Square Enix recently took a massive hit in profits, calling it ‘content abandonment losses‘. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is exclusive to Sony, and it seems that this exclusivity deal was not what the company was expecting.
The Japanese company’s official financial report confirmed the studio’s future plans to release games on more platforms, including Xbox. In the report, the company said that it will aggressively pursue a multiplatform launch strategy, including all the biggest platforms, including PC and Nintendo.
Moving Forward, Square Enix Seemingly Not to Make PS Exclusives
The company released its financial report and announced numerous changes for the future. After Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was seemingly not what the studio expected regarding sales, it will follow a different path moving forward. This statement says how the strategy will change and will include all the upcoming games. The goal is to sell more games in every way possible while exploiting the IPs that the studio has.
The main idea is to release any future games on the Xbox, PC, and even Nintendo platforms. The financial reports themselves say that this new strategy will be very aggressive in the upcoming games. The exclusive deal has proven not to be as effective as the studio thought. The company wants to make changes to earn more money with every new project. This particular plan involves big AAA games and franchises.
Final Fantasy Seemingly Going to Xbox and Beyond
This new strategy could mean that many previously exclusive titles will now be available on other platforms, including Xbox and Nintendo. The company has already launched the majority of their big AAA titles on PC. It is really difficult to maintain an exclusivity model without good sales exceeding millions, especially given the budget that these titles had.
Over the last few years, the Japanese developer has had numerous projects that were complete failures, even though they were multiplatform. Examples include titles such as Balan Wonderland, Forspoken, and Foamstars, among others. This proves that the company has to think really hard about the upcoming projects to avoid losing sales in the process of making games that almost nobody will play besides the platform that is available.
The studio maintains Final Fantasy as its strongest IP, initially releasing every new title exclusively on Sony’s platform. Even the online title of this saga has become one of the most profitable games in the entire franchise, thanks to a subscription-based game. The future of the company will try to expand the IPs into new platforms, but it will also have to see the quality of these future games to ensure sales.
What are your thoughts about this decision? Let us know in the comments!
