It seems Square has either been suffering either from bad marketing or just poor management, or both. The list of their published games recently that aren't made by their in-house development teams have either been good but poorly marketed leading to poor sales or games that are just mediocre to outright bad.

The most recent examples that immediately come to mind are:

Outriders
Balan Wonderworld
Guardians of the Galaxy (which I loved this game)
Marvel's Avengers
Babylon's Fall

and now you can add

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
Chocobo GP

All these games are made either through third parties and published by Square or are subsidiaries of Square, but for one reason or another, never met expectations. It's like Final Fantasy and the HD-2D games is Square's only saving graces at this moment. 

Unless their partnerships that crank out much smaller titles have been great that I'm just unaware of, but this makes me weary about Forspoken

I haven't considered Square a top game producers since the ps1 days. They were still good during the ps2 but not at that top tier for me. I think they were been pretty solid on ps4/Switch/Xbox One. Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Dragon Quest 11 were both fantastic. Octopath was a lot of fun, the last 3 Tomb Raider games were great. I'm looking forward to playing Chrono Cross again in a few months, and Forspoken looks really good. I'm hoping the new Star Ocean can regain some of the quality the last few games in the series have lacked. I think it's just a a bad two year stretch for them, Nintendo was also in a bit of a drought during the pandemic and it seems like they are gaining momentum again. Hopefully Square can put a little more quality control into some of these games.

Probably don't know how to manage outsourced games

I like their in house production. They would be better if they invested more in workforce to make their own games 

I'm not even sure FF is SquEnix saving grace. Sure the quality of FFXV and 7Rehash were high in the looks department but to me they were nothing like old school FF games and in no way compare to the pinnacle the series has to offer in terms of storytelling and gameplay.

It's hard to know where to pin things down. Their obsession with GaaS shows in the list of games you mention but over the last few years we've still had Bravely Default 2, FF mainline titles, the Toyko RPG games, Eidos games outside of the GaaS ones. All generally well received with a high quality.

Japan side of things has produced a lot of remasters and HD versions, but I'm looking forward to Forspoken and hope that Valkyrie and Star Ocean games can produce the quality of the PS2 era. As far as Eidos side goes, I think they are doing fine but think they need to focus less on GaaS games which we all now know have a hard time breaking into a market already full. People only ever do one real GaaS and those are usually the F2P ones, however they will buy more than 1 good story driven game a year. This is where they need to look to.

And more FF games in the vein of actual FF would be nice for me.

Stranger is a Damn fun. Instant Cult classic. The game is fine aside from performance. Also 70 is not mediocre. 70 is good. A 50 is mediocre.


Also, Balan was made in-house. SE mad ea studio just for Yuji Naka to make that game. PLus you are leaving out The Quiet Man and left Alive.

In the games industry, I've always seen 70 considered to be mediocre and anything below that is just bad lol. But yeah, I've read that there is fun to be had with Stranger. Like I REALLY enjoyed GotG and it got really good reviews, but because of how Square handled Avengers, by extension it hurt Guardians and the marketing wasn't that good either, thus leading to Square having to admit that they had yet another game that did not meet sales expectations. Which should never be the case for a game based on Marvel properties.

I do know SE made that studio for Naka, but I am also referring to subsidiaries of Square having either poor sales performances or critic reviews. I did forget about those other 2 games lol. Thanks for mentioning them!

It seems like the only successful games that Square is putting out these days are the ones that are being developed by their in-house teams. Which would be Square Enix Creative Business Unit I, II, III, and IV.

No dude. Dumbass people on internet forums decided anything below an 80 was bad because dumbasss internet forums back in the 360 era and further proves Meta is cancer. Some point after that moron Execs got that in their head. Those same fans who use a abritary number for an opinion are hypocrits. Think of all the people who loved Days Gone. It revieweed worse than Stanger in Paradise. Mech games rarely review well in the west but Armored Core 4 Answer is one of the best From Software games ever made and from the same man people suck his dick over the Souls games. One of the most beloved mech games from mech fans. Daemon X Machina reviewed better and people who don't play mech games claim it's bad. Yet DXM is an amazing game. IGN reviewed Imagine Babies better than Mafia II. Which game is more remembered? 

Final Fantasy 13 reviewed very well but look how much that game is reviled. Meta scores do not determine the actual quality of a game. Some reviews read like they loved a game then suddenly low score. Most people don't even read the reviews.

Trials of Mana and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles don't feature local multiplayer. Two games that would work extremely well with local multiplayer don't feature local multiplayer. For no reason.

A shadow group inside the company wants it bought out and is intentionally, through indirect and non-traceable means, sabotaging these games being made through misguided micromanagement in order to lower the valuation of the company enough that people will want to sell. They will then pool their money together to buy three islands of Greenland where they will will build a massive sign saying "Epstein Didn't Kill Himself" so large that the entire world will see it from spaceforce images.

Its like they are making these games just to burn in flames and get to the next thing, like they don't even try. So weird.