Square Enix: “We’re Going To Scrap All The Rubbish!”
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Apr 3, 2013 23:28 JST
- Tags: Announcements, Business, Eidos, Final Fantasy, Marketing, RPG, Square Enix
After finally sacking its CEO for all the vast losses he caused, Square Enix’s new boss is promising “radical” change – starting by scrapping a lot of as yet unspecified projects and concentrating the company’s resources on what may very possibly turn out to be making social games for the Chinese and Koreans.
New CEO Yousuke Matsuda’s comments come with some of the company’s efforts to explain its latest ghastly financial statements to investors:
“I’m Matsuda. You may have heard this at the annual general meeting, but in taking over the important duties of being CEO from Wada, I’m going to drastically re-evaluate all our businesses, projects, and assets from zero-base [wasei eigo for “without preconceptions”].
With the drastic change in the environment, I’ll be taking a fundamental look at what’s no good and needs to be reconsidered, and what to continue with.
We’ll keep in investing vigorously in what we need to go on with, but the useless stuff will be completely squeezed out.
You’ll have to wait for us to announce a more concrete plan, which will come at the upcoming discussion of our balance sheet.”
Aside from discussions of the dreadful numbers themselves, the rest of the lengthy document concentrates on praising the performance of Eidos titles like Hitman and Tomb Raider, and salivating over the prospects of their social gaming division expanding into Asian markets.
Curiously, there is not a single mention of Final Fantasy in the entire document, and precisely one mention of Dragon Quest.
Despite their radical decision to sack the CEO who drove them into the ground and replace him with fresh new blood in the form of an accountant who spent the last 10 years on the same board with him and now still has only vague assurances of “radical” change to offer, markets have reacted only by driving the company’s share price even lower:
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uh oh lightning returns cancelled already?
We can only hope.
For snow ..
enuff snow outside. take al ook.
the sky's too fair for lightning
this play on words...
These puns are ruining of estheim...
Waiting for a certain Literature Girl to make an appearance.
the lightni- *ahem* wind is shining...
I still don't know why they didn't just fuckin' call it Lightning Strikes Thrice or something like that.
FF is on the naughty step.
As long as Kingdom Hearts and any potential World Ends With You sequels are still green lit.
Maybe they will actually work on that damn FF vs XIII that pretty much everyone was excited for 7 fucking years ago. At least that has to come out before KH3.
meh, I'd rather they reboot FF6 with NEW, NOT REVAMPED graphics; as in, at least with same quality as FF8's graphic.
PS1 graphics, are you shitting me? FF6 was sporting some of the best 16-bit sprite art out there. If we're gonna look at a 3D equivalent, it needs to be DreamCast-quality at the earliest (anything before that is either too pixelated or too blocky). I'd agree with you if you meant FF8's FMVs, but even now, Squenix struggles to make in-game footage resemble even their most primitive FMV quality.
I mean what I meant, and I'm saying it like that because I know SE's now just a bunch of lazy asses who just improved their old games' graphics shader a little, and released it as 'HD remix'.
Just give Chrono Trigger a sequel it deserved, and Square Enix's pretty much set back on the path of profiting glory.
To be honest, I don't think they have the talent for something like that.
yeah, they might end up making a Chrono Trigger without a town to explore, like they did in FFXIII
my inner self loled a little bit.
Did you cry before or after you laughed?
After I came
I alternated between them, and then ended with both, while doing some yoga and push ups.
phff.. lol
I agree completely. I don't want them touching Crono Trigger at all. The only way I'd feel half-way positive about it would be if they could get all/most of the original design team back and that will simply never happen. I still play through the original from time to time and I love it still. However I accepted long ago that there will never be a true and faithful sequel. Chrono Cross was a mess of random, silly characters and a plot that felt like it wasn't sure what it was doing with itself. It was sort of fun but a Crono Trigger sequel it was NOT. RIP Crono.
Eh? Chrono Cross's plot was MEANT to be a little difficult to understand, it was meant to make you think.
Chrono Cross was a cluster of inconsistencies and unbelievable things combined together with cool characters and good music. I suspend disbelief pretty effectively, and love many RPGs, but I couldn't bring myself back from them saying "What!? There's a village here!?" on the shore DIRECTLY OPPOSITE THE FUCKING CASTLE MAINLAND!!!
Immediately even I who immerse myself into games and let things like that go just went "...you serious?" Following that you have a grand total of 3 visitable islands within a stone's throw of each other and all of these are ancient fucking legends nobody seems to know, and none of it adequately explained or really alluded to even in passing to make it 'deep or edgy' or any such thing.
Strangely enough even with those inconsistencies it was Chrono Cross that proved to me that atmosphere can carry a game pretty damn far. I'm sick of people lauding Chrono Cross and FF7 as paramount of gaming glory when anyone with half a brain can see every Final Fantasy that came after it had much, much more thought and care put into it. And then yet again people begin bitching about 'no towns' in FFXIII, wheeeen there were. There were 3 towns. They even had stores. And some side quests. Oh you mean they didn't design the game exactly as YOU wanted and you let YOUR expectations stop you from playing what was in front of you? That's what I thought.
