[Square-Soft] Call me Jaded but...

[XxSephirothxX]

[Wolf Kanno]

First I have one thing to say of Capcom, SE is not Capcom and vice-versa. While I believe Capcom takes its own time to adapt to the market/current-trends that are on going and it is Japanese based like SE. However, Capcom is uniquely suffering for different reasons entirely I feel than what you or the next may guess. I personally have more faith in their decisions than SE and they are currently restructuring their marketing and staff here in the US where they struggle. They currently think that digital sales trends are now supposed to be their focus since they are losing profit due to lack of extra content and are right to think so if you have been seeing Nintendo's worldwide data for the 3DS EShop vs retail and it's just gaining numbers like crazy for their Eshop having those games sold digitally and they at Nintendo also wish to bring DLC that matters to their customer base.

You missed my point, while I feel Capcom has many problems and if you still trust them not to shoot themselves in the foot after the last few years of terrible marketing decisions and high profile creator defections, then I admire your convictions but don't envy your position.

My reasoning for stating that SE is becoming like Capcom squarely deals with my first paragraph that deals with running a good franchise into the ground with quick rich spin-offs and sequels of questionable quality, something Capcom is pretty much the poster child of the industry for doing this. They have killed Mega Man, Street Fighter, the Capcom Vs. franchise and getting close to finishing off Resident Evil (finally). All the Bravest is a shameless cash ploy by SE and I feel its no different from how Capcom dealt with the DLC patches for SFIV and MvC3 which they turned around and released as full priced games despite marginal differences between installments. The whole ordeal with losing Clover Studios and Keiji Inafune is also a major issue Capcom has been dealing with which is very similar to SE also losing many of their high profile designers/staff because they find the company toxic to work with.

Other than the comparison you made poorly I might say, everything else about SE I feel you said is spot on. They need a leader of vision who is a Game Designer that can figure how to work out a team with powerful ideas and test them for Final Fantasy. I always believed that they need two different teams to handle FF as a "flagship" series so that we get the not just the okay stuff they have been grinding out but also the really great stuff and the best stuff possible on both the MoRPG and RPG on console front. Much like Betehsda does with Obsidian's games Elder-scrolls and Fallout (Yes the first Fallout 3 game was all of Beth together, although Obsidian is Beth too- its where their best and brightest are) on a bi-yearly basis by rotating them and having mostly separate teams that communicate with one another.

The issue here is that technically SE has been doing this since FFVIII to be precise. Kitase's team and then some secondary team that usually involves Ito keep switching off between entries; so Kitase did VIII, Ito did IX, Kitase did X, Tanaka did XI, Kitase/Toriyama did X-2, Kitase did the Compilation, Matsuno did XII, Kitase/Toriyama did XIII trilogy. They have the KH team doing Versus XIII and the Crisis Core team did Type-0. So I don't necessarily believe this

I feel that SE is using the handheld and Cell phone market as their safety net, where they are only catering to Japan itself instead of the world like Capcom or Ubisoft. The time of specific markets has long since passed, its pretty niche to only cater to one kind of crowd these days. I'm also not saying that they should try to cater to the casual either- no just focus on the core players of your audience and sprinkle refined ideas for the hardcore and casual players. Find a balance that works and stick with it. In Ubisoft's case they hire more Devs than they do Marketers and the same with Capcom. In SE's case I feel that there is too much Marketing focus and not enough on the Dev side.

The thing I'm wondering now is if maybe their "core audience" has changed. SE has certainly branched out as both a publisher, manga distributor, and music they don't really need to rely on the big budget titles anymore if their game division can make do just appealing to the Japanese mobile market and building smaller projects and MMOs. Its why I'm both concerned and interested by SE's new proposed marketing/development strategy they just announced. It would be interesting to know if the mobile market may have overtaken the big budget projects in overall profit, which could spell a different future for the comapny.

[Jinx]

But why a triangle?

