But... we don't know the extent of her character. She might just be a cameo, or she's may play a big part... she may be a seasonal.
I don't see the harm in them using one of the biggest and most talented young pop stars of the moment in the game - it might bring a whole new young female audience to our series. I suspect she might even reel a few lgbtq in too and that's AMAZING - exposing the game to an audience who might not have given a trout. As a glamorous, dangerous woman myself (who has far too often been accused of being a fake nerd/had my nerd level questioned) I LOVE this and you know what? I think I'm more interested in playing this now!
EDIT - and the design is sooooooo cute! It's so Bravely Default!
I agree that it will open up to a new audience. I just fear that when that happens sometimes the need to put out new content gets pushed and the company will suffer in the end. Let's hope it is a true win win for everyone.
Also it's pretty dang obvious why they've chosen her - she'll be a bard/songstress character that is most likely a celebrity in game too. Similar to pop star Yuna of FFX-2. Biggest young pop star of the moment... why NOT Ari?
First Gackt, now that. Also good to see that the obligatory "you sexist" card ist still popular on EoFF. Good old exaggerations.
You know what's worse than a fake nerd girl?
(SPOILER)
The more I think about this, the more genius it is.
Brave Exvius is all about unlocking characters to use in battles. To unlock characters you have to use in-game currency, which are earned at an fairly slow rate by playing the game, or just simply bought with real money. Each unlock is a complete lottery as to which character you'll get - basically it's like you're opening Kinder Egg toy capsules and hoping to get one of the collectible figurines and not a trout jigsaw (incidentally, capsule toys are another big market in Asia... see where this is going?)
Ariana has a huge following in Japan. Mobile games are extremely profitable in Japan.
In the west shes a huge pop sensation and the mobile market is constantly growing. Social RPGs still don't do all that well in the west, with Kingdom Hearts UCX, FF Record Keeper and Brave Frontier being the outlier successes. Square owns the first 2, and incidentally the 3rd - Brave Frontier - is made by the same company who Square partnered with for Brave Exvius - might as well go for the hat-trick and corner that market space right?
Get Ariana to "organically" market her involvement via her own social and watch the bankroll tick in.
Even as a fan of the series, it's probably very likely that Square Enix has to pay some sort of royalty to her/her agent/her record label for the use of her likeness.
So the likelihood is she will either be:a) Free, either as a usable character or a plot driver. In the hopes that her legions of fans will download the app, give it a go, and it's free-to-start structure will entice enough of those users to fork over some money to progress.
b) Part of the random lottery, maybe even a "premium bundle" that has a higher chance to award rarer characters, to entice people into spending small, but frequent, amounts of money in the hopes of unlocking her.
In return, her inclusion in the game might encourage people to check out her stuff, maybe net a few sales, and more than likely some sort of contractual profit sharing based on the number of sales during her availability.
There's nothing altruistic or empowering about it. It's a smart business move. It'll piss off franchise loyalists, but to be fair a lot of franchise loyalists already think of the mobile titles in great disdain anyway, and they are probably in the minority when it comes to the revenue generation of these products.
As someone who likes her games firmly separated from reality, and as a result finds celebrity endorsing/shoehorning to be sleazy at the best of times, I struggle to get behind this - but I can't deny it's a smart business move. In the long-run it isn't really going to affect me as mobile titles (in general) hold very little interest to me. So, cool? I guess.
I doubt she's going to be free. You don't pay money to get a celebrity in your game and give trout away for free. Best believe they'll charge for the character.
Nah, I think they're doing this to build the brand and their playerbase and in which case it makes sense to have her free or cheap. New players aren't the ones who are going to drop money on a mobile game, long timers are. Judging from how the Brave Exvius community has responded, well, they don't give any kind of smurf about her. They're not going to put down cash to get her.
With that said, I bet that would change if she was a good character. Let me tell you what, I don't give any sort of a smurf who she is and have never heard any of her songs, but if they added her to FF Record Keeper and she had some ridiculously powerful stuff I'd go all out to get it! Having never played XIV I have no idea who Y'shtola, Alphinaud and Minfilia are but I dumped my mythril stash into trying to get their trout because it's good.
It is pretty much a win-win. I think after my initial shock of 'what the hell is this' has worn off, I'm slightly more warm towards it.
I never knew Ariana Grande was a fan of video gaming, though! Then again, I don't really follow celebrities, so she could be a fan of hand-gliding for all I know.
I'm not getting Exvius until 50 cent is in it.
Last edited by Mirage; 01-03-2017 at 01:58 PM.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
I'm holding out for Tim Curry or Danny DeVito myself.