Unconfirmed: Square Enix Holding Special Conference Early Next Year, New Final Fantasy Versus XIII Details Expected

[forevercloud3000]

Dodece said:

forevercloud3000 said:

Dodece said:
In all this quibbling something important has been lost. Some of you are blaming Square for what transpired when that blame should go to Sony. The exclusivity wasn't just Sony's to lose. Sony did a fantastic job of fucking Square over, and to be frank it takes some real gall to insinuate that Square should have taken it up the ass to satisfy some kind of console fetish all your own. I am sorry but the revisionism taking place in this thread is atrocious.

Square showed real tenacity when it came to maintaining the exclusivity that Sony enjoyed. Square did repeatedly warn Sony about the price of their console prior to launch, and they warned Sony repeatedly after the launch. They even went so far as to threaten Sony not just with the withdrawal of exclusivity, but with the withdrawal of their support in general. They literally fought tooth and nail to keep Final Fantasy as a exclusive franchise. What did you expect them to do exactly. Fall on their sword so that Sony could be successful.

Sony placed its own technological ambitions ahead of their loyal third party developers, and in doing so they not only abused their trust. They were actively causing them financial harm. Sony's overpriced Trojan horse not only stunted the platforms install base, but it actually split the user base. While at the same time escalating the costs of development. Sony didn't just take developers like Square for granted. They were flagrantly exploiting their very loyalty. All so Sony could profit from winning other product wars.

Sony literally screwed the pooch. Square was well within its rights to rescind the exclusivity, and frankly it is still within its rights to do so. To be brutal about it all. They would have been justified if they had decided to throw their full support behind Microsoft or even Nintendo. In a twist of irony you should probably be thanking Square for not abandoning you. Even though you act like they did.

I think there has been more then enough time to lament the passing of this particular era. That said if your still so bitter then do as I suggested. Place the blame on the guys who fucked up what you thought was a good thing. Oh by the way it wasn't just Square that gave Sony the stink eye. There are a slew of developers that did the exact same thing. So the question you have to be asking yourself is this. Which is more likely all of these third parties are run by total player hating dicks, or Sony did something to them that it ought not have done.

What you just described says very little in who is to be "blamed" per-say. Sony's reasoning for using blu-ray, the cell are all valid as a company that has to make themselves stand out and make a profit. What should they have done? Continued using DVD? Use an off the shelf CPU? That would have left them with no advantage against MS's firm position in the tech world as well as their ability to get top notch parts for dirt cheap(seeing as US based companies make most of them....in foreign countries but still). They had to seperate themselves, and there is no crime in doing so.  I am pretty sure many-a- developer tried to talk Nintendo out of doing motion control but sticking to your guns is how you make progress. Yea, the system didn't sell as much as they hoped, especially after the fact they were market leader 2gens in a row but lets not pretend the PS3 sold horribly bad by any standard. The system sold quite well. It only appears bad when you see the consoles in their tentative "positions" in the console war. Plus BluRay is the format of choice now, inclings of next Xbox will also have BluRay. In short....it paid off.

I thought with your stance you would bring up the disagreement Square had with Sony after they released the PS2 slim. Square apparently got pissed at them for for making the HDD a moot point(which was required for FFXI on PS2). Yet it seems a bit crazy to me for SE to get mad at Sony for doing so, when they litterally had that attachment JUST so SE could do FFXI on the system. It was literally the only game that ever used it, and they wanted Sony to base their entire designs around it. It simply comes down to Wada is an incompatent narcisist. Here is why they shouldn't be at odds like they are...

 

1. Sony saved Square-Enix from the brink of bankruptcy after the Spirits Within fiasco.
2. There games have done better on Sony consoles than any other system in the past and present.
3. Square helped Sony gain the cemented foothold they needed in the PS1 era to become defacto Market Leader.
4. Sony owns a portion of SE stock.
5. Majority of their fanbase is attached to the Playstation Brand.

After all SE and Sony have been through together, you would think SE could give Sony the  benefit of the doubt with their consoles. Which is super strange because they seemingly have been jumping at the chance to do things with NIN and MS, even at points where their consoles don't show much more promise or strong sales either(IE working on a full JRPG for 3DS before it ever came out while Vita gets no such respect, giving 360 Star Ocean and pretty much every game before ever releasing a PS3 title). WHy this is I cannot say, only that it is pissing off fans of SE big time. And all this time they spend trying to "punish" Sony for whatever, they are hurting their financials as well. Pity.....

 

Excuse me I am a little winded from laughing so hard. Oh you were serious with that first diatribe. Sony wasn't in a technological arms race. They already had a serious differentiation. A legion of loyal software developers, brand recognition, and more first party studios. The thing is for two hundred dollars less in parts they could have been exactly where they ended up. Having hardware parity with Microsoft. They should have actually been certifiably superior, because they launched a year later.