[Polnareff]

First I have one thing to say of Capcom, SE is not Capcom and vice-versa. While I believe Capcom takes its own time to adapt to the market/current-trends that are on going and it is Japanese based like SE. However, Capcom is uniquely suffering for different reasons entirely I feel than what you or the next may guess. I personally have more faith in their decisions than SE and they are currently restructuring their marketing and staff here in the US where they struggle. They currently think that digital sales trends are now supposed to be their focus since they are losing profit due to lack of extra content and are right to think so if you have been seeing Nintendo's worldwide data for the 3DS EShop vs retail and it's just gaining numbers like crazy for their Eshop having those games sold digitally and they at Nintendo also wish to bring DLC that matters to their customer base.

You missed my point, while I feel Capcom has many problems and if you still trust them not to shoot themselves in the foot after the last few years of terrible marketing decisions and high profile creator defections, then I admire your convictions but don't envy your position.

My reasoning for stating that SE is becoming like Capcom squarely deals with my first paragraph that deals with running a good franchise into the ground with quick rich spin-offs and sequels of questionable quality, something Capcom is pretty much the poster child of the industry for doing this. They have killed Mega Man, Street Fighter, the Capcom Vs. franchise and getting close to finishing off Resident Evil (finally). All the Bravest is a shameless cash ploy by SE and I feel its no different from how Capcom dealt with the DLC patches for SFIV and MvC3 which they turned around and released as full priced games despite marginal differences between installments. The whole ordeal with losing Clover Studios and Keiji Inafune is also a major issue Capcom has been dealing with which is very similar to SE also losing many of their high profile designers/staff because they find the company toxic to work with.

Killed Street Fighter and the Vs. franchise how? The games from both of those series have done well. It's the fighters from all the other series they've made that have completely tanked. The DS re-release that people clamored for got sunk. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was widely requested for the US, even added new content, and sold as well as trout-flavored Starburst.

Mega Man was killed out of necessity. As I said above, the series remained good, but many of the fans feared change. Thus, most fans didn't care about the series anymore after Zero. I'm well aware of what happened with MML3, just in case you end up bringing that up, but Capcom was stupid to want to make that game anyway, seeing as how MML1 and 2 barely made back the budget they spent on both games! On top of that, fans had terrible ideas for the game as well. Inafune was getting too big for his britches, effectively starting to become like Denis Dyack was to Silicon Knights. If you look at his interviews from before he left, you can see this. He just became so cynical and brash, and kept talking about how all Japanese games sucked. Due to that and a conflict between what games he wanted to make and what Capcom wanted to make, he left. Most people who have left Cap have left due to creative differences. Clover is the one team I can't forgive them getting rid of, though.

I sincerely hope you complained about Capcom a lot more back in the 90s. They were much worse with re-releases then. Hell, you had to pay 50-100 bucks to get a barely tweaked version of the same game with no new characters. Compare that to now where you pay 40 bucks for a game with more than 10 new characters, balance changes, and new modes (this applies to UMvC3 and SSFIV, and TvC to a lesser extent). I'd gladly take Capcom's new business model over their old one, which was to keep releasing SF2 over and over and over again. I still don't see the controversy over DLC since historically other companies have been more greedy with it, but nobody batted an eye. If someone can explain this to me, that'd be great. Then again, I vote with my wallet, and to this day, the only Capcom DLC I bought was the DLC for SF X Tekken.

[Wolf Kanno]

Oh I bitched back then too though it was mostly in lunchroom discussions back then.

SFIV and MvC3 could have both been handled better and I still consider the switch from a cheap DLC to making me pay more for a glorified expansion pack to be a real dick move and to consider they did it twice with two different series made them lose a bit of trust in the Fighting game community. Its not helped that I feel both games are poor shadows of where the genre has gone in the past decades and it took releasing the special edition Ultimate editions to finally start having the core fighting fanbase to really accept them.

As for TvC, to be fair, that whole debacle is really Capcom's fault. Placing the game exclusively on the Wii and then trying to release it in the western market whose core market reviled the system was kind of a stupid move on their part, especially since Tatsunoko is not exactly a household name over here in the West. The fact the game didn't do well was not really much of a surprise.

