Fujito 4gamer Interview

I agree that XI has to have higher margins than anything else they operate, but I don't think comparing XI's hypothetical max. gross revenue against net income for the whole company is useful.

You'd need a good estimate for gross revenue or net profit from XIV alone to put that $35m/year number in proper perspective.

Worth noting that share prices are quite often divorced from the reality of the company's financials. $TSLA is a great example of one that's tilted too far in the other direction.

Square-Enix is, in spite of itself, still completely healthy financially. They still produce sizable profits at a decent margin, they have minimal debt, and there's a couple of very likely winners on the horizon (Dawntrail and FF7R's next chapter). They have multiple loved and recognizable brands. They're not going anywhere.

The share price is likely to continue dipping until something big lands again, but it's not going to fall off a cliff.

I have a suspicion that Sony is alienated by FF14's Xbox exclusivity that it might provoke Sony into buying them. Sony losing the 1-year lead time on PC games by SE, as a result, could provoke them into action (maybe even a buyout).

There is no exclusivity. XIV has been on playstation since the beginning, they're just adding it as a platform, to virtually no fanfare. The crowd went mild at the announcement.

Sony has zero reason to buy SE; even if there isn't an exclusive period, the demographics say outright that by and large people playing mainline FF games are playing them on a playstation. FFXV released on PS and Xbox at the same time, and PS sales dwarfed the XBox. PC came much later.

By the same token, Microsoft doesn't really have any reason to buy SE, either; they couldn't make those games XBox exclusive without effectively killing their sales.

Stares in Vaati (never particularly liked his stuff)


Well and that's exactly why they made ER open-world and made it more approachable with OP summons and spammable ashes of war that can trivialize the hardest of bosses. In my opinion, they effectively made significant enough changes to their Souls games experience for the obvious reason of making more sales.

It soured my experience in many ways, but I don't think this is the place to discuss it. I just hope we get to see more games like Sekiro (and Bloodborne) from Fromsoft, but I don't think it likely anymore.

Did you get number from a different source?

Accoring to Google It's 4680 JPY as of 2018 August 17, the lowest in the past 5 years was 2964 in 2019 Jan. It is 5457 now so about +16.60% from the past 5 years starting from 2018 August.

It's one thing to claim it's stock price is a bit weak relatively(which I would agree), it's another to generate numbers out of nowhere.

I like Vaati alright, but it's a little bit maddening seeing his earth crushingly huge channel and success (2.69 million subs basically for his voice and vocal cadence). For a style of content where he wasn't even the only one doing it, not even the earliest. But to fair, after getting really big, he does a lot of philanthropic type content where he wrangles in artists and other creators to boost their viewership/pays them directly. So he's still quite alright.

As far as Elden Ring goes, I view it more as the devs went no holds barred on both ends. The player gets all sorts of fantastical powers, but they also gave plenty of the bosses mildly unfair movesets/rooms/duo+trio type things.

People say that the Spirit Ashes take away all of the challenge, but they don't. Not anymore than any prior entry's power systems. I mean, for a literal decade before Elden Ring came out, you had every single challenge runner disavowing the use of magic of any flavor. Entire vids dedicated to why a singular dodge -> punish playstyle was the TRUE WAY to have fun that didn't "cheese" the challenge etc.

Even had folks say that about the prosthetics in Sekiro (and some go as far as denying use of the skill trees, too). It's so strange to me that people willingly forsake a new element of strategy and fun in the name of playing one way, cause muh "challenge." or "the real experience."

I mean, it is fair to say that the Mimic Tear Ash and Black Knife Tiche are crazy good (though the Mimic is only really good prior to its nerf/at high levels with a dedicated build). But to get Black Knife Tiche you have to solo fight Alecto, Black Knife Ringleader, which is a problem for quite a lot of people, apparently.

The rest of the Ashes all have niche use or very limited power compared to the bosses, though they certainly help. They are limited to one summoning per encounter, and most of the multi-phase bosses will wreck them during phase 1 if you're trying to rely on them completely. Ashes of War themselves are just magic in another flavor.

The real softener in the experience is the open world. Since you don't have to head -> brick wall for every boss for a long time, you get to indirectly grind as you explore the big world and find less challenging bosses that boost your confidence and playing skills/stats, since you will engage with the game for longer. You also get to find more options for the playstyle you most love, rather than again, having to head -> brick wall if you're completely dedicated to say... sorcery alone or big swords alone or daggers alone or bows alone etc.

