The game that killed Squaresoft.
By Rich Stanton
This is a retrospective in the truest sense. I've switched on Final Fantasy 7 since its re-release on PSN a few years ago, but never played past the opening section of Midgar - an opening that, at the time of first playing, I thought was the game itself. The PS3 doesn't take PS1 memory cards, of course, so I can't resurrect my Avalanche crew, every single one at max level, while the treasured materia and weapon collection remains out of reach - nevermind my thoroughbred chocobos. Some games you can only play once.
Over time this gives distance to how you think about it. Final Fantasy 7 has never been loved for the right reasons; conversations focus overwhelmingly on a single moment that in its grand scheme felt largely irrelevant. I'm referring, of course, to the death of Aeris, the sweet flower girl who joins your party in the game's early portion and then, at the end of the first of three discs, is killed by arch-baddy Sephiroth.
PlayStation PC revenue reached $300 million in 2023, but despite this success, it appears Sony may be pulling back from PC releases.
It's not a success unless we know the profit. It's the same reason I get on Xbox when they mention revenue.
If Sony is considering keeping their single player games exclusive to the PS systems despite the 300 million PC revenue, that means they didn't profit from the venture.
You are correct. Making 300 million doesn't mean anything if you have 299 million in operating costs. Clearly they are making some profit if they want to keep their multiplayer games on PC but what of their single player games?
How could they possibly not make a profit with $300M in revenue?
Nixxis only has about 90 employees. Let's go high and say each person on the payroll makes $200k per year; payroll would only be $18M. I believe the development time to port a game from PlayStation to PC is only about a year, so unless Sony is giving out Bentleys and 5 bedroom houses to each employee with payroll, they should be making a sizable profit.
See, the problem with what you said is we don't know what their operating costs were. So everything you're saying there is just speculation. What we do know is reported revenue and the rumored reporting that Sony is taking first party single player games out of the PC release cycle.
Not saying you're wrong, but we need to work with what we're given.
Here’s another angle of the argument. What if they saw a concerning decline in console sales and/or game sales on PS during this window of PC releases? It may be a crazy success on pc we don’t know but eating your own market share scare PlayStation for sure especially when they are trying to sell every new gen.
Ok, THIS makes sense. I don't know how I didn't think about that. And we know they'll want those PS6 sales to be off the charts. It's harder to do that if their in-house made blockbusters are shared with PC.
Given the recent price increase for their hardware... Sony should really rethink things. Having an additional revenue stream, even if the games come to PC a year after, is still money coming in. Those who wanted a 5 likely already got one, but that doesn't mean Sony should turn their backs on those who may still want to play their software on a PC.
Honestly, I think they are worried about PC piracy.... Getting their games on PC for free is... well its not hard at all. They have to know that and I am sure that goes into their calculus.
thats bogus. Early 2000's a lot of things got pirated sure, but most piracy that currently exists is because the companies themselves sell an inferior product than when you pirate it, denuvo, bad quality on movies/shows etc. It's not much anymore and other companies have been releasing their games on pc since the beginning of time and are doing fine and given the quality of sony's 1st party games they should have no issue making profit at all. Adding shit like having to log in to psn in order to play single players games because they wanna harvest your data, yes that's when I say people are in their right to pirate and sony can go suck a fatty.
We know exactly why they wouldn't want it, because they can't get people into their ecosystem and profit more off of them if they buy it for pc. Nothing more nothing less as with any other company it's only about money.
We buy more games than console gamers BTW. We have over 132 million users on steam so out of that if 2% pirate how can we all be labeled as pirates?
Real reason is sony probably didn't see the big benefits and that's on them because games come out a year later and costs full price
I disagree I think it's strategically in their best interest to remove PC as a pathway to access you need to encourage people to buy the console to play the games otherwise they won't
As soon as Xbox started putting games day one on PC sales of their consoles dropped off a cliff and piracy of their games went sky high
@michiel not true piracy exists because people want to play a game but don't want to pay for it. Piracy may have started really in the 80s but it's still going strong today if you look at any torrent and it's seed count you'll see just how strong the scene is
i specifically said "most piracy that currently exists", not all piracy that has ever existed.
I'm not believing that gamepass story, it's so counterintuitive. They didn't remove the option to be able to purchase a game and for short term they gave people a cheaper way to play it and THEN suddenly they started mass pirating them? yeah I'm not buying that.
Just took a look at GoW Ragnarok and the seed counts are either single or double digits, with 3 out of like 30 having triple digits, 2 of those being basically double digits cause they're so close and the other one a bit above 200. So strong........
Pc sucks and xbox is dead because they stupidly put games on pc and game pass. You like this dumb idea because you want sony down to xbox pathetic level.
