Square Enix To Include Xbox As Part Of 'Aggressive' New Multiplatform Strategy

Too late for me as got fed up of the exclusivity with Sony or skipping Xbox completely. They made it very clear that Xbox was a second class system. I don't completely blame them due to poor sales on Xbox attributed to low console sales and Game Pass.

I don't trust that they won't do it again if they start porting everything so won't bother with any of their games which are mostly mediocre.

Will be interesting to watch and see what happens as far as real game releases go.

SE has had some duds over the last few years I think they don’t have any other choice. FF7 Rebirth underperforming is probably the latest push towards the new strategy. I didn’t buy it because Remake was hot garbage imo.

I don't think they can afford not to go multi platform in order to survive. They have good but disappointing figures I understand.
In other news Capcom keep breaking records and surpassing their own expectations.
What can others learn from them?

Hopefully this will mean the FF pixel remasters should come to Xbox at some point in the future.

Square Enix (and to a much lesser extent, Insomniac) are the only reason I have a PS5. So yea, bring it all to Xbox and I will buy them all over again to show my support. Hopefully they stick to it this time unlike the last wave we got in 2019-2020 (Kingdom Hearts/Dragon Quest etc).

FF Pixel Remaster, please.

Excellent news, best of the year so far. Third-party games should be multiplatform. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and XVI had low sales as PS5 exclusives and left PC and Xbox players excluded indefinitely and that sucks. If Switch 2 is powerful enough, it will be able to get more third-party games as well.

I remember that Phil said, "It's up to them." Not outbidding Sony, that pays less money because it has a larger (2x) console user base, paid off eventually. I can't wait to see the remaining Final Fantasy entries announced for Xbox, plus the old Dragon Quest games and the upcoming remakes.

I read this as Squ-Enix noticing that their strategy of backing Playstation to the hilt recently has only made their sales suffer.

They had the biggest chance to leverage their biggest success in recent history, with FF7 Remake, and increasingly, their reluctance to bring it to anything else has seen even that underperforming.

They're looking at a massive payday when Dawntrail comes out, with new server clusters being set up since the demand is there. The only thing they changed was putting it on XBOX Series consoles.

If Microsoft announced on the Showcase that Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Call Of Duty were coming to XBOX Game Pass in a few months, they could increase the price and no-one would notice.

@Nic-Noc20th-C same here hope we get the pixel remasters ff6 is the best imo loved it back on ps1😎

Maybe they learned their lesson on final fantasy games where they accept the exclusive money then complain about how they do on one platform. I do believe the paid 3rd party exclusive days are mostly ending.

It's interesting how Pure Xbox felt the need to post this article before sister site, NL. In any case, this seemed obvious for a while. SE is realizing the one console strategy doesn't work for their business model.

Ah. A bit too late for me.

1) The more people who get to play games, the better — regardless of console.

2) It’s going to be funny seeing the commentators who swore up and down that SE only puts out trash bend themselves backwards to praise the same games when they’re ported.

I love final fantasy 16, so to see that come to Xbox will be great. I have been saying it makes no sense to keep their games on one platform. PC in Japan is a decent size. I hope they see more sales as we don’t need more people losing their jobs in the industry.

@EvenStephen7 Yeah! And it will also be funny to see the excuses from the people who swore up and down that Square didn't release their games on Xbox because no one buys their games there.

Just shows there is far more to Microsoft current strategy than people think , you can bet P. Spencer knew about this a while back.
By the time Sony release another AAA current gen First Party title over 2 years will have gone by(only one was released in 2023 and nothing until March 2025)and no more Square Enix exclusivity any longer, whereas it looks like Microsoft are now hitting their 4 AAA First Party a year target.

@Sifi Seriously! Xbox has definitely taken some hits and been knocked down some, but not out. Future is still bright for them.

@Sifi It's ironic. From Xbox has no games to only games released for PS5 are Xbox games...

@Fenbops How was it hot garbage? Lol

@Banjo- Huh? All the games would be coming to both, so not sure how you came to the conclusion "Only games released for PS5 are Xbox games."

@deadmaker Agreed on that point too (though caveat, I hope they DO sell well on Xbox and we continue seeing more).

