[Bloomberg] Sales of FFXVI, VII Rebirth, and Foamstars failed to meet expectations
- Thread starter Clippy
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It's how i read it as well. Everything just seems to point to predatory gacha games in the end.
I feel that this read on online service games is a really outdated take that is disconnected with the reality of successful service games today.
By and large the most successful ones today are things that a huge audience actually want to play and they are very grateful that there's a low barrier to entry being F2P, while also offering a wealth of content. There's also the social element that allows them to be connected with friends within a game, regardless if they are online friends or friends they know in person. The demographics that play these games range from kids as young as 4 years old, to adults in their 40s and 50s.
The games vary in genre from building/crafting sims, to hero shooters, to action RPGs, to turn based RPGs, to board games, etc. In most instances there isn't anything compelling you to spend money to actually enjoy the games, but if you do feel inclined to, there's often a lot to spend on. I would say that gacha in itself doesn't even form the entirety of the business model these days. It might apply to certain games more than others, but the traditional pure gamble gacha titles with a zillion banners are actually the less successful ones. Many games make money from cosmetics, battle passes for quick unlocks, and so on.
While we will always hear occasional stories of people ending up with a huge bill because of microtransactions, those are very much not the norm. I would say that among all the people I know, especially the teens I work with through church and volunteer stuff, the average spending on these service games that they enjoy would be less than what "core gamers" tend to spend in a month on buying full price retail games.
You're right and i should clarify. I agree for the other genres, but for JRPGs specifically, there is a constant mention of Genshin and HSR as the current gold standard and for good reason. In terms of revenue, the stats don't lie. It's more of a 1-2 punch where ff7rebirth is doing poorly while those other 2 are still widely successful.
Which is great to hear, but the few whales are the ones bringing the numbers up.
But if you talk to people who actually play these games you will see that it offers an insane value in terms of content for something that is essentially free. You just download it and you have something with AAA production values and tons of actual story and optional content with real gameplay. It's no surprise that the games cost an insane amount to upkeep (the cost they are spending on each game is probably more per year than Rebirth's entire development budget). Given the insane free value, I think many people are okay with dropping $50-100 on the games once in a while, with some whales obviously spending much much more. And honestly, that's a fine business model as long as they have the content and quality to sustain it because it means for the majority of players they are getting AAA JRPG style gaming for free.
I play and actively engage with the gacha communities. I'm well aware of why people play them. My issue is they imploy extreme predatory practices and psychological manipulation to get people to roll the gacha. It's gambling, plain and simple. I understand you don't have see a problem with that and that's probably where we'll never see eye to eye. I certainly wouldn't want all JRPGs going forward using the same tactics.
I haven't even touched on the shallowness of the combat systems because they're mobile games.
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There's difference between gacha and live service though. Even the most greedy AAA live service games are significantly less predatory than your average gacha imo.
It's incredibly unlikely there will be any more than two teams at once for FF, so people aren't going to theorize more than that.
I suspect Luminous in particular isn't even part of CS2 at this moment, for all we know, they might be in CS4 or CS5 now. Whichever one is the new non-mobile division. Though that raises the question of exactly what the new division is even for, and my bet would be on a division that split away from the former CBU2 to focus on the Nier franchise.
Yeah, to blame 'gacha' for the woes of the whole industry is a major misread on how we got to this point today, the same way we boomers turned up their noses at the very concept of mobile gaming in the past, only to get blindsided as the tech got more and more involved to the point where Sony is now paying big bucks to get games like Genshin and HSR on their platform while trying to keep them away from Switch and Xbox.
The success of live service games is generally because they are actually much more accessible. While Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo fanboys back in the day were out console warring over the big three cutting advertising and exclusivity deals for machines that were expected to be replaced every 5 years or so (and demanding that newly developed games take advantage of the new hardware as much as they can), Valve went out and made a storefront on the PC that revitalized PC gaming development, and mobile gaming entered the scene, providing avenues for gaming development in a market that wasn't nearly as tightly controlled as console development was.
People may ridicule the shit out of that Blizzard Diablo Immortal reveal with the whole 'don't you all have phones' thing, but let's be real, the average 10-20 year old gamer today either has a phone that can run mobile games decently, a PC capable of running all but the highest fidelity games, or if they own a console at all, they probably have a Switch. Between all that, they have access to a wide range of games already. That audience is not going out of their way to convince their parents to buy a $600 PS5 so they can play some exclusive $70 games on top of that. The average gamer also won't be dropping anywhere near that much money in their favored live service game either. Which, by the way, is about how much Rebirth would cost them if they didn't already have a PS5.
At this point, I wonder how many new gamers in the 10-20 year old age bracket even give any shits at all about the 30+ year old grownups console warring over their PS5/Xbox/Switches. After this console generation is over, will we even have a next console generation to begin with? At minimum, it will be very different from before, when we have a new generation of gamers that aren't conditioned to be doing anything possible to upgrade to any new consoles immediately, to the point where traditional console warring may be meaningless.
That said, I don't expect SE to go all in on chasing Genshin gacha money. We already know chasing trends for the sake of chasing them is bad, and SE doesn't have the war chest to compete (Genshin and HSR's production values and subsequently budget are astronomical by mobile standards, it is not easy to make mobile live service games with a 6 week content cycle that can easily pass as a console/PC game). There's a lot of other live service things they can do in the meantime without going into full blown high fidelity gacha.
