shikamaru317 said:
You are right that yearly stuff like EA sports and Forza being on the list is a bit unfair. The rest I listed are not copy-paste though, not even CoD, contrary to what some believe about the series (every CoD game but 1 this gen has had an original campaign, mostly original maps, and mostly original guns, very little in CoD has gotten copy-pasted this gen, most of the games have taken place in different time periods which prevented copy-pasting). As for team sizes, a comparison to other development teams is pretty much impossible because Square doesn’t release any information about the make-up of their development divisions. The only team size out of all the Square JP teams that we know is Luminous Productions, which had 130 devs as of September 2019. We can however compare Square’s overall employee count of 4,600 as of 2019 to other publishers, and it is true that Square is smaller than the 3 big western publishers as well as Take-Two/2K (EA and Activision-Blizzard have about twice the employees Square has while Ubisoft has a whopping 16,000, and Take-Two is just slightly bigger than Square at 5,200 employees), but they are the biggest JP publisher, and also seem to have more devs than Zenimax (Bethesda Parent company which released like 10 AAA games this gen) and Warner Bros. Interactive.
Perhaps, but your argument that 1 AAA game per IP per gen is about the same as other developers is equally as bad, I think I showed that much. Fact is that the vast majority of AAA games are made in 3 or 4 years, and yet in the 8th console generation, which ran from Holiday 2013 to Fall 2020, 7 years, only 1 of Square’s JP development teams has managed to release 2 AAA games, Nomura’s team which released KH3 and FF7 Remake part 1. Square’s other JP development teams only released 1 AAA game or no AAA games during this 7 year gen. That is slower than average for AAA development. You are right that Square’s JP teams have released a good many smaller AA and A games this past gen, but it doesn’t change the fact that they haven’t released many AAA games. The other publishers have also released a lot of smaller games after all, while still managing to release more AAA games than Square did. Even ignoring western devs, Capcom pulled off more AAA games than Square this gen, while also releasing at least as many AA and A games as Square released, despite having less developers than Square. I acknowledged that Square has enough development teams and developers to pull off a lot more AAA games next gen, and job listings suggest that they are going to try to increase AAA development next gen. But I am not going to count my chickens before they hatch. Nobody will be more happy than me to see Square release a lot more AAA games next gen, I truly hope they do, but I’m not going to expect it because that may lead to disappointment. |
.... Your argument is still bad because you cross comparing development strategies as if everybody should running off the same blueprint.
When the new CEO of Square Enix took over part of SE's new approach would be to focus on AAA installments in popular IP's while growing smaller projects. Those smaller projects that exceeded SE's expectations would given bigger budgets each installment and after the third success, a possibility of becoming a key IP (Nier is currently on its way to SE's 4th key IP as they gave the main his own studio after Automata success). This was done in response to the previous CEO's management disaster (that everybody complained about). SE has made the choice to have a small pool of AAA's.
Major IP's
Final Fantasy
Kingdom Hearts
Dragon Quest
Each got one got at least one installment (Final Fantasy got 2 with a MMO that receives frequent updates) . You keep complaining about the fact that SE did not release more AAA's; They only have 3 and none of them are annual releases. That is another problem in your argument; you are comparing SE IP's, which are built from the ground up every installment, to IP's that are built heavily from recycled assets ( multiple development teams of people working of them). If you take SE and compare them to other development teams that do not do annual release you will the output is similiar:
Guerilla Games: 2 titles this gen, Creative Division 1 (Old guard FF Team): 2 Tiles
Naughty Dog: 2, CD1: 2
Sucker Punch: 2,
A much more fair and sensible comparison. I do enjoy how you compare SE"s Japanese developers to entire global publishers. Is there a reason why you are ignoring Deus Ex, Just Cause and Tomb Raider? You take a global publisher, reduce them to one division, then compare them to everybody else's global.... ok.
Your CAPCOM comparison also sucks! You are comparing a developer who makes primarily action games ( that take less then 10 hours finish) to developers who make RPG's than span 100 of hours. The only thing that CAPCOM has made that is comparable is Monster Hunter. Now if CAP teams only made MH size games... Those numbers would drop heavily.
Your arguments reeks of one not constrcuted with honest and fair intent.
Last edited by Xxain - on 29 May 2020
