to the such a limited time frame as nine months and suggest that the games that came out in those nine months has anything to do with why they've lost money. As pointed out, Square Enix is pouring massive resources into the continued development of Final Fantasy XIV. Granted, they actually charged subscription fees this past year, but I imagine that doesn't do much other than offset the costs of concurrently developing new content for an existing product while concurrently developing what amounts to a new game.
There are still a few titles expected to drop before the end of the fiscal year (such as Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD). How much money went into developing games that aren't out yet? Final Fantasy Versus XIII? Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn? The new graphics engine they've developed? Without seeing a breakdown of the costs and the expected returns, it's hard to make evaluations at this point.
This is why I hate the focus on quarterly reporting. The importance of short-term gain vastly outweighs long-term strategies.
SE has had a hard past couple of years. But hopefully this year they can finally stop spending at a loss so much money towards FFXIV and work on developing more AAA titles. Between FFXIV, FFXI, Tomb Raider, and DQX, this next year could be good for SE. I know the economic report from last November that I wrote about a little while ago expected higher profits in 2013, but then again they all probably do in order to console shareholders. :p
Oh please don't let this be true.Quote:
Originally Posted by Del Murder
I would really like to see their revenue numbers compared to other developers' numbers for last year. Then we'll know just how much that "tough console market" really factored in. I'm not saying it wasn't in part because of that. With the economy, probably a lot of people aren't spending money on more frivolous things like video games at $50 a pop. But it probably had way less to do with it than they say.
The reason I hate any kind of reporting is because it gets gamers talking about garbage that doesn't matter, much less things we have expertise on.
Looking at that lineup, I can't say it was bad. It's just hard to make games just below the top tier (Sleeping Dogs, Hitman: Absolution) make a splash. I think if they dedicated 5 or so teams to churning out 3-4 RPGs on HD consoles every year they'd be alright. They shouldn't be going half-ass with a little bit on console, a little bit on handheld, a little bit on mobile, a little bit onilne. Go hard on one and put a few things on another. Publishing can take care of the rest.
Please wake up SE and stop being in denial.
That can explain a predicted loss, but they were expecting better returns. When they tell shareholders they expect money to come in, they were never telling them it was going to be flooding in from FFXIV. The "console game market" explanation is for the shareholders, and it is there to explain why they did not meet their own expectations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. rydrum2112
They never expected any money to come from FFXIV in those nine months, and they always expected to be pouring resources into it. They expected to be making a loss in this area, I'm fairly certain of that, because pretty much everyone knew it. However, the console games they did release did not create their expected revenue, and therefore they are correct in stating that the reason they did not meet their expected revenue for the nine months was due to the console game market and not the MMO market.
Ouch! is pretty much on the ball with saying that without the breakdown of the numbers we can't do much analysis. I don't expect them to bulltrout the shareholders as if they can't read the numbers, though, and those shareholders probably get to see more details than we do.