I also find your notion that the PS3 was performing well laughable. Have you forgotten where you are. We saw the sales figures, and Sony didn't slash a third off of the MSRP, because the console was doing well. The sales were in the process of bottoming out, and the channel was super saturated. Without those massive price cuts the console would have died. There just aren't enough hardcore gamers out there to carry a six hundred or even five hundred dollar console. Sony was even forced to slash the hardware. Everybody saw this, and there isn't point denying that it happened.

You are also wrong about BluRay being the format of choice. While it isn't a flop. It sure as hell hasn't buried the venerable DVD yet. Doubt me if you want, but go into any retailer, and tell me which format gets more shelf space. It is understandable really when you think about it for more then a minute. The discs cost more to make, more to license, and thus cost more at retail. It may overcome DVD at some point, but that will be around the time that the profit margins are going to have declined dramatically. In the end Sony may have lost more money to make it a success then they will ever make from their share of the profits, and that is if all goes according to plan. Which may very well not happen. Digital downloads may become dominant, and no I am not personally keen on that, or a newer more potent format may come to market.

There is nothing to say that the next box is even going to use a disc format, and there are actually a lot of good reasons as to why Microsoft may not opt to use one. They are pure fodder for pirates, they generate a lot of heat/noise, and they increase hardware failure rates. Improvements in thumbdrives for example may actually have Microsoft going full circle, and returning to a cart format. They may be more expensive, but even for third parties the value may more then make up for the added costs.

Now time to debunk your points.

1. Are you really so sure that nobody else would have stepped in. The market has a lot of players with deep pockets even back then.

2. No shit the consoles with the higher install bases sold more games?

3. Yeah they did that, because discs were cheaper then carts, and Sony offered buy backs on unsold discs. Square acting in its own best financial interest.

4. A minority share, and it isn't charity. Sony gets a dividend check, because Square makes money by playing both sides of the fence.

5. The Japanese are nationalistic, and when this generation started Square was expected to maintain its exclusivity arrangement. One of the reasons people bought a PS3 was, because they thought that was the only way they were going to get to play Final Fantasy. Imagine how many sales Sony would have lost if Square had said on day one that wouldn't be the case.

They did give Sony the benefit of the doubt. Like eighteen months worth. Maybe just maybe Microsoft and Nintendo treated Square right. Microsoft didn't just get those games out of charity. They negotiated contracts, and often paid for their development. Which was something that Sony wasn't willing to do. Since they were busy pumping money into their first party studios. Quick question for you. How many third party studios did Sony end up driving into bankruptcy. By the by it doesn't piss off Square fans. It pisses off Sony fans. What do you think there aren't Square fans on the Wii or the 360. How do you think they would feel if they didn't get to play any Square games.

Here is a good question for you. Lets just forget the fact that the consoles price drove down the install base, and split the user base from the PS2 generation. What do you think would have happened if Sony had been willing to spend money up front on Square games just like Microsoft was willing to? It is a really good question you should be asking yourself. Sony literally chose Killzone 2 a game that nobody actually wanted from what I understand over Final Fantasy. There was fifty million dollars right there that could have kept Square on board.

Time for a inside joke. Moneyhatting for teh win.

I work at an FYE, and while majority of the store may very well be DVD, it is only because many of what is available on that format is not yet on BluRay. First question usually is "Is this available on BluRay?", its still doing the slow shift, just as VHS did to DVD. Do you think all those BluRay players where purchased for their DVD funtionality? I think not.

Yes, MS obviously paid for many of SE's leanings towards them. Yet those leanings did not pay off it seems as SE is doing worse than ever. Not sure what NIN does to get special/good treatment. All that moneyhatting, and the games all flopped on their system...except FFXIII but with that name it was sure to get decent sales at least, still sold less(a lot less) than PS3 version WW.

You make it out that these companies really weight it all on what the current userbase marketshare is for the time being before saying they will make X game for Y console. 7th Gen was a total enigma, PS2 was defacto market leader so why didn't they all just repeat history and put games on it? Total 360 shift in their actions from then to now, and this was before we could even see what their sales would be like so you can't say it was that. There were other, far more dangereous lurkings at play that Sony was entirely not prepared for.

 

What it comes down to is that even now, Sony platforms are making SE the most money....but SE doesn't seem to want to support them and does so begrudgingly. If they are supposedly basing all these decisions on pure merit of how productive they could be why is this? Its killing their bottomline and they will end up crashing and burning. Its highly detrimental to fans of their games, and the company as a whole.  When they were doing all those exclusive 360/DS games they should have been pumping out PS3 and PSP stuff.