FF16 and FF7R were fantastic (I'm a little more mid on Rebirth, but I know most people love it). I'm happy they're going to potentially get a wider audience and people who only have Xbox get to finally play them.

As I mentioned over on PS, they’ll still complain they don’t sell enough. I can only assume their directors and shareholders think that every game they release should sell like GTA V.

If they aren't gona port ff16 or ff7 remake i dont really care...

There's a sort of terrible irony that Square FINALLY announces this after years and years of us all waiting, and they choose to announce it after MS threw their own customer base into chaos and doubt. I suppose Sony's payments worked wonderfully as Square missing until now is one of the big damaging factors that lead Xbox to its present confusion, meanwhile it hurt Square too. Though Square seems to run hot and cold with Xbox, they were all in when they brought XIII over, and then....silence. Still it's the news I've waited years for, just as MS itself has me doubting the longevity of things. I would have re-bought everything on XB, and meanwhile I've been considering the reverse.

I've been doing my part, I've been playing XIV, paid, on XB. At least, for now.... It actually runs much smoother in 4k mode on XB than the last time I tried it on PS. Not sure if they made it better everywhere or if it actually performs better on XB. Though the incoming graphics update will definitely hit performance everywhere. I kind of like it how it is. 4k60 most of the time.

Which reminds me, @FraserG , any word yet on how XIV sales/subs are doing on XB? I've been curious how that's performing, really because I felt its success would lead to this article, but still curious even now that we have this article.

@ValentineMeikin Dawntrail was going to be huge regardless of Xbox clients or not, the last expansion was so big they had to temporarily delist it for sale because the servers couldn't take the influx, and it's only gotten bigger since then. The majority of the playerbase is PC, though.

@deadmaker It's sort of true and not true, if we go back to last gen and look at XV, it sold 5 mil on PS4, 1 mil on X1. On one hand 4:1 isn't really a good sales look for being on Xb and it's easy for Sony to pay off the difference and keep it off for good. OTOH, that's still 20% of console sales which isn't nothing. And PS had the marketing rights at launch. PC made up the other 5 million, half of all sales, more than PS even. But a lot of that was less about the game and more about the terrible engine becoming a standard benchmark to test hardware against.

@Sifi Oh Phil knew about this and has been working on this. And it's finally been bearing fruit. All this is the result of "Phil's Xbox." The question is how much is Satya working on recklessly flushing all this down the drain to chase quarterlies and implement the Activision model.

Some good news for Xbox. Square should have done this a ways back.

Unless you run a smaller indie studio that could use some extra funds, platform exclusives don't make sense. They especially don't make sense for the 'AAA' third party publishers like SquareEnix. Xbox should've always been part of the equation and Nintendo when possible as it currently has the most popular brand in Japan.

Is it really too much to ask for FF Pixel Remasters, Dragon Quest 8 (and others), FF Tactics: War of the Lions, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Evermore? I'd be set! One can dream I suppose.

Square played no small part in putting Xbox where they are today. My image of this announcement is them having a press conference about their triumphant return to supporting Xbox, on a podium next to Xbox laying in their hospice bed.

F*** you, Square. Seriously.

@Kooky_Geezer MS made it clear for years that Japan wasn’t their target audience. Late launches, barely any promotion… Unsurprising that Squeenix didn’t go all in for quite a while. Now that they are, I’m sadly unsurprised by the “too little too late” reaction from some folks.

If you don’t reward good behavior/games with your dollars, why should they even bother to release anything? Not attacking you personally, please don’t get me wrong. You’re just the first comment I saw here with this opinion.

Just give FF3 Píxel Remaster. I don't care about the rest.

@dskatter It isn't just the fact that they are releasing late. I simply don't trust them to not change strategy again when it suits them. I mean why should I get into a franchise now if in the future it's a risk I won't be able to play them on my platform.

Plus I don't want to reward them financially for going exclusive on PlayStation in the first place. Plenty waiting for Final Fantasy it seems won't believe the story until ports actually happen.

@Banjo- I desperately want the equivalent of Pixel Remasters for the older, hard-to-access DQ games.

@deadmaker you have @MrMagic on Push Square saying because Tekken 8 has sold only 7.47% on Xbox so far that Namco Bandai & other shouldn't bother.

