Final Fantasy 16 Would Still Be in Development Without the PS5

Hurry and tie the knot Sony.

@UltimateOtaku91 I agree. Especially considering Square Enix are still going on about NFTs, and hopefully a Sony buy out will put this to bed.

@UltimateOtaku91 For real! This "will they wont they" suspense is killing me 🤣

@UltimateOtaku91 hope they get it before Saudi Arabia does.

Once ABK is done we can finally hear about the marriage here. With xbox consolidating the market, wont be surprised if theres more as well.

Because of the "memory and fast SSD" they game was able to not be in development hell? Welp, good luck PC players!

I normally love dev commentaries, but across all of Square the weird talking points they get always rub me the wrong way.

Square's a mess at this point, but I still think if Sony buys them they'll become nothing but more of an FF machine than they already were and most of the small stuff that was their actual good stuff dies. I don't see Sony funding Bravely Default III when they could fund Dante of War Versus and add Chris Pratt. And there's less than zero chance Star Ocean continues at all, I think they'd cut TriAce loose and let them wither on the vine. Though much as I love the series, from a business perspective I suppose Square should already have done that anyway. I still don't see, business-wise WHY Sony would even buy them, it mostly just gives them a way to spend even more money to buy nothing but FF which they already practically own.

@UltimateOtaku91 I know right? 😅

Really looking forward to it. Will be here before we know it too.

@NEStalgia There's no reason to think Sony is buying Square-Enix. It's just console warrior fan rhetoric.

Although they're brownnosing Sony so hard at the moment that I could fully understand why someone would think they're fishing for a buy-out.

From Sony's angle, though, it wouldn't make sense.

@KaijuKaiser Totally agree, it's the only way playstation players can feel safe about future games. Seeing games like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts along side playstation studios banner of devs would be great. But I'd hope they would be allowed to keep some level of freedom so that the smaller titles like Harvestella and Bravely Default still get made but this time on playstation with better visuals and performance.

Yoshi-P and the PS5 ought to get a room already.

Hope they don’t get conjunctivitis with all that brown stuff so close to their eyes.

So sick of hearing this stuff. It’s a great system, so is the Series X, so are blazing fast PCs (if built right).

At this point, the only thing stopping Square Enix from being Sony exclusive is the Switch. There's a lot of support there still but eventually, they will probably want to move away from outdated hardware once they've put all their retro games on it.

We head it before, many of these exclusivity deals obviously come with “you need to pretend this game would not be possible without our ‘fantastic’ hardware!”

Both, Xbox and PlayStation likely do this since exclusives for both hace had developers spout such nonsense.

@NEStalgia I’m some ways I would like SE to be owned by sony, but agree it would likely be the end of all things not FF or DQ. Sony would rather they make 20 ultra realistic Forspoken attempts than make another Bravely Default or Octopath Traveler.

We do know they dont have the money right now to buy them, though.

@Ralizah @NEStalgia The console warrior rhetoric for buyouts is stuff that truly makes me cock my head sideways, and often time squint really hard to see what I'm missing. Like, every time someone says Sony should buy Konami. Okay, they buy Konami and then what? Konami doesnt really have any prestigious studios anymore. So, it's hand the IP to another PS team, which they could surely already do if they really wanted to. Then Sony can just double down on the God of War erotic violence pachinko machines, which is basically most of Konami's revenue these days. The console wars are such a bizarre thing.

It's nice to develop a game for a single console, especially since the console has really fast ssd and great cpu/gpu, can't wait for the game

@SplooshDmg I mean, these sort of fan theories are ones cooked up with a minimum of thought. Look at Sony's acquisitions the last few years and you'll mostly see them buying out companies that will help them in some key area. Bungie for live-service titles. Nixxes for PC ports. etc. These acquisitions are supposed to help them expand their profits by branching out more into areas that have growth potential.

What growth potential is had by buying Square-Enix? They already spend a fraction of the money a buy-out would cost to subsidize exclusive access to their AAA games. It's not like Final Fantasy, as prestigious a name as it is, is a gigantic seller. And there's no real risk of them being poached by Microsoft.

I'm not entirely sure this is good news. By implication, isn't he saying that the overheads provided by the PS5 meant that they didn't have to spend so long optimising the game? If so, that may not bode well.

@Ralizah I get what you're saying about Sony being careful with their purchases and focusing on key areas. But they have never been in a situation like this before with their biggest competitor buying multiple huge third party publishers taking future games by the dozen off playstation consoles. Then there's others like tencent and embracer buying studios left right and centre and it won't be long before either of them or Google/Apple start going up a level and start buying publishers as well.

Sony need to cement popular franchises that playstation are known for and tie them down otherwise they will be lost in the future and will lose players to other platforms who were interested in those games. And Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts are some of those franchises.

