Embracer Group acquires Square Enix's Western studios and IPs (Deus Ex, Thief, Tomb Raider, etc)

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

From the sound of it these studios were huge drains on Square Enix, spent like crazy, had little return, and were the place they were losing money most.

Oh you mean Final Fantasy?

The difference between how Squeenix managed it's Western studios vs it's Japanese ones, was nothing short of retarded

On the Nippon side you have:
- studios enjoying great freedom of development
- shitty remarsters
- sequel bloat
- FF14 given a full redevolepment, despite being dogshit and a financial bomb
- FF15 taking 10 years (and 2/3 complete redesigns) to release, burning millions each year, only to turn out one of the most mediocre FF titles
- the shameless cashgrab that is FF7 Remake, divisive even among FF fanboys

And despite all this, these games only had a modicum of "success" in fucking Japan and S. Korea

While on the Western side, the devs were faced with:
- extensive micromanagement from Squeenix
- unchangable deadlines
- unrealistic goals
- harsher crunch time
- small funding comparatively to their eastern cousins

However the western side of Squeenix has the one that had regular success (even if it didn't meet the japs hilarious expectations) and actual appeal outside east asia

Yet for the last 10 years, Squeenix used their western projects as a scapegoat for their every fuck up

The Western side of Square Enix has had shit returns for years. The studio has business reports where you can see returns, and the western side of Square Enix not only doesn't return, but is a drag. It's a simple numbers games. FF15 also wasn't in active development for ten years, and it made back its budget the first day of its release.

Marvel's Avengers cost something like $200 million and was publicly announced at the beginning of 2017. The most recent cycle of Tomb Raider games get listed on the wiki page for most expensive games made. It doesn't sound like these studios weren't afforded the time, money, and freedom to make their games. I'm not really sure where your getting this shit other than your ass, because it doesn't really line up with reality.

FF14 got a full redevelopment, another game called FF14, precisely because it was dog shit, no despite it. That also only happened because the guy they brought in to fix it talked them into letting him make the new version since FF14 was seen as damaging the brand.

 

[Morgoth]

These Square-Enix execs aren't the brightest bulbs in this business.

 

[Dodo1610]

Selling those studios and IPs was still better than closing them down. From SE perspective they got rid of thousand of employees which hadn't been making money and got 300mil in return.

The sad reality is that those studios haven't been profitable for a long time and no one else had any interest in them.

 

[flyingjohn]

The Western side of Square Enix has had shit returns for years.

And that is on square for allowing bloated budgets for multiple sequels and not acting like a publisher at all.
Nordic is just gonna fire 2/3 of the staff and make aa tomb and deus ex games which will make plenty of money.

It is the publisher/parent company job to regulate budgets accordingly.Square didn't. They only interfered to make things even worse with deus ex preorder fiasco and throwing millions into the marvel game for no reason.

 

[JamesDixon]

A reminder that all of the original developers of your beloved games no longer work in the companies that made them. They've been replaced by creatively bankrupt SJW retards that love to shit on everything you love.

 

[Star Citizen]

Even the original Dark Project was not a best seller.
So the only thing they could do with The Thief IP is give it to some tiny indie team.

Then we'd just get Thief Ascension. Lmao. But yeah I guess it'll still be interesting to see what they attempt to do with the IP, if they even do. I don't see a AA or 'retro styled' Thief installment raising enough eyebrows today to be financially worthwhile personally, unless it was *really* fucking good and if they did decide to go that route then I feel it'd at least need to be equivalent or superior in terms of the art, technology n visuals Thief 3 had. I wonder how much time and resources were soaked up trying to make Thi4f a MoDerN CiNemAtiC™ experience. If they cut the crap and focused all their efforts entirely on making an actual Thief game I'm sure they could pull off something closer to 'AAA' with a WAY smaller budget than Thi4f had.

 

[toughasnails]

How would you guys feel about LoK being revived as some sort of souls-like? I imagine they'd be looking to add something that follows that trend in their portfolio and LoK might look like a good choice given its theme and tone. Maybe they could give it to devs behind Darksiders 3 and Remnant.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

The Western side of Square Enix has had shit returns for years.

Aside from Teef and Avengers, all western Squeenix games have been successful
Their unsatisfaction was simply due to their unrealistic sales expections

FF15 also wasn't in active development for ten years

Yeah, because at first it was the Vs 13 spin-off, and then it got scrapped into FF15
Still doesn't change the fact that for 6 years Squeenix was pissing money away on a project that went nowhere

It doesn't sound like these studios weren't afforded the time, money, and freedom to make their games.

