Community MetaSteam | May 2023 - Bloody hell!

[Derrick01]

I saw people arguing something similar on Era and I don't agree at all. Everyone here has been saying that Square Enix is squandering the potential of their franchises with their baffling decisions on release timing and platform exclusivity. The fact that they just had a bad year in HD games and it's still one of the best years in its history shows that their HD games division is not the core pillar of their business anymore and the company is being propped up by their other divisions, namely MMO and mobile/browser.

Their HD games segment only has a notable incline when big FF games or DQ or Kingdom Hearts comes out. If anything it shows an inability to come up with something new that turns into a hit which lets be honest is affecting nearly every company out there. That's why we get fewer big budget new IPs as time goes on and the one that SE just put out flopped.

I don't believe the platform issue matters as much as people want it to. Forspoken for example was on PC day 1 and it still cratered. If it were out on xbox too it would gain a few thousand more sales at most, but be without the 2 years of sony exclusivity that they paid for (they fleeced sony with this one lol). We can speculate that if the big FF games were on PC day 1 it could help a bit, but it's nothing more than speculation. There's not a lot of evidence that suggests the steam base would turn out in huge numbers for it, as they haven't shown up for past day 1 SE games like crisis core. And before someone responds with "because they're inconsistent with releases" I'm gonna say the same thing I tell xbox fans when they say that, you either want the games or you don't. If you don't buy them when they do release day 1 then that's only going to deter companies.

With or without them selling almost half of their company and assets (aka their west division)?

Well considering their most profitable years have been in the last 2-3 years, and you can only sell the division once, then it's pretty clear that's not the reason why they're doing well.

If anything the west division was a massive money sink. Crystal dynamics in particular is insanely expensive and they produce nothing but flops. I know people like to lift up tomb raider selling "millions" as proof that it's not, but if you sell 8 million copies mostly at $10 price points that's not going to mean much.

 

[Dragon1893]

I hope RE5 remake is made in a way that allows you to play solo without an AI companion.
Between them getting killed when you're separated and constantly obstructing your field of view, it can get really annoying.

 

[Lashley]

Refunded Evil West. The game is alright, but I'm not in the mood for it.

Going to put the money toward what is surely 2023 GOTY - Gollum

 

[Alexandros]

Their HD games segment only has a notable incline when big FF games or DQ or Kingdom Hearts comes out. If anything it shows an inability to come up with something new that turns into a hit which lets be honest is affecting nearly every company out there. That's why we get fewer big budget new IPs as time goes on and the one that SE just put out flopped.

I don't believe the platform issue matters as much as people want it to. Forspoken for example was on PC day 1 and it still cratered. If it were out on xbox too it would gain a few thousand more sales at most, but be without the 2 years of sony exclusivity that they paid for (they fleeced sony with this one lol). We can speculate that if the big FF games were on PC day 1 it could help a bit, but it's nothing more than speculation. There's not a lot of evidence that suggests the steam base would turn out in huge numbers for it, as they haven't shown up for past day 1 SE games like crisis core. And before someone responds with "because they're inconsistent with releases" I'm gonna say the same thing I tell xbox fans when they say that, you either want the games or you don't. If you don't buy them when they do release day 1 then that's only going to deter companies.

I very strongly disagree with that. Building an audience takes time, you can't expect a game to sell gangbusters immediately after ignoring some platforms for decades. There is ample proof for that fact in the way that almost every other japanese publisher has steadily grown their audience on Steam, with every subsequent game selling better and better (if it's good of course).

 

[Lashley]

9 games come out years later on PC

1 game is day 1

"why aren't they flocking to this day 1 release!?"

 

[Derrick01]

9 games come out years later on PC

1 game is day 1

"why aren't they flocking to this day 1 release!?"

It's not like the games are connected at all. There's simply no excuse for skipping the 1 that does come out, that's the same nonsense you see xbox fans say and then they can't understand why games are continuing to skip their platform.

Most JP games that came to PC did so late. EXTREMELY late sometimes, like ace attorney games came to PC for the first time like a decade late technically and they still came out and bought the collection with about 280k sales or so. On xbox it did 5k, and now they're wondering why battle network collection isn't on xbox. You have to buy the games to get the games.

