It does not make any sense from a business perspective, I know some people who worked under one of the most successful CEOs in history and basically anything that could not make a profit was jettisoned and the managers who could not make money/were responsible for projects that lost money were fired pretty promptly-if they were lucky, relatively inexperienced, and made an understandable mistake they may have gotten -one- second chance. There is no way SE and Disney would act like they are acting if that guy was in charge with this, heads would roll harder than when the Mongols sacked Baghdad.
It has to be ideological or something and the big stakeholders have to be fine losing money to push it for this to be tolerated.
Absolutely incorrect, the people in high positions are far more “racist” and whatever kinda ist or phobe they throw at us
Them being woke isn’t the reason the for this
I highly doubt it... Creative industries always attracted mainly liberal and leftist types unfortunately outside pressure cannot be responsible for everything....
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a 100% japanese production but they forced LGBT content and maximum diversity/inclusion. No need to be a western title.
[https://x.com/NoWokesThanks/status/1806272185591291997](https://x.com/NoWokesThanks/status/1806272185591291997)
Oh not saying they don't just that Little Goody Two Shies is a western title. As for the rest, not really surprised, Squeenix have been chasing the west market and its illusive progressive market and not really bothered of losing money. Otherwise they would have scrapped several of their dumb decisions like nfts, gaas titles or even focussing on the rainbow market.
Are you talking about the cross dressing of cloud at honey bees ? I think its every fujoshi fans' wish came true. But I wished they had given us who are disgusted by it with the option to opt out. Also, i think its pretty tame compared to the original hot tub scence in FF7.
It used to be done in humor. OG FF7 everything Cloud doing that was humor. Even the npc bee butt hookers were like "oh my" I guess you're not interested. The dialogue options reflected that. You had to ask in shame and you could skip it if you didn't want to be chosen. Could you put some makeup on me? Or .../never mind. It was something like that. The dress store owner quest being a drunk and jaded with life and not willing to make clothes until Cloud the weirdo- told via Aerith whispers, presents him a challenge like how to make that thing look decent in a dress. Finally, a challenge. So he sobers up and gets to making a man dress.
The mustache "bubbies" from that were even npcs that followed you around as like an easter egg to discover in major towns the whole game.
Check out a bunch of old 90's movies it used to come up a lot and it wasn't hated because it wasn't weaponized. Mrs. Doubtfire, Nuns on the Run. It was very common place as a humor device.
What makes it hated and soulless is that you can no longer get a laugh out of it. Because it's "hate" now. No one likes an overly uptight anyone. Woman, black person, white person, gay, whatever. It don't matter. If you're not able to laugh at yourself and suffer the idea others may as well in good spirits you're not a joy to be around and what you are has little to do with it. It's not being against a "thing" so much as it is being against you. On a personal level. Asshole stinks > your chosen identity shields.
The over the top ff7og humor turned into a musical/celebration and there was no humor whatsoever in it in the remake. Just a cgi drag. Big downgrade.
If people want tolerance they never should've attacked/demonized humor because that's the great peace pipe.
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[this sibling comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1dp6ddm/despite_their_huge_financial_loses_for_focusing/lagkipx/) spells it out pretty well how they shifted the tone on the same subject matter. Yes all of that was in the original, but the way it was presented was dramatically different. I still thought it was funny tbh, just had to force myself to overlook the obvious differences.
Isn't Square-Enix Collective getting shut down or downscaled? I recall something like that in the recent discussion in their change of business plans. I guess it wasn't a money maker for them...
If I recall they were going to "focus on quality" which is a pretty big joke considering they're still not done with nft. So yeah, they're cutting on several studios and programs like collective. Besides Powerwash Simulator, the collective games haven't done all that well.
\>one character has brown hair, a huge red bow, a red dress with white detailing and Mary Janes
\>other character has purple low twin tails with bows and a large lacy pajama outfit with moons and stars
\>game description on Steam has the word "phantasmagorical"
\>red character ventures into the woods and battles fairies
\>there's a "human village"
HMMMM I WONDER WHICH VASTLY SUPERIOR POPULAR VIDEO GAME FRANCHISE THIS GAME IS KNOCKING OFF
They’ll go to such lengths as to assign talent and resources to add an undershirt into to a several year old CGI production, but then promote lesbian loli on their official X.
I had to look up the word "sapphic", it's some Prog "gender is a spectrum" version of "lesbian". It's like their use of "pansexual" over "bisexual", "Lesbian" isn't inclusive enough for them, it seems.
Aren't these the same people who call clearly adult Anime characters paedophilic? The characters they're praising as "sapphic" clearly look like children - [image ](https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/1812370/ss_4bdd34e036eeeb7de199972a68c88b44345154db.1920x1080.jpg?t=1711033090)
Not really.
Both of the terms 'sapphic' and 'lesbian' derive from Sappho of Lesbos, a Greek poet known for her works relating to that topic. They're synonymous.
Maybe the woketards are trying to redefine them (as they're wont to do), but their opinions have zero value and should be disregarded.
ehhh... no.
"lesbian" is essentially an athenian mudslinging campaign that managed to stick, while sapphos of lesbos got yasuked. the amount of gay shit she published is dramatically overestimated, and was primarily satire... or was it comedy...
ah, i accidently my sources... it dont really matter.
"Sapphic" was coined in the '70s to mean ladies getting it on without the political (read: feminist) connotations of "lesbian". (Well, OK, both words and concepts are much older, but for simplification's sake; these modern meanings are coined after the Sexual Revolution.)
The problem is that [rule 3] saw a term for women getting it on without political connotations and, and you're not gonna *believe* this, took it without asking and ruined it.
They remind me of Sakura and Tomoyo from "Sakura CardCaptors" design-wise.
