Final Fantasy XVI
Square Enix is in a bad place at the moment, the storied video game company coming off a rough year, $2 billon lost in market value since the launch of Final Fantasy 16 this past June.
The loss is not blamed on Final Fantasy 16 specifically, but rather the more important elements were outright failures like Forspoken and Babylon’s Fall, with the latter being one of the worst reviewed large releases in recent memory. A 41 on Metacritic, a literal death sentence (and the game was indeed killed a year after launch).
Axios has a good summary of the recent issues, and one key point drawn out is that Square Enix has been relying on its longstanding relationship with Sony much too frequently. Final Fantasy 16 launched exclusively on PS5. Forspoken was only on PlayStation and PC. It’s rare to keep seeing a third party do such expansive deals with just one console manufacturer, but it seems that Square Enix has learned that lesson, recently holding hands with Xbox’s Phil Spencer, with the promise of big releases on Xbox and partnerships with Microsoft to come.
As such, it stands to reason that Final Fantasy 17, whenever it arrives, is almost certainly going to avoid Sony exclusivity and instead launch simultaneously on Xbox, and hopefully PC as well. Unless Sony is paying Square Enix an astonishing amount of money to keep it exclusive, it’s not going to be worth it, even though Xbox sales will be fewer than PS sales, clearly.
There’s also the quality control problem. Forspoken was a miss, still better than Redfall, I suppose, but it was supposed to be a big new IP for them. Babylon’s Fall was just…that should have never seen the light of day at all. This extends before this as well, the ill-conceived idea to make Marvel’s Avengers a looter. The idea that solid games like Tomb Raider and Guardians of the Galaxy need to be megahits, and because they weren’t these studios get pawned off to Embracer for dirty cheap (who knows if they’ll survive over there, at this rate).
Forspoken
Final Fantasy is the most consistent performer. Final Fantasy 16 sales were reportedly within Square Enix’s expectations, but in a year with big losses, you would need them to exceed those expectations to offset that. FF16 even reviewed quite well, but 2023 has been a year of an astonishing amount of quality games, so it got somewhat lost in the shuffle between Tears, Diablo 4, Baldur’s Gate 3 and others all releasing over the summer. And once those were finished, oops, time for Armored Core, Starfield and now Spider-Man. And PlayStation exclusivity for the third party title certainly did not help.
It remains to be seen if Square Enix could end up being an acquisition target for either Sony or Microsoft, especially now that it’s much cheaper due to these losses, and management may think that maybe now is the time to cash out after all these years. Microsoft has of course repeatedly expressed an interest in adding Japanese companies to its growing portfolio, and right now, SE is down to a mere $4.1 billion market cap. Sony just bought Bungie, who’s only current game is Destiny 2, for $3.5 billion. Not to say Square Enix will sell right now, but this is the climate the industry is in.
For now, expect essentially all multiplatform releases after what happened this year, and where Square Enix wants to go from here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
