Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

It does mildly blow the mind how square gets to rack up failure after failure and there are zero or near zero resignations in disgrace. I thought that whole honor thing was big there.

They're a small indie company that can't afford to be honorable. /nods

also offset your marketing costs (which is usually a huge line item in your launch & annual operations budget) with direct email to your MASSIVE database of past and present FFXI/FFXIV subsribers.
What's in there, like over 10,000,000 unique users?

Sorry SE is just a bunch of goons today that inherited some exceptional legendary I.P from giants.

edit: Mobile gaming is the issue. it's way too profitable

Hopefully Sony will shake up Square-Enix's board of directors after the acquisition is final.

oh wow I missed that. Hopefully, the Japanese will take back what is theirs and bring back kaizen and ikigai to FF

But it's korean MMO......

Personally I have low confidence in Korean MMO as a whole, lol. I've played so many korean mmos in the past, nearly all of them has pretty looking graphics but extremely generic/bland playing experience as a whole. This developer's projects in the past(seven knights, gran Saga) was not particularly amazing reputation wise too.

Really, nothing to see here unless the final release has a surprising twist that breaks away from generic korean mmo curse.

In terms of mmo I honestly look forward to blue protocol a bit more, at least it's made by Japanese.

The board of a >$5b company with almost 5.5k employees and numerous projects in and out of the FF universe isn't going to care much about a project the size of 11. It's probably one or two bullet points on a slide they see once a quarter, if that, and maybe one member of their board tracks what is going on with FF at a high level. They are looking at a 1000ft view of many projects and 11 is barely a dot on the radar, the fact it's under 14s budget should be an indicator how impactful it is to the business.

They probably care to the extent that the Final Fantasy series is a major product line for them and shutting down a numbered/major title is going to reflect poorly and reduce confidence in future products, but when you start talking about allocating the funds required to do this (and $10m is a massive understating IMO), that's a different story.


Does SE still release census data? I haven't heard an official source on the # of subscriptions in years and I've heard numbers all over the map, is 95k really the # of active subscribers?

The game is already on the same scale as new FF titles (if not larger), D4, and other games, the content is there and it's a huge world/series, it's just 20 years old. So revitalizing it by nature would require that existing content be brought up to date for a title that's already massive in size unless you start cutting content, which is where this would all lead. I am also not sure what assets would really transfer over aside from story, characters, text, high level map design, and such, I don't think any technical assets would really be reusable.

Newer FF titles are things they can invest large sums into because they are just that, newer titles with updated mechanics. They play like games released in the 2020 era and appeal to modern audiences, FFXI plays like a 20 year old MMO. So if FFXI-2 were to be a thing, would it be a remaster/revitalization of the current game or an entirely new title set in the same gameworld but with different mechanics and reduced content? I could see the latter happening possibly, but the former is a major undertaking with minimal payoff for a game that doesn't appeal to a wide audience.

I think I've basically given up on MMORPGs and online games in general. Even if the game doesn't have any explicit FOMO crap like battle passes and daily login stuff, I hate the inherent feeling of falling behind my friends. My schedule never seems to align with that of any real-life friends, so we're just constantly playing solo to one-up one another so we're not the one lagging behind if we ever do meet up in-game.

With very, very few exceptions (FFXI being one of them) I genuinely don't have fun with most MMOGs. I don't like their gameplay and/or their worlds. I play not because I'm having fun but rather for the prospect of maybe one time playing it with a friend. But I'm so exhausted from trying to do that.

EDIT: I'm tired of games that aren't simply fun on their own. Where friends swear "It's better when you play with people, honest!" or "No, no, it really does get fun after the first 60 hours!". If I'm going to play games as a hobby, I want that hobby to be enjoyable right now.

MMOs aren't fun. They're not supposed to be. Genre needs to disappear.

Should've vanished already, insanity that new ones keep getting made. If nothing else should be entirely replaced by freemium, it's the same ***.

FFXI hits my three primary check-boxes:

1. I find the gameplay immediately compelling. I like managing resources and learning how to gradually optimize my gameplay. It plays in real-time, but is paced such that I can constantly *** the situation to make meaningful choices.