To some extent even since the first entry in Souls, you could do that. There's always been at least one other path you could take to accomplish this (in Bloodborne it's the Chalice Dungeons). Elden Ring just made it obvious because it's a whole *** buffet, that you don't even need a Master Key to partake of (of course, the real master key is the knowledge that you could/can all along).

I don't know what's up next for them after Armored Core 6, but I'm sure it'll be high quality. They may or may not do Soulslikes forever or again after Elden Ring's DLC. But if they do, I'm sure there will be some other new element entirely different that folks will try to shun in the name of the dodge-hit god that they exalt.

The AI aggressiveness at button reading, and moveset variety were dialed up a few notches going from DS3 to ER. I certainly wouldn't call that "mildly unfair". XD It was evident from the first boss.


Not all, but certainly a big chunck of it, depending on which spirit you use. Again, it was evident from the very same first boss.

And I don't think it's a fair assessment to compare a stand-alone system like spirit summons or ashes of war, to, say, a magic build. The difference is clear, unless I don't really understand what you meant by "power systems". If it meant any auxiliary that's not part of your core build (e.g. items in general like pine resin weapon buffs, or even spells with low stat requirements) then I fundamentally don't have a problem with it, and I think the games still provided what felt like a properly balanced challenge for the majority of players experiencing it for the first time.

I don't think one should use challenge runners, dodge-punish puritans and their ilk as representatives of of people who have fundamental issues with Elden Ring.


I generally agree with this as I mentioned earlier. My issue with Elden Ring is that it seemed to me that it was unlikely to have a reasonably-challenging experience a la previous entries; it was either too easy or too hard, and I think the "no holds barred" approach you mentioned in your post is to blame.


In any case, I watched my friend completely trash the penultimate boss of ER on his first playthrough by zapping him with his ash of war, while his mimic tear kept the boss busy. He didn't even get see the boss' moveset. And he was feeling himself. /shrug lol

If you don't check videos on youtube, Elden Ring is still very challenging for a first playthrough.

If you want a greater challenge, don't use mimic on the first playthrough.

post your source and we can compare.

i disagree that SE is healthy, for a studio the size that they are they are constantly getting out shone by smaller studios. they haven't had a hit in a decade.

Healthy studios don't sell off acquired assets that they can't properly manage to competitors. The PS exclusives on their big games and then blaming Sony for not selling enough PS5s for bad sales...not a good look.

There's a massive difference between a healthy business and a good one. The measurements used to determine if a business is healthy typically boils down to how it treats its stockholders in terms of profit growth and share price- the product, the employees, the customers are all inconsequential.

SE is going down the same path that Warner Bros went recently. They're sacrificing their ability to make quality products in order to satisfy the shareholder, because the reduction of cost looks the same to those shareholders as profit from a quality product.

Yeah so uh, I think you're intentionally missing the point of what I'm saying here, which is that none of the things you are saying are obstacles to the games continued lifespan are actually issues at all. I was extremely generous in the quick napkin math that I did towards Square, and even with metrics I used which are nowhere near their actual estimated active accounts, they're at the very least breaking even. The exercise was more meant to demonstrate just how bad things have to get for the "They turned it off cause the game no longer made money" to ever be worth considering.

Unless they do something crazy like drop the sub fee to half it's current price and offer all of the extra inventory and content IDs for free, the game will continue to make them money for many years.

Why not post the google link you used?

I assume the person you are replying to is using this chart

and you are using something like this chart

The first one is SE on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the second one is SE on the OTC Markets, which I am not sure what it actually represents.

No it doesn't. Shareholders look closely at where revenue comes from (in addition to cost) and hitting budget through cost avoidance might get you through one year, but it's certainly not a sign of a healthy business.

What do you mean by SE doesn't make quality products? It's probably true that FF16 isn't GOTY level game, but that does not mean FF16 isn't a quality product. The idea of "not the best=bad quality" is absurd.

FF16 has a lot of hate on the internet, but 99.99% of the complaints like "action battle" "too linear" "no builds" are not quality related, it's just design direction and preferences. Bad quality means a game would crash, has bugs, had janky control or animation, has bad UI or grammar error, has incomplete content etc. I haven't seen people said things like that.

If you look at other recent SE games, FF7 remake and FF14 Endwalker, they both have positive reputation in the gaming community too. Can you tell me which game made by SE has bad quality?

