Multiple Square Enix Rumours Spread Like Wildfire Ahead of Summer Game Fest

The Japanese game companies - and in particular Square and Capcom - prove that the game industry is doing just fine.

The problem with the American game companies is the exact same problem that Hollywood has right now: ridiculously bloated budgets to the point that EVEN IF they become blockbusters they still lose money.

2024 and we’re still crossgen. What do we need a PS5 ‘Pro’ for, again?

@LifeGirl "is the exact same problem that Hollywood has right now: ridiculously bloated budgets to the point that EVEN IF they become blockbusters they still lose money"
Take the new Kong and Godzilla film for example. What a big old steaming pile of 💩💩.
Then compare that to Godzilla minus one. A far superior movie with a drastically lower budget.

Dragon Quest HD Trilogy is definitely getting shown at the Nintendo Direct and depending on the art style so could Final Fantasy 9 Remake which has a chance could be a timed exclusive for the Switch.

Glad ff9 remakes coming to Xbox🙂 easy a day one buy that ps1 era FF were my fave apart from 10😎 just need pixel remaster for ffvi now 🤣

As popular as I know Fortnite is we don’t need KH being added, they have enough franchises in that game already that kids will say that so and so is from Fortnite didn’t know that they had their own franchise.
Hoping the FFIX remake does turn out to be true and it’s only been three years since Dragon 3 HD 2D remake was announced so glad that’s going to be there

@LifeGirl Do we know if Japanese developers are fairly compensated? For example, things cost less in China to be made but that's because the people who make them don't earn much at all and are taken advantage of (or that used to be the case; I've heard that things are getting better)

@LifeGirl capcom is doing great, square enix isn't lol. The only reason they aren't firing people in Japan is because it's ilegal to do it suddenly but they sure are firing people in other countries and making Forspoken 2 for the Nintendo Switch 2 won't help their situation.

Midori is extremely accurate, so maybe these will be at another event like Nintendo Direct as Square Enix is not a partner for this year's Summer Game Fest

@vyseofhr vgs aren't basic needs so I would say no one "needs" it. But sure a lot of people would buy it just because they want to.

@Kidfunkadelic83 could've chosen a better example. The new Godzilla movie has low review scores, but the audience scores show it was popular with fans (above 90%) and the box office was nearly $600 million. While Minus One is the superior movie, there's no logic in trashing GxK when it actually did well.

Wonder if some of this stuff gets announced at the xbox showcase. Square and Microsoft were on stage together recently, and there are rumours of the show being a good one for JRPG fans

I'm really curious to see what form the FF9 remake will take. Surely nothing like the FF7 treatment. I don't think a realistic style would suit FF9, so hopefully it stays closer to the original, artistically speaking. Could be amazing.

In the words of Robert S. Pearson from PS Access: still the Final Fantasiest Final Fantasy.

@DarkTron my comment was more to do with the quality of Hollywood movies as opposed to budget vs takings. I should have left that bit out.

FF9 remake surely won't be FF7 remake quality, and they'd hardly pass over FF8 for that treatment first right.....right ???

The Japanese game companies - and in particular Square and Capcom - prove that the game industry is doing just fine.
The problem with the American game companies is the exact same problem that Hollywood has right now: ridiculously bloated budgets to the point that EVEN IF they become blockbusters they still lose money

When we are talking about budgets in video games we are talking about salaries. Video games are made by people at a desk, there are very little costs outside of that.

Do you know how Japanese games cost less to develop than other places? A new graduate position at Capcom just got their starting pay increased, and is now one of the higher starting salaries, and the amount they get paid is literally less than the minimum wage in the UK. I could go work in McDonald’s and get paid more. A 10+ year experienced dev gets paid less than a janitor.

A game like Spider-man 2 cost so much because the staff got paid really highly, have great benefit packages and there were lots of bonuses related to their success etc. From the insomniac leak the average cost per insomniac employee associated with SM2 was over $200k per year. Again, a capcom graduate position pays 300,000 yen, thats under $20k per year. It’s £15,000 per year, in the UK the minimum wage for 21+ is £11.44 which over a year in full time employment would be around £22k.

So when people are celebrating the Japanese low budgets, remember that’s because the people get paid rubbish, even when you take into account the lower living cost there. It’s also a huge competitive advantage that Japan has over other countries. The same way China can manufacture goods cheaper and all the manufacturing in the west got shut down.

Most western countries have drastically cut down on crunch culture too, simply because they can’t get away with it mostly(Spider-man 2 was made with zero crunch they have stated), but in Japan it’s still the norm to work 15+ unpaid hours a month and is socially unacceptable to leave your office earlier than your boss.

So if you actually care about the people making the games you should be careful what you are celebrating and what you are asking for. Companies that are celebrated like FromSoft and Capcom are among the worst employers in the video game industry in regards to pay, crunch and employee burnout rate.

I'm most excited about the Fortnite and Kingdom Hearts crossover.

@ChrisDeku There's definitely some truth in what you're saying. I still think some of the Western AAA budgets have gotten out of hand, but there's absolutely a contradiction in people being angry at reports of crunch and layoffs and at the same time lambasting high budgets and pointing to Japanese studios as the ideal.

If we'd be getting the same sort of in-depth, Jason Schreier-esque reports about the depths of the Japanese video game development culture, I do wonder what the reactions would be like. Of course, it's not just games, the entire country basically has an extremely workaholic attitude. Those devs might not even complain about it, because it's just what's expected of a Japanese employee. But it's surely not something we should be glorifying.