This is just a more direct snippet on the issue
But over the interview he regurlarly talks about it and paints the same picture
Squeenix management over the western studios was tight and stupid - it was their idea and decision to make nuHitman episodic ; they also wanted DXMD to have microtransactions, but fortunately Eidos strongly opposed

 

[Adon]

All things considered, this is a better move for these studios and IPs, they weren't under suitable hands with Square-Enix.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

From the sound of it these studios were huge drains on Square Enix, spent like crazy, had little return, and were the place they were losing money most.

Oh you mean Final Fantasy?

The difference between how Squeenix managed it's Western studios vs it's Japanese ones, was nothing short of retarded

On the Nippon side you have:
- studios enjoying great freedom of development
- shitty remarsters
- sequel bloat
- FF14 given a full redevolepment, despite being dogshit and a financial bomb
- FF15 taking 10 years (and 2/3 complete redesigns) to release, burning millions each year, only to turn out one of the most mediocre FF titles
- the shameless cashgrab that is FF7 Remake, divisive even among FF fanboys

And despite all this, these games only had a modicum of "success" in fucking Japan and S. Korea

While on the Western side, the devs were faced with:
- extensive micromanagement from Squeenix
- unchangable deadlines
- unrealistic goals
- harsher crunch time
- small funding comparatively to their eastern cousins

However the western side of Squeenix has the one that had regular success (even if it didn't meet the japs hilarious expectations) and actual appeal outside east asia

Yet for the last 10 years, Squeenix used their western projects as a scapegoat for their every fuck up

Just say that you want to believe the Japs are the ones responsible for these games turning to crap, despite the fact that western industry has demonstrated time and time again they don't need an excuse to suck beyond any expectation xd

the two deus ex games are better than anything the japanese side has put out since... well, ever.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

The Western side of Square Enix has had shit returns for years.

Aside from Teef and Avengers, all western Squeenix games have been successful

Strong evidence that GotG failed to turn a profit as well, although maybe Microsoft brought it into the black with the GamePass deal.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Completely forgot about that one
But as far as google allows me there's nothing specific about sales, all they say is that it "underperformed" or "failed to meet sales expectations" - vague corpo speak, could be anything
Probably this was the result of the Avengers game failure

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The LoK IP looks pretty fertile. There's six existing games that could be remastered/remade in order to cash in on nostalgia and introduce new players to the brand (BO1, BO2, SR1, SR2, Defiance, Nosgoth), two canceled projects that could be revived/remade (Dark Prophecy, Dead Sun), and the world of Nosgoth could be further explored/expanded in wholly original projects.

Because I'm really sick of Paradox dropping the ball on their atrocious Bloodlines spin-offs.

 

[ADL]

Whatever their plans are, it better include a conclusion to the Adam Jensen trilogy. If you were paying attention, there's a lot of spooky shit going on in Mankind Divided that deserves a payoff. Particularly

Spoiler

Adam's corpse in the Palisades versalife vault, his apartment being monitored and the experimental augmentations hidden in his body that no one can explain.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Completely forgot about that one
But as far as google allows me there's nothing specific about sales, all they say is that it "underperformed" or "failed to meet sales expectations" - vague corpo speak, could be anything
Probably this was the result of the Avengers game failure

Yeah, to whatever degree it underperformed it was for sure due to the Avengers fiasco.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The Western side of Square Enix has had shit returns for years.

Aside from Teef and Avengers, all western Squeenix games have been successful
Their unsatisfaction was simply due to their unrealistic sales expections

FF15 also wasn't in active development for ten years

Yeah, because at first it was the Vs 13 spin-off, and then it got scrapped into FF15
Still doesn't change the fact that for 6 years Squeenix was pissing money away on a project that went nowhere

It doesn't sound like these studios weren't afforded the time, money, and freedom to make their games.

This is just a more direct snippet on the issue
But over the interview he regurlarly talks about it and paints the same picture
Squeenix management over the western studios was tight and stupid - it was their idea and decision to make nuHitman episodic ; they also wanted DXMD to have microtransactions, but fortunately Eidos strongly opposed

No, it has nothing to do with it starting as VS 13, the game just wasn't actually in active development during all that time. There was like pre-production work that was done, there were the VS 13 concept trailers that were made, but Final Fantasy VS13/15 wasn't in production but for something like four (three) years. The game isn't some Duke Nukem Forever situation where active production was happening all that time.

The Tomb Raider games cost over a hundred million, and the Avengers game was like $200 million, so I'm thinking the studios did get money. Mankind Divided started development sometime in 2011 and finished at the end of July 2016. For comparison, despite announcing Final Fantasy 15 (which also came out in 2016) far earlier, it doesn't seem to have when into production until 2012.

