By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

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

Tagged games:

forevercloud3000 on 17 November 2012

@nem

Userbase doesnt equal fanbase. Thats what im trying to get across. If FFxiii remained exclusive it would have sold just as much if not more. Sales numbers from similar situations dictate this. MGS4 sold more than mgs3. Ever old ps exclusive that went multi..... Sold the same or less. If the company paid more money to development just to make it multi how is that making them more money. This is y i say going multi to achieve sales is a lie propagated by those who would benefit. Im just reading the numbers and data



      

      

      

Greatness Awaits

PSN:Forevercloud (looking for Soul Sacrifice Partners!!!)

Around the Network
forevercloud3000 on 17 November 2012

Also i would like to also add ur wrong about ffxiii selling more in us, ps3 outsold it there too even tho it was advertised n us as a xbox exclusive.



      

      

      

Greatness Awaits

PSN:Forevercloud (looking for Soul Sacrifice Partners!!!)

Nem on 18 November 2012
Aura7541 said:
Nem said:
forevercloud3000 said:
Aura7541 said:
Nem said:
forevercloud3000 said:
Nem said:

Oh please... what a Sony pink world you live in. Sony bought some squaresoft stock, thats it. They did not Save them, the merger with Enix did. The company that exists now is called Square-Enix, it owes Sony nothing.

Also the majority of their fanbase in the SNES era would be attached to Nintendo and they still developed several titles for the playstation. This is not about hardware brand loyalty, its about money. The market has changed, its not Sony domination anymore. Companies need to adapt and make money. Get over it or get out.

From my understanding, Sony actually owned about 20% of Squaresoft, which is just what they needed to keep them afloat.

Wikipedia.com

"The merger between Square and Enix, which had been under consideration since at least 2000 according to the then Enix chairman Yasuhiro Fukushima, was delayed because of the failure of the film and Enix' hesitation at merging with a company that had just lost a substantial amount of money.[34]"

The merger with Enix would have never happened without that help from Sony. It wasn't until the Merger where Enix head boss bought the deciding amount of stock in the company that Sony's share fell to 8.3%.

We will have to agree to disagree on where majority of their fanbase lies. I think its fairly obvious that if you were a die hard FF fan and played FFVII on you would grow to expect them on that same platform that had always been. Simple logic.


Its only simple logic to you because you dont understand how marketing works. Its not as simple as "i put the game in this platform, therefore i should put all of them here", that only works for the generation it started in. The product is aimed at the consumer, not the fan of console X. The market changed since the PS1. Microsoft came into the market, nintendo changed strategy and SEGA abandoned the market. With each new generation its a whole new ball game. The same people dont buy the same systems every gen, every system is different from their predecessor. Square's job is to bring their product to the most consumers possible to garner the most sales/profit possible. It really makes no sense to think it should stay in the sucessor of the previous system and should assume every consumer that purchased the previous iteration will purchase the new one.

Besides that, you are totally ignoring new adopters/buyers. The consumers ultimately rule the market. This gen the consumers decided to split between PS3 and X360 and companies had to adapt to that. Its the companies that adapt to the market, not the consumers. They are the ones looking to make money.

What you're telling us is that companies should ignore the market and blindly release titles on the sucessor system everytime to expect the same result. It just isnt the case at all. It seems like the recipe for disaster if you look at the Vita for example.


And yet you're also guilty for thinking too simply. "This gen the consumers decided to splite between PS3 and X360." That's consumers, in general. Your arguments lack any demographic insight. No two consumers have the same tastes. You'd really think there are as many JRPG fans in the 360 userbase as those in the PS3 userbase? smh. The PS3 userbase has a much larger JRPG fanbase and when SE decided to drastically change FFXIII's original identity, it alientated much of the JRPG fanbase, that a lot of those potential sales went down the drain.