@Uromastryx
I would absolutely love a remake of VIII but I know it would take a longer for them to remake it if they would be changing the draw system etc around.
I know they said recently that they are interested in doing a remake of VIII

I heard Square Enix might have a new game coming out..

@WizzNL Big difference between rumoured suggestions of a couple of games (which aren't even really new, FFIX was leaked years ago via Nvidia of all people and the DQ rumour has been going on for the last couple of weeks not to mention being a game already unveiled years ago) and the entire actual running order taken direct from the video.

Additionally, FFXIV's upcoming expansion already has some bonus items related to FFIX, which in itself isn't unusual (Endwalker had items related to IV and concepts from that game featured heavily in the expansion for example) but Yoshi-P has been extra coy about them. A bit of series promotion would be a sensible thing to do.

@ChrisDeku "When we are talking about budgets in video games we are talking about salaries. Video games are made by people at a desk, there are very little costs outside of that."

You know, apart from the marketing costs, dev kits, outsourcing, replacing the pc's every couple of years, technology licensing costs, post release support, etc etc. While the budgets of the main development staff sitting at their desk are going to be a large part of the cost, they may still only be half the total outlay.

@LifeGirl To be fair, Square also has that issue with their heavy-hitters like FF16 and Rebirth. But they even things out with the mid-budget stuff like Star Ocean, Diofield, Harvestella, etc. Now if only they could not release all those games on top of each other to avoid cannibalizing their sales...

@ChrisDeku You didn't take in to account the drastically lower cost of living in Osaka (where Capcom is based) versus a place like London. Expatistan indicates that it could be 55% lower. That's huge. I live in rural America, and it's famously cheap to live here - Osaka is much, much cheaper than that even. Based on what it costs to live, I'd say their compensation is fine. Their starting salaries are above the median for the area. You can't say that about fast food jobs in the UK.

Imagine a time where news was sourced through actual investigation rather than using social media hearsay as a crutch to create any kind of content. At the same time I'm glad I do t have the job to constantly make content just for traffic sake.
I like the articles about the gaming trips to Japan and the other seldom deep dive.
Timeextension do regularly write well researched articles, but that's probably the advantage of doing historical journalism.

@ChrisDeku you have to also take Japan's inflation freeze from the 90s to 2021 into consideration. Those wages you listed weren't bad, but will have to adjust accordingly in the coming years as inflation is slowly growing.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/japan-1990s-credit-crunch-liquidity-trap.asp#:~:text=From%201991%20through%202001%2C%20Japan,pace%20than%20other%20industrialized%20nations.

@tameshiyaku There is absolutely a place for this news appearing on social media as a source and then being repeated through other places.

However so many sites are now beholden to the industry to supply them review code or marketing opportunities that they aren't going to risk that by repeating things they may have been told, or leaked to them from within. This is why the usual credible sources are people who have stepped away from or are far enough away from the games press for them to not really be affected or bothered and then that information is disseminated through the various sites.

You do sometimes see sites give their own confirmation or say they've heard the same thing once the leak has first been discussed because it isn't going to blow back against them then. For example Digital Foundry knew about the Series S, having been shown it months before its announcement. Obviously, they could not tell people that, but they could discuss the rumours in vague terms because they were only discussing what other people were claiming.

The one complaint I would make is one paragraph news being turned into a 5 paragraph article, 3 of which have nothing to do with the leak is the bigger issue. However I understand the reasons why this happens.

Can't get Sora in Dreamlight Valley but they'll let him in Fortnite 😭

@LowDefAl

You know, apart from the marketing costs, dev kits, outsourcing, replacing the pc's every couple of years, technology licensing costs, post release support, etc etc. While the budgets of the main development staff sitting at their desk are going to be a large part of the cost, they may still only be half the total outlay

Outsourcing costs is paying the salary of someone else sitting at a desk, just in a different building. The other costs are minuscule. The largest cost outwith normal salaries actually is tied to things like Voice Acting, motion capture etc. Marketing costs are after development costs, they are not tied to the development of the game in any way and have no bearing on the scale or scope of the game. That’s an entirely separate issue.

@IntrepidWombat I did account for that, I quite literally mentioned it. Also, the minimum wage in London is a joke, so comparing it to that is pointless. They make slightly more money, after accounting for cost of living, than a McDonald’s employee in London, ok great but a McDonald’s employee in London is poor as hell and you’re comparing them to a graduate in a high skilled labour job.

The UK minimum wage applies everywhere in the country. If you work as a cleaner in a poor area of Liverpool you will be making £21k minimum over full time hours.

Give me that FF9 remake you cowards!!!!

@Ainu20 Exactly. They NEED to keep that lovable art style and not try and go realistic like Dissigea.

Please be a turn based remake in one single chapter

Can’t figure out what they mean by a DQ trilogy. Is that 1-3 or 3-5?

I feel like they are all false. Wasn’t it confirmed no big announcements and the focus’s is on announced games?

@Zenos A FF IX Remake would be excellent , especially with DragonQuest (Warrior) Trilogy as well!!

Honestly the Final Fantasy 9 Remake just gets me nervous. I don’t trust modern Square Enix to make something that captures what the original was. Especially when the original already aged extremely well. Honestly the only change that could be made that would benefit the game is speeding up the battle system a bit. The game doesn’t really need a remake.

While I do really like the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series for what it is, it absolutely does NOT do the original justice.