@Ralizah I think that's a part people are largely just ignoring. Square Enix doesn't really move the needle much. I mean FF7R has been their biggest game in probably a decade, and it sold MAYBE 10 million copies over the course of several years? Square Enix has a lot of legacy franchises, but they aren't exactly printing money these days. I imagine Sony locks up games like FF because... Why not? It's probably fairly cheap and it strategically makes sense. But start talking about sinking billions of dollars and taking over the liabilities of a sinking ship and Sony might change their mind on how valuable that franchise is to them. I'd like to see the figures of what portion of PS's total sales are from Square Enix as a publisher. I honestly couldn't see it being much more than a low single digit.

Fine, i'll frame it differently.

Sony buying Square Enix is just hopeful fanfiction by a...select group of fans, and nothing more than that.

@SplooshDmg LOL, exactly. Fans really mean "we want these IPs to be exclusive", but with Square......they already are. For less money. Then what fans must mean is "forever exclusive with no chance of changing", but, franchise popularity comes and goes while the overhead of a few thousand employees needs to be paid for.... MS wants ABK because they want to add tons of dev teams for their strategy. Sony really doesn't need to add a bunch of Japanese dev teams with rocky histories of spending more money than they make for their strategy.

@StrickenBiged That's exactly what he's saying. Though technically he's just blowing nonsensical hot air to promote PS5 because he's paid to in the contract. He be boasting about the necessity of portability of Switch for the game if Nintendo had exclusivity.

@Tharsman And we also know that current interest rates make financing such a purchase a non-starter. But yeah, Square's not healthy now, but I don't think a Sony buyout helps, it just acts as an expensive IP purchase and acquiring trouble studios. I think Sony would do better just poaching "Yoshi-P" for their own teams than buying Square at this point. I don't like the guy, but he has an agenda, and it's aligned with Sony's more than Square's.

@Ralizah Exactly! There's definite incest with the two, but the only reason I could see Sony would buy them is Jim's petty dictator disposition as a knee-jerk "we have to buy something and Square's easy" retaliation to ABK. Even though it doesn't align with any of his strategies at all, and Square has next to nothing to benefit them.

IMO selling the Western studios to embracer ended any possibility of Sony touching them. That's the part of Square that actually would have bolstered Sony's strategy.

i still think sony intends to buy s-e at some point... they might want to evaluate the success or failure of ff xvi first before making it official, though, as that could have an adverse effect on the buy in price or the timing of the deal.

Buying Square means having more control over the japanese market especially with DQ.

How is that not growth?

Square sucking my major Sony Ds5 and everytime I read summin like this it seems as square is gonna join playstation exclusively

Sony just needs to tie the knot with Square Enix at this point. It just seems to perfect.

Just imagine if during the supposed Playstation Showcase in June if they announce "We welcome Square Enix to the Playstation Family", everyone would lose their mind and at the same time say "yeah it makes sense".

@NEStalgia Basically until SE is truly swirling the drain, I don't see any buyout happening. Even then, I still think it's going to be Tencent or NetEase. Which I know makes you cringe, rightfully so. Maybe SE will just merge with Bandai Namco and makes Super Square Bandai Enix Namco. Toss in SEGA and we'll have enough parts for a proper Voltron-like mega publisher. We will just continue the celebrated Japanese tradition of merging with a friendly competitor when times get tough. Total buyouts paint too much of an image that you failed and sold because you're a loser. You know... Like... Sharp.

@Ralizah I suppose Square-Enix would help them in the key area of NFTs, so there's that? It's reaching, but not as long a reach as anything else lol

@SplooshDmg Yeah, and S-E has basically been aligning themselves with Tencent/Netease priorities in terms of NFT, mobile focus, etc. Things Sony flirts with but not enough to sink billions and their entire acquisition budget into. I'd SORT of rather see them under Sony than Tencent/Netease, but honestly I don't even think it matters that much. Under Sony SE would make nothing but Marvel's Spider of War Fantasy and under Tencent they'd just make FF gacha mobile games.

I mean SE really fits that Sharp profile, so it's still appropriate. But, yeah, lol, Sharp. It makes me sad actually. They used to be amazing.

@NEStalgia That's just it. I hardly love Tencent or NetEase, but SE as a corporation, as it stands right now aligns itself more with those two companies. Honestly, I think Tencent would mostly keep it business as usual, but probably just run it a lot better than it is right now. Tencent surely wants those properties for mobile games, but so does SE. They keep funneling resources into mobile games and shutting them down a year later because they have no idea what they're doing. Heck, Yuji Naka got to go to jail because he thought The First Soldier was the next big thing. Now he's in jail and the game has shut down. Lmao So, it's hard telling.

I remember when the Aquos TVs came out, and they were being hyped to the moon. They were pretty nice, the mythical fourth pixel. But they were a hard sale to make. I sold TVs at the time and selling anything that wasn't a Samsung was... Difficult.

I’m glad to hear we’re getting actual PS5 games. We’ve had far too few of them, especially when you discount remakes.
I mean for big releases that weren’t on PS4, we’ve had Ghostwire, Deathloop, Returnal, and a few other things I guess, but I’m having trouble remembering.

