/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.7164992]

Back in the late 90s these guys seemed unstoppable, producing numerous successful games every year. Yet just a few years later they were forced to ask Enix to merge with them to avoid bankruptcy. Was that really because they spent all their dosh on that animated film, or were there more serious financial issues at Squaresoft that are not commonly discussed?

[Anonymous No.7165000]

The only good game they put out in the late 90s was Parasite Eve and the sequel was dog shit. Most overrated company of all time.

[Anonymous No.7165004]

I suppose that they were not making as much as it seems like, despite the success of their games.

[Anonymous No.7165013]

>RPGs

[Anonymous No.7165027]

>>7164992
Even though I still think Spirits Within is good to this day, I really think they got ahead of themselves thinking straight up normies would go to the theaters just because something had the name Final Fantasy on it. I mean the broad normal audience wouldn't even have known what the fuck it was at the time at least in America.

[Anonymous No.7165031]

>>7164992
>Was that really because they spent all their dosh on that animated film

That thing flopped so hard that they were about to go bankrupt. Sony bailed them out with a donation.

[Anonymous No.7165040]

>>7164992
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Squaresoft only ever released retarded weebshit.
Fuck them and the faggots who like them.

[Anonymous No.7165043]

>>7165013
Based.
It's far overdue for us to acknowledge that JRPGs are not RPGs.

[Anonymous No.7165048]

>Back in the late 90s these guys seemed unstoppable, producing numerous successful games every year

Says who?

[Anonymous No.7165082]

>>7164992
It's kind of like great bands or musicians. They tend to have 10-15 years of greatness at most, then their powers fade.
Also the personnel changed after the mid 2000s, can't expect new people to carry on the legacy.
>A lot of Squaresoft haters here who are literally insecure paid kike shills so don't be swayed frens

[Anonymous No.7165091]

>>7165082
But it is generally seen as a particular event which caused major shifts within the company. Namely, their flop movie.

[Anonymous No.7165147]

>>7165027
Spirits Within is the most underrated movie of all time. One day all movies will be 100% CG, and it will be acknowledged as the equal of Citizen Kane, i.e. a good but not great movie that pushed the boundaries of film-making technology. Calling it "Final Fantasy" was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.7165679]

>>7164992
>Was that really because they spent all their dosh on that animated film
Yes.

[Anonymous No.7165727]

>>7165147
>>7165679
Where the hell the idea for that film came from? (in other words, WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING?)
I watched it back then, and, while it was a nice film, I was left pretty confused by the distinct lack of Final Fantasy elements on it. Why even give it the name?

[Anonymous No.7165740]

No.

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/lets-clear-up-the-reason-for-squaresofts-demise-and-why-square-and-enix-merged.744184/

[Anonymous No.7165753]

Square Enix owns Taito too. I wish they would purchase Sega Sammy and put them out of their misery.

[Anonymous No.7165760]

>>7165753
Nah fuck squeernix, they don't deserve any more profitting off and exploiting old IPs.

[Anonymous No.7165776]

Seasons changed when gen6 arrived. Different hardware to work with and stuff like Vagrant Story lost its charm. FFX and Bouncer were the last bastion of old Squaresoft.
Also, the movie bled them out.

[Anonymous No.7165787]

>>7165740
tldr

[Anonymous No.7165902]

>>7165740
>when even the link is tldr

[Anonymous No.7165919]

>>7165740
>neogaf

Fuck off pedophile

[Anonymous No.7166008]

Squaresoft never seemed like a particularly impressive company. JRPGs are niche even with the fluke success of FFVII. I can imagine a $100 million flop nearly destroying hem and sewing discord among investors.

If you can compare sales, SS didn't really match the success of FFVII. Final Fantasy VII is still Square's best selling game to date with 13.3 million units sold.

By comparison, Final Fantasy IX moved 5.7 million games. Less than half of what VII sold. That should have triggered alarm bells. This is the kind of performance they had during the SNES era but they were going to need a lot more money for cutting edge 3D games.

[Anonymous No.7166343]

>>7165027
The problem was trying to appeal to normies in the first place. A full-blown weebfest would have worked better.

[Anonymous No.7166369]

>>7166008
What's fucked up is that Hollywood looked down on using cgi to "replace" real actors in 2001 only to end up doing the exact same thing. Tom Hanks had a particularly ironic quote shitting on final fantasy movie only to end up motion capturing a cgi character in the movie Polar Express.

[Anonymous No.7166373]

>>7166369
To be fair, CGI is completely soulless and awful. And being the first in an awful trend isn't commendable.

[Anonymous No.7166376]

>>7165760
They've poached Yuji Naka. If it weren't for that one dude making Yakuza games, they'd be a glorified publisher.

[Anonymous No.7166393]

>>7164992
>later they were forced to ask Enix to merge with them to avoid bankruptcy

that's not how bankruptcy or mergers work

[Anonymous No.7166404]

>>7166376
Both naka and ohshima are washed up and haven't made a good game in decades. Their new game looks sucky too.

[Anonymous No.7166748]

Xenogears a shit.

[Anonymous No.7166786]

>>7165027
>make spirits within
Reeee this is terrible
>make advent children
Haha action sequences go brrrr

[Anonymous No.7167597]

Feel like part of it is the fact that it actually takes a lot of creative force to bring those to life, can't just shit one out every year. Yearly installments like CoD or AC have it easy since there's something in real life they pull from.

[Anonymous No.7167612]

>>7164992
The Final Fantasy games were the main source of their income
The rest of their catalog was Sakaguchi giving blank checks to people to make their dream games lol
Animated film nearly prevented the Enix merger, didn’t cause it.
Sakaguchi was an artist’s suit who would just bet the farm and hope it would produce money.
It worked on the first FF and on FFVII, but his luck ran out with Spirits Within, and Square became a more financially risk-averse company afterward

[Anonymous No.7167613]

>>7165000
Found the butt hurt Segafag.

[Anonymous No.7167618]

>>7165048
Clearly OP says that.

[Anonymous No.7167620]

The movie ruined them

[Anonymous No.7167623]

Really upsets me thinking about how special VII and X are to me and that we'll probably never get something on that level again. XVI looks interesting enough but I still have my grievances.

[Anonymous No.7168213]

>>7165027
they fucked up by making a "final fantasy" movie that had absolutely nothing to do with the games and letting that hack sakaguchi direct it instead of someone with actual film-making experience.

[Anonymous No.7168228]

>>7167623
FF brand is dead. Should have accepted that when it became obvious in the mid 2000s.
Check out Bravely Default if you want an evolution of the Final Fantasy style. Only complaint is that the scale of the game does feel like a portable game. Hopefully the new one feels more like a full scale console release.

[Anonymous No.7168563]

>>7164992
worst games ever... baby tier cartoony bullshit.... also fuck enix they sucked ass as well

[Anonymous No.7168580]

>>7164992
>Was that really because they spent all their dosh on that animated film
I think you're underestimating just how expensive that stunt was and how little they got from it

[Anonymous No.7168587]

>>7168580
DVD release only huh? No moar VHS

[Anonymous No.7168878]

>>7165787
>>7165902
Abloo bloo, it's a complex matter, not >DEY DUN GOOFED

>>7165919
YWNBAW

[Anonymous No.7170482]

>>7168228
I'm surprised this shit hasn't been made procedural yet. How hard could it be to pump out randomly generated FF-style adventures?

[Anonymous No.7170660]

>>7168213
This. Literally just calling it "The Sprits Within" and making the plot be that Gaia is killing humans because they've damaged the ecosystem too much and humanity just ASSUMES they're aliens and it would have done better.