Or do you meant low metacritic score games made by a different studio and published by SE, like Forspoken or Valkyrie Elysium? Those aren't really SE games and even if you count them in those don't represent ALL of SE's published games. Like for example, Octopath travelers 2 has fairly decent reputation in jrpg community, it's an improvement from the first. I love how everyone forget about this game and only mention Forspoken over and over.

Ultimately I would still rank SE as a fairly competitive developer in the industry. Not best of the best, but far above average. If what SE produces are bad quality games then literally 99% of the developers in the industry are trash tier according to your standard lol.

FFXIV?
The most profitable FF game ever, which also has Very Positive score on Steam and every expansion getting very high metacritic score from both critics and users (Endwalker having 92 and 9.1) and what is probably the most important it's keeping that up for years now (Best ongoing game award twice in a row now at The Game Awards 2021 and 2022).

I would consider FFVII remake a hit too. It's not a simple remaster, but complete overhaul and considering the expectations and how hard it was to satisfy new young players and old fans, it was a great success and part II is one of the most anticipated game.

I recently started FF7 remake myself and I was completely blown away by the cutscenes and environment quality. Honestly one of the best jrpg cutscene experience that I've had since FF8/10 20 years ago. Can't wait to play FF16 eventually.

To be more specific, this is how 90% of jrpg environment that I played in the past 20 years look:



(No offense to trails fans as I understand most people play this game for story and characters. I just want to stress this environment quality applies to many other jrpg that I've played in the past 20 years. I still remember the endless empty corridors from Persona 3 decade after I beat it.)

And yet the jrpg community often recommend these games and praise them.

If you look at FF7 remake the environment model and cutscene quality is on another tier.

I think SE is still one of the best dev when it comes to building cinematic experience in a video game. I just don't understand the low quality product talk here.


SE's competitor isn't going to be western studio though, their competitors are other jrpg dev like Falcom, Atlus etc. I highly doubt Deus EX and Tomb raider players are going to play jrpg to begin with. It literally makes no difference if other studios own these western IP, it's not like these IP are killing Octopath Travelers or DQ/FF.

Wow they spent all of their resources on milking ff7 AGAIN instead of making something new. Wow they spent all their time on ffxiv which is just a FF greatest hits roller coaster instead of making something new. Wow they made ffxvi a PS exclusive so the only possibly new thing is locked behind buying a console or waiting for their new thing to be old by the time most of us play it.

Hey remember Balan's world and chocobo circuit that bombed hard and they had to fire people publicly or apologize for the qulity of the game by rereleasing it without as much micro transactions?

So what have they made that is new and relevant in a decade? The only thing I can think of is Nier. Other than that they are scared of making something new because every time they try it bombs. It's all rereleases or games we have definitely played from them before, there is no new AND good from them anymore. I bought my PS2/3/4 solely for making sure I could play SE games. I can say it was a bad move starting with PS3 and there is no way they are getting a PS5 out of me. They are incapable of doing anything but polish antiques.



With what little I'm looking at FFXVI, it is direct competition with Deus Ex and Tomb Raider. The only thing that could obscure that is they put the words Final Fantasy on it so you assumed it was a JRPG, which it is clearly not. It's a AAA title that has you walk around while the character or narrator tells you they story, you fight, there is cinematics. Maybe you make branching choices.

You know, a lazy movie. Very little game.

Personally opinion, lol. Plenty of people still enjoy FF7re, ff14, ff16. No game can please everyone. Just because you don't enjoy them it doesn't mean others are the same.

I personally enjoyed FF7re more than OG FF7 that I played more than 20 years ago. Cinematic and character acting looks way better. Better localization too. The newer version helped me connect with OG characters way better. Don't really care if it's an old concept, it feels new enough to me.

The problem here is that saying SE makes low quality games and failing the business only because their games don't match your personal preferences.

No there aren't personal preferences when you ask specific qualifying questions like, "what have they made recently that is new instead of recycled brand content?" as part of a discussion about the health of the company. Artistically they are polishing antiques.

My personal preference is SE games. They don't make new good ones anymore, they just recycle what they already have made again for safe profits.

It is not, Deus Ex is an immersive sim that heavily focus on stealth gameplay, VERY different from any of the SE game including FF16.


being a cutscene focused linear game doesn't meant it's bad or lazy, it's just different design direction from sandbox/open world/non linear games.

A linear narrative game still needs tons of effort to do well. The writing, acting and cinematography has to be really good to create an enjoyable experience. Which cost a lot of money, talents and effort to make.

It is inherently different kind of game from gameplay focused games, it doesn't mean they are bad. I enjoy cutscene focused linear games as much as gameplay focused games. variety is the spice of life, there is no need to bash one type of game only because you prefer something different.


