5 ms·
Square Enix to record extraordinary loss of 22.1B yen
- breckenedge 3y agoThat’s only $139M USD, so not terrible when it comes to the costs of making a AAA game these days.
- nozzlegear 3y agoGenuine question, I don't play very many video games anymore: does Square Enix make AAA games? And what does a AAA game cost these days?
- nitwit005 3y agoThese are questions you can paste into your browser search bar and get perfectly good answers.
- cfeduke 3y ago> browser search bar and get perfectly good answers That depends. If your search engine is Google, you'd get things like "The best 17 AAA games by budget to buy in 2024" or "22 triple A games for a tight budget in 2024."
- nitwit005 3y agoI tried before commenting. Yes, the first page included real answers.
- ClassyJacket 3y ago...Have you used Google recently?
- nozzlegear 3y agoI’m interested in the discussion that might arise from the question, not just the answer. If my question annoys you then you’re welcome to ignore it or ask an LLM to simulate the most efficient forum discussion possible on each topic you come across.
- nitwit005 3y agoThe top answer very clearly did a search, and dumped some wikipedia content for the person. The discussion you're looking for is basically Google Gemini output.
- pixl97 3y agoBaldur's Gate 3 had a budget of $100 million.
- nozzlegear 3y agoThanks! Baldur’s Gate is one of the few video games I’ve played in the last six months, great game. That gives me a bit of a reference for what AAA games might look like.
- djtango 3y agoWas BG3 a AAA game? IIRC the developer wasnt one of the major companies
- pixl97 3y agoI'm pretty sure the company that creates it has nothing to do with it being a AAA game, but instead the amount that was spent making the product. We're just used to the few huge companies crowding the AAA market and turning out rather shitty games hitting you up for MTX every few seconds. BG3 is a good example of what AAA gaming should be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)
- solardev 3y agoFYI, BG3 was unusually good because Larian is an independent studio that was able to self fund BG3 and take many years on its development without publisher interference and rushing. It's an example of a great game, but not a typical example of an AAA game. Most AAA games these days are regurgitated sequels with a ton of micro transactions, etc (see any shooter), very limited choices (Diablo 4), season passes, etc. Many of them get poor reviews from gamers and they would often embargo reviews before release too just to drive up pre-order sales. All this is to say... if you like BG3, you'll usually find that kind of love in indie games these days and not AAAs. What the AAAs give you is typically good graphics and UI polish (but not always), usually at the expense of gameplay, player choice, and writing quality. Starfield, for example, came out the same time as BG3 and was a terrible, soulless game.
- solardev 3y agoSure. Square Enix is a big publisher and sometimes developer, responsible (or formerly responsible) for the Final Fantasy series, Tomb Raider, Hitman, Thief, Deus Ex, etc. They sold some of their development studios to Embracer Group, I believe, but still publish titles. You can see their franchises here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Square_Enix_video_game_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Square_Enix_video_game... AAA games can cost around $100 mil or more, altogether. Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...
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- rowanG077 3y agoThis is money they wasted due to "content abandonment". As a whole SE is still shoveling in money. This is just a clickbait title and an article that seems to want to cast Square Enix as beeing in a bad financial position.
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- mushufasa 3y agosounds like they cancelled a major game that had been in development for a while. The fact that they're issuing a mid-year guidance just for this suggests it isn't your standard tax losses
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIt was probably Final Fantasy 13 III Mark 12 Edition 21 Version 2.18. In which case nothing of value was lost.
- omoikane 3y agoAccording to speculations from some random thread[1], it might be Dragon Quest Monsters 3 that's at risk, especially since Toriyama Akira was involved with Dragon Quest and he died earlier this year. [1] https://togetter.com/li/2358590 https://togetter.com/li/2358590
- peanuty1 3y agoMaybe they will reconsider their decision not to sell the square.com domain to Jack Dorsey's Square, Inc.
- downrightmike 3y agoNaming FF7:Rebirth was probably not a good move. Just sounds like ew
- jimbob45 3y agoYou're joking but I follow the games somewhat more than casually and even I'm a little confused on which game is which and what is actually in each game.
- ClassyJacket 3y agoI do think the obsession with naming everything in a series words beginning with 're' is a little unnecessary.
- downrightmike 3y agothank you
- ambichook 3y agoi vaguely follow? and i think final fantasy <number> denotes a new series, with then any words after <number> being different entries in said series?
- downrightmike 3y agorebirth is a remake of remake, but doesn't use the same horrible battle system as remake, so rebirth is a retread
- JojoFatsani 3y agoIt’s just you.
- bilekas 3y agoFor context also that's 130 million euro. Not that bad actually.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoYeah, consider the pattern recently of the major media corporations just not releasing movies so they could declare large tax losses A major movie being abandoned like that is probably on a scale of 100 million
- bilekas 3y agoPersonally I haven't seen that happen, can you enlighten us with some links to source?
- gnabgib 3y agoWarner Bros shelves finished ‘Coyote vs. Acme’, takes $30M tax write-off [0](76 points, 5 months ago, 104 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38228644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38228644
- hiddencost 3y agoOn revenue of 3.65 trillion in 2022, or 0.6% of annual revenue
- gffrd 3y agoTheir 2022 revenue was 32B yen, or 202M USD. The financial figures in Wikipedia for Square Enix are in Yen.
- bilekas 3y agoI'm genuinely shocked by this. The gaming industry usually culls companies based on acquisitions, then become insolvent by the investor.. maybe I missed a beat I don't see this here. In fact they made 2 Amazing chapters of a series everyone wanted and a promised 3rd to finalise. I would like to believe this is invested money's and not "losses of investment" but I'm no accountant.
- iEchoic 3y agoFF7 Remake and Rebirth are both incredible, but Rebirth's sales are significantly lower. I'm hoping this doesn't make them reduce investment for the third installment.
- ddtaylor 3y agoIt's also a very expensive development.
- iEchoic 3y agoYou can definitely tell while you're playing it. It's probably the best-looking game I've ever seen and it has a pretty unbelievable amount of content.
- bilekas 3y agoIt absolutely should be the most expensive, but they did choose to use unreal engine, I'm not complaining about but it's certainly cheaper.
- bilekas 3y agoLet me reply again, game development in my eyes is insanity personified. If it's engine or interop, it's wild. It always has been.. We used to have memory and space limits, now we have no limits but time. I adore and praise every game developer. It's a tough field.
- bilekas 3y agoI don't have the sales numbers, but if we look at Capcom with resident evil remakes, they made some cash. FF remakes are in unreal engine, so some costs there but I would imagine far less than a new engine build? With faster turnover times..
- resist_futility 3y agoSo half of last years earnings? https://companiesmarketcap.com/square-enix/earnings/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/square-enix/earnings/
- marricks 3y agoYeah, but line must go up or there will be blood. I feel like the business world feels the need to overhype any loses to justify whatever measure are about to come.
- arkis22 3y agoIt might be helpful to understand that "extraordinary" is an accounting distinction: >An extraordinary loss is a loss resulting from a business transaction that is highly unusual, should occur only rarely, and which does not result from operating activities. These losses are reported separately on the income statement from operating earnings, in order to keep from confusing readers about the state of a firm’s earnings. https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/extraordinary-loss https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/extraordinary-loss
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