Or maybe medically?

And then they try to fix it by spending even more on the next title.

I don’t get it.

It has resulted in some fantastic, well-selling games, but it was never going to reach the universal “literally everyone is playing this” level they seem to keep thinking will happen “any second now”.

That bothers me, too.

But then it wouldn’t fit in the frame, and it’d look a bit like she’s about hit someone with it.

Sony?

Final Fantasy is owned by Square Enix.

I suspect Sony pays them very little for the timed exclusivity, still that does help.

But the mismanagement I’m referring to is less to do with the platform availability (though that doesn’t help) as it is with Squenixes habit of consistently over-estimating final sales, and thereby overspending on development and scope.

Squenix did it with Tomb Raider, they did it with Deux Ex, and then axed the franchises entirely because they “failed to meet sales projections”. They still sold like hell, but “underperformed” because Squenix had completely bonkers expectations, and thereby also spent way more than warranted.

The marketing budget for Shadow of the Tomb Raider was apparently more than a third of what they paid for development, and even the development cost was questionable.

The exact same pattern is happening with Final Fantasy, where they try to fix waning sales by going bigger and bigger, instead of more efficient and consistent. I hope they wise up before they axe FF, too.

Intergrade is an increbile game. I loved it.

Squenix is still missmanaging the shit out of their franchises, and I will be waiting for Rebirth to be discounted and on PC.

Waited for the PC version of Intergrade, and then a sale. It was absolutley fantastic IMO. But I will still do the same with Rebirth.

Squenix keeps trying to spend more to get more, and it never fucking works.

It’s always “our titles are performing below expectations and we will be forced to axe the project” when the whole reason things are going south is that they somehow thought there was a market to make hundreds of millions, then spend accordingly.

And when fans aren’t interested in buying one game three times for full price:

Rebirth didn’t need to be bigger and better than Intergrade. It just needed to be the same quality level (which was excellent, now with Rebirth its overshooting the sweet spot by a mile) and cost less than full-price.

I know. My posting tool tries to find a suitable title automatically, and sometimes it misses.

What? Squenix overspending still didn’t result in proportianlly higher sales?

No way! But surely, next time it’ll work!

If youre unfamiliar, squenix keeps upping the budget when they get “hits” expecting the return to scale. Then when it doesn’t, they use it as en excuse to abandon the franchise.

They did it with Tomb Raider. They did it with the new Deus Ex games. I really really don’t want them to do it Final Fantasy, as I really enjoy the modern games.

No work today. Gonna make a cast iron pizza. Then play Satisfactory until I get sleepy.

Browse the community, perhaps. It’s a neat game.

I’m running a dedicated server for it, check out the relevant post if anyone is interested in joining.