More bad news for Square-Enix

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Mako

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Geez, its going from "Really bad" to "Worse" Square is reporting a negative 226% change in there outlook for 2010. After already two years of record breaking losses!


http://www.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/110512.pdf


Excerpt:


Due to the recording of extraordinary losses, forecasted net income (loss) is revised for fiscal year.
Under a rapidly changing operating environment and more prudent estimates of future cash flows, the
Company plans to write down goodwill (approximately ¥8.8 billion). Further, as a result of introducing a
tightened selection standard regarding title lineup to strengthen the revenue base of the Company’s
digital entertainment segment, project development cancellation and related losses (approximately
¥4.5 billion) are expected.
Additionally, damage and losses during closures at, and restoration of, amusement facilities resulting
from the Tohoku Pacific Ocean Earthquakes and Tsunami caused an extraordinary “loss on disaster”
(approximately ¥0.6 billion).
The above factors as well as losses on retirement of noncurrent assets (approximately ¥0.6 billion),
losses on adjustment for changes of accounting standard for asset retirement obligations
(approximately ¥0.5 billion) and other losses are expected to result in total extraordinary losses of
approximately ¥16.0 billion during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011.


Any thoughts guys? Square can't possibly take much more of a beating :/
 
Stop making crap games.  Stop putting profit before quality.
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If they're losing money, they can hardly be said to be putting profit before quality. :P

At this point, I think the best thing they could do is release another mainseries Kingdom Hearts game, as well as hurry up with Versus XIII. It seems, as of late, that Tetsuya Nomura is the only S-E employee who has an inkling how to design a good game anymore, so putting more man-hours and money into the projects he's directing could only be a good move.

Bad time for L. Spiro to join  :-\
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You kidding me? The company needs fresh talent; if anything he'll help.
 
What I mean by that is not firing out any old games sub standard that are aimed at profit but fail.
 
If they're losing money, they can hardly be said to be putting profit before quality. :P
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Actually its quite a good illustration. Profit comes before quality, and given their profits are so poor, one can only imagine the relative quality :P
 
You kidding me? The company needs fresh talent; if anything he'll help.
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Oh I def agree! I just hope they don't try to cut budget corners by letting people go.
Or at least, not letting new people go.
Hopefully that's exactly why they hired new people - was to change things around.
 
In situations like this, an overhaul is needed.

Blow SE up and rebuild it stronger, faster, and better!!!1111
 
If they're losing money, they can hardly be said to be putting profit before quality. :P

It seems, as of late, that Tetsuya Nomura is the only S-E employee who has an inkling how to design a good game anymore, so putting more man-hours and money into the projects he's directing could only be a good move.
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Nomura = belt buckles. although he might have realized that by now and stopped himself.

recently i read an article where some S-E people realized that they are going wrong with the games. i only could wonder how come they figured it out this late.

ff13 is evident what S-E is still doing wrong. it's a fx fest, with very linear gameplay, repetitve visuals that quickly get irritating - a lot of which is unskippable ( i have paradigm shifts with a passion nowadays. i tend to pull them off when party leader is mid-air, so i don't have to watch them again and again ), repetitive music and visual design, poor story and annoying characters.

battle system greatly reduces your strategic options, and usually you can get by with just repeatedly the "auto-battle" command. the game basically plays itself. if so, why can't turn the AI on party leader on and just watch the battles go by?

S-E games are usually very thoroughly tested, but it looks like testers can only complain about actual bugs. design flaws and repetitive stuff that you have to watch over and over again doesn't get noticed.

i really think S-E should rethink their priorities in making games. they should focus on more rich gameplay, even at a sacrifice of visual experience.
 
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Good presentation should not have to make up for poor gameplay.  At worst, good gameplay should be making up for poor presentation.  Isn't that how Final Fantasy took off to begin with?

Nowadays, it's possible to have videogame graphics that make everyday life look poorly animated.  It was better when there were restrictions on graphics and sound that developers had to work around.  They had to make games that were good in spite of limitations imposed on them by the game engine.  Now that those limitations are pretty much gone, they don't bother making the games good at all.  They get too carried away with what they're able to do and lend less significance to what they should be doing.

