Square Enix is a major publisher, with many smaller studios under its umbrella. In the past few years, we've seen a lot more games than usual released by Square Enix, which included the likes of Harvestella, Various Daylife, Valkyrie Elysium, Octopath Traveler II, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Forspoken, and more. They also managed to launch a number of remakes and remasters, ranging from Live A Live, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, Tactics Ogre: Reborn, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, and the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, all within the last two years.

Following all this, it looks like Square won't be adhering to such a rapid output, going forward. In an interview that has been recently translated (courtesy of Twitter user Genki_JPN), Square Enix's current present and director, Takashi Kiryu, stated the company's aims to release a wide variety of titles that suit lots of players' genre preferences haven't gone as well as they'd hoped.

As our customers’ needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we have tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than by focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool.

Going forward, the new plan is to release fewer titles, with more structure, so that Square Enix's overall lineup has more quality and focus.

It has less to do with our development function and more to do with the numerous entries in our lineup. I want to structure our development function so that we are able to ensure higher quality from each title by slimming down our lineup.

Right now, Square only has a handful of titles in the pipeline that they've announced, with DLC for Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and SaGa: Emerald Beyond all due out before the end of this year.

Source

 

[ZachariasBarnham]

It's pretty messed up when Final Fantasy XIV and the division that it falls under (Creative Business Unit 3) are as wildly successful as they are in spite of Square Enix being Square Enix.

 

[G25900]

They’ve been milking FF7 since 97, they are never going to stop until people stop consuming FF7 content

They really haven't though, if you check the FF7 related releases they're all pretty far apart, original game they did the PSX and PC versions in '97 and '98, then did nothing with it again until 2012 and that was just a better PC version, they did ports of that later but it took a while for them to actually make new versions of it. They did the compilation stuff between '04 and '07, then did nothing again until Remake in '20 and everything they've done since that is basically part of that project.

Now if you want milking go look up all their FF IV related stuff, it's absolutely insane, there was like a 16 year stretch where they released either a port of the original, an improved version, a sequel, a remake, or a remake of the sequel, somewhere in the world every year. The original has been on at least 11 different platforms on its own, VII took 18 years to get actual ports outside of PC.

VII has had much bigger projects done for it but they do create new stuff and expand the story and world, meanwhile they constantly chuck out older FF's specifically just to milk more money out of them.

VII is the only one they've really treat with any respect and tried to do more with it, the others are just chuck another cow out and people will buy the shit out of it. VIII is probably the worst treated one (Calling that version Remaster was a fucking joke), IX was getting it pretty rough for a while too but the ports were pretty decent considering.

 

[The Catboy]

They really haven't though, if you check the FF7 related releases they're all pretty far apart, original game they did the PSX and PC versions in '97 and '98, then did nothing with it again until 2012 and that was just a better PC version, they did ports of that later but it took a while for them to actually make new versions of it. They did the compilation stuff between '04 and '07, then did nothing again until Remake in '20 and everything they've done since that is basically part of that project.

Now if you want milking go look up all their FF IV related stuff, it's absolutely insane, there was like a 16 year stretch where they released either a port of the original, an improved version, a sequel, a remake, or a remake of the sequel, somewhere in the world every year. The original has been on at least 11 different platforms on its own, VII took 18 years to get actual ports outside of PC.

VII has had much bigger projects done for it but they do create new stuff and expand the story and world, meanwhile they constantly chuck out older FF's specifically just to milk more money out of them.

VII is the only one they've really treat with any respect and tried to do more with it, the others are just chuck another cow out and people will buy the shit out of it. VIII is probably the worst treated one (Calling that version Remaster was a fucking joke), IX was getting it pretty rough for a while too but the ports were pretty decent considering.

I would consider this milking

No other FF game has nearly this much attention. This isn’t even including the FF7 characters that appear in other games.

 

[AdenTheThird]

I would consider this milking
View attachment 415282
No other FF game has nearly this much attention. This isn’t even including the FF7 characters that appear in other games.

Cloud and Sephiroth in Smash, Apex Legends x FFVII crossover, Cloud, Sephiroth, Aerith and Tifa in Kingdom Hearts...

 

[Ligeia]

I forgot to mention Dragon Quest XII, can't wait for this game !

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

There are only two games I want to see from Square Enix as a great remake:
Illusion of Gaia / Time, Terranigma.

No no no no, I don't trust modern game square enix to do those justice, way too many themes about religion in those games would be censored by their hr department. Also as much as I thought trials of mana was a good remake, it felt a little too low budget mobile game oriented (its on the google play appstore for cheap too).

 

[raxadian]

The Switch was an easy way to sell ports and remakes but Nintendo is gonna launch a new console and the Switch hardware is freaking old at this point.

 

[G25900]

I would consider this milking
View attachment 415282
No other FF game has nearly this much attention. This isn’t even including the FF7 characters that appear in other games.

Now get up IV's related media, that had at least one kind of release for every one of those years.

Multiple original products does not equal milking. Porting it to damn near everything does along with it's sequels and remakes does.

 

[The Catboy]

Now get up IV's related media, that had at least one kind of release for every one of those years.

Multiple original products does not equal milking. Porting it to damn near everything does along with it's sequels and remakes does.

Moving to another game doesn’t change the fact that they are milking 7. It’s fine if you don’t think they are but I am not convinced

 

[G25900]

Moving to another game doesn’t change the fact that they are milking 7. It’s fine if you don’t think they are but I am not convinced

You mean the game I literally gave in my original post as an actual example of milking within the same franchise?

Everyone goes after VII because it's the popular one to shit on while conveniently ignoring the fact they constantly release something to do with IV all the time, that's the one that's getting milked, expanding on the one with the most potential for story and world expansion, the one that was originally planned to be 60 hours longer than it was, then waiting 20 years to do something else with it isn't.

 

[HextarVigar]

Streaming services could learn from Square Enix, i.e., quality over quantity.

Considering most of what they've put out recently are remasters as opposed to anything that isn't twenty years old, that's not really saying much.

 

[LightBeam]

Streaming services could learn from Square Enix, i.e., quality over quantity.

They'll all learn when they'll release a flop like Babylon's Fall

 

[TheCryOfHatred]

Probably it would be the best for them to do that, they release so many games such as Diofield Chronicle, Valkryie Elysium, Star Ocean The Divine Force, Forspoken, the quality of those games suck.

Agreed, Valkyrie Elysium was such a huge dissapoint. After the awesome games before it (1 and 2 of course) they made this crap...