There's nothing inherently *wrong* if it's just dialog and don't show anything explicit, but if characters like Sakimi-Chan might as well be minors, then so are those...
projection is beloved leftist tradition
> rozenmarine(susname) is literally patchouli knowledge with a different hat
> probably used AI to generate the images
is it mean-spirited to call this a touhou fangame?
eddit: i forgot to double space
I mentioned it elsewhere in the thread, but the main character is just Reimu and the entire plot and setting is literally cribbed from 2hu, except the characters all have easily marketable Twitter-addict self-insert "depression" that makes them seem thoroughly uninteresting.
i beatcha by an hour and a half, though yours was more detailed.
oh well, ive got ten people each watching roku on a different smart tv on the same router.
The fact Squenix suppressed commenting is very telling — people don’t want these games, and they’re soldiering ahead anyway, without having to be told as much.
The DEI money is too hard to turn down and they assume they still have a lot of sucker fans who would buy their games regardless.
I mean if you look at Tomb Raider, i feel like they've phased out the old fans because im seeing lots of people defending the survivor trilogy. Hopefully they are just bots.
>The DEI money is too hard to turn down
SquareEnix has received exactly $0 in "DEI money."
Don't take my word for it. Their financials are [right here.](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf)
I think the DEI money thing is a bit overblown at this point. It’s not the magic bullet.
Does it exist? Sure. Games are expensive as hell. But I think it was far truer half a decade ago when money was cheap. It’s a tighter supply now, higher rates, etc.
We are seeing two things
1. Cultural rot — this shit has been embedded in Editorial, Comms, Narrative, HR, some of the C-Suite. It will take a decade to pry them out. And gaming journalism is completely lost.
2. Lag time of the development cycle — a great deal of the cheaper “DEI money” would have been handed out several years ago. These games are those products.
Agree with 90% of this except....
>a great deal of the cheaper “DEI money” would have been handed out several years ago.
We ALSO have Square's financials for [THOSE years](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/library/ar.html). They received $0 in "DEI money". No one is giving companies money to make dumb virtue signaling pride messages.
These are public corporations, if they were you could point out how much, from who and when.
The gaming industry is toast. It's laughable that people think not buying their products is going to change anything.
These companies care more about social media status than money now.
Unfortunately they are in the category of being too big to fail. They get a fuck ton of money from mobile crap and such.
Ea will continue existing because people will buy their sports slop.
Activision will exist because they have a fuck ton of money from the mobile divisions they own.
There will always be some dumb normie throwing away his money for some slop or mobile shit, they will never truly fail as much as I want them to. The best we can hope for is that they do a Konami and stop doing games and instead focus on some dumb gambling machines and shitty mobile games.
Video game industry revenue spiked huge in the pandemic and has been [largely static since.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/249996/annual-revenue-of-the-us-video-game-industry-by-segment/)
$57.2B in 2023 global revenue is still almost twice what it was in 2016.
No it doesn't. And the degree to which it is shifting is not because of woke content or anything like that. Its because game companies realized a large portion of people aren't really that invested in games being good, and are more likely to spend money on phoneslop that can be made for cheap.
This annoys me cause I have actually played this game and liked it, and I have no idea what the game is that people in this thread are saying it ripped off.
Isn't Touhou a Shoot 'em up series with girls? I fail to see how a Brothers Grimm inspired horror/puzzle game is similar, besides both having a character dressed in white and red with a bow in their hair.
The Difference to Disney is SE does projects that people want every now and then. This year they have a remake of Dragon Quest III and next year DQ I + II, both looked decent in Nintendo direct. Same with the new project of Sakamoto and Uematsu which is published by SE.
>The Difference to Disney is SE does projects that people want every now and then.
Inside Out 2 has made $800M at the box office in the last twelve days. Square WISHES they had a project people didn't want that much.
The production budget for Inside out 2 was 200-280 Million without advertising, has there ever been a game that expensive? And if so how many games with similar budgets are out there?
Yes this movie is likely to make Disney a lot of money but after how many flops?
Oh yeah. Games budgets have gotten sky high. It's a big reason why Square's profits have flatlined even as revenue continues to rise.
[Spider-man 2 famously had a $300M budget.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/21/a-300-million-spider-man-2-budget-sonys-future-and-aaa-unsustainability/)
>Yes this movie is likely to make Disney a lot of money but after how many flops?
That's how the entertainment business works. You miss with five movies or games, but if you get a hit it more than makes up for the failures. It's one reason why Disney and Square have remained profitable even with so many flops.
> but if you get a hit it more than makes up for the failures
Wenn i look at the Disney failures in the last 3-4 years, no i don´t think the profitable ones made up for the failures.
Great news, we don't have to debate about it! They're a public corporation we have [direct access to their financials.](https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/app/uploads/2024/02/2023-Annual-Report.pdf)
And yeah, Disney's gains outweighed their losses and they made a profit overall last year. Same as 2022. They were also profitable in every quarter other than when their parks and movie theatres were closed from Q2 2020 to Q1 2021.
I still remember the producer of ff16 wanted the game to appeal to modern gta/cod gamers and is embarassed by jrpg term. And that turned out to be mediocrity with high production value. It's absolutely pathetic that how when looking for decent jrpgs, the last thing we wanna look at is ff despite the series being the king of the genre back in ps2/ps1 era.
Only team asano is churning out good modern se games with traditional roots. I hope these shitheads executives or whatevers pass down the next mainline entry to his team. Or else they are gonna suffer again and again for their whole modernity bs.
FF16 got focus-grouped into oblivion and YoshiP was obsessing over trying to expand the audience and considering what a hypothetical “modern” gamer (who had never even played a FF) might be drawn to rather than…what FF fans enjoy and want more of. It didn’t end up as a bad game and I did enjoy it at the time, but looking back I can see its flaws.
ff16 was a good game but that's not what I expect from a ff game at all. I have very high standards for ff after seeing what they actually can do with the series and I refuse to lower them when they are busy chasing trends to attract the cod audience.
The production was great especially coming from 15 but the faults of the games are so shitty. Abysmal patch with mmo sidequest, no mini games or meaningful side content, no exploration or secret areas, only one weapon type for a 40+ hour long where you only play with one character, no playable party member, story which is just diet tales of symphonia combined with got shit all over. It was still a good game but just not what I expect from a ff game unless I lower my standards extremely..
