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Microsoft Was Moments Away from Buying Square in '99|You Should Read This New Making of Xbox Book
- Thread starter Dancrane212
- Start date
What did they do to Phantom Dust? If you're talking about the Phantom Dust reboot, that wasn't Japanese.
Nippon Ichi complained about MS having minimum order requirements. This is a root problem that primarily affects Japanese games with low, low sales. Not Japanese games inherently. I believe someone mentioned some time ago it has to do with MS not having DVD/Blu Ray manufacturing capacity in Japan or something like that. But that doesn't make MS the bad guy in that scenario.
The Level 5 thing is True Fantasy Live Online, I assume? That was a messy business. It was a mixture of MS pushing new technology -- voice chat in particular -- and the development team struggling to adapt to said new technology. It's difficult to assign blame fully to one side. But it's not like MS were "mistreating" Level 5. They were simply negotiating poorly and Level 5 were struggling to deliver the product asked of them.
Games get cancelled all the time. For various reasons.
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Wouldn't really have mattered, it's not like there been many good Square games since the PS1 days.
Ok, so we don't live in the darkest timeline after all. Thank God It didn't happen, Square would have been shut down years ago.
Although I would have loved a Dreamcast 2.
Although I would have loved a Dreamcast 2.
Thanks for the heads up about the books. After finishing Console Wars and Blood Sweat and Pixels I've been wanting to read more on the industry like that. I had remembered the book about the 360 and was going to hunt it down but now I've got some additional reading to add to the list.
Yeah, another one of these big deals will actually come to fruition though and a lot of ppl are going to lose their shit
Sakaguchi was never president of Square. He was executive vice president at his resignation and likely at this time too
Also, thank god that never happened. I do NOT want to see that alternate timeline
If MS didn't really understand what Rare was and their culture, good lord would they have struggled at understanding Square. Everyone involved dodged a bullet there.
Nice! Once I'm done with Jacked I'll read this. Love reading books about the inner workings of the industry.
I've read console wars like 3 times
I've read console wars like 3 times
Nintendo didn't understand Rare, either. But the critical aspect of the Nintendo/Rare relationship was that Nintendo left Rare alone for the most part. More importantly Rare's management shielded the development teams from external meddling. (And deadlines.) Nintendo would occasionally veto things and make "suggestions", but they were largely hands off. Ken Lobb was the primary point of contact between Nintendo and Rare. And the strange thing is that he joined MS. He is Rare's evangelist within MS. They could have had the same relationship, but MS management felt they knew better.
Really, a Square/MS relationship would have entirely hinged upon management style. As we saw with Lionhead -- or even Bungie, arguably -- it's not like MS in that era had a "must micromanage the shit out of everything" policy stapled to the wall. Bungie's absolutely terrible development practices would probably never have been allowed if Microsoft had been paying attention to what Bungie were doing.
If this had gone through, what would have happened to the games that came out for PS1 and PS2 afterwards? The original Xbox came out in November 2001, so I suppose all of the games released during that time just wouldn't have come out, or they would have been delayed which would have caused other games not to come out. In 2000 and 2001 before the launch of the Xbox, we got FFVIII, FFIX, FFX and Vagrant Story... and MS almost stopped that.
Yeah, I misremembered, he was president of the NA branch of Square as well as executive vice president at the time. Couldn't find who was the actual president though, every site I found says Suzuki only became Square's president in 2000. If the book says it's 1995 though I'll believe it.
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Bill Gates did not believe Xbox would be successful. According to interviews he was always asking what they were doing with his money. He was ready to abort despite being excited for it in public.
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That was the number Rick Thompson floats in the book, yes.
If Square was owned by MS, automata would have never been made.
We don't know that. Unless you can prove it NieR: Automata was going to be an XB1 game.
Pun intended? ;p
But seriously, Square fans should consider themselves lucky this didn't happen. Sucks that us Rare fans can't say the same. :(
Microsoft want blockbusters game, look at their current output.
You could say that it was not like that during the OG Xbox days and you would be right but MS basically dropped all franchise from that era.
So there's very little chance for them to greenlight a sequel to Drakengard, than a spin off based on one of the endings of that game and then a sequel to Drakengard 2 and finally Nier Automata. All the while knowing that the team developping the first Nier was closed.
That's too convoluted to be a scenario coming with Microsoft unless they give Square full control for decades.
NeiR: Automata was going to be a PC game, originally, wasn't it? If Square were owned by MS, terrible PC ports like NieR: Automata's would not happen. MS have standards. Wildly inconsistent standards -- see Halo Wars 2 -- but standards nonetheless.
It's all speculation, anyway. We have no idea how MS would have run Square. They've never been in that position before. Like, if Microsoft had outright owned Bioware, do people think that Bioware's games would have changed all that much? I don't think so. The biggest change of MS owning Square would probably have been MS pushing higher production values. (The Final Fantasy series has some ATROCIOUS graphics.) Which would push costs up. Which would push sales expectations up. This would have potential knock-on effects.
But don't we have a pretty good example with Rare?
Though I wonder what series would've risen to take Final Fantasy's place in that alternate timeline. Enix would never have merged with Square either.
This could've been a decent thread, but instead it's a shit on Microsoft thread. FFs y'all got some intersting tidbits to talk about and all some of you want to do is praise the heavens that Microsoft from 99( who were actually putting out games) didn't buy Square. I mean damn.
But Rare is free with MS. The only thing MS made them do were the avatars and the kinetic games (and I'm not sure the latter was forced). Everything else was made by what the studio wanted. And that's the reason why we don't have new Banjos or Conkers. They may have a stricter schedule but they do whatever they want to. It would be no different with Square but I imagine they would focus on Japanese market.
Y'all need to ask yourself why Nintendo didn't value Rare as much as Microsoft.
Well we have the power of knowing what happened after MS got into the game industry and how they act as a game publisher, so you can't be surprised to see everyone breathing a sigh of relief.
I don't think MSFT management meshes well with Squaresoft's style of doing business.
It probably would have ended up with a massive exodus (if not outright closure) and the merger with Enix never happening as well.
Of course Nier Automata wouldn't exists because Square wouldn't either.
It probably would have ended up with a massive exodus (if not outright closure) and the merger with Enix never happening as well.
Of course Nier Automata wouldn't exists because Square wouldn't either.
You also have the power to exercise your judgment on how they were when these things were happening and the people who around at that time. Really silly to apply their decision now to what you think could've happened back then. Sighing relief is hilarious in this context.
The Rare situation is... nuanced. One can draw parallels to Valve. MS instituted a corporate structure that made it difficult for Rare's teams to actually make the games they wanted to make. But underneath this layer is another problem. Rare were afflicted by a sort of creative morass. A lack of forward direction that has only just been regained with Sea of Thieves.
The same thing happened to Free Radical. It's so easy to blame EA and Ubisoft and Lucasarts. And it's true that Lucasarts were kinda assholes. But HAZE demonstrated that Free Radical were struggling to implement current technology and also struggling to creative a cohesive game using that technology. Spending hours and hours in meetings not having any clear idea of what they were making. Rare/FR struggled to adapt to rapidly changing technology. It's one of the reasons why PD: Zero is such a technological Frankenstein. It's why HAZE is an ugly, buggy mess.
The situation with Rare is complicated, again. MS's shitty management style hurt the company badly, but Rare had internal problems. MS gets all the blame because people want a convenient villain.
