Worth anyone interested in this shit turning back a page because it is a genuinely good discussion about how this shit happens

£40 a pack. Good grief. I’ve played Dota2 for nearly 900 hours since starting in 2013 and I think i’ve spent less that on it.

regmcfly wrote:

tigersgogrrr wrote:

FIFA peaked in 1998.

Appreciate the sentiment but it's the wrong take chief

I have never done a 'wrong take' pal so you watch that slander.

The worst thing is the way they say Fernandes as Fernan!

Fifa and fc24 is the worst and mtx and ultimate team is the worst things in gaming.

My manager career will continue though till boredom.

Dark Soldier wrote:

Always has been, and always will be lack of competition. Football Manager is an absolute broken mess year on year, equally zero coverage.

NBA 2K also, every year the same basic game with updated rosters and new means of pushing you towards loot boxes. £69.99 please

Oh no!

afgavinstan wrote:

In better news, in case anyone needs an update, I know of at least one "EA Partner", BorasLegend, state he will no longer buy any FPpoints, nor do shareplays with people loaded up. He actually hosts esport stuff and does regular ea things with them so that's something at least. Others are following.

Hope that gains momentum for you, gav.

tigersgogrrr wrote:

FIFA peaked in 1998.

Hell yeah

AndCallMeCharlie wrote:

Dark Soldier wrote:

Always has been, and always will be lack of competition. Football Manager is an absolute broken mess year on year, equally zero coverage.

NBA 2K also, every year the same basic game with updated rosters and new means of pushing you towards loot boxes. £69.99 please

See this is where I slightly wince when told its just a competition issue. All rumours are pointing to VisualConcepts making a new team to build a new FIFA 2K game. Apparently it's going to go head to head with EA this coming autumn. I'm doubtful but will entertain it. Thing is though, if there's anyone out there doing as much or more fuckery than EA, it's 2K. So I'm kinda careful what I wish for.

There's also the free to play indies on the way, most notably UFL and Goals. Both making small splashes as they reach alpha/beta etc. They're on the way and heck, if they're in anyway remotely playable, I think just the presence and buzz would be enough for EA to panic, which may force change.

Balls rolling, just gotta keep it moving.

They want that sweet Switch 2 money.

Yep, noted it earlier. Good to see. Just the tip of a very large, very shitty iceberg, though.

Everything’s missing targets at Square Enix.

Final Fantasy XVI met initial expectations but then didn’t have enough long tail and failed to meet 18 months expectations.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth hasn’t met initial expectations.

Foamstars has done badly.

Bad times.

I don't think any game has met their expectations for about 10 years has it?

The FFVIII remakes are supposedly great but I doubt anyone really wanted one game - no matter how fond of it they are/were - turned into three parts released over the course of 8(?) years.

LivDiv wrote:

I've not played it yet but the impression I get of FF7 Rebirth, even form those that loved it, was that it was a bit OTT. Didnt need to be as extravagant as it ended up being. Other games they are talking about taking multi-platform which makes sense. A lot of people will be thinking FF16 to Xbox which is the most obvious move. I'm thinking Switch 2 might be able to bridge the gap enough to make ports viable and would probably, quite quickly be a bigger market for Square games than the Xbox. Foamstars, lump it in with all the other live service crap from multiple devs. Lesson learned hopefully. Having a Splatoon-a-like on non-Nintendo consoles isnt the worst idea just not like that. In general I think the new $70/£60 price point for games is too much and publishers need to do whatever they need to do to bring that back down to last gen prices. Its a volume industry so they need to get that balance right again. Too easy to wait for a sale, especially with so many games launching borked.

The economics behind multi-plat are complicated. Something like FF7 Rebirth, for example, you're offsetting whatever Playstation put in versus potential sales on Xbox. It's why Xbox have fewer 3rd party exclusives - while Phil may say thats not their style and When Everyone Plays We All Win, that's a bare-faced lie - Xbox exclusives cost more, because they have less to offer re. marketing value, and the cost of losing playstation sales is more than the cost of losing xbox sales.

The main problem here is that end of PS4 gen you have 80+ million PS4s, plus a PS5 version, plus tie-in controller and hardware models, plus Sony likely covering 100% of the marketing spend + a chunk of dev cost yada yada on a X budget.

Now the budget has doubled, the hardware has halved because its PS5 only and...yeah, the economics don't make sense. 

There's a telling segment in the recent FF16 interview on their official Youtube channel, prior to the launch of FF16 on PC. Yoshi-P, FF14 and 16 God, laughs when he says the biggest surprise is that Square "approved the budget" of the game. 

The fact is, PS5 and Switch exclusives make sense with the right backing and Xbox is likely not very important (sorry), but Square have to be smarter with budgets and realising which games need that extra help. Everything else needs to go multiplat and be properly scoped.