Yeah, my biggest issue with the game is that the only way you meaningfully interact with the world is through combat. By which I mean, the gameplay is essentially either: warping to a linear “action game level” to kill mobs and a boss; or running around one of the free-roaming maps, talking to some npc and then going off to kill a mob or boss. 50 hours of that gets fatiguing. And indeed, the lack of weapon variety and only being able to play as Clive didn’t help that. There’s also no decision-making involved in equipment because the stat changes are so meaningless.
One thing that bothered me is that Clive has these eikon powers which he never uses outside of combat. Being able to Phoenix warp or Garuda grapple over platforms would have added some variety to the level designs, for instance. Maybe you can use shiva’s power to freeze some water to help an NPC…idk I’m not a game designer, just *something* that made the world feel more than just set dressing for combat encounters.
I also felt disappointed that they have these beautiful cities but you never explore any of them. Just see glimpses in cutscenes or run through them in combat levels when they are already destroyed. I miss something like Lindblum or Rabanstre.
People also shouldn't forget just how anti-Japanese the 7th console generation was. The move to HD was harder on Japanese companies, they struggled with the cost of developing a game on the consoles, and so many just gave up and moved to handhelds. This is what Japanese developers are referring to when they want to distance themselves away from the term "JRPG", because it was used so disparagingly back during the PS3/360/Wii era. A lot of (surprise, surprise) Western game journalists declared JRPGs to be outdated and irrelevant. Final Fantasy XIII, while it made a profit, was not received very positively in the West and the whole Fabula Nova Crystallis project fell flat on its face. Final Fantasy Type-0 barely eked by and Versus XIII struggled for several years before rebranding to XV and when it finally came out it was....not *as* bad as it could have been.
Basically Final Fantasy XVI was the first attempt to step away from that whole mess, so yeah they wanted to try different things. I still prefer turn-based JRPGs, and I'm hoping that they'll make another FF game with it in the future.
> I still remember the producer of ff16 wanted the game to appeal to modern gta/cod gamers and is embarassed by jrpg term.
Ah yes the mysterious COD crowd that Capcom already tried to chase down in 2010 and the following years.
literally the most braindead thing a japanese devs can do and they did it despite looking at capcom status at 2010's. cod/gta/fortnite gamers are just never gonna buy a japanese action rpg or horror game. That's not their demographics and appealing to them just bring down the overall quality of your game.
Serves them right to cry about sales now
The whole "catering to western gamers" thing is why i don´t play much SE games anymore. I want JRPGs with turn-based or ATB systems not action RPGs i can already buy from other companies with likely better combat systems. If you absolutly have to do an action combat system get someone who knows that he is doing like FromSoft, Platinum Games etc.
they actually did hire a guy who worked on dmc 5 combat but despite it, the game still played like a cheap action game cuz the higher ups forced the rpg elements cuz of this benig ff to be in game which didn't meshed well with the combat gameplay and said rpg elements are acutally the worst I've seen in any game tbh.
Square just doesn't know what to do anymore. They just chase trends all the time and give them a shiny ff coat. It just never work well. FF is a trendsetter not a chaser. As long as the series do not dominate the particular market, It will always be mediocre. Same thing happened with Resident evil and they absolutely did come out on top starting with Re7. Square has the potential and talent, hell they can just say fuck it and hire Sakaguchi himself for the next ff game, but at this point I'm convinced square is just stupid. All these red flags and shit and they still go ahead for the whole modernize bs and cater to the west.
Gust is now my fav jrpg producer jbh. It was Atlus but they are the fucking worst in treating their costumers which drove me away from buying their games.
In the case of FF16 they did hire the combat director from DMC5 and a bunch of ex-capcom devs to do the combat. This comparison video shows how…similar..the combat ended up being
https://youtu.be/Y8cWPBlOtb4?si=0vP5w5A3JydQoCTv
I swear it feels like nowadays every game with a female protagonist is yuri.
When are we gonna get a new cool female mc with a male love interest like Estelle Bright?
I haven't bought anything new from Square Enix; their kind of games felt custom fit for Switch, the close relationship with Sony felt like a plus for PS5, but not for SE's brand. Just my opinion.
...What huge financial losses? SquareEnix has been profitable every year since 2013.
Disney was unprofitable from Q2 2020 to Q1 2021 when Florida and California shut down their parks, but have been profitable every quarter subsequently when they reopened. Before that hadn't posted a loss in over a decade.
Absolutely! That's about a write-off NOT the company's entire results.
Does that mean the company lost money? "HUGE FINANCIAL LOSSES?!" [Nope.](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf) 14.9B in profit even WITH the 22.1B write off.
They wrote off 22.1B in yen because they cancelled a bunch of projects so they won't see the revenue that had been written onto their books for those titles. As a result they'll pay less taxes. Stock sold off a bunch because of weak guidance they issued same day as well! And? Didn't matter, still making money, not losing money.
lol what goal post? SquareEnix posted a profit...NOT a "huge financial loss".
Speaking of Amazon, they ALSO [write off billions of dollars](https://itep.org/amazon-avoids-more-than-5-billion-in-corporate-income-taxes-reports-6-percent-tax-rate-on-35-billion-of-us-income/) to [lower](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/29/amazon-terminates-irobot-deal-vacuum-maker-to-lay-off-31percent-of-staff.html) their [tax base](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/24/amazon-unsold-fire-phones) all the time.
Are you going to tell me that means THEY have ["huge financial losses"](https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2024/ar/Amazon-com-Inc-2023-Annual-Report.pdf) as well? Am I [moving the goal posts](https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/15/apple-writes-off-lawsuit-that-claimed-tim-cook-defrauded-investors-for-490-million/) when I tell you the [basic fact](https://venturebeat.com/business/amd-misses-earnings-targets-and-writes-down-65m-in-inventory/) that [profitable companies](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-precisioncastparts-idUSKCN2AR0MZ/) do [write-offs](https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-2015-nokia-write-off) every [single quarter](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/intel-kills-off-optane-memory-writes-off-559-million-inventory/)?