Fuck it. I just hope this guy doesn't have High School Syndrome and just go the opposite of the 'popular kids' and ends up being a directionless piece of shit about it.
Just because something is designed to be 2deep4u doesn't mean it's exempt from criticism. I personally have the same feelings on it as 05:10. Chrono Trigger deserved better. Now Cross as a side series could still exist, as he said it was still a fun game but it just wasn't Trigger levels.
Chrono Cross was based on Radical Dreamers, which is a Chrono Trigger side story. So I would say it is not a true sequel.
Exactly, it shouldn't even be called Chrono Cross because it's not. Aside from the very very minor relation it has to Chrono Trigger, it was given that title probably as a way to sell more copies. It was very much based on Radical Dreamers for Satellaview, also scored by Yasunori Mitsuda and all (in fact he reused many of the tracks).
Of course it wasn't. Even before Cross was released, the director said "This is NOT Chrono Trigger 2."
They might split it out into 3 linear story games or some stupid thing like that. Chrono Trigger II part1, Chrono Trigger II part 2, Chrono Trigger II part 2.5, 2.8, 2.9, 2.91, 3 >.>
chrono trigger 1.5 remix HD
As imagined by the artists behind Crayon Shin-chan, full of DLC, press-to-win buttons, and a heavily modified storyline and characters. It'll be like Advent Children all over again.
I wonder if the shit is really shitty. Or they just make jew shit like social games.
They did, and sent them a cease and desist...
I think people are just wearing nostalgia glasses when they complain about current rpgs, FF13 included. Go back and play FF4 and tell me how long it takes to get to the final boss. I"ll save you the time though, it takes 7-8hrs. Of course I passed over some of the side stuff but steamrolling through things fighting the bosses and you know what, I didn't buy any new gear for my team nor did I bother to equip them with anything I received.
I was able to beat every boss on my first try and the only time I died was against the 4 fiends all at once. Now of course I'm up to the final boss and he spamms Big Bang one shotting everyone so my journey to go with their starting gear may be over but the point is, people need to takea step back and take off those nostalgia glasses.
Maybe what made rpgs so magical in the past were their graphics where we were the ones that could fit the puzzle and pieces together to make it our own. I mean think about what's changed, the graphics, but honestly FF13 is a long game and also honestly I don't see how FF13's battle system is any different from FF4. In FF4 you find the golden strat and stick to it til the boss dies. Oh water lord is weark to lightning, spam strongest lightning, melee and fight til it dies while curing. In FF13 oh I need buff -set to buff paradigm- and buff oh I need to stagger -set to melee paradigm- and stagger. The paradigm system just cut the redundancy of combat and allowed for the openess of creating more intense looking battles. People just don't understand that, they feel more "involved" by being the one that does, choose blizzard, choose blizzard, choose blizzard. So how is that any different from setting ravager, you're doing the same thing at the end of the day but people claimed it took away from combat when it really didn't.
Just I think if people want to figure out "what's wrong" with FF now they should first go back and play through all the titles, clock how long it was and just consider, what made these fun and why do you honestly think FF13 failed, I mean if you play through the old FF titles you will see a pattern in the abilities you use you will see redundancy and just going through the motions in combat and honestly if you don't see that then you're just being blind to nostalgia.
TL;DR, the games aren't hard but you're blowing smoke to say they were that easy. And yes, they were that good. Most of us have gone back to play those games and enjoyed them all the same. Technology has changed in 15 years but humans haven't.
Unfortunately Squeenix has no idea how to make a proper sequel. Think about it; each iteration of FF and DQ takes place in a completely different world with completely different characters and a different combat system.
There are no sequels, just brands.
Well, mostly they don't except with Kingdom Hearts. Then again, KH is pretty much milking the mixture of their own brand name and Disney's.
Well, what about Crisis Core then?
that's a prequel
Crisis Core fucking blows.
actually, some of the Dragon Quest games are connected. The first three games all take place in the same world and revolve around the legendary hero Loto (a role which the player themselves take on in the third game). Dragon Quest IV-VI (as well as Monster: Terry's Wonderland) also make up the same world and revolve around the floating castle of Zenith. I think most of the Dragon Quest titles from VII onwards are stand-alone (albeit with connections to Caravan Heart and other spin-off titles).
On the other hand, you are right in assuming that Final Fantasy was never connected. Though they did release the Legend of the Crystals OVA (a continuation of Final Fantasy V) several years earlier, this trend of releasing sequels to numbered titles never really took off until X-2. I believe around this same period, they were also expanding Tactics into the Ivalice saga, which ultimately resulted in XII.
Does nobody fucking remember Chrono Cross?
cross was the best. The series deserves another sequel though.
I agree entirely, to each his own, but cross had a deeper meaning to it. And square does know how to make sequels, just because they don't cater to your personal preference doesn't mean its not done right it means you're a biased bitch.
But yeah square hasn't been the same since it merged with enix, that's been known for years.
Also to add to the list, Parasite Eve sequels--I demand them!