@Kooky_Geezer Fair! As a PS/Nintendo fan who just recently picked up a Series X as his first XBox and a companion to the PS5 and Switch, I just see this as a win for all the platforms. PS will still be my focus, but I’ll encourage devs to make good games on all the platforms I own.

They finally realized FF flopped on pisstation.

What I never get is articles like this always brings up PlayStation and the Square exclusives on that. Yet, there's more Square exclusives on Switch and no one ever talks about those 🤔 as I can't play Paranormasight on my PS or Xbox, where's the outrage for that.

Then it's always X flopped because only on PlayStation, we don't know if Sony paid what might been the amount sold elsewhere as Xbox % often low, PC likely should be there day one. Square in 2023 put out 34 games, how do they expect that many games to do well and I remember how they said Tomb Raider underperformed but sold like 8m.

I really think they expect too much from there games.

Great news really.

@masofdas The two main differences are that Nintendo didn't pay Square Enix for Xbox exclusion contracts as Sony did, as proven during the ABK acquisition (while demanding Microsoft to keep Call of Duty on PS) and that Nintendo is the most popular console in Japan, while PS has lost strength there. Because of the latter, many smaller Japanese games are, unfortunately, not released for PS and Xbox, but Switch is a no-brainer and Nintendo doesn't even need to ask for it.

@masofdas Square is so wierd, they split up releases by platform, dump a bunch of games all at once, expect them all to be blockbusters. A few years ago they were all in on Xbox, everything was on Xbox. Star Ocean, Diofield,Crisis Core, everything. And then just total nothing. Now they're back in on everything. Will it last? IDK.

I think I tend to forget their Nintendo exclusives because they seem to drop them and run. Bravely Default just hasn't appealed to me...1 let me down and I couldn't get into the demo on 2. I'd love to see Triangle Strategy break away. OT2 is already confirmed for XB but awol. I'd love to get Harvestella. I could buy it on switch but I tend to prefer remote play handheld to Switch handheld because performance on Siwtch 1 is just so bad for everything not Nintendo. I can't even think of their other exclusives....they really kind of ignore them I think and let Nintendo do the marketing so if you're not watching Nintendo's marketing you don't even know it exists. That'll change now of course.

@Ralizah Oh, wow, I'd take the old DQs in a modern format in a heartbeat. Can modern gamers read that much, though? It's more than 144 characters.

@dskatter I'd argue the opposite, that Square has the exact same approach to Japan as MS does, their games are clearly not targeting Japan and are aimed at the West, and what they do make for Japan, like pixel remasters, are mobile-oriented. Both are going where the money is.

And both are seeing equal amounts of success lol.

@Jenkinss Did they really? All...what...3M people that bought Rebirth and Forspoken on their PS5s are what killed Xbox? Imagine if we had Falcom, Xbox would be saved!

I actually agree with you, and I'm kind of just being a jerk in saying that....but I do have to wonder how much our perception of Square's absence helped build the image of Xbox is irrelevant, everything is on PS, when the reality is their games aren't actually selling very well on PS. We THINK Square mattered. Jim THOUGHT Square mattered, but in reality Square seems to be basically irrelevant.

I feel somewhat gutted though that now that I'm at the point of debating whether I continue with XB or go PC, that's when Square shows up. I literally just used them over the weekend as my baseline in lining up prices and checking out Forspoken and Remake for $35 on Epic Games Store as a litmus test for PC pricing lol.

But when I look over their catalogue, I think they remain one of my top pick publishers across the board. Niche or not, they're my niche, which is why they also tick me off so easily when they screw the fans.

I admit, I probably bought my PS5 more for Square than for anything Sony was doing. VR matters to me. Outside VR though? I like Horizon, GoT is ok, Sackboy and R&C were the last Sony "must haves" for me outside Square's stuff.

@Banjo- yeah we know PlayStation has that I agree with but we don't really know if Nintendo paid for Triangle Strategy to only be Nintendo, Live A Live was a timed exclusive then came to PlayStation they must have paid for that, that's to name a few not the other dozens of games. As can't see Square doing it for the goodness of there heart, must be money involved somewhere.

Not saying either right, it's more people only seem to care about Final Fantasy, yet Square makes loads of games and I'd like to have them all on my one system. Seems very selective the complaining.