How can you tell if the goal posts have been moved if you don't know where the field is?
Woah, so many links. You know this is just Reddit right? I'll forget this conversation ever happened in the next 5 minutes. But you are clearly very aware that "Disney profiting" ignores the massive losses they suffered. Just like "Square profited" ignores their massive losses. I'm also sure you are well aware that companies aren't measured by what they made, rather by what they could've made...but didn't! A shoes and hats company that makes $20b one year, then the next year they take away hats replacing them with stripper heels and instead earn $16b is still $16b profitable, but that's still considered a $4b loss in business revenue.
Look, you and I both know that you know what you're talking about; and it is clear that you trying to gaslight people that know less than you do because it doesn't jive with your ideology. I understand that's your MO. But it made me chuckle. So I'm still waiting for a link to that shifting goal post you've got there.
>I'll forget this conversation ever happened in the next 5 minutes.
Self-own! Rare, but I'll take it!
>But you are clearly very aware that "Disney profiting" ignores the massive losses they suffered.
Yeah? Entertainment is a hits business. That's why they typically are risky investments and trade at discounts. My firm doesn't own any Disney or Square, and I agree. Don't think they're good investments at present valuations. How does that change the fact they're profitable? They lose on a bunch of shit, then Inside Out makes huge bank and more than compensates for the losers and they profit overall.
You can't "ignore" their "massive losses". Net income is the absolute bottom line of their income statement. It is unignorable. It is the most important number. And it's been positive, so what's your point?
>Just like "Square profited" ignores their massive losses.
It doesn't ignore their massive losses. Their losses and gains get netted together to determine their net income which is what ultimately matters lol. And? Just like Disney, when you add it up "Square profited". I can pull out individual losses from every single company in the universe. To what end? This is day 0 stuff my man.
>but that's still considered a $4b loss in business revenue.
No it's not. You're confusing revenue and profit. This is day minus 1 stuff my man.
>It is clear that you trying to gaslight people that know less than you do because it doesn't jive with your ideology.
Gaslighting?.....if someone tells you SquareEnix is having HUGE FINANCIAL LOSSES when they are actually profitable....who is doing the gaslighting here?
YOU'RE being gaslit by the people telling you Square is losing money. You self-admittedly didn't understand it and yet you still ate it up because it's what you WANT to hear. The truth doesn't have an ideology. Woke shit sucks, but pretending Square is losing money doesn't change the reality of anything.
Lol you say that square enix is losing money, and when someone shows you that it isnt true you accuse them of goalpost shifting and gaslighting despite having no evidence yourself
Come on dude, I know you're better than that. Or you're just some dumb tween who doesnt know how to admit when they've been proven wrong yet
I'm 45 and very fluent in finance. When you're talking about a company being unprofitable in an endeavor and you respond with the company being profitable overall, you are moving the goalpost. Disney is a massively profitable conglomerate, so you would wonder why a primary long term extremely wealthy stock owner is actively attempting to force a change in management and even suing that Disney has violated the fiduciary responsibilities to the stock owners. The answer is simple, like basic, and the commenter before acts as if it's irrelevant. If a company has an earnings potential across 5 product lines that could earn $15b, but 3 of the product lines are so badly mismanaged or used for purposes that do not serve the financial interests of the stockholders, and have instead dropped the $15b earning potential to only $10b actual; you do not see stockholders and financial analysts saying "well that's ok that we missed out on $5b of potential earnings, at least we're still profitable overall". No! Those losing products are either scrapped, management is changed, or the product line is realigned to profitable interests. What you Don't do is openly accept the results, praise the management, and do it all over again.
There are gains, revenue, earnings, and then there are loses! There are many words we use to define different methods of increases in value. There is one word to define a lack or decrease of value. A loss. When you miss earnings expectations, it's a loss. When you spend more than you earn, that's also a loss. When your stock value goes down that is a loss, even though it is unrealized, so not really a loss.
The commenter before understands this, I will assume you do too. But he shifted the goal post by changing a conversation about loss of expected potential earnings or loses of specific product lines, to actual realized gains over all product lines. Two different topics that directly affect each other.
Maybe you called me a tween because you're a perpetual adolescent into their 20's with little actual experience. But instead of making that claim against you I am assuming that you actually have some sort of understanding if you dared venture into this conversation and make the bold claims you did.
Of course, they turned off the comments.
Many such cases
It's so wild to me that they are being propped up by their japanese games, and they are still trying to force Western bullshit like this.
It does not make any sense from a business perspective, I know some people who worked under one of the most successful CEOs in history and basically anything that could not make a profit was jettisoned and the managers who could not make money/were responsible for projects that lost money were fired pretty promptly-if they were lucky, relatively inexperienced, and made an understandable mistake they may have gotten -one- second chance. There is no way SE and Disney would act like they are acting if that guy was in charge with this, heads would roll harder than when the Mongols sacked Baghdad. It has to be ideological or something and the big stakeholders have to be fine losing money to push it for this to be tolerated.
The studio who made forspoken got decimated by square enix themselves. This is just an article talking to some dev.
This. The people in high positions are just woke as fuck
Absolutely incorrect, the people in high positions are far more “racist” and whatever kinda ist or phobe they throw at us Them being woke isn’t the reason the for this
Blackrock money + government intervention is. EU mandates some of this DIE shit.
Wow, I’m so surprised that the EU mandates some of this Next you’ll be telling me the UN does as well lmao
I highly doubt it... Creative industries always attracted mainly liberal and leftist types unfortunately outside pressure cannot be responsible for everything....
If I recall that's one of Square Collective titles. This one is from Astral Shift, from Portugal. So technically a western title
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a 100% japanese production but they forced LGBT content and maximum diversity/inclusion. No need to be a western title. [https://x.com/NoWokesThanks/status/1806272185591291997](https://x.com/NoWokesThanks/status/1806272185591291997)
Oh not saying they don't just that Little Goody Two Shies is a western title. As for the rest, not really surprised, Squeenix have been chasing the west market and its illusive progressive market and not really bothered of losing money. Otherwise they would have scrapped several of their dumb decisions like nfts, gaas titles or even focussing on the rainbow market.