2. I really like the world. If the gameplay gripped me, then the world is what held onto me. You can tell the developers took a lot of time to flesh it out long before even writing the main story. I don't care that the storytelling sucks, because I can still immerse myself in what feels like a lived-in world.

3. Pre-99 you've got level sync and post-99 you've got horizontal progression. So I never feel compelled to log in every single day and grind like crazy so I'm the cruddy low-level. There's pretty much always something to do and a whopping 22 jobs to level up, so progress is always made no matter what the level difference is.

I've yet to play another online game where all three of those prerequisites are met for me.

Profits were BIG on mobile in '20 & 21. They kinda dissipated cashwise in 22 making XIV with its massive wave of defectors from WoW a profit leader. Let us not forget the faceplant AAA and AA games though.

Unfortunately Squenix wants something BIG and NEW and VISIONARY and MODERN like NFTs.... Not realizing that their biggest moneymaker today is all the VII remakes.

Maybe we should try to sell them on an XI remake because they aren't interested in an XI-2 at all. I mean they can cheat and pull assets from XIV and all their single player games....

Mobile gaming casts a wide net and abuses human psychology to rake in many, many millions of dollars while costing 10% or less to develop compared to a AAA game and even a fraction of a lot of modern indie games. That's why companies push them, and I'm honestly shocked that the industry hasn't shifted even more toward them considering how loveless the games industry as a whole has become.

There'll never be a day where 'real' games make as much profit as mobile games/mobile focused games ever again, even when the inevitable microtransaction saturated AAAs start becoming more and more mainstream (you think it's bad now, just wait) they will never match the efficiency of a for-peanuts-development-budget mobile game. That's the reality and that's where we're headed.

Games like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Nikke Goddess of Victory, and Granblue Fantasy are exactly what investors want: 20~50million USD a month in sales, less than 3 million a month in upkeep. This doesn't even touch on how prevalent mobile gaming is in Asia, which is quickly becoming (if not already) a bigger market than NA/EU for games.

Our infrastructure is being more attacked from hackers junks since we built our security team.

I dont have proof but that is a anwful coincidence. Being more attacked since our data started to go outside our boundaries

Proth, far more people have phones that can run games than have computers.

A lot of countries had phone networks far more widely distributed than electricity. Some still do. Those Nigerian princes used to have to go to an internet cafe to run their scams, now they have phones.

Did you, like I, laugh at the simplistic avis Zuck was showing for his metaverse? On a phone it doesn't mater. This is part of why phone games are cheap to develop, less graphical fidelity.

On a side note I am interested in a game with studio Ghibli graphics. It can be played on a PC but you have to download it onto a phone first. My phone is too lame for that ....

Its all going to phone, not just games. Your super disco gaming rigs are dinosaurs. (I wish I had something even close BTW.) My lameass phone is more powerful than the mid core gaming rig I had when XI was released.

This I got from reading their annual reports BTW.

So why did you pull that 1m/year out of your rear and then ask where his numbers are from? 1m/year? Cmon, that is not true lol.

The fact that Forsaken was literally in a landfill in bulk and half off the first month its out... They have not been making sound business decisions in a long time. They gonna end up like Disney soon, too much wokeness and too little caring about the people who actually want to purchase these things lol.

Depressing really. I can only hope we will get more push back against it in the future. A lot of games had tried to come in with micro transactions in recent memory and got shut down because of the push back. For mobile games, there should be some kind of legislation pushed to limit their influence, especially on kids. I purchased gift cards for my nephews and they literally spent over 200 on "Roblox"... Idk if thats a phone game or console but damn.

if you're talking about the ni no kuni mobile game: i've tried it. it's a play to earn game, aka you leave it autobattling 24/7 and it advances your character and farms cryptocurrency. it isnt the best. not the worst either.

that's also the future that SE wants to move into, play to earn w/ NFTs.