Oddly PS5 has nearly caught up to PS4 in Japan

@NEStalgia that's my point Square are odd like why put Saga Emerald on Switch, PS4, PS5, PC, iOS and Android like why missout Xbox, then ya have something like Octopath Traveller that even came to Stadia but missed PlayStation

@masofdas Yeah, I was talking generally and I don't know what possible agreements Nintendo and Square Enix had. I don't know about every single game, but Switch is a massive hit in Japan that PS5 is not. For instance, Octopath Traveller, I think, was never paid exclusivity for, but Switch was powerful and popular enough for the first game. Because Sony was more worried about Final Fantasy than any other Square Enix IP, it was eventually offered as a Game Pass release. The sequel on PS5 and not Xbox was an experiment, because Sony wasn't obsessed with Dragon Quest or Octopath Traveller but Final Fantasy.

I agree with you, all third-party games should be available on all platforms and it's sad when small games are only released for Switch. The only games that I pre-order digitally are niche games that I like, to support the publisher and developer, e.g., Project Zero/Fatal Frame.

@Lanmanna as a fan of the original and its story, every single story element they added or changed was awful. From the ghosts to the ending of the game. Graphics are nice and the music was top notch but everything else was underwhelming imo, especially the story as I’ve mentioned. You can tell it’s from the same guy who made kingdom hearts, utter nonsensical.

A lot of people enjoyed it, I didn’t.

@NEStalgia ‘, I probably bought my PS5 more for Square than for anything Sony was doing.’

You must enjoy self harm 😝🤣😋

Maybe they’ll finally get around to releasing Final Fantasy X on the iPhone!

Kinda unsurprising as companies keep pushing themselves for more a more demanding growth targets and market getting more and more saturated, more multiplatform focus makes sense and is a logical move. We've all seen a version of this in the last few years with PS games coming to PC etc., which was unthinkable not so long ago. We shall see what happens.

But will we now choose them hmmm?

@Sifi PlayStation will have the xbox games that are being ported too

Plus their own exclusives that’ll never come to xbox

@Fenbops Lol. I mean, not ALL of their games Forspoken

@NEStalgia I know (hope) you're joking but by the time Rebirth launched, Xbox's grave was dug, it's irrelevant. This is a decades long issue. Phil Spencer's public makeout session with Square at X019 was 5 years ago now, and it was in response to Square's long cold war against Xbox. And since then they went BACK to a near total freeze on Xbox development, before resuming again (dizzy yet?). But again, the real damage was over the last decade, before that when Xbox had a chance of clawing back (X1X era), and Sony held a pillow on their face and Square was more than happy to sit on it for a few shekels.

@Jenkinss Yeah, but it's ironic that Square isn't exactly a system seller for anyone at this point.

You're not wrong, the OG Xbox era into 360 Sony was part-owner of Square and certainly held them in place, and that certainly did do a lot of damage back when Square mattered. OTOH 360 is when we saw FFXIII break onto Xbox which continued into X1. It's been awkward stops and starts. I really don't know what happened after things seemed to be on track 5 years ago, late X1X things seemed to be really great with Square, and then....nothing. rumor was there were disagreements about MS requiring Gold for XIV, but here we are, finally with XIV, and it still requires Gold/GPCore. So that must not have been the problem.

IDK how much of it was Sony meddling to "keep Square off Xbox" and how much it was just Square following the money. The true PS "exclusive exclusive exclusive" moneyhatting wasn't until 7 remake, and by then Square already seems to have been irrelevant. Nothing since then has been a real success. And even from the 7 remake exclusivity show, that was the only exclusive, WoFF, and XV were both Xbox. Heck XVI showed some success only because it's basically not FF at all.

For me, and a subset of fans, it made a difference, but I still don't know if in the broad market it made any difference at all. Square hasn't been really relevant since PS2 which is when XB first launched. And on PS3 they were also on XB.

In our inner circle it's like "OMG Everything Square is on Sony Xbox is doomed!!" In the broad market it's more like "ohh the weeb trash...who plays that? Oh yeah, FFXIII/XV....man that sucked. Back to Call of Duty."

