Square Enix to stop making mid-budget games after Final Fantasy 16 success

Trend News January 18, 2024

Final Fantasy 16 key art protagonist Clive Ifrit — Final Fantasy 16 – definitely not a mid-budget game (Picture: Square Enix)

Despite suggestions that it underperformed, Square Enix claims Final Fantasy 16 did well but that could still lead to some unwanted changes.

For months now there’s been a narrative that Final Fantasy 16 didn’t do as well as Square Enix hoped, but since there’s never any hard figures to back things up one way or the other it’s been difficult to know for sure.

According to publisher Square Enix though, ‘It was in line with our expectations. To maximise our sales of ‘FF16’ over an 18-month period, we intend to roll out downloadable content and the PC version when the timing is optimal.’

That seems like good news but it won’t stop a reorganisation of its publishing plans, that will see the Japanese publisher purposefully avoiding mid-budget games in the future.

While the somewhat unenthusiastic appraisal of Final Fantasy 16 means it probably only just hit its targets that’s still an important achievement, in an industry where a single big budget failure can mean the closure of a studio (as happened with Square Enix’s own Forspoken).

Indeed, it sounds like the big budget excesses of Final Fantasy 16 are going to be used as a template for the future, with an investor Q&A, after their financial results were announced, revealing that Square Enix intends to slim down their overall output.

There’s no indication of which Square Enix exec answered the question, but they were asked whether it’s become difficult controlling so many different teams and studios.

‘It has less to do with our development function and more to do with the numerous entries in our line-up. I want to structure our development function so that we are able to ensure higher quality from each title by slimming down our line-up,’ was the response.

Square Enix is one of the few major publishers that still publishes lower budget titles, often using its own internal teams, with games like Valkyrie Elysium, NEO: The World Ends With You, and The DioField Chronicle.

As with everything else, it’s hard to tell how well these games, and others like them, sold but it looks like Square Enix will think twice before greenlighting anything similar in the future.

‘As our customers’ needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we have tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than by focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool,’ said Square Enix, when asked why they hadn’t pulled in the reigns before.

‘Meanwhile, there have been clear winners and losers among the major titles released recently in the gaming market, and it has become possible for even indie titles to make their presence felt. The market is increasingly polarised between blockbuster and indie titles, but I feel that we have developed many titles that fell somewhere in the middle. I want to make clearer distinctions going forward.’

That last line seems to make their plan clear: only big or small budget titles in the future and nothing in the middle, which seems a bit of a shame.