They still do, you just choose to ignore them because the direction is different from your personal preferences.

So you enjoyed Stranger of Paradise then, right?

Very clearly a Final Fantasy game in lore and story
Very different from what SE usually puts out (because the Nioh team made it)
and fun to play

I mean that's the only logical conclusion I can derive from this post. That you want more Jack Garland.

Bravely Default and Bravely Default II.

Seriously if you like classic FF games, those are basically them with a name change.

Also Trials of Mana got released, which is a reimagination of Seiken Densetsu III. Originally made for SNES and never released in US, we've had to make due with IPS patching translations into the ROM. One of the few times a remake radically improved on the original game, and best part, it's fully modable allowing the community to "correct" issues.

the user is comparing the JPY to the USD essentially by claiming SE has actually improved their stock price when viewing it in JPY instead of USD. the dollar has gotten stronger while JPY has gotten weaker over the last 5 years as well.

https://imgur.com/a/eJUdlX7

basically it's how an 11 year old would interpret the situation. to be clear, in AMERICAN DOLLARS, the stock price has slipped 10% in the last 5 years and is being outperformed by the market to the tune of 47%. i'm not japanese and purchase nothing in yen but it looks like the currency has absolutely tanked, thus the higher valuation since the dollar is the backbone of all economies.

it really blows my mind that people can simp for this company in 2023. they are a talentless bloated studio that presents nothing of value, ff14 only got popular because of streamers and that has completely died off and i personally do not think it will come back. even at it's peak it couldn't touch 1/10th of peak WoW subscriptions.

Need a Yagrush plush. Please, holy ***.

Wait what? SE is a Japanese company, of course its stock value is calculated in JPY like every other company in Japan.


Not using usd to calculate asset value = 11 year old? I guess all the non-US based investment firms using a different currency in their reports are 11 year old then LOL.


This has nothing to do with SE. It has more to do with 2 decades of Bank of Japan monetary easing. They purposely keep Yen weak to boost economy performance. The fact that USD is now stronger because of Fed QT makes things worse.

The SE stock conclusion that you made isn't fair to a private company which has zero control over their government's currency policy. Plus yen currency values affect every other JP business, not just SE. If SE ended up losing value calculated in USD because of currency exchange then the same fluctuation will apply to every other Japanese company, which puts them on the same baseline for comparison.

So I am not sure why do you target SE about this specifically.


So does every other MMO that isn't WoW. Your point? Less sub than wow at peak=bad or unpopular MMO? You may as well type "any developers in the world that isn't Blizzard are bad developers" instead.

The issue isn't that this is a players perspective, it's also SE's perspective too. Remember that Fuji, Matsui, and company were all mentored by the same FFXI Director who lost all positions of authority in the company after he flopped FFXIV 1.0. I remember circa 2006-2007? SE posted a POL announcement how we've reached 200k active players! During those days, pre-Wrath of the Lich King, that was healthy enough for SE and their leadership.

Now that SE has seen what a money printer FFXIV 2.0-7.0 are going to continue being, anything less = not worth it. The issue with FFXI is that they are receiving approximately (2) 2004+ subs from each player who realistically plays multiple jobs in terms of wardrobe subscriptions. They also turn a blind eye, outside of mass STF reports to chinese and south american gold farmers, because subs = money for a game a toaster can run.

If we weren't paying $25 a month, half being wardrobes, this game would be in a floppy disk in a storage room at SE HQ. All the while FFXIV gets these expansions for free, but I suspect they're now entering their Adoulin phase, and will see similar changes too.

it's not worth arguing with this kid.

some straw man ***either way, on a US/english based forum trying to argue that company valuation has went up in yen (when the value of the yen has actually gone down so it's not even true.)

sony is a japanese company and is up 55% over the same period (out performing the market by 9%). in yen they are up nearly 80%. what a completely dishonest argument lol. there are likely hundreds of examples just like this.

typical SE fanboy. buy some NFTs and that new kraken club plushie, you'll feel better

Except I said SE's performance was relatively weak just a page ago, never said their stock is strong. Not sure why do you decide to call me a SE fan even after that statement.

You are just a hater man. If people choose not to bash SE for everything like you did they are a fan to you.


Maybe you should have ask the admin to delete all the JP/DE/FR page on ffxiah.com and ban all the French LS recruitment post too, since everything should be US based and not even Yen is allowed in a JP company discussion no?

I am not aware that this site has such rule.