The joke has been that the FF market wasn't on Xbox, but it seems like it's also not on PS anymore. I think Nintendo and PC has all the weebs now. Blue and green just fight over Call of GTA. If we look at where things presently sit....360 had FF. X1 had XV. What real cold war did Square have before XO19 (I miss XO19, those were the good years...) The real cold war seemed to be after Series launch. (Unless we're talking KH except for the latest one....that was a long shutout.)

@NEStalgia Do you remember? I said before the remake was revealed that Final Fantasy VII would be released for Xbox and, when the remake was announced, I also said that it would be released for Xbox? 😁

The moneyhatting was at its highest between VII Remake and Pixel Remaster. Sony won't even try now. Square Enix changed their mind and Sony can't keep its exclusives afloat on PS5. Both companies have new CEOs, interestingly.

These games published by Squeenix launched on PS4 and not Xbox in just the 4 years leading up to 2019:

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8
Kingom Hearts HD 1.5 and 2.5 Remix
Dragon Quest Heroes
FFX/X2 remaster (came to Xbox at XO19 6 years later)
Star Ocean Second Evolution
Dragon Quest Builders
I am Setsuna
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness
Dragon Quest Heroes II
World of Final Fantasy (2 years late on Xbox)
Nier Automata (15 months late on Xbox)
Dragon Quest XI (2 years late on Xbox)
The Last Remnant Remaster (this one stings for me especially)
Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon
Dragon Quest Builders 2 (3 years late on Xbox)

Just having to answer that question, you are misremembering those years. The only thing of note Square really put on Xbox was FFXV, and that's because Xbox paid big time for the marketing rights. X019 was a BIG deal for looking like Square and Xbox were finally back in business - of course it turned out to be total bull****, probably due to Sony backing another truck of cash up to HQ.

@Jenkinss Yeah I did forget that. I guess I got my x1x in 2018 and ignored x1 before that (because I thought Xbox was getting out of gaming it was so bad lol), and completely forget what didn't go to Xbox,I was more concerned with what wasn't coming to wiiu so it looked like Xbox got everything in comparison 😂 Yes, I forgot how bad the losing team was because it looked like a winner from the angle of having backed a bigger loser....

To be fair to some of that list though, xb got the real dqx1, and that first PlayStation build was some weird incomplete beta thing they promptly forgot existed Even on ps (I bought it......I pre-ordered it....I know...). Integrity and hopelessness is so bad Xbox was spared, and Xbox got the much superior version of automata where the ps version sucked and iirc didn't get a pro patch (I bought both platforms!). But yeah, I really don't know that happened after xo19. I've theory was that square was looking for a game pass money basket and when they didn't get one, they took their ball and went home. Which is very very square so I believe it.

@Banjo- Yep, you did call it! Funny thing is every money hatted game except remake has been a sales dud lol. I think that was just Jim living in the 90s and squares change of heart probably is equal parts realizing they don't sell to Sony's new market, and Totoki telling them Jim's gravy train to nowhere just ended . We'll see if remake does though, depends on the legalese of it, and the terms for that one go back to House and Layden so it didn't have Jim's incompetent hands on it. 16 is a lock though. YoshiP kinda sorta outed that months ago with "other platforms" and he's the xiv guy so....

Wonder if they get a game pass deal for rebirth. They honestly need to tbh. And part 3 could end up outselling ps on xb, even in the middle of Xbox Done if rebirth is an indication. 😆

I'm glad it's happening, but 'Square Enix Down So Bad It's Giving Xbox a Chance' isn't exactly a W in the way people are painting it. Especially considering the fact Xbox has already missed a lot of SE games, and we're unlikely to see ports of all but the biggest ones due to the shift to only focus on those AAA games at SE.

But most of these same people have trashed on SE and said they didn't want their games on Xbox anyways, and another good percentage of them said Japanese and anime games like theirs suck, but sure, pretend like you want their games now.

@NEStalgia I was late to the XB1 generation as well as I refused to own a kinect for reasons that will sound absurd to anyone younger than gen x (tin foil hat stuff), so I didn't buy one until Phil Spencer took over and decoupled the system from it and lowered the price.

