I think i've heard somewhere that they couldnt port the game to the 360, they had to create a new game engine to run the game on the 360, which i think caused a lot of delays.

oh and i thought that GTA4 was the most expensive game developed at $100 mil, but i thought FF13 was $75. besides MS is rumoured to have to given them $75 mil, so i dont think it was a total diaster. i doubt they spent all that money on advertising, they probabily recouped a lot of the development cost from MS.

Edit: @naznatips, even though they're using the Luminious game engine now, instead of Crystal Tools, a lot of the stuff might be taken straight from Crystal Tools. even though i agree, they never should've of created a new game engine when they already spent 1 year on the PS2 developing.

They don't profit. They barely profitted at all for years during FFXIII development, despite selling cheap ports and remake software in ridiculous quantities on DS, for massive profits, and inflated prices (In Japan SE games on DS cost as much as PS3 games). In fact, they were in the red numerous times over those years, which shouldn't even have been possible.

You're right, I'm speculating, but logically they should have made hundreds millions of dollars during those three years, and the fact that they didn't suggests that FFXIII could have cost even more than I've postulated.Of course it's not responsible for all those losses alone. SE was developing many games at the time, including DQIX, Versus, and 432,168.3 Kingdom Hearts spinoffs, but it certainly was a big chunk of the reason that they barely broke even.

As for the advertising costs supplemented by Microsoft, that could be true, but I doubt it. There wasn't nearly the ad-push you'd expect from a $75 million ad campaign, and even if it were it would have been a US-only campaign, and they would have spent their own money for TV spots in Europe and Japan, which would have been in the $30 million range anyway, after combining the two territories, so it's not like Microsoft handed them a free game. Not to mention if MS has really shelled out that much for the advertising of FFXIII it would have shown up on their fiscal results.

And as for the Luminous Engine, it was created from the engine tools owned by Eidos (used by K&L 2 and Deus Ex) when they did their buyout of them, so even if it includes some fractions of Crystal Tools, basically it was years of labor scrapped after 2 games for what will amount to no return. As I said, though, all of this isn't even a fraction of the disaster that Versus will be with 5 years of development and 2-3 million lifetime units sold at best.

Again you're speculating way too much, you're not even bringing sources to prove your point.

See page 3 http://www.square-enix.com/eng/pdf/news/20100518_02.pdf

Since 2004 they profited millions of dollars every year.

this, SE makes money, they profitted significantly during the years of Development, and then when they release their big games (DQIX and FFXIII) they get record profit for them http://www.1up.com/news/square-enix-achieves-record-profits

One could argue had the approached FFXIII a different way they couldhave made even more. But they make significant money either way and have consistently.

Fine, they dropped, they didn't lose, but in 2009 they posted the lowest profits in the entire existence of the company (since the merger in which they became Square Enix). I was speaking of fiscal quarters, rather than years, in which they did post some losses. Obviously not enough to offset profits entirely, but it's an issue that it happens. To further analyze that chart, their previous record was in FY07, which is the fiscal year in which they released FFXII (yes I know it came out in 2006, but it was FY07). FY05, the record before that, is when they released DQVIII. So yes, you post bigger profits on years you launch big games. Also the sun rises in the east.

Let's look at that though. Both of those years, had nearly the same profit as this last fiscal year. One year they had an FF game, and one year they had a DQ game, but this year they released Dragon Quest, Arkham Asylum, and FFXIII. In one fiscal year, and they still barely beat the record they had set with FFXII alone. So yes, that's a problem. It's a problem of diminishing returns. You're also talking about a company that is now 3 times the size it was in the PS2 generation, and yet posting the same or lower profits! There is no way Square Enix is happy with their current business model and profits.

A decent game passed a bad game, I can live with that.

But so say that FFXIII was hard....?? ... please...it was almost as easy as FFXII tp beat and that says alot.

whether or not this is the case naznatips, i think Wada can be trusted as CEO, he is a buisness man, and to be fair the problems your talking about stem from FF13's prolonged development cycle, which wasnt his fault. the problem seems to be that other than FF theres nothing with the same international appeal; and Wada is doing something about that by integrating the foreign studios like Eidos, and Luminous seems like a good move because it has not taken as much time as Crystal Tools, and uses exisiting engines.

oh and about you Versus comment, i i agree, imo it will not sell more than 4.5 mil. and tonio_13, i didnt look at the link, but surely millions of turnover is not enough for a company that employees hundreds of people, with offices in the 3 key gaming teritories, i would expect a least $100 million yearly. and this fiscal year we've had DQ9, FF13 & Batman, AA.

@naznatips.

though also to be fair they released kingdom hearts 2 in 2006 as well. So obviously you release big name games that sell well, those years you're going  to post a lot of profit.

Square-enix Bought Eidos in 2009.  it was bought in April 2009 so I believe that lowers the profit number for the last report which was a record anyways.

Kinda like the overreaction EA got when it lost hundreds of millions of dollars, yet ignored the fact that they bought bioware for 860 million. Except in this case, SE still profitted.

But even with that said, Wada knows the dev times haven't been good as he wanted them to be despite making profit.
Which is why he told kitase he wants a Major release every 2 years from their dev teams, whether that actually happens is up to the dev team.

Recieved $75m from Microsoft for marketing?

Halo Reach had about $6.5-10m for marketing which was more than Halo 3's 6.5m

@A203D  I was also wondering if MS actually got any dough from that deal. 1.5 mil sold is not bad, but how much went to SE??? How much of that paid for exclusive ad??? And considering they were talking so much crap about how the 360 version would beat PS3 in US and it didnt even come close, I wonder if MS profitted at all