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It’s only been two months since taking office, and Takashi Kiru has already realized the mistake that hampered the company’s financial results – the deal with Sony. It’s not that Final Fantasy XVI isn’t selling well, in fact it had a decent launch for what is a game in the franchise, at least three million copies at launch alone. However, despitein for its back-up date, Square has lost $2 billion in market value.
This was followed by ForsPoken and Babylon’s Fall, both commercial failures. These three games have one thing in common, none of them saw the light of day on the Xbox and it doesn’t look like they’re going to do that at this point. We have to add Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is currently pulling the wagon. As such, the company’s current CEO has announced that Square Enix’s big releases will launch on Xbox from now on.
The problem is conflicts of interest
Why does this happen? Are Xbox sales sufficient for games to reach the desired profitability? Well, the truth is that it’s not as easy to explain as it sounds. Fortunately, Jacob Navok, current CEO of Genvid and former head of Square Enix’s Shinra Technologies, spoke on the subject. From his perspective, conflict of interest is the biggest obstacle, and he explains it in the following quote:
The problem I see is one that the whole industry needs to be aware of and that is the risk of console exclusives when you have a main agent problem. If you’re a publisher who relies on the success of your games, you’re always at a disadvantage because your individual title means less to the platform owner than it does to you.
That is, if you exclusively buy a game, you not only reduce its visibility and sales, but also The company that buys it doesn’t give it the same priority as its first batches although in reality it remains exclusive. Likewise, he clarifies that Square’s CEO’s new attitude has more to do with that part than possible Xbox sales.
Not because they expect the Xbox to sell more than the PS5, but because it revealed the same problem I was talking about.
It’s always good news that a company as big as Square Enix chooses not to leave Xbox behind. I still think FFVIIR should come to a US console at some point and possibly Game Pass. As for the rest of the titles, maybe XVI will come via a port, but failed games like Babylon’s Falls or Forspoken, I don’t think they’ll risk porting them to Microsoft’s console.
