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Norion on 13 March 2024
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Soundwave said:
Norion said:
Soundwave said:

I'll let you in on a secret. 

Final Fantasy 17 isn't going to look much better than 16. 

Lets look at the facts. The series is declining in sales and it's likely already very expensive just to have FF16 tier graphics in a large scale RPG context with big cinematic cutscenes. 

So to go beyond FF16 graphics, you'd likely need a budget that is getting into $250-$300 million, but you're only selling like what? I don't even think FF16 has hit 5 million copies sold yet, if it had Square-Enix would've released some kind of press indicating it did. 

The math simply doesn't math on $150-$250 million dollar budgets for a game franchise that is only putting up 5-6 million in sales. 

Increasing your budget while your sales are going down is obviously not workable. 

Another example of this is Monster Hunter Wilds ... it doesn't really look much better than Monster Hunter World on the PS4. I suspect actually when you're looking at Wilds, you're looking at one of the first big ticket Switch 2 third party games. They simply stand to sell so many copies of this on Switch 2 that there's no way they could look off it. 

If it doesn't they'll have a harder time selling it to people. At least UE5 should help alleviate this problem for a lot of developers at least somewhat.

Would it really though? Honestly at this point I think FF is just a brand that maybe can sell 5 million ... maybe. That's what's left of its fanbase. No one outside of that gives a shit. 

Square is just going to have to accept the bitter pill that they're no longer part of the "cool kids club", meaning they're not really going to be in the big budget top end graphics showcase space any longer, you need more than $50 in your pocket to play at the high roller's table. They don't have the sales to compete against games that are going to soon have budgets of $300-$400 million. 

Capcom didn't do a big graphical leap for Monster Hunter Wilds and MH World sold way better than FF15, 16, 7Remake, 7Rebirth, etc. etc. So if they're not willing to even spend big, cold hard reality is likely to be sinking in at Square-Enix at this point too. 

Lets just do some basic math here, lets even give Square-Enix some benefit of the doubt and say on 300 million dollar budget for an "Awesome Graphics FF17", they see an uptick in sales from FF16 to like 7 million copies. Not bad. On that 7 million lets say they make a net profit (after licensing fees, shipping/printing costs for physical, etc.) average of about $40/copy. I say $40 because some copies will be sold at full price, some significantly below full price, lets just assume an average of $40 (which is being very generous). 

That still only gets you to $280 million in net profit ... so against a $300 million budget, you haven't even broken even. And I'm not even including things like marketing costs which may add another $20-$50 mill to your budget. 

Even 300 million is kind not like the greatest budget either for a graphics showcase, lol, Sony spent $300 million on Spider-Man 2 and Insomniac's own leaked internal memos state that people at the company wonder if gamers will even notice a big difference in graphics. Spider-Man 3 (the next game) is already pre-budgeted for 385 million, that means it likely will end up over 400 million. You really probably need 400+ million to leave FF16/7 Rebirth tier graphics in the dust completely and have it be an acceptable FF experience (that means 40-60 hour playtime with dozens of environments/characters/etc. etc.). 300 mill isn't gonna cut it. 

It would since part of the appeal of games like FF16 is spectacle though you're completely right about the budget issue. The main question then is how large of a sales decline would occur from pulling back on that since if it's low enough it would be the best business move for Square.

curl-6 said:
Norion said:

I never said that group in particular is the majority but them combined with those who don't care as much but are still more likely to purchase a game when it has high quality visuals make up a big chunk. Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game last year after all and it definitely wouldn't have been as huge a seller if its recreation of Hogwarts wasn't high fidelity. The issue for the sequel is if it's not a notable leap over the 1st it won't be as exciting but making it a notable leap will be costly.  

Hogwarts Legacy on Switch was massively cut down graphically, yet it still sold really well despite arriving 9 months late. I'm not saying pretty graphics can't be a selling point, but clearly they are not the be-all end-all, otherwise the Switch would've been another Wii U. 

And you can have good graphics these days without spending a triple-A budget anyway; look at AA titles like Hellblade, Plague Tale, Lies of P, Hifi Rush, It Takes Two, etc.

The amount it sold on Switch is small compared to PC and PS5/Series X/S so that's not a good argument against what I said. My point is that reining in budgets is an issue for AAA game makers like Square since spectacle is a big part of the appeal of those games thus doing so would lead to a decline in sales. Do you not agree with that?