Why does Square take so long to release their games?

0/10 efforts

Because FFXIV makes most of their money?

Is there any sources stating how much they make off that game? Quite curious actually.

Remember hearing it makes 1.7 billion a year from it.

Could be a lot of reasons. I believe it's mismanagement. They make big game announcements early which I see it as a huge problem, especially since announcing Final Fantasy VII remake in 2015, while clashing with development with Kingdom Hearts 3 and FF XV. Another problem is low resources, so they had Nomura work on all 3 projects at the same time before they had him just work on KH3 only.

This started when "Square" became "Square-Enix"

2 year gap between KH1 & 2 and now its going to be well over 13 years from KH 2 & 3

FF7-10 was all released within 4 years. Between FF13-15 it took 7 years.

Square-Enix is no longer the end all, be all of gaming studios like they were in the PS2/1 days.

I think it’s lack of focus. Too many games being developed all at once. Some mobile tower defense, some mobile snes era games, multiple big next gen games at once, ports galore, hr remakes etc.

That's how much FFXIV grossed in total up until last year. Its annual gross is about $200-300 million. It's currently the second highest-grossing subscription MMO after WOW (over $400 million annually). And FFXIV is the highest-grossing FF game of all time.

Squaresoft > Square-Enix.

By an infinite amount.

Ah, so i got the Number use wrong.

Still, second place? I thought maybe 3rd, or top 10. At least behind Elder Scrolls online.

Wow, didn't think it was such a big ticket item for them. Square also realizes now that their fans are quite ok with waiting long periods of times for their games seeing as they buy them right up anyways. That being said, that wouldn't be the case if they weren't putting some quality games out.

I don’t know but it does seem that they have a fair amount of things that they are developing at the moment. Just off the top of my head they have:

- content being worked on for Final Fantasy XV

- maintaining and creating content for Final Fantasy XIV

- Kingdom Hearts 3

- Final Fantasy VII remake

- released World of Final Fantasy not long ago

- released Dragon Quest Builders not too long ago

- working on Dragon Quest XI

@Archangel3371: and Octopath Traveler

@xantufrog: Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. I think that Square-Enix have more going on then some people realize.

Just a guess but talentpool in their area ain't that great and workplace culture might not be as welcoming as others? Maybe not as well paid as well so they can't pirate employees as much as some would want to?

EDIT: Then agian, they probably work harder in general due to culture.

Shit upper managment

One, they’re a bloated corporate behemoth and struggle to stay on point.

Two, their fans let them.

None of the above.

The biggest problem was that they felt they(like most archaic Japanese developers) needed to develop a new engine for every game and then scrap them all for the next game.

After luminous was finished and ended not being a good engine, they've finally chosen to use unreal engine, which made development for their games really faster.

Square suffered a lot during the transition to HD and it's just now that they're recovering.

The

@Netret0120: just so you know, they've released a lot of kingdom hearts between 2 and 3 and all are necessary for understanding the plot of 3. So I find all this whining about the lack of KH titles dumb.

@Archangel3371: they have several teams working on each of the projects, so this doesn't make any sense.

Specially when it comes to Dragon Quest

@recloud: How doesn’t that make sense? I mean it’s all stuff that the various teams at Square-Enix are working on.

@Archangel3371: the development of each game go in parallel, they don't have the same staff working on different games.

There's different team for each game.

FFVII remake, for example, just now entered in full production, most likely because kh3 development has ended and probably the team that will work on the remake is the same as kh3

Edit: still, the biggest struggle SE had last gen and in the beggining of this gen was with the engines. I'm so glad they've finally decided to let go of in house engine in favor of the unreal.

@recloud: Yeah I know that but I still don’t see how you think that me saying that they have a number of different games that they are working on or have recently finished doesn’t make any sense.

@Archangel3371: I may have understood you wrong, I thought you said they having lots of games in development made the development of them to be delayed.

they use their own engin and I think it is far from Unreal Engin so they take a lot of time.

I think they are on a lot of stuff at the same time so it takes time.

Even though they took a lot of time they didn't make what people wanted from Final Fantasy since X and even this one was meh.

They bought a lot of studios since the merge with Enix and they probably aren't well equip enough for it.

They are Japanease and so it is different than 'Murica

@Netret0120: VII, Tactics, VIII and IX were all on the PS1 ...

