Ffxvi Game Cutscene

Nah, plenty of PS4 exclusives sold over 10m. God of War, uncharted, last of us, horizon zero down etc.

Persona 5 is probably king of turn based rpg in PS4 era, but I still wouldn't call it mainstream.

It was part of every piece of marketing.

It was mentioned by every single souls youtuber (who are like a colossal marketing team in and of themselves, many having millions of subscribers and 10s of millions of viewers).

There were interviews with George R.R. Martin about it outside of gaming centric areas.

In the end, all he wrote was the world building/setup prior to the game's events. It was Hidetaka Miyazaki's idea to plaster his name in all of the marketing, specifically saying, "He hoped it would make the game's narrative more accessible, and entice more people into getting Elden Ring."

For some few millions of people(exact figure unknown, just know it sold 6.6 million more than DS3 and 11 million more than Sekiro in the same time frame), Elden Ring was their first Souls game. Sure, it wasn't George R.R. Martin alone that drew these folks in, but he was a big contributing factor.

The goal with Elden Ring's marketing was to reach outside of the normal demographic. I see no signs that it was a meaningless gesture which did not succeed, as far as sales go.

He sold all the western studios to buy into NFTs, massively underselling them too.
He signed off on (and probably insisted on) making FF7R episodic.
He green lights garbage like Babylon fall.
He continued to pay for development on babylon fall for a year after release, when it had under 100 players.
He allowed the next single player FF game to be made by the MMORPG division at Square Enix:
This is stupid because
a) they are mmorpg developers
b) they starved the mmorpg titles they are supposed to be working on while working on ff16.
Marvel avengers.

I don't blame him for stupid stuff like turning every FF title into an action game, that's the director/producers. However he is still terrible.

What do you think makes him a good CEO?

None of these were advertised as open world(which normally adds tons of sales) and they are all harder from what I've heard. Games being too hard = less mainstream appeal.

I hated souls game because it is too hard to me, and I skipped all of the DS titles because of that. But Elden ring is currently on my to-play list only because I heard the difficulty is lower. If there are plenty of people like me then that explains the sales increase.

I don't believe one novel writer writing background story automatically adds 6-11m more sales. Otherwise every game dev would be hiring novel writers to make more money if it's that easy. But so far besides a few people like Tom Clancy or Clive Barker there are rarely that many novelist writing for games. So I wouldn't come up with such conclusion.

IMO Good writing is a bonus for this kind of game, but ultimately it's gameplay that counts.


Of course he was the intention, that doesn't mean 6-11m more sale is all on the writer.

Elden Ring's open world nature lets you skip bosses you don't like till you get overpowered, so yeah, it is a bit easier from a power acquisition standpoint. But Dark Souls has level ups, so you could just grind if you wanna beat'em with ease. Turns out there's just a lot of people unwilling to do that.

That's how my first playthrough of the first one went. I leveled up to use big weapons and armor, and just overpowered things rather than finessing them.


I think you could beat any of the Souls game if you put your mind to it.

I feel like most people still on this site are bright.

But anyway, more on the discussion. They didn't lead with Elden Ring is open world. They lead with, "A new story by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin!" in its very first cinematic trailer, before they showed anything else. There's no real way to discount it.

Now I don't doubt that Elden Ring would have still sold well without it, but a great deal of buzz was created by this decision for years. There are people out there who picked up Elden Ring solely because it had George R. R. Martin included in its development.

Martin being linked to the game not only lead to a massive increase in sales purely because he was linked to it as a writer, but also pushed the game under the noses of people who normally would never play it but like this kind of fantasy setting.

Elden Ring would of still sold a ton, but it would not of outsold CoD if Martin wasn't linked to it and that's why they did this when his writing role was pretty minor.



This is as big a boost to sales as if Starforge was co-written by George Lucas or something.

If the way Elden Ring sold was thought to be a newfound massive increase in love for hardcore souls games, Microsoft would of bought them by now. The next game they release will get a bit of a bump but it won't sell Elden Ring numbers again.

My qualifications for a good CEO is simple. As long as the company remain profitable as a whole so game dev can keep their jobs and don't have to worry about their next meal and investors are getting good returns from their investment then it's good CEO to me.

They don't have to make games for my personal taste. There are 12k+ games release on Steam every year, and mobile market is double the size of that. I have a long list of games that I can play if I want a turn-based RPG. It doesn't have to be the next FF or even SE games.

This is where I just don't get your rant. You are complaining only because they aren't making games for you. Despite plenty of other people are still making this kind of games.

Keep in mind, from 2019 to 2022 SE's earnings per share and return on equity has been increasing. There are no signs of this CEO doing a bad job at least in the past 3 years. So your complaint sounds nothing but person feels.