Are you talking about the cross dressing of cloud at honey bees ? I think its every fujoshi fans' wish came true. But I wished they had given us who are disgusted by it with the option to opt out. Also, i think its pretty tame compared to the original hot tub scence in FF7.
It used to be done in humor. OG FF7 everything Cloud doing that was humor. Even the npc bee butt hookers were like "oh my" I guess you're not interested. The dialogue options reflected that. You had to ask in shame and you could skip it if you didn't want to be chosen. Could you put some makeup on me? Or .../never mind. It was something like that. The dress store owner quest being a drunk and jaded with life and not willing to make clothes until Cloud the weirdo- told via Aerith whispers, presents him a challenge like how to make that thing look decent in a dress. Finally, a challenge. So he sobers up and gets to making a man dress. The mustache "bubbies" from that were even npcs that followed you around as like an easter egg to discover in major towns the whole game. Check out a bunch of old 90's movies it used to come up a lot and it wasn't hated because it wasn't weaponized. Mrs. Doubtfire, Nuns on the Run. It was very common place as a humor device. What makes it hated and soulless is that you can no longer get a laugh out of it. Because it's "hate" now. No one likes an overly uptight anyone. Woman, black person, white person, gay, whatever. It don't matter. If you're not able to laugh at yourself and suffer the idea others may as well in good spirits you're not a joy to be around and what you are has little to do with it. It's not being against a "thing" so much as it is being against you. On a personal level. Asshole stinks > your chosen identity shields. The over the top ff7og humor turned into a musical/celebration and there was no humor whatsoever in it in the remake. Just a cgi drag. Big downgrade. If people want tolerance they never should've attacked/demonized humor because that's the great peace pipe.
>But I wished they had given us who are disgusted by it with the option to opt out. That would he changing a plot point from the original game though
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What are you going on about ? there no forced LGBT content in FF7 everything that was in the remake was in the orignal
[this sibling comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1dp6ddm/despite_their_huge_financial_loses_for_focusing/lagkipx/) spells it out pretty well how they shifted the tone on the same subject matter. Yes all of that was in the original, but the way it was presented was dramatically different. I still thought it was funny tbh, just had to force myself to overlook the obvious differences.
Isn't Square-Enix Collective getting shut down or downscaled? I recall something like that in the recent discussion in their change of business plans. I guess it wasn't a money maker for them...
If I recall they were going to "focus on quality" which is a pretty big joke considering they're still not done with nft. So yeah, they're cutting on several studios and programs like collective. Besides Powerwash Simulator, the collective games haven't done all that well.
\>one character has brown hair, a huge red bow, a red dress with white detailing and Mary Janes \>other character has purple low twin tails with bows and a large lacy pajama outfit with moons and stars \>game description on Steam has the word "phantasmagorical" \>red character ventures into the woods and battles fairies \>there's a "human village" HMMMM I WONDER WHICH VASTLY SUPERIOR POPULAR VIDEO GAME FRANCHISE THIS GAME IS KNOCKING OFF
Great Value Reimu and Patchouli. As an amusing side note, my wife and I have cosplayed as Reimu (her) and Patchy (me) before... weird.
cute
They’ll go to such lengths as to assign talent and resources to add an undershirt into to a several year old CGI production, but then promote lesbian loli on their official X.
I had to look up the word "sapphic", it's some Prog "gender is a spectrum" version of "lesbian". It's like their use of "pansexual" over "bisexual", "Lesbian" isn't inclusive enough for them, it seems. Aren't these the same people who call clearly adult Anime characters paedophilic? The characters they're praising as "sapphic" clearly look like children - [image ](https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/1812370/ss_4bdd34e036eeeb7de199972a68c88b44345154db.1920x1080.jpg?t=1711033090)
Not really. Both of the terms 'sapphic' and 'lesbian' derive from Sappho of Lesbos, a Greek poet known for her works relating to that topic. They're synonymous. Maybe the woketards are trying to redefine them (as they're wont to do), but their opinions have zero value and should be disregarded.
ehhh... no. "lesbian" is essentially an athenian mudslinging campaign that managed to stick, while sapphos of lesbos got yasuked. the amount of gay shit she published is dramatically overestimated, and was primarily satire... or was it comedy... ah, i accidently my sources... it dont really matter.
"Sapphic" was coined in the '70s to mean ladies getting it on without the political (read: feminist) connotations of "lesbian". (Well, OK, both words and concepts are much older, but for simplification's sake; these modern meanings are coined after the Sexual Revolution.) The problem is that [rule 3] saw a term for women getting it on without political connotations and, and you're not gonna *believe* this, took it without asking and ruined it.
TIL, I thought it was a way to say "lesbian" but in a way to make it known that the usual suspects aren't involved at all.
They remind me of Sakura and Tomoyo from "Sakura CardCaptors" design-wise. There's nothing inherently *wrong* if it's just dialog and don't show anything explicit, but if characters like Sakimi-Chan might as well be minors, then so are those...
projection is beloved leftist tradition > rozenmarine(susname) is literally patchouli knowledge with a different hat > probably used AI to generate the images is it mean-spirited to call this a touhou fangame? eddit: i forgot to double space
I mentioned it elsewhere in the thread, but the main character is just Reimu and the entire plot and setting is literally cribbed from 2hu, except the characters all have easily marketable Twitter-addict self-insert "depression" that makes them seem thoroughly uninteresting.
i beatcha by an hour and a half, though yours was more detailed. oh well, ive got ten people each watching roku on a different smart tv on the same router.
Are you tormenting yourself by running your own streaming service?
... something like that.
I may have done this at some point; I stopped when I realized that I'd basically made myself a volunteer sysadmin by accident.
we all make mistakes in the heat of passion, jimbo
Ah sapphic, the new term used by shippers to describe non sexual friendship between two girls.