Lately I've been running into this annoying thing where I want to buy something off someone on facebook and they want to use Paypal. They keep trying to force me to use "friends and family" so they don't have to pay a minimal fee... its like 3%, or they put the fee into the overall charge (which I think is against the rules.)

Either they trying to scam or they really wanna save like 6 dollars.. annoying. Then I go and sell something on Ebay and they take 50 dollars out in fees and I can't do anything.

For what it's worth friends and family isn't (just) to save the dollar. You can't refund it. So you give your "friend or family" money for an item, you can't tell paypal that they didn't send it.

Stops chargebacks and can't be cancelled. Free seller protection.

(It's still possible, maybe, but for simplicity)

I've noticed this trend as well. People are very, very gradually starting to grow tired of the poor quality of modern games. Whether directly or indirectly, a lot of articles I've read lately have been talking about gaming burnout.

Even that video Eiryl posted a couple of pages back was just another description of the same burnout. If the game was fun, we wouldn't be complaining it was too long. A lot of these games aren't as much fun as they are psychological warfare. On a subconscious level we understand that getting the dopamine reward without overcoming an obstacle first is boring. But obstacles can turn players away, and the AAA industry wants as wide of an audience as possible.

"You watched the intro cutscene. Congratulations!! Achievement unlocked!" (happy dopamine noises)

I think that's it. I wanted to experience the graphics, just not on a phone.

From what Eiryl says, scam.

Kind of scam prevention, but exists as a scam too. As scams work both ways.

You can put bluestacks on your pc. It's just a phone emulator. So you can play phone games on your monitor.

F&F is a common scam vector cause it doesnt have paypal protections

Can't find Jet's chars anywhere in Sandy even though Sea All says they're in Sandy.

Must be watching Moogle Spin. Q.Q

Really? Whoever says that either haven't look hard enough or just writing clickbait posts for the clicks. There are like 12k new games released on steam every year, if you add google app store the number would be even bigger. Surely something out there gonna be fun.

Admittedly I haven't enjoy console games for quite some time and I definitely feel console games are getting worse in the recent years due to the lack of creativity, I still enjoy many indie games and mobile jrpg.

The thing is...many aaa console games that everyone talk about are about as mainstream as it possibly can. And unique games targeting a niche target audiences aren't going to be well known. So you gonna look pretty hard among thousands of titles.

I think gaming industry is just more divided these days. There are games for every kind of player, you just have to look. if you want super difficult turn based tactics game with rpg element, you can find them within roguelike genre. If you want relaxed story focused game with a good writing, you can find them within adventure, walk sim, interactive fiction or visual novel genre.

But don't expect traditional big companies like SE, Ubisoft, Konami or sony make games targeting a niche target audiences with a niche preferences. It's not their role to aim for small group of TA.

Personally, I would say compare with 10 years ago video games are more enjoyable as a whole, because their TA are more focused. If I want a game with really good story, I wouldn't want to play a 30hr generic open world arpg on console that is half combat half story telling. I would want to play a 5-6hr adventure/walk sim/interactive fiction/VN that has nothing but good writing. And vice versa for gameplay focused genres like Roguelike.

And there are TONS of games these days that focuses on providing a focused, unique experiences rather than spreading too thin in every aspect.

In terms of mobile v.s console....they don't even share the same niche. Console games are meant to be played in a large living room for a couple of hours. Mobile games are occupying people's time when they are at work or on bus or even sleep. For people without a living room or 1-3 hours of free time at night, mobile games are perfect for them.

Mobile games aren't killing console games because of gacha addiction. Their TA is people who will never, ever touch console games for variety of reasons.

Therefore, I strongly disagree that video games are getting worse as a whole. I think it's far more diversed and interesting in the recent years. The only market that gets worse is console games which is sadly full of generic open world and political correct themes these days.

Have you played the original Ni no kuni games? They've got Playstation and PC versions. They're also built as actual rpgs, not mobile games.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/798460/Ni_no_Kuni_Wrath_of_the_White_Witch_Remastered/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/589360/Ni_no_Kuni_II_Revenant_Kingdom/