While no one really knows what the f*** happened after XO19 (I think the profanity is warranted because seriously... WTF), I've had a theory of my own I've been going with for a few years now. I think Square (much like today) wanted more money than Sony was giving them. They show up at XO19 and make all sorts of grand gestures, and in that brief era we get the whole slew of every FF game, Octopath, etc. It's the equivalent of your girl making a big show of flirting with another guy. In this case Xbox was the other guy, and Square quickly got what they wanted - a big fat additional commitment from their real man, Sony. This metaphor may seem ridiculous but I really believe this is what happened.

@shoeses This should never have been. SE skipped Xbox and PC. That is tantamount to seeking bankruptcy in 2024. Sony was paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to keep games off of those platforms. Games that would not have skipped PS, anyway. The more you avoid a platform, the more your undermine chances of ever building a following there.

Look at Koei Tecmo; you take a Game Pass deal for Wo Long, then think it wise to make Rise of Ronin exclusive to PS? What were they thinking? Millions of Wo Long players would picked RoR on impulse.

No third party game should ever skip PC.

People constantly say there aren’t “JRPGs” on Xbox. I’ve been playing them all year. Like a dragon in Jan, P3r in Feb, unicorn overlord in March, Eiyuden in April… plan to play smt v in June, metaphor refantazio in October… It’s more than I can even keep up with.

@theduckofdeath Oh for the most part I agree. Even if it was just things that made sense on a case by case basis like Octopath 2 & the FF Pixel Collection to keep their toes wet and have a minimal presence on Xbox they should've done it. But at this point the damage is more or less done, and the only one barely scathed is Sony.

Third-Party games paid for via Publishing I'd argue are fair game for Exclusivity though. Yeah it sucks something like Bayonetta is stuck on Nintendo Platforms only, but if Nintendo didn't pay for them, well it'd still be a one-off rotting with Sega. Honestly though I find it hard to fault Sony for the FF-exclusivity stuff, because SE is still stupid enough to accept it every time despite sales are worse each time, I can't blame Sony for doing it from a business perspective.

@jesse_dylan I feel the need to point out all but 1 of those games listed are from Sega and Atlus, who is owned by Sega.

@shoeses I’m not sure what else I’d be playing either way. I don’t like square Enix action games, but Octopath 2 and others are definitely on my list (and also coming to Xbox, though ludicrously late)

@shoeses I think more the issue is sq-en released a ton of mid-budget games all at once, didn’t get the sales they wanted, and then decided they needed to stick with triple A (or so they said in August); and they doubled down on a “we need to make huge AAA budget games and sell huge numbers of copies by focusing on western audience” strategy.

And they maybe didn’t get the sales they were expecting. But the rumors of their demise are greatly exaggerated. They seem to be adopting a more holistic strategy now (but it still feels like they’re doubling down on AAA action games and endless growth—hope I’m wrong and we still see plenty of lower budget games with modest goals, but on all platforms)

@Banjo- Yeah I think xvi was always kind of inevitable. It was really a 1 year anyway. Don't know what magic happened on 7 trilogy.

Alas and alack, Xbox gamers must wait 2 more years for Forspoken. Maybe ps players get redfall as consolation 😂

That's great news! Although, personally i am not really interested on these square titles, i am really happy that some friends of mine or xbox owners will have now access to these titles. Now, let's see if the internet will keep the same negative energy for PS as it did for Xbox now that PS lost in a night all these exclusives.

I am not going to say anything negative about Square because Xbox is my preferred console and I think it's a win to get their best games on there. I have a PS5 collecting dust because I refuse to pay $150 for PS+.

Weird stuff. Where more customers can enjoy our games ... Phil Spencer is that you?

If Sea of Thieves & others are going to be successful on PS, I wonder, how long before we see Halo, Gears, Forza, ... on PS.
I see Xbox, well MS, doing these bigger titles as well!

@jesse_dylan @NEStalgia I read the full statements and, basically, it's a change of business strategy that will reboot Square Enix during the next three years. My understanding is that there won't be so many releases as jesse_dylan said and that they won't be as busy as a publisher. I didn't even know about The Diofield Chronicle.

They are going to invest in fewer projects in order to raise benefits, because they are spending way too much and haven't earned enough. That doesn't mean that all games will be AAA. What they say is that their releases were too many and overlapped. Obviously, releasing the big games for PS5 only did not help.

Another part of the strategy is releasing all games everywhere, even mobile games designed as mobile games on PC, for the more dedicated players, to reach more people and sell more units of all the titles.