[/ostentatious rant]
 
Quit Hackin' Square Timu! :P

Oh Geez Square is falling on tough times....
 
oops... my bad. n' no need to point fingers mr. Zola!

as to the hacker "names" posted... it just me or arn't those from the movie "hacker"? I recall  a nikon, n possibly a zero/xero.
 
See that's where I have questions! xero rimes with Xeno is it obvious that a Xenogears fan infiltrated Square. I wish we could put our heads together and figure out who has done this deplorable act!
ninja.gif
 
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Nomura = belt buckles. although he might have realized that by now and stopped himself.
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I was more referring to games he's directed, not simply ones he's done character design for. That's why I didn't use FFXIII as an example, because he didn't direct that. However, he HAS directed the entirety of the Kingdom Hearts series, and the gameplay in it has been a cut above everything else that the company has been doing recently.

I'm fully aware that his character design choices are questionable at times, but he has a good idea of how to make a fun game.
 
oops... my bad. n' no need to point fingers mr. Zola!

as to the hacker "names" posted... it just me or arn't those from the movie "hacker"? I recall  a nikon, n possibly a zero/xero.
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There was a character called Lord Nikon and the lead character used the alias "Zero Cool".

But FFS, don't remind me of that bloody film!

I watched it recently because I thought it might be a laugh, but it turned out to be one of those films that goes so far into "so bad it's good" territory that it starts to be crap again.

so_bad_its_worse.png
 
Huh-oh... That's when they must realize that a remake of FF7 will produce more income...

Quebec? Right... Stop accusing Timu! It's me, it's... huh... oops...
 
S-E should get their act together and focus on a few core games, instead of spreading their resources on multiple projects.

when SE gets really desperate for money, they will put out something related to ff7, that's for sure.
 
S-E should get their act together and focus on a few core games, instead of spreading their resources on multiple projects.
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I doubt this is the problem. None of their projects have run into trouble from a lack of resources; it's certainly not a low budget that messed up FFXIII. The problem is a combination of bad ideas, and a poor development flow that causes work to be done in the wrong order, bringing up problems that it's already too late to fix by the time they show up. It's why FFXIII was so linear. The non-traditional battle system was just creative minds not thinking clearly.

I'm getting tired of people acting as though the problem is diversion or overspreading of resources. I've seen it said that Square-Enix focused on graphics instead of gameplay and story, when in reality the employees working on graphics are not responsible or qualified for makign gameplay or story decisions, and having them put less effort into what they did would not have helped other aspects. From a technical perspective, the game (as well as most of their recent games) was quite well done, and the key issues with the game were all things that should have been planned for and solved early on, by the creative leads. Again, I point to the Kingdom Hearts series, which has consistently had both fantastic graphics AND gameplay. There are a few exceptions in the gameplay department, but they are all caused by questionable design choices (panel system in 358/2 days), NOT by misallocation of resources. The programming is fine, and diverting money from the graphics budget to some other department would not have helped in the slightest.

As a general rule, there is NO SUCH THING as a tradeoff between graphics and gameplay, except in cases where the graphics actively interfere with gameplay (such as a HUD that is pretty but difficult to use) or when the programming itself was shoddy and incomplete and needed a higher budget, more time, or more programmers at the expense of a few 3D modelers. A good example of this is Metal Gear Solid 4, which had some good ideas, but was plagued with framerate issues, install times, and mediocre level layouts because the programmers didn't have adequate resources to fix the game in time for its release.

This all ties back to my view of the profit vs quality statement that DLPB made earlier. Many of the company's recent games have certainly been low-quality, no question, but it isn't for lack of effort. They're investing a TON of money in these projects, trying their hardest to make them good, they just genuinely don't understand what the problem is. This is what happens when graphics whores run a game company or are put in charge of a big project. It's not that they are just looking for a quick buck rather than trying to make something good, it's that they ACTUALLY BELIEVE that they have made something good because every quantifiable aspect IS good: a ton of polygons, high resolution textures, high framerate, plenty of paradigms, and lots of hours of both gameplay AND story. In a world where everything is ruled by numbers, FFXIII would absolutely be a good game.

It can hardly be said that Square-Enix is putting profit over quality. They just have no clue what quality means anymore, or how to achieve it.
 
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