I don't not after how shitty PE: the 3rd birthday was. The game was barely like the previous 2 pe titles.
if you played Trigger before Cross, you realized it can't even be considered a canon sequel; happened on different world map, no more time-travelling concept, not even a trace left of Trigger's world except for a few cameos. And no, I never heard Crono, Marle and Lucca can cross between dimensions.
Yes, Cross got it's own deep plot and cool battle system but what gamers who played Trigger actually want when they see the tag 'Chrono' in the title, is a canon sequel. As obvious as it seems, Square's pretty much milking off the Chrono franchise like FF at that time... making games with title that looks continuous but in actuality they're completely different games at all.
Uh no, you're a delusional fanboy. Don't sell it as a true Chrono Trigger sequel when it's not. Be honest and say it's an unrelated story like a Final Fantasy sequel or an alternate-universe take on it. They completely dicked around with the CT universe, turned it into something it absolutely wasn't before, populated it with characters no one gave a shit about, practically retconned the entire plot--they fixed something that wasn't broken, and it was a disaster. An absolute disaster. And the worst part is that then when they rereleased Chrono Trigger they went back and started retconning IT so that Cross wouldn't look like the malformed bastard child it truly was.
I don't drop games as a matter of principle--I forced myself to finish Final Fantasy 8 even though I hated it--but I dropped Chrono Cross like a hot brick and caught the rest of the game from watching others play it; it wasn't worth my time and it wasn't a Chrono Trigger sequel. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist.
Cross a shit.
I think some of you need to relax. Cross may not have been the Trigger sequel that everyone wanted, but if you don't treat it as such, it's still a pretty decent game in its own right. Besides, even if Square was milking the Chrono name, I dare anyone to say it was half as bad as, oh say, the entire fucking FFVII compilation... or one-tenth as bad as the currently on-going FFXIII compilation.
Chrono Cross was a cluster-f of nonsense. YES, I got the deeper parts of it. As any kind of sequel to Chrono Trigger though it failed miserably. All those retarded characters who had no reason for being there and joined up seemingly randomly with no story was stupid. Only a few had any real meaning to the story. I mean come on...A sword-wielding Turnip? A Exorcist Mexcian Wrestler? A little goofiness in a Chrono game is fine but Chrono Trigger tended to have a little more dignity and a more serious tone. This game was like a fever dream of WTF.
It felt like the Chrono Trigger connections were shoehorned in halfway through development. The very world (yes i know the game took place in a rather small part of the world) seemed completely different from the world Chrono Trigger showed us. It didn't have anywhere near the same feeling. The best part of that game was the music which was awesome.
Ugh...when are people going to realize that Chrono Cross largely blew herds of chipmunks?!
"Ugh...when are people going to realize that Chrono Cross largely blew herds of chipmunks?"
When Schala finally decides to dye her hair blue again.
True that... Compared to those whole casts of Chrono Cross' extra characters, Frog from Chrono Trigger made more sense.
Even then, Frog (Glenn) was a human that was transformed by Magus.
It's called Chrono Cross because it makes people cross (ie. angry).
I thought chrono cross is already some sort a sequel for chrono trigger? ...well sort of
Its links to Chrono Trigger are mostly implicit and came across like they were forced onto it during the later stages of production. And while it certainly is a good game, it's nowhere close to the greatness that is Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Cross isn't the sequel it deserved?
chrono chross wasnt avialable... but that was regional. mayb i shouldnt comment about the game if i havent played it yet :D
You didn't miss anything. If you have good memories of Chrono Trigger, this game might very well damage them beyond repair.
Chrono Cross is more like a spinoff stemming from Chrono Trigger's continuity; using some of the story elements and characters from Trigger. Cross pretty much throw the whole concept of time-travelling which made Trigger a legend out of the window hence some gamers consider Cross to be non-canon at all to Trigger.
I agreed with anon @05:23 04/04/2013. While Cross got more selection of characters, some of them play trivial to none of a role at all in the story. Trigger, eventhough there are only 6 playable characters, they all come with their own deep background story which points out even in the side quests (plus each of them got their own cool theme song. frog's theme, anyone?)
Once they do create this sequel, they will milk the shit out of it till they ruin it's name.
Yeah, even more crappy sequels to beloved classics surely is the right way to go ...
SE over milked FF, whens the last time they made anything not FF that was AAA game. they port FF and resell it on a new system. now FF15 is gonna come to the PS4 i bet money thats there big game when it launchs.
They will be going down forever UNTIL they LISTEN to the FUCKING FANS. That's all. What do the fans want? EVERYONE knows that already. They want a fucking remake for VII, They want Aeris back, they want to fap to a Tifa whored up bouncing HD model rendered in the fucking FOX engine, they want all that crap, and there's no remedy for that.
Square should have learnt something about Gainax by now.
Business are business. The last GLOBAL success from Square was a fucking stupid an already dated CGI short film: FFVII Advent Children (I rise, and remove my hat) They should know better by now.
Advent Children was an abysmal movie that ruined FF7.
They should scrap Drakengard 3 because the first 2 games were soooooo awesome.....