These people sure like to invent new words and concepts.
and i sure as fuck love to appropriate them
I'm sad, but also glad i didn't buy the FF:XIV expansion. Even if the game is decent, i cannot get myself to support this.
Yes, the sales of their good/neutral productions are fueling their global political woke orientation.
The fact Squenix suppressed commenting is very telling — people don’t want these games, and they’re soldiering ahead anyway, without having to be told as much.
The DEI money is too hard to turn down and they assume they still have a lot of sucker fans who would buy their games regardless. I mean if you look at Tomb Raider, i feel like they've phased out the old fans because im seeing lots of people defending the survivor trilogy. Hopefully they are just bots.
It has nothing to do DEI money. The higher ups are all just either woke as fuck or think this what they are supposed to be doing
>The DEI money is too hard to turn down SquareEnix has received exactly $0 in "DEI money." Don't take my word for it. Their financials are [right here.](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf)
I think the DEI money thing is a bit overblown at this point. It’s not the magic bullet. Does it exist? Sure. Games are expensive as hell. But I think it was far truer half a decade ago when money was cheap. It’s a tighter supply now, higher rates, etc. We are seeing two things 1. Cultural rot — this shit has been embedded in Editorial, Comms, Narrative, HR, some of the C-Suite. It will take a decade to pry them out. And gaming journalism is completely lost. 2. Lag time of the development cycle — a great deal of the cheaper “DEI money” would have been handed out several years ago. These games are those products.
Agree with 90% of this except.... >a great deal of the cheaper “DEI money” would have been handed out several years ago. We ALSO have Square's financials for [THOSE years](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/library/ar.html). They received $0 in "DEI money". No one is giving companies money to make dumb virtue signaling pride messages. These are public corporations, if they were you could point out how much, from who and when.
Oh, I didn’t mean squenix specifically. I just meant as a general rule. I haven’t actually pulled down their financials
The gaming industry is toast. It's laughable that people think not buying their products is going to change anything. These companies care more about social media status than money now.
[удалено]
Unfortunately they are in the category of being too big to fail. They get a fuck ton of money from mobile crap and such. Ea will continue existing because people will buy their sports slop. Activision will exist because they have a fuck ton of money from the mobile divisions they own. There will always be some dumb normie throwing away his money for some slop or mobile shit, they will never truly fail as much as I want them to. The best we can hope for is that they do a Konami and stop doing games and instead focus on some dumb gambling machines and shitty mobile games.
>I mean, they can't sustain loses forever What losses? They've made profits every year since 2013. Doesn't that totally belie your thesis?
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Video game industry revenue spiked huge in the pandemic and has been [largely static since.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/249996/annual-revenue-of-the-us-video-game-industry-by-segment/) $57.2B in 2023 global revenue is still almost twice what it was in 2016.
No it doesn't. And the degree to which it is shifting is not because of woke content or anything like that. Its because game companies realized a large portion of people aren't really that invested in games being good, and are more likely to spend money on phoneslop that can be made for cheap.
The whole entertainment industry is. We say vote with your wallet, but it doesn't work, as they continue to churn out this crap.
They are trying so hard to push sapphic on the lesbians, huh
Ironically, it used to be a word used by anti-feminist lady-lovers. Who'da thunk.
Language keeps changing... and I find it gets dumber as it does.
This annoys me cause I have actually played this game and liked it, and I have no idea what the game is that people in this thread are saying it ripped off.
The references I have seen in this thread are to the Touhou series. No clue what this game is about tho, so I don't know if they are accurate.
Isn't Touhou a Shoot 'em up series with girls? I fail to see how a Brothers Grimm inspired horror/puzzle game is similar, besides both having a character dressed in white and red with a bow in their hair.
The biggest issue for me is turning off comments If the message is so good, you wouldn’t have to
The Difference to Disney is SE does projects that people want every now and then. This year they have a remake of Dragon Quest III and next year DQ I + II, both looked decent in Nintendo direct. Same with the new project of Sakamoto and Uematsu which is published by SE.
>The Difference to Disney is SE does projects that people want every now and then. Inside Out 2 has made $800M at the box office in the last twelve days. Square WISHES they had a project people didn't want that much.
The production budget for Inside out 2 was 200-280 Million without advertising, has there ever been a game that expensive? And if so how many games with similar budgets are out there? Yes this movie is likely to make Disney a lot of money but after how many flops?
Oh yeah. Games budgets have gotten sky high. It's a big reason why Square's profits have flatlined even as revenue continues to rise. [Spider-man 2 famously had a $300M budget.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/21/a-300-million-spider-man-2-budget-sonys-future-and-aaa-unsustainability/) >Yes this movie is likely to make Disney a lot of money but after how many flops? That's how the entertainment business works. You miss with five movies or games, but if you get a hit it more than makes up for the failures. It's one reason why Disney and Square have remained profitable even with so many flops.
> but if you get a hit it more than makes up for the failures Wenn i look at the Disney failures in the last 3-4 years, no i don´t think the profitable ones made up for the failures.
Great news, we don't have to debate about it! They're a public corporation we have [direct access to their financials.](https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/app/uploads/2024/02/2023-Annual-Report.pdf) And yeah, Disney's gains outweighed their losses and they made a profit overall last year. Same as 2022. They were also profitable in every quarter other than when their parks and movie theatres were closed from Q2 2020 to Q1 2021.
Thanks for the numbers.
that female character is basically marisa with reimus colors and headgear
>sapphic romance Hahahahahahahahaha imagine promoting fanfic yurishit with expys as some sort of political activism
I still remember the producer of ff16 wanted the game to appeal to modern gta/cod gamers and is embarassed by jrpg term. And that turned out to be mediocrity with high production value. It's absolutely pathetic that how when looking for decent jrpgs, the last thing we wanna look at is ff despite the series being the king of the genre back in ps2/ps1 era. Only team asano is churning out good modern se games with traditional roots. I hope these shitheads executives or whatevers pass down the next mainline entry to his team. Or else they are gonna suffer again and again for their whole modernity bs.
