Square Enix Loses Big

I've never really been a fan of SquareEnix titles. Famous for its
JRPGs, their titles never really appealed to me. But - if their
popularity was anything to go by - they were good games and Square
Enix leveraged their popularity into some major success. In fact, for
a while the company was on a bit of a buying bender, vacuuming up a
number of other - mostly Western - game development companies,
including Eidos and IO Interactive.

But Square has been struggling recently, despite the release of hit
games Final Fantasy XIV and the Final Fantasy VII remake. It's had to
divest itself of many of the companies it once absorbed, surrendering
many of the valuable IPs. It's recent financial report* showed the
company suffered a quarter-billion dollar loss, even as many of its
competitors prospered.

It's a bit of a wonder that many of Japan's premier studios - Konami,
Capcom, Square - are struggling, despite their owning so many beloved
franchises. Except for Nintendo, all the big names that once dominated
the video game marketplace are treading water at best, if not slowly
sinking into irrelevance: chasing crypto, pachinko, or endless
re-releases of classic games from four console generations back.

And it's just baffling to me that this is happening, because - in the
rare time they do release something new - their games seem to have the
same degree of fun and quality that made these developers so beloved
in the 80s and 90s. So why are they having such a hard time? Have
players tastes changed so dramatically? Are the costs of game
development so much higher in Japan? Is Japan just unable to market to
foreign gamers? Why aren't Japanese studios the biggest names in the
game anymore?











* read some of the details here:
https://www.siliconera.com/square-enix-announces-over-22-billion-yen-in-losses/