MM did need to die in its current state but it would never have had to come to this if Capcom had handled the franchise better instead of riding it into the ground. For awhile there, they were announcing sequels before new entries had received world wide release, and some of the side franchises received a huge stack of sequels in a very short period of time, despite being a new IP within the series. If Capcom had really pushed for innovation instead of nostalgia or a quick buck as far back as the original series, the franchise may have survived. I mean games like MMLegends didn't do well because by the time they were released people were sick of the Mega Man franchise, and even MMX4-6 all did mediocre along with MM8. The fact it grew into a cult classic later may have given MML3 a chance, though I would point out it was probably a bad move on Capcom's part to ask fans for creative advice on the game. One stroll through and franchises fanfiction will teach a company why you should never take fans creative advice. Both Mega Man and Street Fighter will always be infamous for overpriced expansions and flooding the market with unneeded sequels and they got that reputation in the 90s but it hasn't stopped them from doing the same with Resident Evil, MvC, and Monster Hunter today.

I do agree that Capcom is in a bit of a "damn if you do, damn if you don't" but I also feel that it's largely Capcom's fault for getting themselves into this predicament in the first place. SE itself is now in this position and I would also point out that like Capcom it has a lot to do with how they treat their franchises and creative staff that got them into this state of affairs.

As for Inafune, he was hardly the only guy within the Japanese game industry who was talking about the lack of innovation and poor corporate environment of the industry. I'm starting to believe that the only people who don't think the Japanese Gaming Industry is in a funk and in danger are the fanboys who seem to be in denial. I mean when people within the industry start saying its a problem I feel its time to just accept the facts. Wada complained about the industry, Kojima has made choice remarks about Konami, the troubled developments of FFXIII that SE admitted to (like not having a solid game concept until a year before release when the team was forced to make a demo, or the error in making the game with a new engine that SE wasn't even out of Beta with) just shows that management within the company does not have its head on straight. We've also seen far more of the famous designers from the 90s/early 00s leaving their companies in the past decade.

So I honestly stand with Inafune when he says there is a serious problem with the Japanese business culture that is choking the industry over there. With the exception of a handful of major franchises like FF, MGS, and RE the Japanese game industry has been overshadowed by Mass Effect, God of War, Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, and GTA to name a few. If you look at a top ten list of what gamers are looking forward to there are rarely many Japanese series games. Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Rockstar, Bungie, Bethseda, and Bioware are now creating the industry standards this generation. Capcom is only making headlines now because they started releasing sequels to franchises that haven't been on the market for nearly a decade. SE has been getting more press time with their Eidos publishing titles than their own in-house titles. Both Konmai and Capcom have also handed over major franchises over to Western developers, so I really do feel the idea that Japan's gaming industry is no longer the industry standard is a pretty fair statement, and all Inafune was doing was trying to make his opinions vocal for the hope that some changes could start happening. The man was just frustrated and I felt his probalems with the industry were things that even fans have been grumbling about for years.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate Capcom, in my experience, the company has a nasty track record of being incredibly awesome or incredibly stupid during different periods of time. I just happen to feel that Capcom is in said stupid phase at this point in time, but if any company has a good track record of rising from the ashes of its mistakes its usually Capcom. I'm hoping SE could do it as well but lately they have left me very skeptical about this.

[HasteInTime]

Capcom's predicament is very unique, and nothing like Squenix's at all. Whereas Squenix spits in the fans' faces all the time now, Capcom at least tries to please their fanbase, as long as they're willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Capcom seriously has one of the worst fanbases of any company in recent memory. They cry and scream and moan (especially on Capcom's forums!) about wanting certain games, and then when they release the games, the fans don't buy them. So Cap is forced to basically stop throwing fans bones and focus on games that actually sell.

A good example is the recently released Darkstalkers Resurrection. Fans clamored about having a 'Stalkers collection for years, that you could play online. Capcom does it and it doesn't make their (pretty low) sales quota. Everyone gets mad when they say they won't be re-releasing much anymore.

Another good example is Ace Attorney Investigations. After Apollo Justice sold fairly poorly, Capcom was reluctant to release the game here. Fans bitched and moaned and we got the game. Pretty much bombed. AAI2 was kept Japan-only and fans' jimmies are still rustled over it.