The unrealistic sales expectations were based on the large budgets the games were given.

 

[Tafferontheroof]

Since the demise of LGS Thief has belonged to the modders and FM creators. There are textures, tweaks and lighting mods for those that want them and at least a smattering of superb new missions put out each and every year. It needs no remaster and absolutely no smeggin’ remakes.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

No, it has nothing to do with it starting as VS 13, the game just wasn't actually in active development during all that time. There was like pre-production work that was done, there were the VS 13 concept trailers that were made, but Final Fantasy VS13/15 wasn't in production but for something like four (three) years. The game isn't some Duke Nukem Forever situation where active production was happening all that time.

The Tomb Raider games cost over a hundred million, and the Avengers game was like $200 million, so I'm thinking the studios did get money. Mankind Divided started development sometime in 2011 and finished at the end of July 2016. For comparison, despite announcing Final Fantasy 15 (which also came out in 2016) far earlier, it doesn't seem to have when into production until 2012.

The unrealistic sales expectations were based on the large budgets the games were given.

most of this seems to be wrong tho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Final_Fantasy_XV

A proposal to turn Final Fantasy XV into a musical after Nomura watched the 2012 film adaptation of Les Misérables was vetoed by the higher-ups at Square Enix.

 

[J1M]

I would have to be quite the simpleton to believe that a game studio announced a game 3 years before they started working on it.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Did some digging...
Interestingly the western games are very easy to find reliable info on their production cost and other financial matters
But the japanese ones I mostly get speculation and sometimes vague indications (like FF15 needs to sell 10million copies to recoup)
How peculiar
Even in Squeenix related forums/discussions, the prevailing opinion is that Squeenix likes to hidde this type of info somewhere in their financial reports

DXMD development was around 55 million us dollars
TR2013 made 3.4 million sales by the end of 2013 (so at least it made 100million in profit), and by 2015 it was the he best-selling Tomb Raider title to date with 8.5million copies

Now for their jap titles, this is what I think:
- FF15 cost them at least 300 million
- FF14 redevelopment was around 120 million (so this is already on top what they wasted for version 1.0, which according to most estimates was easily 200million - I am being generous here, as I frequently came across 1.5x/2x times that value)

I'm thinking the studios did get money.

But again it's not just about the money
The western studios were under much more pressure and oversight than any of Squeenix Japanese studios

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Final Fantasy 15 didn't cost them $300 million. If you think Final Fantasy 15 cost them $300 million you have no grasp of video game budgets. GTA5 and RDR2 didn't even cost $300 million. Generally, video games do not cost that much. Honestly, when I found out Tomb Raider 2013 cost $100 I was shocked, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider had a production budget (not marketing) between $75 million and $100 million.

They announced FF15 made back its production cost in the first 24 hours it was out, and that it'd shipped 5 million on the first day, and 6 million by the start of January...the game came out at the end of November. Last year it was reported the game sold 9.5 million copies.

That interview you posted is working from the false idea that Final Fantasy 15 was actually in production for ten years. It was not. Despise showing things years earlier as VS 13, the game never actually went into production until, like, 2012. FF15 went into production in 2012, it came out at the end of November 2016. Mankind Divided went into production after they finished work on Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link DLC in 2011, (that DLC came out in October, so production may have started like a month or two before) and it came out on August 23 2016.

 

[toughasnails]

At the beginning of the previous generation, Square was really interested in the games-as-service trend, you can find the comments from their execs made around that time. Their Western studios and IPs seemed to testing ground for that, everything from Hitman's episodic scheme to Mankind Divided's aggressive DLC scheme (and it could have been ever worse from what some of the people who worked on MD claimed later).

There is also the thing with Square obviously valuing their original Japanese IPs far more. You don't need to look further from the difference between price drops and sales Eidos titles would be on, as well as finding their ways into bundles, compared to FF and other Japanese developed SE titles once they began appearing on PC en masse to see the difference in how Square perceived them and their commitment to preserving the aura of value and prestige around their Japanese titles. Which is understandable tbh. Japanese ARE p nationalistic, they are one of few to whom nationalism is largely forgiven in this day and age, and Square and Final Fantasy ARE one of Japan's major cultural exports.

 

[Grauken]

 

[Tacgnol]

This is what happens when companies make decisions solely on the fear of missing out.

Never thought I'd see big corps acting retarded as get rich quick cryptobros.

 

[Star Citizen]

This is what happens when companies make decisions solely on the fear of missing out.

Never thought I'd see big corps acting retarded as get rich quick cryptobros.

There's a reason for it. I personally believe there's going to be a shift to a universal digital currency as all global economies collapse and they're just prepping for/dabbling in it it sort of.