 

[Lashley]

It's not like the games are connected at all. There's simply no excuse for skipping the 1 that does come out, that's the same nonsense you see xbox fans say and then they can't understand why games are continuing to skip their platform.

Most JP games that came to PC did so late. EXTREMELY late sometimes, like ace attorney games came to PC for the first time like a decade late technically and they still came out and bought the collection with about 280k sales or so. On xbox it did 5k, and now they're wondering why battle network collection isn't on xbox. You have to buy the games to get the games.

Bringing games out years and years later is a piss poor way to build an audience, so of course there's no audience there to buy the 1 game that comes out day and date.

It's not a hard concept to grasp.

Also, idgaf about xbox, I'm talking about Steam.

 

[Kyougar]

Bringing games out years and years later is a piss poor way to build an audience, so of course there's no audience there to buy the 1 game that comes out day and date.

It's not a hard concept to grasp.

Also, idgaf about xbox, I'm talking about Steam.

And buying FF 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 x2 12 13 13-2 13-3 14 15 on Steam didn't get us day and date release for FF16, so anyone who still believes in "if we just buy more of their old games, certainly they will release it on Steam Day1 with their NEXT game" lives in Final Fantasy land

 

[Lashley]

And buying FF 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 x2 12 13 13-2 13-3 14 15 on Steam didn't get us day and date release for FF16, so anyone who still believes in "if we just buy more of their old games, certainly they will release it on Steam Day1 with their NEXT game" lives in Final Fantasy land

But y'see, you didn't buy 30 copies and give them away to people who don't even own PC's.

This is what the Playstation playerbase did.

4theplayers

 

[Ascheroth]

It's not like the games are connected at all. There's simply no excuse for skipping the 1 that does come out, that's the same nonsense you see xbox fans say and then they can't understand why games are continuing to skip their platform.

This is a really poor argument.
Forspoken is a new IP that launched to poor reviews, a bad port and a price tag of 80 fucking €.
A day 1 release can't salvage that, but a late port under the same conditions would have sold even worse.

 

[Lashley]

Thank god we won't get Forspoken 2 day 1 on PC

 

[yuraya]

Square is probably gonna get bought out by Sony or Nintendo before the end of the decade. They are pretty much the Japanese Ubisoft.

Nearly identical down to the stupid decision making and company value + future potential etc.

Ubisoft is getting picked up by someone too. These companies and the way they are built is just unsustainable to achieve any type of long term growth. The fact they are chasing blockchain and NFT bs while being creatively bankrupt shows the writing on the wall. All of their competitors continue to grow faster while they are gonna get left behind unless some giant conglomerate absorbs them. Its the sad truth but it is what it is.

 

[Lashley]

For pure hilarity sake, if anyone buys Square Enix I hope it's Nintendo

 

[ZKenir]

yeah no fuck that, at least with sony their games would still come to pc at some point

 

[Ge0force]

I don't believe the platform issue matters as much as people want it to. Forspoken for example was on PC day 1 and it still cratered.

Forspoken was €80. That's €20 (or 25%) more than most other AAA games.

Also, if you see how well games are doing on Steam after 12 months of EGS exclusivity, it's obvious that this costs them a lot of money because of the discount that people demand in that situation.

 

[lashman]

 

[Lashley]

Beat

 

[fantomena]

PC players are very price sensitive and that's a good thing.

Like when a EGS timed exclusive releases on Steam without a discount or even with a 10% discount, there's a lot of complaining.

 

[ezodagrom]

Square is probably gonna get bought out by Sony or Nintendo before the end of the decade. They are pretty much the Japanese Ubisoft.

I doubt it, this past fiscal year may have been "below expectations", but I find it likely that their next fiscal year or two are going to go well, with releases like FF16, FF7 Rebirth and the next FF14 expansion.

 

[Lashley]

PC players are very price sensitive and that's a good thing.

Like when a EGS timed exclusive releases on Steam without a discount or even with a 10% discount, there's a lot of complaining.

Except when it comes to hardware!

BAZINGA

 

[Kyougar]

Except when it comes to hardware!