Capcom's problem is, they can't win. They still make damn good games, other than RE5 and RE6. They have, for the most part (other than character color DLC) reasonably-priced DLC for most of their games. But people cry and moan, likening Capcom to EA for DLC, and the fact that some of it was day one. But other companies like SNKP, Arc Systems, Midway, etc. got away with overpriced day-one DLC with nobody complaining. That's not even mentioning games like CoD, Battlefield, etc. There was all that backlash about the DLC for SF X Tekken, but it was reasonably priced. I'd pay 20 bucks for 12 characters, instead of 9 bucks for one character (like with Blazblue).

Mega Man was another sore spot. Since the Legends games, the MM games have either sold mediocre amounts (Zero) or outright bombed (Star Force). Yet, like the other parts of the fanbase, they whine like little Johnny did when his parents took his Game Boy away, after Capcom tells the MM fanbase (rightfully) to screw themselves.

It's no wonder Capcom said screw the fans and just started doing what they wanted to. They've already stared down the barrel of bankruptcy three times, why on earth would they wanna do it a fourth?

There was something I forgot to touch on in my last post. It seems that Square is too focused on cinematics over gameplay. Without all the fancy cutscenes, I bet FFXIII could have been made in maybe 2 years. Why is it that a company like Namco (who used to really suck until the Bandai merger) can pump out 1 or 2 Tales games a year and make an arguably better game than a company who spends 4-7 years making one game? Or Gust, who can make a new Atelier in NINE MONTHS and have it still be pretty fun, albeit derivative?

Logic dictates that it is indeed because too much emphasis is put on how the game looks. You don't spend almost 5 years making a game full of narrow corridors. C'mon now. Squenix wants that next big success like FFVII, so they keep taking the same approach they took with that game. I don't blame them, but it's starting to get old by now. At least back then, we got games like FFIX and FFX out of the whole deal.

I will say that I absolutely loved Type-0 because while it had the best graphics on the PSP, it was more focused on how the game played. The World Ends With You was the same way. Really, all of their best efforts now are on handhelds.

It happens this way simply because for SE their focus is in Japan and not the entire world instead. What sells there in Japan, doesn't sell everywhere else unlike Japan where it has a large mobile market focus and install base. SE has a rather large focus on their home market and not enough elsewhere else because of that, I feel that they are really "palying it safe". I would hope that they find a good market balance and offer games that once again focus on refreshing game play and quality for consoles for the rest of the world. After all I do have a list of SE games I would love to see again, with a RPG FF among them. (I'm sorry Tactics fans this list puts you out in the cold, its all about just console focus except KH)

Here is a list of games that I would love to see return from SE and/or it's affiliated Developers:

1) Dragon's Quest (Console RPG)

2) Final Fantasy (Console RPG and keep them numbered)

3)Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (An Adventure RPG like the GameCube one but updated entirely with more features, like in-depth character leveling and equipment, ect.)

4)Final Fantasy (MoRPG, do not number them, this allows for any kind of story, settings, and characters to return or for new ones to join seamlessly example; KH does allow a blend of characters and places and FF can learn from this by adding a new way for that to co-exist in a MoRPG space, if it cosiders it the Universal place for all things FF of course)

5)Kingdom Hearts (3 or a reboot, whatever works and out it out for Console & then port remaster to handheld, since SE likes handhelds)

6) Tomb Raider (2 or whatever Eidos does decide next, it's a success for me)

7) Dues Ex (whenever Eidos does another is fine)

8) Thief (4 is coming finally, FINALLY :] )

9) Mana & SaGa Series (Rebooted)

10) Chrono Trigger (Rebooted)

11) Star-Ocean (RPG, I really love this series- keep it coming)

12) Anything new IP wise is welcome, just no more rythm or casual phone games.

For more games that SE has released/dev/pub/Ect, please take a look at the list from wikipedia. I just hope that SE doesn't start to try to compete with itself, cause it will only lose if it does or is doing so. Just make games and do that really well. People will buy it.