"What you're telling us is that companies should ignore the market and blindly release titles on the sucessor system everytime to expect the same result. It just isnt the case at all. It seems like the recipe for disaster if you look at the Vita for example." That... made me laugh... a lot. Nice try at stretching forevercloud3000's argument beyond its intended message. In case you didn't know, SE has already did what you just stated. The company ignored much of the JRPG market with terrible decisions such as excruciating linearity, no towns, and continuance of FFXIII when no one asked SE to do so. SE blindly released FFXIII-2 expecting better reception than FFXIII. Didn't work. Now, it's blindly going to release Lightning Returns in hilarious hope to save a series that was never meant to be.

This^

Thanks for explaining exactly what I have een trying to get across to him for the past few pages....

He seems to not realize consumers are creatures of habit. It takes multiple entries in a series to train consumers in which console's to get their games on. For instance, take the "Tales of.." series. The series has spanned far too many systems, so FANS of the series are hella confused on which system to get if they are to recieve the next tales game. With consistancy the fanbase know where to find the game and hence it will recieve more sales. Namco has FINALLY learned that. This is why Star Ocean suffered so greatly when they put it on 360 initially as an exclusive. Also fans would have been expecting it on PS3.

Take a look at the sales of something like FFXIII, with 4/6ths of sales on PS3. Its on both consoles so why is it not even or MORE on 360 seeing as it had the larger fanbase? Because....as I have said till I am blue in the face on these forums, games do NOT sell dramatically more due to larger userbase but simply grow or fluctuate with the fanbase's desire for it. And with that simple fact, there is no real reason to make a game multiplatform as it justs costs a company more money with sales they would have gotten anyway on one platform. Shit, FFXIII is the worst selling FF game in years for it's respective correspondence in the generation timeline. Every first entry of the series on a platform has been the top selling  for that gen since PS1, FFX sold 8m while FFXIII struggled for 6m.

Its funny to me, because his logic dictates that some mysteriously new "2million  adopters" got the 360 version and had never played a FF game before. Seriously? New adopters are subtle in their practice and usually only do so in small portions. Any reasonable person will tell you that majority of those buyers were already existing FF fans, same goes for on PS3. What it really means is that 2million consumers bought a 360 with its head start and cheaper price, whom might have gotten a PS3 once a game such as FF came out for it, if they didn't have the option of getting it for 360 (also mind you, the game was heavily bundled in the US and only for 360 as they had exclusive marketing rights for the game in US).

I'm just so done explain to people that games don't magically double sales(or increase at ALL in most cases) because they are spread across multiple consoles and it is foolish to think so. lol

 

Why dont you make the math on how much % of the installed base of Xbox360 in japan bought the game and how much of the PS3 one? Where are your fans now? Also dont forget to see how the game sold better in the X360 in the west than in the PS3.

 

As for FFXIII you are seeing in absolutes. Its not about wich console sells the most, its about making money!

In Italic, poor atempt at spinning. I never said those 2 millions were only new buyers. Recall me saying that not everyone buys the same system every gen? Yup, theres new buyers and theres old buyers that ditched the Playstation for various reasons. They ammounted to those 2 million, wich if you had your way would never have seen the game and square wouldnt have made as many sales.

What you have to understand is that the market is divided in half in share, but not necessarily with an equal ammount of consumer types across them. Releasing in both platforms might double sales or it might not, but it certainly increases overall sales than releasing in just one platform. Easy example: compare Halo sales with CoD sales. If Halo wasnt an Xbox exclusive it could potencially hit alot bigger numbers. Double? Not necessarily. I never made that argument, but definitly more.

Do you understand now why its best to have the game be multi-platform instead of PS3 exclusive? I bolded the why in this post, and i will 1-up that with reaching a higher overall number of fans. The idea that everyone should buy a playstation 3 to buy every series that ever came out in the playstation 1 and 2 exclusively and therefore the companies having better sales is completely obtuse. That can only be the case if the playstation 3 had the large majority of the market share. It happened with the PS2, but it didnt with the PS3. Time to learn that was the result. Why not blame Sony´s tardiness and arrogance price wise in the market? Those are the real reasons why the trend didnt continue.


