Square Enix: 'We Can't be Exclusive to a Single Platform' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 January 2025 / 9,358 Views
Final Fantasy VII Remake producer Yoshinori Kitase speaking with IGN Brazil said Square Enix is happy with the sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, however, they can no longer release games exclusively on a single platform.
"While we are confident and pleased that we are reaching a certain level of sales, it is clear that with the modernity of gaming, we cannot be exclusive to a single platform," said Kitase. "I think we need to offer the game to as many players as possible."
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth released for the PlayStation 5 in February 2024 and will launch for PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on January 23, 2025.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Well, at least they finally decided to join the rest of the major Japanese publishers who came to the same realization lol
Guess the check from Sony is not big enough to cover the lost sales anymore.
SE are probably in for a reality check. It being on more platforms, wont let it sell more, if others haven't had the chance to play Remake and Rebirth as well.... how many people jump in, on the 3rd and last part? without having had access to the first 2? Maybe they mean future games, after this last part? would make more sense. However I still think SE need to go back to the drawing board, and work on makeing FF more popular again.
Making a popular franchise exclusive when you're a 3rd party publisher doesn't make sense in the current gaming market. Better off with marketing deals.
This makes sense. Even if FFXVI sold 10m on Playstation , it could potentially sell 20m if released on all platforms.
Platform exclusivity made sense in the past when it really dictated game & narrative design (PS1 vs N64) or when Playstation was so dominant there was no reason to invest in other platforms (PS2) or when PC was still struggling to compete with consoles in market share of most genres (PS3/360)... Now there's no reason to have an absolute exclusive and for a franchise as big as FF, timed exclusives do not make sense either. That is better saved for indie titles, AA or new IPs that need that added security to get them to completion .
But as others has said, even on Playstation alone FF could be selling double what it currently is. SE need to do some soul searching and getting a better grasp of why the franchise is not able to reach the heights of its AAA peers, especially as its peers are now action RPG titles like God of War and Elden Ring. I'm definitely of the feeling they should lean back to the turn-based, reignite the core audience, many of whom have fallen out of love with it, and at the same time offer something very distinct compared to the sea of current action rpgs.
The FromSoftware issue is one I don't think many consider. Back when 7-X were the top for RPG games, SquareSoft were king, could practically do no wrong and their dev teams working on all these games were churning out hit after hit... which is now FromSoft's thing.
SquEnix for whatever reason, even if it's down to just change in direction because of 15s delays, are now barely releasing a FF game every half decade and ones they do are remakes or remasters. It feels like they are chasing the trends instead of setting them.
"I'm definitely of the feeling they should lean back to the turn-based, reignite the core audience, many of whom have fallen out of love with it, and at the same time offer something very distinct compared to the sea of current action rpgs."
I'm all for a return to what to me made Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy. ATB, full control of party in combat, steampunk (even if it's not directly steam powered) aesthetic, good thought provoking story and amazing characters, all who might have their own issues to deal with.
Oh and remove stagger, bloody stagger. Balance your damage. :P
Everybody knew that... 7 years ago. Except SE.
Expect a release of Remake and Rebirth for Switch 2, and a Trilogy pack of the 3 FFVII for PC, PS5 and Switch 2 after the last one appears.
If bloody switch 2 can run it, a man can dream haha
They need to come out swinging on Switch 2, then. Xbox isn’t going to save them.
Switch 2 should be able to run Final Fantasy VII Remake. Rebirth would only run on cloud-only or a very compromised version.
Dragon Quest XII should absolutely be made with the Switch 2 in mind.
Gamepass money and physical should be enough
no-one is buying physical games on Xbox anymore. Will require a massive gamepass check
That's a lie as I buy Xbox games and I do gamepass.
Game Pass doesn’t pay enough.
They get paid to just have the game on gamepass and then they get paid for amount of hours game is played on gamepass. Alot of devs have said gamepass money is good
Depends on the game. Xbox tends to pay well for big 3rd party releases on Game Pass.
So basically, confirmed Square Enix will be putting their major RPGs on Switch 2.
The majority of sales will be on the PlayStation platform, so it won't have a significant impact overall. However, additional sales are always beneficial, no matter how small. +1mil sales is better than 0.