Also, About Capcom's fanbase- I concur w/you Polnareff. I do consider myself a fan of Capcom but I do not "wine" (if at all) the way those fans do, they give Capcom an undeserved bad name. I personally love stuff like DeadRising(love the series), Street Fighter IV (they did it right), and Resident Evil 6 & 5 (really-fun! ). Everything Capcom and Konami do these days I find refreshing. As for Namco, now Namco-Bandi. Soul Calibur 5 was a welcome addtion as opposed to 4's "tortise" like slow mechanics and while the story did suck, is a great fighting game. However as for MM series, I was never a fan. So while this will sound spitefull- I hope Capcom does what it needs to, even if that means letting MM stay in stasis mode forver and ever. lol. Although I did like the new teased Sci-fi modern MM FPS/TPS, it was supposed to be a new Maverick Hunter game supposedly. When I say I'm not a fan of MM, mostly mean the cell shaded cartoon version. MM does need a reboot and overhaul. MM Maverick Hunter (2013) would have been an interesting but different way to go for the MM series. I have always found MM fans to be kind of picky to put it mildly and no offense is meant.

Edit:

Oh I bitched back then too though it was mostly in lunchroom discussions back then.

SFIV and MvC3 could have both been handled better and I still consider the switch from a cheap DLC to making me pay more for a glorified expansion pack to be a real dick move and to consider they did it twice with two different series made them lose a bit of trust in the Fighting game community. Its not helped that I feel both games are poor shadows of where the genre has gone in the past decades and it took releasing the special edition Ultimate editions to finally start having the core fighting fanbase to really accept them.

As for TvC, to be fair, that whole debacle is really Capcom's fault. Placing the game exclusively on the Wii and then trying to release it in the western market whose core market reviled the system was kind of a stupid move on their part, especially since Tatsunoko is not exactly a household name over here in the West. The fact the game didn't do well was not really much of a surprise.

MM did need to die in its current state but it would never have had to come to this if Capcom had handled the franchise better instead of riding it into the ground. For awhile there, they were announcing sequels before new entries had received world wide release, and some of the side franchises received a huge stack of sequels in a very short period of time, despite being a new IP within the series. If Capcom had really pushed for innovation instead of nostalgia or a quick buck as far back as the original series, the franchise may have survived. I mean games like MMLegends didn't do well because by the time they were released people were sick of the Mega Man franchise, and even MMX4-6 all did mediocre along with MM8. The fact it grew into a cult classic later may have given MML3 a chance, though I would point out it was probably a bad move on Capcom's part to ask fans for creative advice on the game. One stroll through and franchises fanfiction will teach a company why you should never take fans creative advice. Both Mega Man and Street Fighter will always be infamous for overpriced expansions and flooding the market with unneeded sequels and they got that reputation in the 90s but it hasn't stopped them from doing the same with Resident Evil, MvC, and Monster Hunter today.

I do agree that Capcom is in a bit of a "damn if you do, damn if you don't" but I also feel that it's largely Capcom's fault for getting themselves into this predicament in the first place. SE itself is now in this position and I would also point out that like Capcom it has a lot to do with how they treat their franchises and creative staff that got them into this state of affairs.

As for Inafune, he was hardly the only guy within the Japanese game industry who was talking about the lack of innovation and poor corporate environment of the industry. I'm starting to believe that the only people who don't think the Japanese Gaming Industry is in a funk and in danger are the fanboys who seem to be in denial. I mean when people within the industry start saying its a problem I feel its time to just accept the facts. Wada complained about the industry, Kojima has made choice remarks about Konami, the troubled developments of FFXIII that SE admitted to (like not having a solid game concept until a year before release when the team was forced to make a demo, or the error in making the game with a new engine that SE wasn't even out of Beta with) just shows that management within the company does not have its head on straight. We've also seen far more of the famous designers from the 90s/early 00s leaving their companies in the past decade.