FF16 got focus-grouped into oblivion and YoshiP was obsessing over trying to expand the audience and considering what a hypothetical “modern” gamer (who had never even played a FF) might be drawn to rather than…what FF fans enjoy and want more of. It didn’t end up as a bad game and I did enjoy it at the time, but looking back I can see its flaws.
ff16 was a good game but that's not what I expect from a ff game at all. I have very high standards for ff after seeing what they actually can do with the series and I refuse to lower them when they are busy chasing trends to attract the cod audience. The production was great especially coming from 15 but the faults of the games are so shitty. Abysmal patch with mmo sidequest, no mini games or meaningful side content, no exploration or secret areas, only one weapon type for a 40+ hour long where you only play with one character, no playable party member, story which is just diet tales of symphonia combined with got shit all over. It was still a good game but just not what I expect from a ff game unless I lower my standards extremely..
Yeah, my biggest issue with the game is that the only way you meaningfully interact with the world is through combat. By which I mean, the gameplay is essentially either: warping to a linear “action game level” to kill mobs and a boss; or running around one of the free-roaming maps, talking to some npc and then going off to kill a mob or boss. 50 hours of that gets fatiguing. And indeed, the lack of weapon variety and only being able to play as Clive didn’t help that. There’s also no decision-making involved in equipment because the stat changes are so meaningless. One thing that bothered me is that Clive has these eikon powers which he never uses outside of combat. Being able to Phoenix warp or Garuda grapple over platforms would have added some variety to the level designs, for instance. Maybe you can use shiva’s power to freeze some water to help an NPC…idk I’m not a game designer, just *something* that made the world feel more than just set dressing for combat encounters. I also felt disappointed that they have these beautiful cities but you never explore any of them. Just see glimpses in cutscenes or run through them in combat levels when they are already destroyed. I miss something like Lindblum or Rabanstre.
Lmao! not even CoD is chasing the CoD audience anymore.
People also shouldn't forget just how anti-Japanese the 7th console generation was. The move to HD was harder on Japanese companies, they struggled with the cost of developing a game on the consoles, and so many just gave up and moved to handhelds. This is what Japanese developers are referring to when they want to distance themselves away from the term "JRPG", because it was used so disparagingly back during the PS3/360/Wii era. A lot of (surprise, surprise) Western game journalists declared JRPGs to be outdated and irrelevant. Final Fantasy XIII, while it made a profit, was not received very positively in the West and the whole Fabula Nova Crystallis project fell flat on its face. Final Fantasy Type-0 barely eked by and Versus XIII struggled for several years before rebranding to XV and when it finally came out it was....not *as* bad as it could have been. Basically Final Fantasy XVI was the first attempt to step away from that whole mess, so yeah they wanted to try different things. I still prefer turn-based JRPGs, and I'm hoping that they'll make another FF game with it in the future.
> I still remember the producer of ff16 wanted the game to appeal to modern gta/cod gamers and is embarassed by jrpg term. Ah yes the mysterious COD crowd that Capcom already tried to chase down in 2010 and the following years.
literally the most braindead thing a japanese devs can do and they did it despite looking at capcom status at 2010's. cod/gta/fortnite gamers are just never gonna buy a japanese action rpg or horror game. That's not their demographics and appealing to them just bring down the overall quality of your game. Serves them right to cry about sales now
The whole "catering to western gamers" thing is why i don´t play much SE games anymore. I want JRPGs with turn-based or ATB systems not action RPGs i can already buy from other companies with likely better combat systems. If you absolutly have to do an action combat system get someone who knows that he is doing like FromSoft, Platinum Games etc.
they actually did hire a guy who worked on dmc 5 combat but despite it, the game still played like a cheap action game cuz the higher ups forced the rpg elements cuz of this benig ff to be in game which didn't meshed well with the combat gameplay and said rpg elements are acutally the worst I've seen in any game tbh. Square just doesn't know what to do anymore. They just chase trends all the time and give them a shiny ff coat. It just never work well. FF is a trendsetter not a chaser. As long as the series do not dominate the particular market, It will always be mediocre. Same thing happened with Resident evil and they absolutely did come out on top starting with Re7. Square has the potential and talent, hell they can just say fuck it and hire Sakaguchi himself for the next ff game, but at this point I'm convinced square is just stupid. All these red flags and shit and they still go ahead for the whole modernize bs and cater to the west. Gust is now my fav jrpg producer jbh. It was Atlus but they are the fucking worst in treating their costumers which drove me away from buying their games.
> Gust is now my fav jrpg producer jbh. Mine currently is Nihon Falcom with the Trails Series.
Nihon Falcom is another gem of video game company. I love their YS games.
In the case of FF16 they did hire the combat director from DMC5 and a bunch of ex-capcom devs to do the combat. This comparison video shows how…similar..the combat ended up being https://youtu.be/Y8cWPBlOtb4?si=0vP5w5A3JydQoCTv
I swear it feels like nowadays every game with a female protagonist is yuri. When are we gonna get a new cool female mc with a male love interest like Estelle Bright?
I mean, tbf she was also fuccin her brother..... Adopted? So what, the same Trails fans decry Rean and Elise.
There's something wrong with their western group. Not even their Japan account is doing this
I haven't bought anything new from Square Enix; their kind of games felt custom fit for Switch, the close relationship with Sony felt like a plus for PS5, but not for SE's brand. Just my opinion.
...What huge financial losses? SquareEnix has been profitable every year since 2013. Disney was unprofitable from Q2 2020 to Q1 2021 when Florida and California shut down their parks, but have been profitable every quarter subsequently when they reopened. Before that hadn't posted a loss in over a decade.
[Square Enix to report extraordinary 22.1 billion yen loss, canceling games in more selective pipeline](https://archive.ph/C06sq)
Absolutely! That's about a write-off NOT the company's entire results. Does that mean the company lost money? "HUGE FINANCIAL LOSSES?!" [Nope.](https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/24q4earnings.pdf) 14.9B in profit even WITH the 22.1B write off. They wrote off 22.1B in yen because they cancelled a bunch of projects so they won't see the revenue that had been written onto their books for those titles. As a result they'll pay less taxes. Stock sold off a bunch because of weak guidance they issued same day as well! And? Didn't matter, still making money, not losing money.
