“Square-Enix and Microsoft, sitting in a tree. K.I.S.S.I.N.G!”
We all have heard it at some point, but is it actually true? I believe it is not.
Square-Enix shocked the world at last year’s E3 with the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII being developed for the 360. This joined other RPGs like Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery and Blue Dragon raising the question as to why they suddenly turned on Sony, who has brought them enormous profits for two generations. As we seen on N4G, there have been conclusions that Microsoft gave them money to make their titles exclusive, but I doubt this is the case.
Square-Enix said on a number of occasions that they wish to develop their games on multiple platforms, but as of yet, we have seen nothing like that. Are these lies to quell anger from the Sony camp, or is there some secret plan. S-E wants the 360 to succeed in Japan to the same extent as the Wii or the PS3, and the only way to do that is to release RPGs on the Xbox 360. S-E wants to be the EA of Japan, but the low number of 360s in Japan is a problem. We have seen a number of RPGs on the 360 from a number of noteworthy develops, such as Tri-Ace, Square-Enix themselves, and Mistwalker, which have seen an varied degrees of success.
The 360 has nearly reached the 1 million mark in Japan, and this was helped by S-E, but the problem is software. 360 software sales in Japan never stay on the top 30 charts for very long before things return to normal.
With the release of Star Ocean 4 in Japan and the U.S., it brings us to the end of the current batch of RPGs on the 360. What will happen now? Will there be more exclusive RPGs on the 360 from Square-Enix?
We will need to wait and see, but the odds are not looking up for it. Last year, Square-Enix’s profits had fallen by 63% from 2007, even after releasing two high profile games on the 360. Sales were not as high as they hoped. Yet Demon’s Soul’s ran out of stock in Japan, and White Knight Chronicles sold massively. Square-Enix will be taking note of this, do not doubt...
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Nice little blog post there. I agree for more or less everything. Square Enix themselves said about the PS3 that they don't want it to be the overwhelming winner or loser(they didn't expect the Wii to shoot ahead).
They know the PS3 sells more as well, that's why they shipped such little numbers of Star Ocean. It's also the reason they're not even bothering putting FFXIII on the 360 in Japan.
The reason the Mistwalker games were 360 exclusives is obvious though, MS payed for them to get started and signed up for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey as exclusives.
I'll say it again as well, nice blog post. I think I may track you if you don't mind?
SE need to stop playing at console warz because they're well on the road to becoming the "Overwhelming loser" of this gen. They were already in a terrible foinancial situation last year and SO4 has failed beyond all expectations
And right now, Sony doesn't need many JRPGS for sales, they actually just need more marketing for their top notch games.
SE is retarded for thinking that JRPGS will seel on the xbox360 in Japan.
...SE will release PS3 games after FFXIII and Versus are completed; all of their PS3 DEV resources seem to be focused on those games. I don't think they are capable of putting out a good PS3 game with these big games on their plate.
W
hen they do, they won't be big games like FFXIII or Versus; they'll likely be rebuilds or fixes of the games released for the 360.