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The Internet Entertainment Games

Square Enix President Looks To Online Play 44

Posted by Zonk from the where-it's-at dept.
Gamespot has a story detailing comments by Square Enix president Youichi Wada. In the article, they touch on the fact that Square is going to be increasingly looking to online play in their future games. From the article: "Wada predicted that online games will be Square Enix's main source of income in the future. 'I think that over half of our income and profit will be based on network content [including games] by 2008 or 2009.'"
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Square Enix President Looks To Online Play More

Square Enix President Looks To Online Play

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  • I refuse to pay to play a game. Witch is why final fantasy 11 is the only final fantasy game I havent played/own.
    • Yeah, it does scare me. Very few, if any, actual FFs (by "actual" I mean ones developed with Sakaguchi-san at teh helm) that I know of are coming, and now they want to bilk our money by charging us for the game and the online service. *sigh* I dunno about you guys, but that they are so concerned with financ^H^H^H^H^H^Hgrowth shall be the death knell for them IMO. I hope so; I can't see FF in their hands sans its creator, and I don't care much for their other games. Maybe if they make Rad Racer an MOG* or so
  • If they dont make many MMORPGs.
    There simply is not the market for many of them at all. Unless there is one flat fee to play all square-enix mmorpgs.

    Even then, I prepher the D2 and UT style online play. Where players have their own servers and it is free to play online.

    If that is the case. Then this is awsome. I would love it if they made a game like that for the DS. Or just an old school-esque FF game with online play.

    From what I have heard about FFXII an optional online mode like D2 could be great.
    • That's how I read this article. Less console single player games, more online games. Bah! I don't mind this at all, unless the focus on multiplayer degrades the quality, or quantity, of single player console games. Networked gaming is great, but I really hope that it isn't the complete "future" of gaming. Financial issues aside, there is still the possibility of paying for something for which you may or may not be able to consume 100% of the content of.
      As it is right now I can max my characters and find
  • Last I checked, World of Warcraft gave them a thorough trouncing.

    Rob
    • Well, World of Warcraft just about scraped a slightly larger player base than FFXI... two years after FFXI's launch. I wouldn't write that off as a thorough trouncing by any stretch of the imagination. For a long time, FFXI was the largest non-Korean MMORPG around, comfortably ahead of the nearest rival, Everquest.

      • Re:Haven't they already "looked to online play"? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        FFXI has an estimated 500,000 subscribers. WoW has a known 1.25 MILLION subscribers. FFXI's figures are estimated because - well, they haven't bothered releasing the damned figures in over six months!

        And that's really strange, too, since they've released an expansion pack AND released in Europe since they last announced their figures. Why the hell haven't they announced that they're up past the 500,000 figure? Why not say "600,000" with the European release?

        Because, most likely, they AREN'T. It's act

    • Pfft. I played WoW for a few months, and now I'm back to FFXI. Why? It's hard to say... WoW is probably better for the casual player, and it's easier to do stuff, but there's not the same feeling of accomplishment. Lots of stuff is available to you immediately... but then things don't seem to open up as much, gameplay-wise, as you progress. And FFXI is far more polished.

      WoW is a nice diversion, but FFXI is where it's at, long-term, for me and many others.

  • The amount of people willing to pay a monthly fee to play a game is not that large. Unless they are willing to make online games that have free servers - SquareEnix-run or not - they will be chasing after the same small pool as everyone else.
    I'd rather pay an extra $10 for faster internet ;)
    • This comment is utterly ridiculous. Just because "you" wouldn't pay a subscription, doesn't mean others won't. Hell, WoW has $800,000 copies sold! Tell me that isn't a fairly large market. Let's say 200,000 are active subscribers at 15 a month - that is 1.5M per month in revenue! I subscribe to WoW and find the subscription model very good for the money. I spend 50 bucks on an Xbox or PS2 game only to receive max 50 hours enjoyment out of it. Plus, it is never upgraded (on xbox live, there are excepti
    • ...Just get Guildwars. I mean, isn't that an MMO that doesn't have a monthly fee?

  • Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by computertheque ( 823940 )
    If this is how they want to change their business structure, that's fine. It does seem strange that a company that has acquired much profit from offline games would make this decision.

    It just comes down to direction. Nintendo is trying something different, so it isn't too shocking that Square-Enix is as well. The most shocking thing that both are doing are turning away from proven forms of capital.
  • Don't get me wrong, I like(d?) Square, but the creator of the Final Fantasy series recently left (as well as the composer). Moreso, it seems the series has been going downhill with each release past 7 (with respect to acclaim and sales) with the only bright spot being 10. What's more, they're releasing direct sequels now in a Disney-like effort to milk the characters for every cent they're worth (I'll set my copy of the Lion King 2 next to FFX2). The marketing department needs to be shot (FFT2 could have
    • I believe the creator of the FF series that went to MS, left Square back around FF 5 or 6. I do know he left before ff8. He didn't leave Square to go to MS, he just needed a job.
    • You can repeat formulas. Just look at "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." It's an excellent book on the underlying structure of basically every hero-driven book ever made.

