Square Enix: 'Final Fantasy VII Rebirth' "cannot be exclusive to one console," again implying an eventual Xbox launch

An XBOX port might not arrive for a long time.
Witness the DEATH STRANDING exclusivity deal that lasted 5 years.
That'll be 2-3 years deep into the next generation of games.

Will anybody care about the FF7 remakes by then? If the new games use AI NPCs, will the limited, scripted npcs seem quaint?
Worse yet, how badly will Square-Enix be squeezed waiting for the exclusivity deals to expire?

The way things are trending a lot of today's studios might not last five years.

fjtorres5591 said:

An XBOX port might not arrive for a long time.
Witness the DEATH STRANDING exclusivity deal that lasted 5 years.
That'll be 2-3 years deep into the next generation of games.

Will anybody care about the FF7 remakes by then? If the new games use AI NPCs, will the limited, scripted npcs seem quaint?
Worse yet, how badly will Square-Enix be squeezed waiting for the exclusivity deals to expire?

The way things are trending a lot of today's studios might not last five years.

Witness the DEATH STRANDING exclusivity deal that lasted 5 years

It was a different era. Whether it was Square Enix, Kojima, or others, no third-party publisher can afford to release a game on a single console nowadays, or at least not for long. Given the production costs, it's very difficult to make a game profitable. Moreover, exclusivity deals are much more expensive now than they used to be, except for small studios that can still be tempted by such agreements.

Anyway, we can see it very clearly. PlayStation has fewer and fewer exclusive games, which shows the difficulty and cost that it represents.

Furthermore, Death Stranding now belongs to Kojima, so he is much freer than before to port his games and negotiate with Sony. I am certain that Death Stranding 2 will be released on Xbox quickly, given the popularity of the franchise. I can't see Sony paying for a 5-year deal; the sum would have to be very, very significant for it to be worthwhile for Kojima.

To be honest, I am quite surprised by the huge amounts of money Sony invests in third-party game exclusives, while at the same time investing very little in original first-party games. This headlong rush by PlayStation can only ruin them financially, considering the loss of revenue it represents for a third-party publisher not to release their game everywhere. Square Enix realized this very late, but the sales of their games on PS are not at all what they could have hoped for. It's a huge waste and a significant loss of revenue for them. All third-party publishers are in the same situation and are learning from their mistakes or the mistakes of others. Kojima is far from being foolish and will not get dragged into absurd multi-year agreements. It wouldn't surprise me if, in the future, he publishes his games himself without going through Sony; it's not worth the hassle.

Agreed that it is a new era.
But Square-Enix (and who knows who else) are already locked up to Playstation.
A bit late to the realization that times have changed.
They have no recourse now but to wait out the deal and hope some gamers will still want their wares when in ends.

fatpunkslim said:

To be honest, I am quite surprised by the huge amounts of money Sony invests in third-party game exclusives, while at the same time investing very little in original first-party games.

It depends on how much money they have had to spend.
Obviously they were never going to spring for ABK or even ZENIMAX since their annual acquisitions budget has been in the $3-4Billion a year range.

it's what makes the recent KADOKAWA drama so odd: KADOKAWA was valued at $4B when Sony admitted they were trying to buy it. This at a time when KADOKAWA made it clear they would only sell as a unit, not pieces. (ABK was the same. In both cases Sony came back empty handed.) In the end they just bought $300M worth of influence in the running of the company.

It may be that instead of spending $2-3B buying Square-Enix and then having to fund their burn rate, spending $100-200m upfront for a few years exclusivity was the best use they could make of their limited content acquisition cash. MS, on the other hand, can not only buy anything that's not nailed down, they can fund it as long as they produce. And so far their buys have produced in spades. Obsidian in particular looks to be a home run. No losers to date.

For Sony, piecemeal deals to block XBOX may have been all they could afford. After all, all they had to offer was whatever S-E might expect to get off XBOX and if S-E still bought the myth that "XBOX is just a shooter platform" that might not have been much. And in Sony's view what most matters is the console and bragging rights.

The old line about buying the cow to get milk comes to mind. As in, when you buy a studio you don't just buy the IP and whatever game is close to ship, but also the staff, the facilities, and the liabilities from pensions and whatnot. Plus the annual cost of keeping the studio running between game releases.

Sony might have simply being short term wise and long term foolish, which is in line with their launch window sales focus on game releases, the reason they don't and won't soon do day one. The XBOX approach is more of a full life cycle, long tail view: the game might not bring big profits off sales the first month or two but with Game Pass and microtransactions, the game can end up being very profitable in the long term. (FALLOUT 76 anyone?)

Square-Enix new realization isn't necessarily just because of low sales on PS5; they might have discovered how the other big Japanese publishers sales splits run and figured out they sold cheap. And with SEGA considering doing an EA PLAY move, S-E is going to have to take a good look at their full catalog.

If anything, given Japanese companies' incestuous dealings, I'm surprised several of them (say Capcom, Sega, Konami) aren't teaming up to do a combined subscription service. With day one. Between PC and XBOX they'd do good business at a reasonable price. Add cloud and they might not care about consoles at all.

It's something they need to consider because it clearly is working for XBOX and EA. Not sure about Ubisoft but their price is out of line with what they offer.

Which is to say, future games can't be limited to consoles or short term sales revenue alone, just as Hollywood movies that don't set the world afire in theater's still make a profit off digital sales, rentals, and streaming.

The other content market (smaller) gaming studios need to consider is ebooks where a *lot* of authors and small presses are going direct to consumer. No big publisher or distributor; straight to the ebook store. Very doable on STEAM and GAME PASS. Remedy is doing just that.

The changes are just starting.