BAZINGA

Don't think so

Desktop processors: Lowest sales since 1993

AMD and Intel are struggling with high inventory levels. AMD’s CPU market shares rose only because sales have been less slumped than Intel’s. The bad business figures have already indic…

techaint.com

 

[Hektor]

Their HD games division, absolutely.

You can't restrict it to that.
Even the FF Pixel Remasters were made PC exlusive for a while for very little reason.
Or think of The Last Remnant, which isn't available on PC anymore AT ALL ever since they released a remaster, basically forcing PC gamers to pirate the game if they wanna play it.

 

[fantomena]

Steam cheevos overview in desktop is pretty nice in the last update, but all I want is a sound when the cheevo pops up, just give me some goddamn sound.

 

[kio]

Or think of The Last Remnant, which isn't available on PC anymore AT ALL ever since they released a remaster, basically forcing PC gamers to pirate the game if they wanna play it.

That's for the better, that abomination is a contender for worst game ever. Nothing made sense, it was a frankenstein's monster of random (bad) ideas wrapped around a nonsensical story senved on an empty map. I'll die on this hill.

 

[Derrick01]

Forspoken was €80. That's €20 (or 25%) more than most other AAA games.

Also, if you see how well games are doing on Steam after 12 months of EGS exclusivity, it's obvious that this costs them a lot of money because of the discount that people demand in that situation.

That's going to be the price for nearly everything soon and some stuff has sold fine for that price on steam. If FF16 was coming day 1 it'd be that price too.

 

[Ge0force]

That's going to be the price for nearly everything soon and some stuff has sold fine for that price on steam. If FF16 was coming day 1 it'd be that price too.

I don't think so. €70 will become the norm for AAA games soon, but €80 will take a while.

 

[Lashley]

Don't think so

Desktop processors: Lowest sales since 1993

AMD and Intel are struggling with high inventory levels. AMD’s CPU market shares rose only because sales have been less slumped than Intel’s. The bad business figures have already indic…

techaint.com

Ruined my amazing joke

Steam cheevos overview in desktop is pretty nice in the last update, but all I want is a sound when the cheevo pops up, just give me some goddamn sound.

GitHub - SteamAchievementNotifier/SteamAchievementNotifier: Steam Achievement Notifier is an Electron application that shows a customisable notification when you unlock any Steam Achievement! It uses the Steam Web API to track achievement stats in real time, and displays an achievement summary within the notification.

Steam Achievement Notifier is an Electron application that shows a customisable notification when you unlock any Steam Achievement! It uses the Steam Web API to track achievement stats in real time...

github.com

Never look back

 

[dex3108]

Point with Square Enix is that they could do better if they would just look at their Japanese competition. Look at Capcom 7st year in a row beating their expectations if I remember correctly. They still do exclusives but in form of modes and items. Look at SEGA and PC expansion too. Bamco and even Koei are doing fine/great year over year and expanding and growing their audience.

Square in other hand is doing everything to reduce their audience and sell their games to platform holders and not to users. That includes release schedule, pricing and platform availability. Again at best on sale Kingdom Hearts Complete on PC is over 100$ on one store and nowhere else, on PS4/5 it's 30$.

As much as Sony is paying them they are still locking themselves to limited user base instead of expanding. It is enough to look at PSN subscribers numbers to see that they are stagnating for past 3-4 years. That's probably same with Xbox. PC is still growing. And again other companies realized that so they started treating all platforms better and casting their net as wide as possible.

 

[Madventure]

square enix has a bunch of stuff I literally want to buy but it never goes on sale for less than 30$ so I'm probably never going to buy it

 

[Durante]

Point with Square Enix is that they could do better if they would just look at their Japanese competition. Look at Capcom 7st year in a row beating their expectations if I remember correctly. They still do exclusives but in form of modes and items. Look at SEGA and PC expansion too. Bamco and even Koei are doing fine/great year over year and expanding and growing their audience.

Yeah, just looking at their trajectory compared to all those other Japanese publishers makes it very clear that S-E's release strategy is really hamstringing their success.