On PS2 we got X, X-2, XI and XII

On PS3 we got XIII, XIII-2, Lightning Returns (XIII-3), XIV

On PS4 we got XV

So the PS4 is the first system with only one new FF all the other got 4 games even if they are in the same serie they are also all different in gameplay

That's is piss poor compared to Square a decade ago.

@needhealing: Well to each their own but I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV and think that Kingdom Hearts 3, Dragon Quest XI, and Octopath Traveler all look to be excellent games. Tried the Dragon Quest Builders demo on the Switch and thought that it was quite enjoyable. Haven’t played Final Fantasy XIV or World of Final Fantasy but from what I’ve seen of those games they look to be very enjoyable as well.

@clefdefa: they're using unreal nowadays.

But, you're talking about most games that haven't even come out yet. This is the point of this topic. By this time last gen, Square had tons of quality titles. Albiet, not goty like the golden ps1 and ps2 ages but still.

@needhealing: Most all of those games have come out or are coming out very shortly. The furthest one away is Kingdom Hearts 3 but really that’s only probably like 6 months or so away now. Plus like I said before they’re still making content for both Final Fantasy XIV and XV. Also there’s been other stuff that they’ve done prior that I haven’t mentioned like the remasters for Final Fantasy X, X-2, and XII. Anyway I just don’t really think that their game output has been as bad as some people seem to think that it has gotten.

Because they don't want to use a third party game engine to speed up game production, instead they said they were creating their own game engine for Final Fantasy games which was supposed to give games more cinematic qualities while speeding up their own game production. Well, it certainly didn't speed up game production, they should just do the tried and true thing, use Unreal Engine 4 and stop wasting time.

Building new engines for every game does take some time although I'm hoping this is not normal. The point of an engine is supposed to ease development of new software so if you have to literally rewrite new rendering pipelines, physics, entities, etc. then your engine probably wasn't exactly robust enough to start with. Of course engines will never be catch all; way too many dependency problems there that could crop up but if you are writing JRPGs in general I would think there should be some relative similarities... sort of. They have been getting kind of unique lately.

Overall though I actually think what really gets to them might be a lack of focus and project management being fairly poor. Time and resource management (and of course don't forget communication) is pretty important and if you don't have a good estimate and a flexible project plan then things can go poorly very quickly.

kh3 is goat

The management and software bloat is absolutely the correct answer as suggested by someone earlier in this thread.

It doesn't matter if teams are working in parrellel, Square ENIX is bloated as hell now. FFXIV was so badly managed and had a talentless group of arse-holes to the point where the game had to be completely remade into a WoW-clone in only 2 years.

FF15 took 10 years of mis-direction and still ended up being lackluster and still they need to update it constantly.

KH3? it maybe good.... but why did we need those inbetween games over the years? why was this just not created afterwards... i nthe end, the story's ridiculousness is a CON not a PRO.

Basically they went up their own asses. FFXIV is luckily keeping them afloat.... it's probably the 2nd best MMO on the market.... but the MMO market is dwindling.

THIS, there games are always amazing quality, As much as I don't like FF personally, I can see why many do. If I see square-enix I know its going to be a quality game even if it's not my cup of tea. I cannot wait for KH3 but understand why I've had to wait for so long for it. I know its going to be fantastic. I do think that they announce things to early but if your a fan of a series you already probably know that it's in development and there's no point of not announcing it, just like Bethesda's "Starfield".

Its not even their game output, why take a decade to release your AAA games if they are going to be good at best?

@needhealing: I still enjoy most of their games very much myself. *shrug*

@needhealing: KH 3 is been in development for 4 years, not 10.

Last I checked, Elder Scrolls Online had an annual gross of around $100-150 million.

@lamprey263: they're using the UE4 for new games

@clefdefa: technically, the PS4 has 2. You forgot World of Final Fantasy. I’d add that one into the mix if you’re counting Tactics.

Not discounting your point, that’s fair, but I would say game development costs keep going up and the market is more fickle.

Releasing shovelware for 10 years.

Because they specifically hate you.

Square is dead to me ever since they cancelled Sleeping Dogs 2.

@needhealing: if you call BBS and DDD shovelware then you know nothing about the series and should stay away from itm

Because they are Shit Enix. Their only saving grace is their western arm (Eidos).

Last game that was any good was the last remnant, would have been great if FF used that battle system. Everyone forgets that game because it was a Microsoft exclusive that was only playable on PC.

Was the last true final fantasy style game.

Sake. Too much sake.