      The problem is not that they're making sequals. Final Fantasy III was pretty close overall in spirit, plot, and characters to Final Fantasy II (US naming conventions). But what it had was years of time inbetween for people to get excited. They're making nothing but sequals now, and they're making them far too frequently. Every few yea

      • Re:A Nail in the Coffin? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@nOsPAm.gmail.com> on Saturday March 05, 2005 @09:22PM (#11856464) Journal
        So there are insightful intelligent people on slashdot, who knew;) In other words, thank you for your intelligent reply.

        Campell's work deals with cultural reverse engineering: basically taking a bunch of works and analyzing them for commonality. The story-maker's role is the opposite. None of the great mystics or storytellers read Campell's work. They happened to make stories that followed his rubric quite unintentionally. Simply put, even if all great stories follow this formula, it's possible that anyone who attempts to follow the the formula intentionally fails.

        Thus, I find ambivalence in your 3rd paragraph. It is precisely through experimentation that great creative works are made. Companies like Pixar and Retro studios have been doing great things precisely because of their independence. For some reason, companies don't understand math. It's simply a better business strategy to produce riskier products if their average return is greater. They're too focused on optimizing the worst case of the small picture.

        I still want to pick up Square's previous games and have much more desire to play them than FFX2 (though Xenogears has the most repetitive battles known to man). Nintendo on the other hand, and maybe I'm going out on a limb, has managed to keep the most consistantly great/innovative games of any publisher for the longest period of time (from the original Mario to Animal Crossing; even their sequels try to do something different and novel. many people still consider Mario64 to be the first landmark 3D platformer just as Super Mario Bros was considered the first landmark 2D platformer).

        • (though Xenogears has the most repetitive battles known to man)

          I don't know, I think I found FFX more repetitive than Xenogears. Then again, I don't like the rock/paper/scissors aspect of the battle system in FFX, which is also one of the reasons I'm finding Xenosaga Ep.2 difficult to play. When I play an RPG, I tend to like using certain characters, and don't like being forced to use other characters by the game.

          On the other hand, I'm still not sure why I dislike FF9 so much. I don't believe there's

          • Shit, the thing I hated most about FFX is that you had to rotate your entire party, for one turn each, into each battle, to allow for XP parity.

            Note to RPG developers: If you have more available chars than you have slots in your party, either assume that everybody's participating, and give the XP to everyone, or split the parties up and give them similar separate screen time. I seem to recall FFIX doing this, to some extent.

            Better yet, allow the out-of-party members who are just kicking around to provi

      • Actually, there was pretty strong demand for FFX2. And it wasn't exactly pumped out a couple of weeks after FFX. In addition, FFXII isn't due out for months still, and from all indications, the series is taking a dramatic departure gameplay-wise. To date, the only direct FF sequel is FFX2. True, there is a Kingdom Hearts sequel on the GB and another coming out for the PS2, but there was also fan interest in these, as well. The forthcoming "sequel" to FFVII is NOT an RPG, so though many fans would have liked
        • Very true. From the perspective of someone very close to what is going on, all of these games look different and have as different overtones as Final Fantasy 3 did from Mystic Quest. But to someone on the outside, you have an endless stream of Final Fantasy games. And the ones that aren't officially Final Fantasy titled are as close as one could possibly be in artistic style and gameplay. To someone on the outside, they're indiscernable.

          Kingdom Hearts was a great game, and I give Square total credit fo

  • Stupid Idea..it's the reality TV of computer game (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Red Moose ( 31712 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @05:13PM (#11855016)
    I'm sure in some MBA marketing exec's boardroom meetings the graphs show endless profits from adopting the "rental" method (pay per month of use). It's undoubedtly justified to expand global dot-com collaborations and network sharing expansion. And other marketing bollocks.

    What they are forgetting is that the lowest common denominator is the console - only a minority and that's a real definite minorirty but a *minority* none the less have or give a shit about online play

    I dont have FFXI, because I liked FF games due to the plot and story created and the playability which while not hard was entertaining and kept you going.

    The move to online-only games = the computer equivalent of reality TV. They don't need plots and people will kill each other (almost) to produce the content the developers don't need to anymore. The character interaction, etc., is what makes RPGs and l44t sk9i11z kids don't exactly imply adequate value.

    But it's $60 + $15/month. You might cancel after a few months, probably 3-4 I would guess is what the board of directors figures. This means up to $120, well worth it even with a smaller userbase.

    What a bunch of shit.

    • Actually, FFXI has a pretty decent story. It's just a story that you can't gain access to if you try to go solo.

    • Hah, you think $60+$15/mo is expensive? It's not. I used to regularly buy 3-4+ games a month, that's at $40-50 a pop. Per month.

      Enter FFXI (or any MMO of your choice, really). Sure, I pay $50. After that I pay $15/mo. (With FFXI, it's $13/mo and $1 for each extra char, which becomes worth it if you get into the game.) But FFXI has enough content and I play it enough that I don't usually buy anything else.

      So, if it make Square more money, it saves me more money, so what's wrong with a win-win situa

  • Pretty much since the two companies became one they've been trying to do this. They've put out plenty of betas in Japan trying to look for that winning genre combination. There's "Junkmetal", which is an MMO mech-based FPS, and "Shisso, Yankee Tamashii.", a more original MMO where you play as a Japanese highschool delinquent. There's not really that much you can do with the MMO model, though, but they don't seem to get that...

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