 

[Alexandros]

You can't restrict it to that.
Even the FF Pixel Remasters were made PC exlusive for a while for very little reason.
Or think of The Last Remnant, which isn't available on PC anymore AT ALL ever since they released a remaster, basically forcing PC gamers to pirate the game if they wanna play it.

Of course, I didn't mean to exclude these games. I used the terminology that Square Enix uses in its financial reports. "HD games" includes all PC and console games, "MMO" includes, well, MMOs (do they have others except FFXIV?) and "Mobile and browser" for smartphone and casual games.

 

[Ascheroth]

Of course, I didn't mean to exclude these games. I used the terminology that Square Enix uses in its financial reports. "HD games" includes all PC and console games, "MMO" includes, well, MMOs (do they have others except FFXIV?) and "Mobile and browser" for smartphone and casual games.

They've listed FF XIV and Dragon Quest X in their MMO section. DQX is Japan only though.



I think the damning thing about their HD games section is that while it is still doing well relatively to other years (it is down YoY, but it is still relatively high compared to the average in the past). it is down despite them releasing way more stuff and having access to all the back-catalogue sales of the successful titles of previous years.

Now compare this to the amount of stuff they've released. I've counted SKUs because with their scattershot platform release strategy it's a pain to sort out new releases and late ports.

FY 2023: 61 SKUs
FY 2022: 41 SKUs
FY 2021: 28 SKUs
FY 2020: 27 SKUs
FY 2019: 34 SKUs

Their library is growing massively, but their revenue does not at all reflect that.


I would also be worried about their mobile section if I were them.

The report says existing titles had weak performances and new titles weren't able to offset that.
Looking at the games, a lot of them are very old already and their revenue will probably continue to go down. They are throwing a lot of shit at the wall but most stuff doesn't stick (remember all of the End of Service news for their mobile games after 1 or 2 years already?)
Meanwhile the competition on mobile is getting fiercer and more expensive with companies like Hoyoverse raising the bar with Genshin and now Star Rail and other devs following suit.

 

[kafiend]

Don't think so

Desktop processors: Lowest sales since 1993

AMD and Intel are struggling with high inventory levels. AMD’s CPU market shares rose only because sales have been less slumped than Intel’s. The bad business figures have already indic…

techaint.com

Is now a good time to upgrade a PC or is there something great coming soon? I don't pay much attention to whats going on
Ryzen 3700x upgrading (probably) to Intel i5-13600K and appropriate high end mobo and ram etc.

 

[Kyougar]

Is now a good time to upgrade a PC or is there something great coming soon? I don't pay much attention to whats going on
Ryzen 3700x upgrading (probably) to Intel i5-13600K and appropriate high end mobo and ram etc.

CPU, SSD and RAM will be fine, the issues are GPU prices

 

[kafiend]

CPU, SSD and RAM will be fine, the issues are GPU prices

I got a 3080ti so wasn't doing the GPU. Part of the reason I was thinking about an upgrade spurge was because I wasn't sure if the current CPU/mobo was holding back the GPU.

 

[Alexandros]

They've listed FF XIV and Dragon Quest X in their MMO section. DQX is Japan only though.



I think the damning thing about their HD games section is that while it is still doing well relatively to other years (it is down YoY, but it is still relatively high compared to the average in the past). it is down despite them releasing way more stuff and having access to all the back-catalogue sales of the successful titles of previous years.

Now compare this to the amount of stuff they've released. I've counted SKUs because with their scattershot platform release strategy it's a pain to sort out new releases and late ports.

FY 2023: 61 SKUs
FY 2022: 41 SKUs
FY 2021: 28 SKUs
FY 2020: 27 SKUs
FY 2019: 34 SKUs

Their library is growing massively, but their revenue does not at all reflect that.


I would also be worried about their mobile section if I were them.

The report says existing titles had weak performances and new titles weren't able to offset that.
Looking at the games, a lot of them are very old already and their revenue will probably continue to go down. They are throwing a lot of shit at the wall but most stuff doesn't stick (remember all of the End of Service news for their mobile games after 1 or 2 years already?)
Meanwhile the competition on mobile is getting fiercer and more expensive with companies like Hoyoverse raising the bar with Genshin and now Star Rail and other devs following suit.