Error the price hike effects hardware as well. By all accounts ps6 is designed to be able to be made as cheap as possible. Which should mean it's cheaper than ps5 pro at the very least. Pc parts are effected by increased hardware costs too so they have an obvious market position as the more affordable alternative and once people are in their ecosystem they are unlikely to abandon libraries and switch
And people think they’re going to give that up 🤣🤣
And it’ll be way more than 300m by now
If they make billions in sales on the actual console sure this isn't gross profit either
The value to the brand is significantly more important. Plus is this before or after steam takes their cut?
@Jammit
Majority of the sales is more than like from live service games, so it makes sense why they're pulling away their single player games. Which is honestly a good idea for those games and the brand. Also, if the 300M is revenue, steam taking a 30% cut means Sony is only getting around 210M. Now take aways how much they spent to bring those games to PC and you're looking at less than 200M. With majority of the money coming from live service games.
So easy to spot I wonder HOW YOU GUYS keep falling for his first almost sensible comment then keep getting more and more deranged 🤦🏿 😩.
Death Stranding is owned by Kojima (he purchased the rights back from sony.) Hence the eventual xbox port of the original. Not exactly a good example. Lets see if/when Yotei comes to pc, as that should have been announced already if going by their last first party developed titles ps5 release to pc announce timeline. It's looking more and more like the rumors are correct and Helix has has Sony rethinking pc releases. And why wouldn't they when it would guarantee a competing "console" has access to all their games without their say so.
I'd argue that 300 mill revenue without even considering what part is profit, is not nearly enough money to risk giving xbox access to PlayStation games.
Thats not a lot but still successful,when you consider some games costs over 100 million. But I still think Helix has something to do with them pulling back too.
They’re definitely panicked by helix
Helix also marks the end of their party PS exclusives - Sony can’t afford to keep 3rd party games off PC
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
Panicked by Helix? You probably also believed Xbox Games would never come to Playstation or Nintendo.
“They’re definitely panicked by helix” - 🤡🤡 I know you are a dumb little troll hurt by the demise of Xbox and the continued success of Playstation, but that is still a hell of a clown statement to make after Xbox series got whipped by Nex Playground in December… in 2026 Xbox doesn’t even show up as a skid mark next to PlayStation😬
Also, tech wise PlayStation is ahead of Xbox with PSSR. I can’t see Xbox coming up with anything that matches it. Ps6 is already WAY ahead of Helix
The United States' National Videogame Museum has acquired one of the earliest prototypes of the Nintendo PlayStation system that never came out.
Nintendo's biggest mistake was turning Sony down... the two of them together would have been a completely unstoppable force in the industry. Now they compete.
it would have been a very different landscape I think if those two had partnered. Who knows what the gaming world would look like. One of those "if I had a crystal ball" scenario to see what could have been.
Somehow, I think Sony would've branched off and released its own console. Nintendo's history with game licencing. more so with the NES would at some point of rocked the boat with Sony. Jumping Flash on the PlayStation was originally a Nintendo PlayStation game, plus a few others. I'm all for a single format that's never going to happen, but somehow, I'm glad Nintendo and Sony went their separate ways.
Sony went to SEGA and said they don't like games on cartridges (back then it was Sony Imagesoft), the Mega CD (SEGA CD) was born. SEGA still wasn't convinced about games on CD, the Mega Drive 32X was born as SEGA didn't agree with Sony on a 32bit CD console. Out pops the PlayStation which swallowed up the Saturn. After the Dreamcast, SEGA popped games on PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. The Nintendo PlayStation, Nintendo didn't see eye to eye with Sony on game licencing and they parted company. Oddly, Nintendo ditched a CD console for the cartridge based Nintendo 64, games topping £70 hit console sales. Out pops the GameCube and it was still curtains for Nintendo. Nintendo's only successful disc console was the Wii.
Final Fantasy VII 1997 exceeds 15.5 million units sold worldwide as of February 2026, reinforcing its legacy as the series best selling title.
I’d love to know how many units have been sold of all the Final Fantasy VII franchise games, including the original, the remakes, spin offs such as Crisis Core, and mobile games Ever Crisis. I bet a fair few copies.
Modern day publisher be like: "Failed to meet sales expectations. Pivoting to live service."
It's an absolute legend of a game. And I honestly really love how the remake trilogy is shaping up so far.
Worst FF in the series
I think its time for Square Enix to make a remake for the PlayStation 4
Drivel. Don't waste your time.
fact is that...it remains the best ff to date.
I don't understand how Final Fantasy VII killed Squaresoft. It's an all-time classic JRPG. Squaresoft made Final Fantasy VIII, IX and X - all of which I think are great (with 8 maybe just good).
If you want to say the merger with Enix killed Square, then from a logical standpoint I understand. But even then, while we haven't seen a great run of Final Fantasy games we did get FFXII, Kingdom Hearts games, The World Ends With You and some good published games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hitman: Absolution and the new Tomb Raider.
Square Enix has been making a lot more bad decisions than good the past several years, but how on Earth can we attribute this to a fantastic RPG from 1997.