I have no words... With all the layoffs happening in the past years, SE was one of the few companies which stood out by not doing it. Looks like it is inevitable though, and I hope the restructure will bring a brighter future for the company and its games.
People on other platforms are already pointing fingers and speculating which is no use really, as it's one thing what we gamers think from outside and what the people involved in the business think.
But there are a few points worth a discussion and would love to hear your thoughts.
It's been a constant debate for the past year if FFXVI was a fail and if FFVII Rebirth will be a fail. There were interviews before where SE said both games met expectations but didn't reach higher expectations. People kept comparing FFXVI sales to FFXV and I don't think it's a fair comparison for various reasons. They were made for 2 different platforms. We had a pandemic and serious hardware shortage. Not as many people own a PS5 as PS4, so the amount of people with the new console who do want to buy SE games are also smaller. FFXV also had the hype of a cancelled game which it got built from, and many fans bought the game in hopes of seeing what they would have wanted to see from the cancelled game, and then were disappointed. While technically less people bought FFXVI, those people who did were in a general happier with the game than people were with FFXV. So numbers aside I would say FFXVI was a successful game. As for FFVII Rebirth.... I haven't finished it yet so don't know which direction they have gone with the story, but many of the OG FFVII fans were upset about possible changes to the original storyline even without playing the game or knowing what changes were made. And both FFXVI and FFVII Rebirth went into development before the pandemic. So they possibly had higher expectations than it was realistic for the post-pandemic world.
The good news in this restructure though is the focus on multi-platform releases which many people asked for for a long time. But again, SE has lots of multi-platform games already, just none of them carrying the amount of possible sales which could have boosted last year's financial results. But it will definitely be nice to see the big titles release on multi-platform and be available to more players from the beginning. Will be interesting to see though if those who have more consoles and PC which platform would they choose to buy the games on?
So what do you think would these games have performed better if they were released still in the PS4 era, or if PS5 wasn't hit by the hardware shortage? Or were there less popular because the game itself didn't meet players' expectation in gameplay / design / story?
If you could buy your favourite SE game on any platform right now, which game is it and what platform would you buy it on?
Created at . Page last updated at .