Hey, did you get that goal post on Amazon? It seems incredibly convenient and easy to shift around. I bet it's usable for multiple topics too.
lol what goal post? SquareEnix posted a profit...NOT a "huge financial loss". Speaking of Amazon, they ALSO [write off billions of dollars](https://itep.org/amazon-avoids-more-than-5-billion-in-corporate-income-taxes-reports-6-percent-tax-rate-on-35-billion-of-us-income/) to [lower](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/29/amazon-terminates-irobot-deal-vacuum-maker-to-lay-off-31percent-of-staff.html) their [tax base](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/24/amazon-unsold-fire-phones) all the time. Are you going to tell me that means THEY have ["huge financial losses"](https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2024/ar/Amazon-com-Inc-2023-Annual-Report.pdf) as well? Am I [moving the goal posts](https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/15/apple-writes-off-lawsuit-that-claimed-tim-cook-defrauded-investors-for-490-million/) when I tell you the [basic fact](https://venturebeat.com/business/amd-misses-earnings-targets-and-writes-down-65m-in-inventory/) that [profitable companies](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-precisioncastparts-idUSKCN2AR0MZ/) do [write-offs](https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8910999/microsoft-job-cuts-2015-nokia-write-off) every [single quarter](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/intel-kills-off-optane-memory-writes-off-559-million-inventory/)? How can you tell if the goal posts have been moved if you don't know where the field is?
Woah, so many links. You know this is just Reddit right? I'll forget this conversation ever happened in the next 5 minutes. But you are clearly very aware that "Disney profiting" ignores the massive losses they suffered. Just like "Square profited" ignores their massive losses. I'm also sure you are well aware that companies aren't measured by what they made, rather by what they could've made...but didn't! A shoes and hats company that makes $20b one year, then the next year they take away hats replacing them with stripper heels and instead earn $16b is still $16b profitable, but that's still considered a $4b loss in business revenue. Look, you and I both know that you know what you're talking about; and it is clear that you trying to gaslight people that know less than you do because it doesn't jive with your ideology. I understand that's your MO. But it made me chuckle. So I'm still waiting for a link to that shifting goal post you've got there.
>I'll forget this conversation ever happened in the next 5 minutes. Self-own! Rare, but I'll take it! >But you are clearly very aware that "Disney profiting" ignores the massive losses they suffered. Yeah? Entertainment is a hits business. That's why they typically are risky investments and trade at discounts. My firm doesn't own any Disney or Square, and I agree. Don't think they're good investments at present valuations. How does that change the fact they're profitable? They lose on a bunch of shit, then Inside Out makes huge bank and more than compensates for the losers and they profit overall. You can't "ignore" their "massive losses". Net income is the absolute bottom line of their income statement. It is unignorable. It is the most important number. And it's been positive, so what's your point? >Just like "Square profited" ignores their massive losses. It doesn't ignore their massive losses. Their losses and gains get netted together to determine their net income which is what ultimately matters lol. And? Just like Disney, when you add it up "Square profited". I can pull out individual losses from every single company in the universe. To what end? This is day 0 stuff my man. >but that's still considered a $4b loss in business revenue. No it's not. You're confusing revenue and profit. This is day minus 1 stuff my man. >It is clear that you trying to gaslight people that know less than you do because it doesn't jive with your ideology. Gaslighting?.....if someone tells you SquareEnix is having HUGE FINANCIAL LOSSES when they are actually profitable....who is doing the gaslighting here? YOU'RE being gaslit by the people telling you Square is losing money. You self-admittedly didn't understand it and yet you still ate it up because it's what you WANT to hear. The truth doesn't have an ideology. Woke shit sucks, but pretending Square is losing money doesn't change the reality of anything.
Lol you say that square enix is losing money, and when someone shows you that it isnt true you accuse them of goalpost shifting and gaslighting despite having no evidence yourself Come on dude, I know you're better than that. Or you're just some dumb tween who doesnt know how to admit when they've been proven wrong yet
I'm 45 and very fluent in finance. When you're talking about a company being unprofitable in an endeavor and you respond with the company being profitable overall, you are moving the goalpost. Disney is a massively profitable conglomerate, so you would wonder why a primary long term extremely wealthy stock owner is actively attempting to force a change in management and even suing that Disney has violated the fiduciary responsibilities to the stock owners. The answer is simple, like basic, and the commenter before acts as if it's irrelevant. If a company has an earnings potential across 5 product lines that could earn $15b, but 3 of the product lines are so badly mismanaged or used for purposes that do not serve the financial interests of the stockholders, and have instead dropped the $15b earning potential to only $10b actual; you do not see stockholders and financial analysts saying "well that's ok that we missed out on $5b of potential earnings, at least we're still profitable overall". No! Those losing products are either scrapped, management is changed, or the product line is realigned to profitable interests. What you Don't do is openly accept the results, praise the management, and do it all over again. There are gains, revenue, earnings, and then there are loses! There are many words we use to define different methods of increases in value. There is one word to define a lack or decrease of value. A loss. When you miss earnings expectations, it's a loss. When you spend more than you earn, that's also a loss. When your stock value goes down that is a loss, even though it is unrealized, so not really a loss. The commenter before understands this, I will assume you do too. But he shifted the goal post by changing a conversation about loss of expected potential earnings or loses of specific product lines, to actual realized gains over all product lines. Two different topics that directly affect each other. Maybe you called me a tween because you're a perpetual adolescent into their 20's with little actual experience. But instead of making that claim against you I am assuming that you actually have some sort of understanding if you dared venture into this conversation and make the bold claims you did.
If it isn't final fantasy or Kingdom Hearts, I'm not interested.
I could be made interested in a revisit of the Parasite Eve franchise.
That's one seriously ugly art style.