If they're paying as much attention to Capcom as everyone insists they should do, they'd see Monster Hunter sitting at the top making bank with copies sold, the player retention with title updates, AND the cosmetic microtransactions that people could more easily justify buying if they love the games that much to continue playing them to begin with. There's also Street Fighter. While games like Resident Evil are much more beloved in these hardcore communities and have more copies sold, I wonder if Street Fighter as a franchise might be more profitable in actual reality, because of the multiplayer live service nature of the games and their updates keeping player retention high for people to buy into the DLC and microtransactions, as opposed to one and done deals that the Resident Evil games consist of.
Maybe we'll see XVII remain a single player game, but I wonder if it might pivot towards a gameplay structure that allows for continuous DLC updates and eventual multiplayer support. JRPGs do have a problem with legs if they aren't Pokemon, and Pokemon does get live-service type events and DLC nowadays.
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I believe that the industry only support so many large successful live service games at a time and as more games enter that space, the harder it will be to break in.
These live service games are often times designed to maximize player engagement over a long period of time. Most people are probably consistently playing only 2-3 of these games max. A traditional single player release is something that people finish of a set number of hours and isn't designed to be played forever in the same way that a live service game is.
These live service games are often times designed to maximize player engagement over a long period of time. Most people are probably consistently playing only 2-3 of these games max. A traditional single player release is something that people finish of a set number of hours and isn't designed to be played forever in the same way that a live service game is.
I agree with you. I think all Gachas are terrible for their monetization system alone and therefore will never touch them. They are gambling and even worse they kinda familiarize the youth with gambling systems which is terrible.
Live service games with different monetization systems are fine like battle passes etc. even if I am not a big fan either.
I also do think there is validity to the claim that gachas like Genshin and HSR are eating into SE profit due to the nature that the big ones are a similar genre to JRPGs.
That doesn't mean SE couldn't have done anything to mitigate the issue by embracing multiplat much earlier etc. but it is difficult to predict such shifts in the market.
I love the series too man. Played and finished all the main games from 1 to 16 (except FF11).
Heck, despite ultimately not really liking it and even before buying it I heard many things that made me have reservations towards the game, in the end I actually bought FFXVI day one... just because it's a Final Fantasy main game. And I always buy Final Fantasy main games day 1.
Sad to see Square seems to be bad at handling the series these days.................
I am not ready to give it up though, and I suppose only the most extraordinary series of circumstances would compel me to do so.
Badly is not exactly fair. They have just been snake bitten by a significant market change, especially in Japan. They indicate they are going to adapt and I feel they have the right management and Final Fantasy Directors, who will do well in getting the series higher in sales again. That being said I still would like 17 to be less bombastic than 16 to preserve 16 amazing presentation.
Considering the mass amounts of layoffs we've seen lately because of live service games failing to take off, I think the industry already knows this.
The major thing is that having a breakout hit with a live service game can fund everything else you do for like a decade, while having a breakout hit of a traditional game by this forum's standards just gets you some modest profit that can fund maybe your next two games and platitudes from 30+ year old gamers online in comparison. And that's why the biggest publishers will continue trying to chase that golden goose.
BG3 has likely sold 10+ million copies. The amount of profit it generated for Larian is probably equal to how much Genshin and HSR makes every three months.
That said, it's not like people who play live service games ONLY play live service games. But traditional games have to compete even harder for the attention of people who also play live service games, as they have less time to be playing something that might *only* be an 86 metacritic game, or a game that might be considered the pinnacle of JRPGs that's still perceived to require playing like two other games beforehand in order to understand what's going on. The live service gamers are not going to consider playing something like XVI or Rebirth, they will only peel themselves away from the likes of Genshin to play something truly exceptional that their online friends also enjoy (that are also on a platform they all already own to begin with), like the TotK, BG3, and Elden Rings of the gaming industry.
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I'm sure they are looking, but personally I'm not convinced they are at all set up to compete in that area, be it in terms of manpower, technical know-how or management.
These games are AAA productions that scale from mobile all the way up to console/PC while looking good and playing well on all of these platforms respectively and have insane content schedules - 1 big expansion every year, new stuff every 6 weeks in addition - with a type of gameplay/liveservice design current Square Enix is not good at (FF14 is an MMO which is a different beasts and their own attempts at gachas mostly suck).
People do often forget that the biggest chunk of revenue for Genshin & co. comes from China.
Square Enix's Million Arthur introduced gacha to Chinese market. At the time it was a complete shock to Chinese mobile gamers and developers. The quality of art, music, voice acting, story, etc were on a completely different level compared to most mobile games at the time. How things have changed in the last decade.
It's nice to know that after a decade plus of booming mobile game development and progress from where Million Arthur started, then wtih FGO/Granblue, then with Genshin/HSR, that collectively have been the real FF killers all along and whilst I do like how FFBE does its own thing, SE hasn't quite cracked the mobile FF code but it's far too late anyway and the market's moved away from them.
This is especially pertinent in I think (and agree with!) what I was reading in the WuWa thread and with my own experience with these type of games (Genshin/HSR/ToF/WuWa) - doing something like them with simultaneous cross play, cross platform release worldwide like those games on mobile, PC then console with a big monthly candence is incredibly hard and I don't see SE and lots of others in the mobile space being able to replicate this.