In a continuation of Square Enix's promise to review the development process "from scratch", the game giant, best known for its Final Fantasy, announced yesterday that it expected massive losses in a warning to investors. 

"... In light of various changes in the environment surrounding the group, Square Enix plans to revise the group's approach to the development of high-definition (HD) games with the intention of "more selective and focused on the allocation of development resources." As a result of reviewing the Group's development pipeline in line with this review, the loss on content abandonment on the books for fiscal 2024/3 is expected to be approximately 22.1 billion yen (approximately 140 million yen).

The statement itself does not reveal exactly what "content" is left to dry, but we will apply some thorough guesses to the issue On May 1 this year, new CEO Takashi Kiryu said, "We want to increase the quality of each title by slimming the lineup." We are calling for the development of "a wide variety of titles" as a way to "break apart" the resources of the service.

As my fellow PC gamer writer Wes Fenlon pointed out at the time, the company has had a glut of games that are great enough to fit that particular bill in the past few years. From games that showed some form of possibility, like Marvel's Avengers or Forespecken, to, uh, Balan Wonderworld, and whatever the hell symbiosis is.

I crossed with my fingers that Kiryu finally dropped the AI and, dare I say, the odd attraction to the Nft, but I'm not crossing them that hard. Even as Square Enix continues to fiddle with such things, this 4 140 million write-offs could bring "high definition" development priorities and big returns 4 early May, when the company replaced the veteran Dragon Quest producer and took seriously how all of the major game series is handled. It shows that we are considering.

This decision may also be related to the performance of Final Fantasy7: Rebirth, but it seems unlikely. In mid-4, analyst Daniel Ahmad observed that the hugely popular first installment sequel was reportedly selling about half of the remakes sold in the same timeframe."I don't know what's unexpected, but the FF7 remake not only came out during the Covid—19 pandemic, it was the first in a trilogy of remake of the beloved RPG, launched on a console with more than 1 billion owners. That number was bound to be buoyant by those factors. Then again, it won't be the first time the company believes in the hype of its first success and squandered on sequels.

In any case — Square Enix is going through stages, uh. Here, not only do I run 1 of my favorite MMOs (I want Dawntrail to be a really good one), but it's a shame to lose the staple of such games to corporate shenanigans and malicious investments.