I think SE selling western IP is a good move which I mentioned it in a different thread. I don't think they can manage western IP as well as western publishers. Why keep staying on a battlefield if you are already losing? The best move is to leave this battlefield, and focus on a different battlefield with more chance to be successful.

As a fan of Deus Ex who is still salty about Mankind Divided incident, I prefer a western publisher too. So win win in my book.

I have a more neutral stance on NFT. Game dev tend to embrace the new technology as soon as they emerge. But we don't know if it'll be successful until years later.

IMO, spending some resources to explore this field isn't a bad thing. If SE wants to shut down all current game development and spend all of their money on NFT before it's proven to be successful then I'd say it's a bad move. But they didn't, they still continue to publish many games for existing fans. Afaik they only started one new division called Blockchain Entertainment Business Division to do research on Blockchain stuff, the rest of the other division functions normally, working on existing IPs.

So it doesn't seem like a terrible decision to me. It's simply a high risk, potentially high reward investment, that's it.



Not sure what's the problem with that.


Yeah, SE published 21 games in 2022, and one game that isn't even In house title is bad. So the CEO of the publisher needs to be fired.

You should be firing the CEO of PlatinumGames for this one.


What's wrong with that lol. Yoshi-P has way better rep as a producer than Nomura or Kitase. It makes sense to let a company's best producer to handle the next big name IP.

Honestly most of your complaint isn't anywhere close to reasonable in the most cases.

Well, when my friend circle started bombarding social media with Elden ring posts, all of them are praising "Open world + Souls"= fun. Very few people even talk about George R. R. Martin after release.

People are acting as if it's all George R. R. Martin's credit which is what I disagree with. All the fancy marketing about George R. R. Martin may get people's attention at first glance, but ultimately it's the metacritic score and words of mouth from the player that helps it spread like fire.

At least 90% or even 95% of the credit belongs to Miyazaki IMO.


Yeah, the very nature of grinding through the hard content by repeating the same thing over and over is just less fun than letting you choose different challenge when you are stuck. That's how it goes.

So it isn't coincidence that Elden ring sold better than DS from the sound of it.

First of all it's a forum, a post on a forum isn't going to bring down Square Enix. It's just expressing opinions. Also anyone that was going to buy it or not, is still going to buy it or not no matter what any of us say.

It's just a discussion.


By this logic he and his entire team should make all Square Enix games from now on? even it that means XIV/XI gets barely any updates then?

If you build units of developers, it's to create specialists to work on lots of titles at once.

If you do that, why put the mmorpg specialists to work on a single player game when you already have multiple single player game units that want and specialize in that job? MMORPG developers have experience making long term games, not games that are supposed to last a week or two.

Ontop of that, as I said. The MMORPG development unit already have a job that -we pay them to do with our sub fee-, updating XIV and XI. What they did was add ff16 ontop of the work they already had and put immense pressure on them all and give us less/worse content too.

This impacted XI far less than XIV, but it's still bs they had the nerve to do this.

Also, just pointing this out. If FF16 flops, this is a big problem for the XIV/XI unit and we may end up paying for it.

Well sure, but normally things work a certain way in life(at least to my understanding) and every job has their own responsibility.

Anyways, according to my knowledge in most big company:

-If a project is bad, then it's the responsibility of game director/producer and it's CEO's job to fire them.

-If a company fail to make money for long enough then it's shareholder's job to fire the CEO.

-Most of the time it's CEO's job to assign director/producer for a project but it's not always their job to have opinions on the direction of the project since game production is supposed to be director/producer's specialty.

That means they greenlight the game concept, but whether a game is good depends on the director/producer's ability.

Therefore, if a company fail one game but the rest of the games are successful, normally it's bad game's director/producer that should be fired. But if the failure is bad enough to hurt the finance THEN CEO will be fired.

That's how things normally work, at least to my knowledge.


I fail to see why "Yoshi-P works on a new game" and "XIV/XI gets update" contradicts each other. SE should have enough employee to work on the updates and ff16.

Idk about 14, but it seems that 11's update pacing did not decrease. If you think XI's update is slow, that's because it has always been this slow since 75 era.


You get the logic backward. :P The sub fee is service fee, not development fee. The game company continue to develop content to keep people around for more income, not because they sign a contract and obligated to create more content.

If you are not happy with content update speed, simply unsub and they'll see the message and hopefully assign more manpower. And if you really someone needs to be fired, then that person would be Yoshi-P for misusing his budget first.


I think SE merged their business division so now it's only Creative Business Unit I-IV.

Creative Business Unit I is working on FF7RE part 2.

Creative Business Unit II is working on DQ12 according to the recruitment page.

Creative Business Unit IV works on various mobile and anime IP, and some remaster too.

So Creative Business Unit III(Yoshi-P's team) is the only one left for FF16 development.

If 14 really lacks update like you said, you should be complaining about Yoshi-P for how he assigns manpower within his division, not SE CEO for assigning one division out of 4 to produce one new game.

