To be fair Unspoken was a garbage title. As for the second I don't think going AA will solve the problem. High production standards with less content at a reduced price point like Miles seems much more viable. Not every game has to last 70 hours or cost 70 bugs. But people will demand high production values.

Arguably the biggest success of the year is an AA game, Helldivers 2. And there's no clear cut line in terms of budgets to make a point out of this, anyway.

The fact is that SE has been messing up their projects far too long to be part of some recent general trend of a certain type of game bombing. And Forspoken is another example of a miss that they can't chalk up to external factors, the game has a ton of problems.

"FF7 Rebirth has reportedly sold half what Remake did in the same timeframe"

my wild take... people don't enjoy haveing a game broken into many peices, to get the story.
They want a "one and done", that is a standalone game, that they can play through in 1 go.

Yeah Forspoken's failure was easy to see coming, the game was memed on relentlessly from before it even released for its painfully cringey dialogue and forced tone.
That one really must have stung them as it clearly wasn't cheap to make.

I admit, it was quite satisfying to watch that one fail, hopefully it discouraged them from making more trash like that.

I get it, but one part would take soooo long and it would be so expensive to make.

But maybe they needed to make it 2 parts instead of 3, and communicate it clearly it's gonna be only 2.

Remake + Rebirth as one game in 2024 and then second part in 2028.

Square should know that better than anyone.  Which just tells me it was a stupid business decision and doomed from the very beginning.

Cut the fluff to get it to 2 games.  Don't need two dozen silly side quests.  Some of the story expansion was too much.  Battle simulator could be dropped, same with the mini games.  Bigger isn't always better.  

Very happy they decided to make it 3 games. Also, really like the length and amount of mini games in Rebirth, bought a ps5 for this game solely and i have no regrets. Def best game i’ve played since elden ring. The ending also is really good considering how different they did it compared to the original. I’ll gladly wait 4-5 years for part 3 if they can get it as long and big or even better.

The same goes for Palworld earlier this year. Or Minecraft if you want to go there.

The thing is, the flop-to-success ratio regarding an experimental AA vs. an established franchise AAA wildly favors the latter even though there are exceptions. Hence why SE is trimming the former to focus on the latter.

Yep this stuff makes me roll my eyes if they complain about dev costs.  Like make it more focused and it'll be a better game and less expensive.  It just dilutes the main experience.  Hell I loved FF16 for just having zones that were fairly linear and loving that in Stellar Blade too.  Gimme semi open world and more focused stuff.