The entire problem for 3rd parties and Nintendo consoles since the Wii: is that Nintendo hardware has been a lot less powerful than Playstation/Xbox/PC.
They really fucked themselves by not having those versions ready once the exclusivity periods ended. And now you have Dawntrail hitting this summer, probably eating potential sales from FF16 on PC, and then where do you put FF7 Rebirth?
Yeah, regardless of how these games sell I can't understand why they are releasing a year+ AFTER the exclusive contract ends. Then again, most Sony exclusives release on PC 2 years after but that's another story all together, but both obviously need to change to maximize revenue.
Unlike us, they have actual sales numbers. I bet those numbers are more worrisome than Internet talk.
Those posters go straight to my ignore lists. After a few years of this anti consumer buying timed exclusive EGS and they still pretend to not know why PC players hate EGS is just ridiculous.
Competitors can learn from Steams mistakes, they have 10 years of hindsight to build a competitive platform. None do for some reason.
This is like saying you can learn from Google's mistake and 30 years of hindsight to build a competitive search engine. Steam is so entrenched and defacto that it's not that easy and even if there was an identical feature set alternative to Steam (if feature is what matters) why would you bother splitting up your library
I know it's not popular opinion but can you really blame EGS for trying to get some exclusives? Like you said it's not easy to compete against something so entrenched and defacto. While it's inconvenient I honestly have no idea what other way EGS could wrestle some market share away from Steam without taking big games away from it. If anybody has any better idea if you were in their shoes please tell me?
The thing about final fantasy Is that a pretty big percent of its sales comes from Japan still. Square cant go "the west will save us" because the west isn't Saving them and FF is losing more and more relevance in Japan because they keep just putting it on PS, but the mainstream isn't buying PlayStation, they're buying switches.
I'm not sure what the question serves to address. What is the purpose of the Epic Game Store to begin with? If it is just a storefront, then it doesn't really need to wrestle market share away from anyone else. Just like how bookstores all co-exist and aim to be viable stores on their own merits. If the Epic Game Store serves to provide a platform on its own for Epic to sell their games, then is that not enough? It would be the same model that EA, Ubisoft, etc operate on.
Would that actually solve the problem that Square Enix has though? They want the 10+ million blockbuster winner. I'm not sure any platform is going to be able to give them that if they make the games they do and expect that level of success. I don't think the audience that plays JRPGs are necessarily enough here. Maybe what Square Enix also needs to do aside from a multiplatform strategy, is to either decide they want to downsize and be a smaller company making Atlus-tier games to great profitability, or stop making JRPGs and make games that a wide mainstream audience actually wants to buy.
I definitely think they need to see what it brings in. Obviously putting FF on the Switch 2 won't hurt but who really knows what the gains will be. More than likely they need to check the reception of a few titles and decide from there.
Tim was one of those casting blame on PC players in the past and no we don't forget that shit. Tim just wants what Steam have without working for it.
It comes up a lot with Square and EGS and their dealings. Like I totally agree it's annoying but at the same time I am not opposed to somebody trying to compete with Steam in this way because at the end of the day it's healthy for the PC Games market place. The more the merrier if in the long term we have competition on price.
I've seen people say this a few times recently, here. But, where is this info coming from? I mean I'm wondering how to get an ear into Japanese PC gaming trends.
No one is "blaming" them or anything. Don't know why you frame it that way. People are saying it is bad business and it's stupid. It's a critique of how EGS has no value to offer the market and hence has to buy exclusives as a pathetic attempt to appear to have value. You see, Steam, GOG, GMG, etc simply sell games. They don't want or need to pursue exclusives because they are simply operating as stores that people want to buy games from. Steam has the majority of customers yes, but simply because they offer the best value and you can't compete with a good deal that is sustainable. Why would people shop elsewhere if its not in their best interest? That's not a monopoly, that's just market dynamics.
I actually think beyond that, a good part of that audience is on mobile these days, particulary in Japan and probably Asia in general.
Mainly F2P though. Apex, Valorant, TFT and Fortnite exploded on PC in Japan, but it'a all F2P market.
Steam has a percentage chart of default languages. I read it somewhere that there has been a marked increase in Japanese users over the last year.