If the ff16 came on on all.platforms day 1. It would have reached close to 6 million day 1 which is really good
3rd party money hatting deals is bad for the industry. The platform holders need to start focusing on offering the customer amazing Hardware and features rather than locking content they didn't make away. This games towards all 3 platform makers.
Square is starting to see the light.. finally.
Yeah but, it never feels right playing their games on anything other than Playstation. At least for me. Plus, developing for one architecture has vast benefits that you don't get if you have to code for multiple consoles.
They can, but they dont want to.
If one pours 70% of the entire budget into a 10% visual improvement, then of course a game needs every sale It can get.
But Square could also settle with not aiming for the minor visual improvement, save 2/3rds of their development cost and produce games tailored towards a specific platform, which are likely to turn out better than multiplatform projects anyways..
Final fantasy never was about the next-gen graphics, it was always about artistry and deep story and characters. They could make boatloads by following the Nintendo recipe, it's time to come back home.
Anyway all this to say I agree
Thank JRPGfan, I know you and I want the same thing. FF was my favorite series on the NES and SNES by far, I even played the 2 and 3j as roms back before they were officially translated. When Nintendo lost FF because of their hubris, I knew the series would lose its way after a while, being out of Nintendo's orbit. While I continued to play the series on PC and PS, I knew eventually it would lose its charm. So they have to do a bit like what Nintendo did with Zelda: They took the first game and made a physics simulator hybrid to build BotW from that tried and true foundation. So Square could look at that, maybe take FFIV and build something next gen from that gameplay foundation, since FFIV is the last 2D final fantasy where every character was tied to abilities and had to be played in a specific way to win, compared to jobs and espers that all members could master (in the next 2D games). I'd love to see the series return to Nintendo's orbit for a bit, even if for a short time, to relive some of the old FF magic. Let's see!
It will be interesting to see how they feel about game sales without Sony's 50 million dollars in funding for Final Fantasy XVI. If Nintendo's next console is powerful enough, I could see them making some good money with all of their games going to Nintendo. Final Fantasy would probably have to sell about a million copies on Xbox to make up for the funding, which is certainly doable but not a guarantee.
Many of their games are already on Nintendo, it's just new FF games that aren't (plus some seemingly high graphical affairs like Forspoken). SquEnix titles, that they don't seemingly get dev money from Sony for, release on a wide set of consoles... confusingly so sometimes. New SaGa game? Not on Xbox. New Mana game? Not on Switch. Dragon Quest Monsters? Only on Switch for nearly a year. New Star Ocean, wasn't on Switch but the 2nd Remake wasn't Xbox.
Whole situation is confusing but someone at SquEnix is making these choices and it's not just because Sony is giving them money.
That's pretty simple, they just need to give back the money Sony paid they for the FF7 trilogy and the compensations to end the contract. Then they are good to go.
That's not going to solve their financial problems tho, FF16 released on steam same day as EPIC and that was supposed to be the sales problem ... it didn't sell that much, people are just not interested in the current FF. I don't know if making it turn based is the solution but there has to be change.
FF used to be epic tales, and adventures... in fantastical worlds of fantasy.... with tons of varied locations and lots of races and creatures. Thats what it needs.... ontop of going back to turn based.
Hell I wouldn't even mind the 2D backgrounds and isometric camra views (imagine how much money that would save in production). Focus everything into good story telling.
I must say... FFXIV, and more especially Heavensward expansion... was ASTONISHING. Very beautiful and delightful game. Best "new" FF i've played in MAAAANY years, apart maybe, from the FFVII remake ( FFXIII and FFXV are dumb and boring. FFXVI starts very impressive... but declines).
FFXIV's expansion, Heavensward, have a GREAT story and the best music production I've ever listened in a FF game. Truly delightful to play it, even doing solo "farmings"... thanks to that music. Oh my.
But being an Online game, many classic FF fans maybe will never play it. A pity, because that game is just beautiful and you can get lots of FF series-related stuff as a reward. Also, you can play with other people, and the NN chat (the general chat) sometimes becomes more interesting and funny than you would imagine.