All the main games will be multiplatform and that includes catalogue titles, that is, previously released titles, meaning VII Remake trilogy and XVI, because even games released when Sony partially owned Square Enix, long ago, have been released on all platforms, the sacred VII included.

They will also boost digital sales. Do they mean lower prices in sales? I noticed not long ago and I posted here that, for the first time, the oldest Square Enix titles on Xbox were 60% off, instead of the typical 50% off.

In short, no exclusives, no exclusions, catalogue games being released for all platforms and fewer new releases.

PS: NEStalgia, by the time Forspoken is released for Xbox, it might have become a good game. 🤣

@Banjo- Well, hopefully... They were saying in August of 2023 that they're going to focus on AAA stuff and do less mid-budget games. I realize it's a short news cycle, but that wasn't very long ago, and people seem to have forgotten, but I doubt they have...

@mulder00 We the same!! Except that I don't care about Sq-En's AAA action games; I do like their mid-budget stuff tho (still waiting on Octopath Traveler 2 on Xbox... for instance... I did buy some SaGa stuff on PS due to zero word of it ever being on Xbox, tho... suppose it'll all end up Game Pass now!)

I'm an opportunist, tho, and would go back to Sony if I had to. But I don't really like their first-party games and exclusives anyway... where as I do like many Xbox first-party games (Avowed, Bethesda RPGs, hopefully Indy Jones). And I don't have time in my life for both Game Pass and PS+ExtraWhatever. (Plus Game Pass is paid for via Microsoft Rewards, so...)

third party should never be exclusive i agree

@Banjo- third party games don’t have to be on all systems. Systems aren’t entitled to every title just because Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo don’t own the studio. Most of SE games that are popular are non western style games. So for me it made sense for them to be closer to Sony.

@nomither6 I see no problem with third party being exclusive if agreements were made between two corporate entities. No platform is entitled to anything third party. Now of course a third party developer will make more money if they released everywhere.

@Nic-Noc20th-C they can afford it. Remember SE always has over ambitious goals for many of their non-western style games which sell well but to them they consider them under performing.

@shoeses you are correct. Most Xbox gamers overwhelmingly prefer western style games. Which is why I never was upset about most JRPGs not being on Xbox. For me I always saw PlayStation as the place to play those non western titles.

Now of course there is a small percentage of Xbox gamers that will be happy but like you said this won’t change anything for Xbox.

@Vaako007 Not only would any gamer with no access to those games disagree with all your comments above, but the whole industry disagrees with you now.

Many times, users that are platform-fans talk as if they were stockholders but in this case, even stockholders have realised that exclusivity is not worthwhile. Of course, there will be smaller exceptions, especially on Switch, but Square Enix was the last company still doing console exclusivity or exclusion for big games and the last one to change their mind.

From now on, exclusivity will be a question of small games not worth localising and small games funded by one of the three, some kind of second-party game.

@Banjo- gaming is a hobby and no consumer is entitled to a gaming product from a particular ecosystem or big developer if it’s not available on what they purchased. Exclusivity will still matter going forward as that is what makes a brand or platform. 3rd party developers mostly always push on all platforms unless someone pays them which has been the case for the past few generations. This won’t change. I’m not sure why so many are worked up over a few games not being available from a third party that makes unique non-western games. Square enix always has unrealistic expectations anyways. Even with team Xbox their shareholders would still be displeased with a few more sells from the Xbox base which has a relatively small fan base for these non-western games. I have always had a PS and Xbox. I have no problem with both brands having exclusives as competition is good for any industry.

@NEStalgia I wasn't talking about Dawntrail.

Sony pretty much, back when the ABK deal happened, pretended that their 54% market share didn't exist. Microsoft suddenly had way too big a market share, and if they bought ABK, they'd try to force companies to make all their games exclusive to Microsoft...

Kinda like what Sony did with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth (only for Rebirth to fail to meet targets) and Final Fantasy XVI. Square Enix need to recoup those losses, and the only way to do so is to tell Sony that the exclusivity only harmed their sales figures.

I don't know how much influence Sony had over the protracted time it took for XIV on XBOX, but that it's on everything that it can be, practically at least, is good news for everyone.