It costs more money to make a game multiplatform than to make a game for only one console. Considering the very different architecture of the PS3, it's a no brainer to say that it costed way more to make FFXIII for both consoles. Had SE just stuck with just the PS3, which would've not gimped the final product, FFXIII could've sold just as much as the combined sales of both versions of the actual product. Maybe even more. Which way would've gotten more money for SE? The PS3 exclusive route. Why? Because SE would've only had to focus on one console, which in turn would require a lot less resources and energy. In addition, SE wouldn't have had to make the FFvXIII team to work on FFXIII had it kept FFXIII only for the PS3, which would also be more cost efficient. Why? Because FFvXIII would've been a lot closer to being finished had the FFvXIII team not been forced to reallocate. SE really dropped the ball big time and it's going to hurt the company long term.

"That can only be the case if the playstation 3 had large majority of the market share." Again, "market share" is general. This isn't just the market share, it's the JRPG market share in which the PS3 still has a large majority of. Please read forevercloud3000's post more carefully. Look what happened with Star Ocean. Look what happened with Tales of Versperia. The 360 userbase didn't care. Here's another one. The Lost Odyssey, one of the best turn-based JRPG's this generation, and the 360 userbase did not give a damn. Now look at some the PS3's RPG's. Valkyria Chronicles sold over a million. Tales of Xillia sold about 3/4 of a million copies and that's only in Japan!


You make little sense. Is your point here that the japanese market wants PS3 exclusive? Yes, its obvious they want that. I am talking about worlwide sales and profit aquired. None of what you say makes any sense there. Its just fanboy'ism sorry to say. You magically assume FFXIII would be better if it would be exclusive to PS3. I call bullshit on that.

Say, Assassins creed would be better if it was exclusive to PS3 according to that logic. CoD would be better if it was exclusive to the 360 with the same logic. Let me tell you the cost to port a game is minimal compared to developing a game from scratch. Do you know why? Cause you dont need to buy x2 the designers/producers etc. Their work only needs to be done once.

Even if that was the case, the games would most definitly sell less copies. You are not worried about game quality here, nor are you worried about the game reaching the most fans it can, you are worried about support for your favorite system.



Nem on 18 November 2012
forevercloud3000 said:
@nem

Userbase doesnt equal fanbase. Thats what im trying to get across. If FFxiii remained exclusive it would have sold just as much if not more. Sales numbers from similar situations dictate this. MGS4 sold more than mgs3. Ever old ps exclusive that went multi..... Sold the same or less. If the company paid more money to development just to make it multi how is that making them more money. This is y i say going multi to achieve sales is a lie propagated by those who would benefit. Im just reading the numbers and data


I didnt say userbase equals fanbase. I already said that twice, i dunno if you're even reading my posts. I'm gonna make this real simple and you were even saying that previously while agreeing to the other poster: Userbase= fans+nonfans(potencial new buyers). Both fans and non-fans are influenced by several different variables that will dictate their buying behaviour. They do not repeatadly do the same thing, as they arent robots, they are people and can change their mind with the changing of the factors that influence them. This is why when a new generation starts the results are not known at the start.

You are assuming that every fan would buy a PS3 to buy the game, that is a wrong assumption. Beeing a fan of a game = buying a copy. As i said before you are also butting out new adopters that have the other system. Its tireing having to repeat this again so i wont do it anymore.

Your sales example are incredibly annoying for trying to fool people. You are trying to throw dirt in peoples eyes and that is extremely irritating. User base DOES matter. The PS2 had the majority of the market share during its generation, wich justified making the games just for it as it tapped most of the market. EVERYTHING will sell less comparably, unless theres some problem with the PS2 games. MGS3 was a prequal, in a different setting with some crap mechanics that made some like myself just ditch the series completely. It sold less, cause it didnt have the same appeal as its predecessors and it was released on other platforms many years later when it was no long a high-end product. This whole theory that games are gonna sell and have more quality if they are exclusive is completely pulled from the rear end. There is NO conclusive evidance of that happening, aswell as it not making ANY sense whatsoever. You are spinning the data selectively to try and support your case.