So I honestly stand with Inafune when he says there is a serious problem with the Japanese business culture that is choking the industry over there. With the exception of a handful of major franchises like FF, MGS, and RE the Japanese game industry has been overshadowed by Mass Effect, God of War, Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, and GTA to name a few. If you look at a top ten list of what gamers are looking forward to there are rarely many Japanese series games. Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Rockstar, Bungie, Bethseda, and Bioware are now creating the industry standards this generation. Capcom is only making headlines now because they started releasing sequels to franchises that haven't been on the market for nearly a decade. SE has been getting more press time with their Eidos publishing titles than their own in-house titles. Both Konmai and Capcom have also handed over major franchises over to Western developers, so I really do feel the idea that Japan's gaming industry is no longer the industry standard is a pretty fair statement, and all Inafune was doing was trying to make his opinions vocal for the hope that some changes could start happening. The man was just frustrated and I felt his probalems with the industry were things that even fans have been grumbling about for years.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate Capcom, in my experience, the company has a nasty track record of being incredibly awesome or incredibly stupid during different periods of time. I just happen to feel that Capcom is in said stupid phase at this point in time, but if any company has a good track record of rising from the ashes of its mistakes its usually Capcom. I'm hoping SE could do it as well but lately they have left me very skeptical about this.

(Agreed, Wolf Kanno) Very true, I can see all of this as a result of mismanagement. Do you remember THQ's debacle and demise? That was indeed due to largely mismanagement in the company's market and finance side of things. Could the same be happening in SE and other Japanese companies? I do wonder...

Companies often make room change to adapt or fade away into obscurity in a business climate like that of the Gaming Industry. Right now Shooters are dominate like the Platform games were in the early 90's. Personally I just miss the old Square for the fact that they were willing to take risks and make games for the fun of it, unlike now. It seems we are at a pass where SE itself will either take the lead or die out spectacularly- trying to find its way.

About Capcom once again, It's in Capcom I trust and that I have faith in, cause they often rise back up like a Phoenix from the ashes. That and I love the large majority of games Capcom has delivered up to now. If that's not clear enough that I love Capcom. Outside of my faith, it is not blind. I also do vote with my wallet, it is with my wallet I decide what I want and I tell Capcom and every other company out there this way in their sales data using my wallet when I buy it new, as I always do.

I just hope that they figured out DLC is not a micro-transaction money pit, it is an expansion for the game in question. The most recent game Capcom has released is Dragon's Dogma an RPG and the DLC sales were sluggish so they made it into a package deal with the new DLC Dark Arisen. Lots of my Friends say it is really good and I like the idea of it. So I should give it a try by of course buying it new as I always do and then get the Dark Arisen DLC with it.

[Psychokitty]

The reason SE sucks is because of Enix. Enix was terrible.

[HasteInTime]

So then its about a terrible Merger decision, mostly? and everything else after that has been 'fudged' (putting it mildly) cause of it?

Bit of a stretch but I could see the possibility of it helping things snowball.

[kotora]

A lot of points have been brought up about the state of the games industry and enix and whatnot and they're all valid points. They fell off after the merger, but I don't know if it's because of the merger or other things. For me it's very simple: Square-Enix has yet to release a game that impresses me like the Squaresoft games did.

[VeloZer0]

For me it's very simple: Square-Enix has yet to release a game that impresses me like the Squaresoft games did.

I'm with you 100%

[NeoCracker]

While I think there were better on a whole as soft, they did give us The World Ends With You, and I really enjoyed FF IV: The After Years.

[Fynn]

While I think there were better on a whole as soft, they did give us The World Ends With You, and I really enjoyed FF IV: The After Years.

I agree with this. Though I'd go and say there were more great titles, but TWEWY did get universal acclaim.

[HasteInTime]

For me it's very simple: Square-Enix has yet to release a game that impresses me like the Squaresoft games did.

I'm with you 100%

This is definitely something I am absolutely agreed upon. Until they released E3 announcement on KH3 this last Monday at the Sony Press Con, yet again I remain mixed on SE. Still, I won't know how I feel about SE entirely until they actually do so and I have played some of both KH3 and FF14RR. Can SE pull a 180 and stand their ground, like they did as Squaresoft and actully grab your attention?

Cause when they were SS not SE they made some of the greatest games I have ever played. I just miss that talent and kind of effort. The other thing is FF seems to be pushing Cinematic over Gameplay why not allow for a fluid but smooth balance? At least I see no reason why FF can't try to improve it's own RPG formula. FF-XIII Versus was supposed to make the whole thing like an action cinematic, FFXV seems to be doing that as far as the trailer goes anyway.

I just- don't really know anymore. I'm just frustrated w/SE I guess.