Thank you for the detailed post. It seems to me that the MMOs are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

 

[Lashley]

Thank you for the detailed post. It seems to me that the MMOs are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

People joke about 14 carrying them for a reason

 

[Cacher]

Discussion - What are you currently playing? (Week 20 of 2023)

New week, new thread! What are you playing? Tears of the Kingdom for me! I am floored by how different this game is compared with Breath of the Wild. Sure, the chemistry engine, many animations and assets are the same, but the game is designed to be played very differently. There are more story...

metacouncil.com

 

[fantomena]

Midnight Suns is good, not XCOM 2 good, but still good.

 

[Alexandros]

Midnight Suns is good, not XCOM 2 good, but still good.

It is indeed very good.

 

[QFNS]

Really liked Midnight Suns' campaign. I didn't play any of the DLC, but the main game was great.

Unfair that it sold like shit and we'll never see another one

 

[dex3108]

 

[Arc]

Midnight Suns is on my list after Zelda, Final Fantasy 16 and Pikmin 4, so I'm hoping to start it around August or September. Funny thing is I bought the complete edition for 50 bucks a few months back. The FOMO bug bit me and I didn't realize it was a giant flop. Now I see that same complete edition constantly go on sale for like $42.

 

[NarohDethan]

I don't think SE wants to be bought anyway, they're more than happy taking Microsoft's money to get their shit ported to Xbox and Sony's money that prevents their biggest shit from being ported to Xbox. And they can ignore Nintendo since they've been releasing underpowered hardware for 20 years so the budget there are pretty limited.

 

[STHX]

Square in other hand is doing everything to reduce their audience and sell their games to platform holders and not to users

I feel like that well will dry up sooner or later. Let's look at the SE EGS moneyhats: Epic tried to paint them as a big thing but in the end they didn't move that many users. I know many even here are convinced FFXVI and Remake part 2 will be EGS exclusive for 6 months/1 year on top of whatever PS5 exclusive period they have, but Crisis Core ended up being on Steam day one (although Epic as a whole is moving away from the old type of exclusive deals)
Same for Sony. Forspoken was obviously set up to be big: was one of the first PS5 exclusives announced, was supposed to show the power of the new console, hell before the ps5 was even out the PS twitter banner was Forspoken itself! And well we all know how it ended up. Sony isn't going to spend money forever if the thing they spend money doesn't move consoles. Like lets be serious they paid so that Forspoken would skip the Xbox for 2 whole years and that game sold so bad it killed the studio in less than a month. That money was completely wasted. It's too soon to say, but if FFXVI doesn't move enough consoles either then why would Sony ever pay for anything SE that isn't FFVII?
If they keep selling games to platform holders at one point they will end up being completely alienated from standard users, no matter their platform of choice. And when no platform holder is left to pay for your games who will even buy them in the end?

 

[fantomena]

Midnight Suns is on my list after Zelda, Final Fantasy 16 and Pikmin 4, so I'm hoping to start it around August or September. Funny thing is I bought the complete edition for 50 bucks a few months back. The FOMO bug bit me and I didn't realize it was a giant flop. Now I see that same complete edition constantly go on sale for like $42.

I have 1 rule, unless I 100% know that I will be playing a game in the week of launch, I will wait for a sale. TotK is the first game I've bought on launch in a very long while.

 

[Dragon1893]

One of the portraits you can choose for the protagonist in Shadowrun Hong Kong kinda freaked me out when I saw it because it looks a lot like me.

 

[Mor]

I feel like that well will dry up sooner or later. Let's look at the SE EGS moneyhats: Epic tried to paint them as a big thing but in the end they didn't move that many users. I know many even here are convinced FFXVI and Remake part 2 will be EGS exclusive for 6 months/1 year on top of whatever PS5 exclusive period they have, but Crisis Core ended up being on Steam day one (although Epic as a whole is moving away from the old type of exclusive deals)

Don't have any information but I 100% believe those two will be EGS timed as they are likely already signed via multi-game deal pre-covid.

 

[STHX]

Don't have any information but I 100% believe those two will be EGS timed as they are likely already signed via multi-game deal pre-covid.

Hey, more power to Tim. His money his deals

 

[lashman]