Not that great is the story of the base game, though. Very meh, Its secundary characters neither are that great. Gets better when you finally got through all its original story, and you can start with the expansions.
You need to make Final Fantasy popular again.... It's time to return to its roots.
Don't do more remakes after this one, and return to turn based combat, and draw inspiration from the older ff games.
I wish this were the case. You don't really care about the writing, or characters anymore. FF used to be almost like playing out a Tolkienesque novel, and now it is a shadow of once was.
I think it's because of how they rush their newer games settings and the characters aren't as likable as the older ones were (at least that's what it feels like to me).
DQ12 confirmed Multi-platform then I guess.
This is good news, but also glad that it got the money it got with Sony so we got such great games. It would have been worse with Microsoft in charge for sure, but it's not perfect. I definitely prefer the original, but Rebirth is still my game of the year.
the copium about the nintendo switch 2 release is unreal in the comment lol. ns2 wont have rebirth, neither monster hunter wild. Did you see how the optimization is going on on those title on pc, did you tryed wild beta ? You are gonna play on polygon mode on the switch 2 xD
It wasn't Sony being greedy and making it exclusive that made FF7 remake and rebirth sales low,
It's by chopping it to three cakes instead of one,
Who's going to pay $60+$70+$70?
Ur fans are old and have moved on from fantasy,
Make it approachable and reasonable for people to buy the bloody games not fcken milk the shit out of it and expect sales numbers to skyrocket
I still like ff despite ff16, being terrible
I do not think FF even sold well on PC anyway. Which leaves Xbox, hmm, lol.
It sold enough.
Issue with these console games is they aren't really supporting PC as a platform appropriately.
Just releasing it on steam is the bare minimum... We want more content, features and support.
But we also want better graphics, the PC is a premium platform and we expect visuals/features to match.
They already have issues with sales and profit.... making a super expensive pc port.....where sales might not justify such, wont help them become more profitable.
What they need.... is to make final fantasy more popular... they need the f***er to sell well, and the main platform for that is likely still playstation. Reguardless of more porting. It not being everywhere isn't the issue. Look at final fantasy 16..... its everywhere, and its sales are worse than 15. They need to fix the real issue, which is final fantasy isn't as popular as it once was, likely because of the direction they have taken the games.
If a PC game is good and supports the PC appropriately, sales tend to increase.
Remember that users "review" games on platforms like Steam, so people can see the Pro's/Con's before a purchase.
People also tend to have less disposable income these days due to a myriad of different factors.
Premium graphics mean you need to be willing to pay a premium price.
It's neither graphics or PS exclusivity that will save FF, but a return to what made the series great since the start: good artistry, good story, good challenge/progression and great character development. They need to calm down on production value and focus on substance, so they can make a profit and continue to make great games. They lost their way and need to take cues from Nintendo. I think breath of the wild is a good template to work from. Looked beautiful, did the job, told a good story. It's good enough at least to start, then we'll see where they grow from there. But for now they are off course.
This. "It sold well enough" couldn't be more wrong and I don't know why pemalite is saying that. These games need to sell millions to break even
Allow me to rephrase.
"It sold enough for the effort they put into it".
Many PC gamers will ignore a console port if it's not done competently.
Remember, Square released the PC game more than a year after the console release, after all the hype has all died down.
Secondly... The game suffered technical issues like stuttering even on high-end hardware. Poor porting... Which shouldn't have been an excuse considering they had OVER A YEAR to get it right.
Ghost of Tsushima was a 4 year old port and it’s sold around 3x the amount of FFXvi. FF has a major issue with appeal right now, and making the games available on more platforms won’t magically fix this fundamental issue.
I don't doubt that it has an image issue.
I am merely highlighting supplemental issues that us PC gamers dislike about Final Fantasy 16 that is specifically pertinent to the platform.
We PC gamers are sick of bad console ports.
No it leaves Switch 2 which could massively increase it's sales in Asia
Sorry, forgot about that and you are right. They should also make one like IX in my opinion, in terms of visuals and game play etc.
I'd say Xbox and the "Switch 2" will be added to their strategy.
More sales are more sales. It spreads the word of the game more and creates more sales long term. It's basic knowledge.