But hey, I know in gaming community it's a culture to blame the CEO and publishers first so people's favorite game director/producer is safe /shrug.

Something kind of sad, ff16 is the first FF title that was made for English first and Japanese second. They seem hell bent on angering the Japanese market.

https://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-16-is-prioritising-english-voice-acting-hasnt-even-started-japanese-dub/

Doesn't say ***about the game "being made for English first". All it says is they are working on the English dub before the Japanese one. Big difference between "making a game for x over y" and "they're recording the voices for x first and working on getting things ready for y". One implies westernization and an emphasis on steering the game into an anglocentric direction, the other just means they don't have all of their voice talent ready yet.

The point is more than YoshiP is going out of his way to tell the world that English is more important than Japanese (and he is on the board of directors, so this means more as a public statement), and the CEO recently stated in a financial report that this is a business strategy too (west main market good, jp too smoll).

He didn't have to tell the world this and he knows Japan will hate it, he chose to tell the press this because he is gambling the western audience will lap it up. Square seem to be copying Sony in actively trying to alienate their home audience to appeal to the wider western audience (who recently moved their head office to California from Japan).

The problem they have is that most of the current western audience that buy JP games like that they are Japanese games (with JP writers) to the point they are almost a genre of games unto themselves. The more they lean into turning into some kind of generic western studio set in Japan (which appears to be what they are trying to do) the more they will lose their core audience.

The strategy I guess is that the current audience that like JP games isn't big enough for their aspirations and they want to appeal to the "wider audience". Marvel Avengers is a prime example of the companies intention (as well as power washer simulator, the quiet man, guardians of the G etc), why else would a JP studio known for Japanese RPGS take on so many western video games like that.

In other worlds they want to be EA set in Japan, they want to stop being known as a JP company and want to turn into a generic western pandering game company. Part of this strategy will be slowly tilting their Japanese franchises to be more western, which is exactly what they are doing with FF.

Square want to move away from their JRPG roots, others will just fill the void they leave.

Monochrome Mobius : Rights and Wrongs Forgotten



It's sad that this looks more fun than ff16.

What are you talking about this generic western studio LOL. Do you even pay attention to SE's games this year and next year?

Just go google the cover art for the following 2022/2023 titles made or published by SE, they are as Japanese as one can possibly imagine...

Voice of cards
Triangle Strategy
The Centennial Case, A Shijima Story
The Diofield Chronicle
Valkyrie Elysium
Star Ocean 6
Harvestella
Various Daylife
Octopath Traveller 2
FF16(I have no idea why you think this game is "westernized", all the flashy and exaggerated presentation seems super Japanese to me)

And that excludes endless remaster(CC FF7, Tactic Ogre, Chrono Trigger, FF6), anime IP and whatever.

Forspoken is quite possibly the only western game they'll publish soon. That's like one game out of 20+ on the list.

You keep posting SE this and SE that, but idk if you even pay that much attention to what they do tbh.

Also if you look at one Yoshi-P's interview, they already addressed your concern about developing ff16 and 14 on the same time, and their lack of experience on single player games WAY back in 2015. Someone as capable as him knows what he is doing.


No they still make jrpg all the time if you pay attention to their recent and currently developed games. But that jrpg isn't mainline FF because FF is too expensive to be a 2022 jrpg, and you just choose to ignore all of the SE JRPG game that is.

Power Wash Simulator.
Marvel Avengers.

Why would they even want these associated with their name at all unless they are not happy with what they are known for?

The more Square pander to the west, the more they will alienate their home audience that don't like that. The more they alienate their home audience, the more they will lean into the overseas market. It's a vicious circle.

The problem Square have is that they are very good at making games aimed at the JP audience and the western audience that like that and have really no idea how to make games aimed at the mainstream western audience they want to appeal to.

Square Enix is like a ship with really amazing crew but a dumbass captain.

=.=.....those are 2020 and 2021 games.....their policy already has changed in 2022.....

Man, aren't you the one complaining about SE selling western IP and leaving western market 2 pages ago, then 2 pages later you complained about SE is going to be "westernized", you are making contradicting statements, give me a break lol.



Because they are a publisher????? Idk why a game publisher publish games in different area for more business can be read as "not happy with what they are known for" by you.

Do you know that EA used to publish Capcom games in certain region? Do you know that Bandai Namco also publish western games in certain region? By your logic they all aren't happy with what they are known for!

What's happening here is whatever happened, you can jump several steps ahead and draw an absolutely ridiculous conclusion out of nowhere. FF16 will flop according to you even with 0 evidence to support it before release. SE will become a generic western studio according to you even though there are absolutely 0 signs that they are moving toward that direction currently.

You do that in nearly every post to the point that idk if it's trolling lol.

When investors are allowed to take some control via their "investment", costs are lowered but then those western investors get to tell you what to add to your games.