This is also why i didnt want to have this conversation. This retorted logic is completely insane. There is a reason why companies decided to release games for both platforms, and guess what, they wouldnt have done that if they thought they wouldnt make more money that way.



Tridrakious on 18 November 2012

Hmmmmm...Square-Enix having a conference to talk about Final Fantasy Versus XIII...mmmmhhmmmmm...

...
...
...
...
I'll believe it when I see it. If it is true and they have both Lightning Returns and Versus XIII playable, or just in trailer form. People won't be paying attention to LR.



Around the Network
Aura7541 on 18 November 2012
Nem said:
Aura7541 said:
Nem said:
forevercloud3000 said:
Aura7541 said:
Nem said:
forevercloud3000 said:
Nem said:

Oh please... what a Sony pink world you live in. Sony bought some squaresoft stock, thats it. They did not Save them, the merger with Enix did. The company that exists now is called Square-Enix, it owes Sony nothing.

Also the majority of their fanbase in the SNES era would be attached to Nintendo and they still developed several titles for the playstation. This is not about hardware brand loyalty, its about money. The market has changed, its not Sony domination anymore. Companies need to adapt and make money. Get over it or get out.

From my understanding, Sony actually owned about 20% of Squaresoft, which is just what they needed to keep them afloat.

Wikipedia.com

"The merger between Square and Enix, which had been under consideration since at least 2000 according to the then Enix chairman Yasuhiro Fukushima, was delayed because of the failure of the film and Enix' hesitation at merging with a company that had just lost a substantial amount of money.[34]"

The merger with Enix would have never happened without that help from Sony. It wasn't until the Merger where Enix head boss bought the deciding amount of stock in the company that Sony's share fell to 8.3%.

We will have to agree to disagree on where majority of their fanbase lies. I think its fairly obvious that if you were a die hard FF fan and played FFVII on you would grow to expect them on that same platform that had always been. Simple logic.


Its only simple logic to you because you dont understand how marketing works. Its not as simple as "i put the game in this platform, therefore i should put all of them here", that only works for the generation it started in. The product is aimed at the consumer, not the fan of console X. The market changed since the PS1. Microsoft came into the market, nintendo changed strategy and SEGA abandoned the market. With each new generation its a whole new ball game. The same people dont buy the same systems every gen, every system is different from their predecessor. Square's job is to bring their product to the most consumers possible to garner the most sales/profit possible. It really makes no sense to think it should stay in the sucessor of the previous system and should assume every consumer that purchased the previous iteration will purchase the new one.

Besides that, you are totally ignoring new adopters/buyers. The consumers ultimately rule the market. This gen the consumers decided to split between PS3 and X360 and companies had to adapt to that. Its the companies that adapt to the market, not the consumers. They are the ones looking to make money.

What you're telling us is that companies should ignore the market and blindly release titles on the sucessor system everytime to expect the same result. It just isnt the case at all. It seems like the recipe for disaster if you look at the Vita for example.


And yet you're also guilty for thinking too simply. "This gen the consumers decided to splite between PS3 and X360." That's consumers, in general. Your arguments lack any demographic insight. No two consumers have the same tastes. You'd really think there are as many JRPG fans in the 360 userbase as those in the PS3 userbase? smh. The PS3 userbase has a much larger JRPG fanbase and when SE decided to drastically change FFXIII's original identity, it alientated much of the JRPG fanbase, that a lot of those potential sales went down the drain.

"What you're telling us is that companies should ignore the market and blindly release titles on the sucessor system everytime to expect the same result. It just isnt the case at all. It seems like the recipe for disaster if you look at the Vita for example." That... made me laugh... a lot. Nice try at stretching forevercloud3000's argument beyond its intended message. In case you didn't know, SE has already did what you just stated. The company ignored much of the JRPG market with terrible decisions such as excruciating linearity, no towns, and continuance of FFXIII when no one asked SE to do so. SE blindly released FFXIII-2 expecting better reception than FFXIII. Didn't work. Now, it's blindly going to release Lightning Returns in hilarious hope to save a series that was never meant to be.