SE just milks it's old games from when they were good. That's all Sony will do

A buyout won't change anything, FF7R will probably show up on Switch 2, FF16 would probably get a Cloud and PC version next year.

@Jaz007 Let's wait to see if this is as poorly optimized as XV and Forspoken and the "PS5-only" just means "our terrible engine can't even function on older hardware even though it looks like that's what it's running on most of the time because we're just brute forcing it" before celebrating it, lol.

@SplooshDmg I think Yuji-san is really the bellweather of the entire mentality at Square-Enix. He wasn't even involved with Square-Enix very long, they totally screwed him while he was, and by the time he was out he was so many quarts of Kool-Aid in, he actually criminally involved himself by betting on their marketing and internal dream factory and is now ruined..... IDK what they pump into the ventilation system over there, but I hope it comes with the DQXII digital deluxe preorders. Puff-puff indeed!

TBH Samsung TVs aren't really special, so that's weird itself. I mean they're ok, their RP TVs were great, but the LCDs? Eh. I really think of LG a and others with panel tech more than Samsung.

@NEStalgia It beats me, but they seriously need to get their crap together. As someone who has been playing games from both Enix and Square for 30 years, it's hard to look at them these days and say, "Wow, look at the quality of this craftsmanship." It's truly disappointing. A lot of the Japanese industry really stumbled in gen 7, but I feel like Capcom, SEGA and BanNam have gotten back on track, where Square Enix is still just completely lost in the weeds.

And no, there's nothing inherently special about Samsung TV's, this however was 15+ years ago and that's just the brand that was wildly popular around here. I have an LG LED and a Samsung QLED at the house right now, and I'd tell you I like the Samsung better, mostly because the TV software just cooperates better. But they're both good. The Samsung is the gaming TV, and the LG is the Crunchyroll TV.

@NEStalgia Was XV poorly optimized? I remember it running quite well, but I also played it 6-12 months after release.

@Jaz007 It's still poorly optimized on all platforms! Even PS5, XSX, and even PC!

@NEStalgia The PC version is basically still just broken. Like most of SE's PC ports. I bought a PS5 for the "In case of Square Enix-type PC port, break glass" situations.

LOL, yeah, but even on "next gen" consoles the game runs poorly. It looks visually ok in fidelity mode, just ok, but can't even maintain 30fps, and on "performance" modes drops to barely better than PS3 games.....at about 40-55fps.

Forspoken, same engine, has a lot of the same problems still, and XVI appears (but they haven't wholly confirmed) to be derived from the same engine. Supposedly they started with UE4, it didn't give the look they wanted, and they started in a tried and true existing engine which has been interpreted to be the XIV engine which is itself a fork from the Luminous engine (merged with Crystal Tools.....gah!) Visually it gives the appearance of what that engine uniquely does with lighting (at a cost they never managed to resolve) so I'm not permitting any optimism in terms of performance until after DF looks at it, lol.

Hate all this buyout *****!! Devs should stay independent, stay doing cross platform games! Can't be that difficult it's what most of the industry has been doing for years.. Love my PS5 but the way tings are going in these buyout wars, i might have to get an Xbox(for the 1st time) too, it's that or miss out on more good games! Never been a FF fan but looking fwd to this now they're leaving turn based GP behind..

@KaijuKaiser you do understand Microsoft is buying up parts of the industry because others including Sony are buying up parts of the industry 😆😆😆.

@cragis0001

yeah because Sony started the whole Publisher buying thing right?

No one gives a ***** when studios like obsidian or Housemarque are bought. I even say: Good for them!

But giant Publishers with tons of AAA Million Dollar IPs?
Yeah ***** you MS.

@KaijuKaiser a JRPG series will be right at home with PlayStation once PlayStation has a portable system once again (and I don't mean streaming). After all the games Square Enix has made properly accessible on Switch over the recent years, hoping for their output to be ball'n'chained to living rooms either sounds counterintuitive or betrays the perspective of someone barely past the college years. Besides, I'm not sure I look forward to what Sony can "do with Japanese franchises" after what they did to Sony Japan Studio. Especially in comparison to all the cain they've been raising about a western FPS franchise.

@NEStalgia huh, I thought XIV was Crystal Tools from the start. Or is it Realm Reborn that went to Luminous afterwards?

@Allfather they did though as Psygnosis was a publisher. But hey because it was back at the beginning of PlayStation & gaming was a smaller business then I guess it doesn't count. But it does count as Psygnosis sold 40% of all games sold in Europe in 1995/96 which is a big deal. Plus it proves if Sony could buy a power house now they would.
Don't see why people should treat buying a smaller studio any different to a publisher? As it explains why many Chinese companies like Tencent have risen from nothing as no one cares if they buy or invest into small studios. But if someone buys a publisher to get many studio's all at once that's a big....NO 🤣🤣. Consolidation is bad full stop.