This^

Thanks for explaining exactly what I have een trying to get across to him for the past few pages....

He seems to not realize consumers are creatures of habit. It takes multiple entries in a series to train consumers in which console's to get their games on. For instance, take the "Tales of.." series. The series has spanned far too many systems, so FANS of the series are hella confused on which system to get if they are to recieve the next tales game. With consistancy the fanbase know where to find the game and hence it will recieve more sales. Namco has FINALLY learned that. This is why Star Ocean suffered so greatly when they put it on 360 initially as an exclusive. Also fans would have been expecting it on PS3.

Take a look at the sales of something like FFXIII, with 4/6ths of sales on PS3. Its on both consoles so why is it not even or MORE on 360 seeing as it had the larger fanbase? Because....as I have said till I am blue in the face on these forums, games do NOT sell dramatically more due to larger userbase but simply grow or fluctuate with the fanbase's desire for it. And with that simple fact, there is no real reason to make a game multiplatform as it justs costs a company more money with sales they would have gotten anyway on one platform. Shit, FFXIII is the worst selling FF game in years for it's respective correspondence in the generation timeline. Every first entry of the series on a platform has been the top selling  for that gen since PS1, FFX sold 8m while FFXIII struggled for 6m.

Its funny to me, because his logic dictates that some mysteriously new "2million  adopters" got the 360 version and had never played a FF game before. Seriously? New adopters are subtle in their practice and usually only do so in small portions. Any reasonable person will tell you that majority of those buyers were already existing FF fans, same goes for on PS3. What it really means is that 2million consumers bought a 360 with its head start and cheaper price, whom might have gotten a PS3 once a game such as FF came out for it, if they didn't have the option of getting it for 360 (also mind you, the game was heavily bundled in the US and only for 360 as they had exclusive marketing rights for the game in US).

I'm just so done explain to people that games don't magically double sales(or increase at ALL in most cases) because they are spread across multiple consoles and it is foolish to think so. lol

 

Why dont you make the math on how much % of the installed base of Xbox360 in japan bought the game and how much of the PS3 one? Where are your fans now? Also dont forget to see how the game sold better in the X360 in the west than in the PS3.

 

As for FFXIII you are seeing in absolutes. Its not about wich console sells the most, its about making money!

In Italic, poor atempt at spinning. I never said those 2 millions were only new buyers. Recall me saying that not everyone buys the same system every gen? Yup, theres new buyers and theres old buyers that ditched the Playstation for various reasons. They ammounted to those 2 million, wich if you had your way would never have seen the game and square wouldnt have made as many sales.

What you have to understand is that the market is divided in half in share, but not necessarily with an equal ammount of consumer types across them. Releasing in both platforms might double sales or it might not, but it certainly increases overall sales than releasing in just one platform. Easy example: compare Halo sales with CoD sales. If Halo wasnt an Xbox exclusive it could potencially hit alot bigger numbers. Double? Not necessarily. I never made that argument, but definitly more.

Do you understand now why its best to have the game be multi-platform instead of PS3 exclusive? I bolded the why in this post, and i will 1-up that with reaching a higher overall number of fans. The idea that everyone should buy a playstation 3 to buy every series that ever came out in the playstation 1 and 2 exclusively and therefore the companies having better sales is completely obtuse. That can only be the case if the playstation 3 had the large majority of the market share. It happened with the PS2, but it didnt with the PS3. Time to learn that was the result. Why not blame Sony´s tardiness and arrogance price wise in the market? Those are the real reasons why the trend didnt continue.


It costs more money to make a game multiplatform than to make a game for only one console. Considering the very different architecture of the PS3, it's a no brainer to say that it costed way more to make FFXIII for both consoles. Had SE just stuck with just the PS3, which would've not gimped the final product, FFXIII could've sold just as much as the combined sales of both versions of the actual product. Maybe even more. Which way would've gotten more money for SE? The PS3 exclusive route. Why? Because SE would've only had to focus on one console, which in turn would require a lot less resources and energy. In addition, SE wouldn't have had to make the FFvXIII team to work on FFXIII had it kept FFXIII only for the PS3, which would also be more cost efficient. Why? Because FFvXIII would've been a lot closer to being finished had the FFvXIII team not been forced to reallocate. SE really dropped the ball big time and it's going to hurt the company long term.

"That can only be the case if the playstation 3 had large majority of the market share." Again, "market share" is general. This isn't just the market share, it's the JRPG market share in which the PS3 still has a large majority of. Please read forevercloud3000's post more carefully. Look what happened with Star Ocean. Look what happened with Tales of Versperia. The 360 userbase didn't care. Here's another one. The Lost Odyssey, one of the best turn-based JRPG's this generation, and the 360 userbase did not give a damn. Now look at some the PS3's RPG's. Valkyria Chronicles sold over a million. Tales of Xillia sold about 3/4 of a million copies and that's only in Japan!


You make little sense. Is your point here that the japanese market wants PS3 exclusive? Yes, its obvious they want that. I am talking about worlwide sales and profit aquired. None of what you say makes any sense there. Its just fanboy'ism sorry to say. You magically assume FFXIII would be better if it would be exclusive to PS3. I call bullshit on that.

Say, Assassins creed would be better if it was exclusive to PS3 according to that logic. CoD would be better if it was exclusive to the 360 with the same logic. Let me tell you the cost to port a game is minimal compared to developing a game from scratch. Do you know why? Cause you dont need to buy x2 the designers/producers etc. Their work only needs to be done once.

Even if that was the case, the games would most definitly sell less copies. You are not worried about game quality here, nor are you worried about the game reaching the most fans it can, you are worried about support for your favorite system.


LOL. I can't stop laughing and shaking my head at this comment. You sir, are the one who makes very little sense. As soon as you mentioned the Japanese market, I knew I couldn't take your comment seriously. When you mentioned Assassins Creed and Cod, I bursted out laughing. Never in any of my comments when I mentioned the Japanese market. I mentioned the JRPG market, which doesn't just exist in Japan. And no, I don't "magically assume" (<LOL) that FXIII would be better if it was exclusive to the PS3. Read my previous comment (and actually read). I don't need to repeat myself. Assassins Creed and Cod are not JRPG's. Assassins Creed is a sandbox game and CoD is a first person shooter. These are genres that are much more popular in the western market so it's the most logical to go multiplat. However with JRPG's, that's another story. SE thought that there are a lot of JRPG fans in the 360 userbase, but the company was wrong. Much of the 2 million that bought FFXIII didn't give a crap when FFXIII-2 came out.

Woowwww. smh. I really can't take you seriously. I really can't. All you've done is making non-sequitors and crying "fanboy" whoever doesn't agree with you. How about you actually contribute to the comment rather than not reading other people's comments carefully enough, simply type the exact opposite of the counterarguments, and spam the fanboy label?



Kasz216 on 18 November 2012

This would be the easiest prediction in the world to make... because if it didn't... what the hell.

I mean, i'm baffled this game hasn't come out yet. I wanted to get it.... like 6 freaking years ago.

What the heck.



Dodece on 18 November 2012
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.



http://live.xbox.com/member/Dodece

forevercloud3000 on 20 November 2012
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.



      

      

      

Greatness Awaits

PSN:Forevercloud (looking for Soul Sacrifice Partners!!!)

forevercloud3000 on 20 November 2012
Kasz216 said:
This would be the easiest prediction in the world to make... because if it didn't... what the hell.

I mean, i'm baffled this game hasn't come out yet. I wanted to get it.... like 6 freaking years ago.

What the heck.

true, but this is also partially verified by SE stating they will be revealing more info on Lightning's Return "Really Soon". Coincides with a possiblbe conference that SE hasn't said exists yet but this article predicts. Whether FFVersXIII makes an appearance is still a toss up but does a lonely puppy not keep running to the door everytime he hears a car....only to be dissappointed when no one comes through



      

      

      

Greatness Awaits

PSN:Forevercloud (looking for Soul Sacrifice Partners!!!)