Eidos Montreal Founder Bails, Citing Poor Communication About Company's Future

It's pretty funny to me that Square is placing the responsibility for their troubles on Eidos, when they're actually performing far better than I ever expected them to. Meanwhile, the parts of Square Enix that are actually Square Enix are a disaster. If they jettisoned all of their Japanese development except for studios working on numbered, single-player sequels to Final Fantasy, they'd be back on the road to profitability. But, nope, let's blame those dang western developers to save face.

I agree that it's wrong for them to place sole blame upon their western games, that's pretty classless, but blaming Final Fantasy for all of their problems isn't any better. Of the last 3 Final Fantasy games two did well, and one did terribly. If you look at the western side it's not all successes either, Tomb Raider was in development for a very long time, and it's clearly an expensive game, so to say that 3 and a half million is disappointing for such a huge franchise isn't actually that far fetched, Hitman did well, and Sleeping Dogs did terribly. The issue isn't that either half isn't holding up their end of the bargain, it's that they are investing way too much in these games and expecting unreasonable results across the board.

Also 13-2 sold a little over 3 million if you factor in both platforms, its development was far shorter than any of the other games, and it reused a ton of assets from the last one. There's no arguing that it was successful.

@hunter5024: But that assumes all games exist in a vacuum. Tomb Raider or Hitman do not have the same public cache of Final Fantasy as a brand, and yes, FF almost certainly cost a great deal more to develop. Also XIII-2 only sold 2 million, and yeah it was an expansion, but that's less than a third of what the original did. Square will NEVER admit that Final Fantasy sales were disappointing, even with XIV. They will say it was subpar, even that it damaged the brand, but never that it undersold.

that's too bad, I really liked the Uncharted feel to Tomb Raider

So 13 sells double what Tomb Raider sold, but it's Final Fantasy's fault they're in trouble? Sure 13 probably cost more to make, but I highly doubt it was a financial failure. You can totally blame 14, but 13 and 13-2 did well for them, even if they wanted them to do better.

@paindamnation said:

@leebmx said:

@paindamnation said:

@leebmx said:

Unless Patrick knows something we don't that first sentence is mighty confusing. Someone needs to make a list of Patrick typo's, kind of like a Brad time to death in QL's we could have a Patrick time to typo.

In other news, I still can't get my head around what all the problem is here. They have made some pretty decent game over the last few years which seem to have sold quite well. Deux Ex and Tomb Raider have been among my faves of the last few years. I get that Square aren't doing so good but if someone could explain how releasing highly-regarded, good selling games is a strategy which isn't working I would love to hear it.

@patrickklepek Do you know of any good articles that go into a bit of depth about this whole affair? I would greatly appreciate a link if you know of any.

They have made some pretty decent games* I get that Square Enix is not doing so well*, but it someone might explain* how releasing highly regarded and good selling games; is a strategic failure which is not working. I would love to hear it.* I could have a wikipedia article in and of itself with your typo's and grammatical mistakes in less then a paragraph. Before you cite someone else's failures, count your own mistakes. Thanks for the read @patrickklepek.

Fuck's sake mate, calm down a just a touch I was merely having a bit a of fun. I think Patrick is capable of withstanding my poor attempts at humour, and if he doesn't want his typos to be a running joke, then maybe he should read his work before pressing SEND (just another joke, don't get tense)

As for typos I am merely some ignorant forum lurker hammering out my vitriol with my big hairy keyboard mashing hands. I give myself the right to misplace apostrophes, mizspelll words or even just go smsx,xx'[s;/sa,.a,áam,szmzxmjzk,zzxjk zn with my big fists. Last time I checked Patrick is a journalist. People actually sign in, or even pay money to read his writing.

And (yes I know its grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with and, but i've done it and it feels soooo good) I don't give a shit about his ever more thundering typos because most of the time he has something pretty interesting to say/report but when it gets to the point of subverting the entire meaning of the opening sentence of your article, I say its time to get a copy checker.

You're telling me to calm down while you made like a little internet rant.

Who is the guy in the picture?

FFXIII sold only 7 million worldwide across both consoles. For such a giant, established behemoth of a franchise, it's been going steadily down from VIII, the spin-offs in particular aren't doing well. It only seems to have outpaced XII due to it being on two consoles.

@undeadpool said:

I don't think it's quite that simple. Final Fantasy 14 is certainly bleeding money, but other games in the franchise aren't doing so badly. 13-2 was the only real Final Fantasy game that launched last year, and while it did sell about a million less copies than Tomb Raider or Hitman, it wasn't in development for as long, and recycled a lot of assets from 13. So when you factor in the investment, its success is probably pretty close to the other two games. I think they're just spending far too much money on development, because they have a reputation for good looking games, and the cost of asset generation has ballooned since the ps2 days.

Edit: My 13-2 sales numbers were wrong. That was only for playstation 3. 360 had .7 million as well.

My position on the thief game was dubious when they revealed that certain aspects were being 'redesigned' to fit a 'console' audience. DXHR was a great game, there were some issues with it, but it was a pretty good first attempt for a studio to make a game.

Square Enix is just making dumb choices and that's all there is to it. I think the MMO market is just a little too flooded at the moment to even consider making a new game. They should have done a new KH game long before, and perhaps tried a new Chrono game.

Wuh oh..

Still Really looking forward to that Thief..

Deus Ex: HR is one of my favourite games this gen annnnnd i have no follow up to this

You're telling me to calm down while you made like a little internet rant.

Maybe someone with more knowledge about this can answer this question, do the sale numbers count at all digital sales or does it still only count the copies sold at retailers? Everyone I know who bought played Tomb Raider and Deus Ex played those games on PC.

The Montreal office was seemingly the only part of S-E that had their heads on straight. Too bad.

@elincoln said:

It's because those games don't exist in a vacuum and the fact is: a LOT of Square games have been underperforming, which necessitated much, much, MUCH higher-than-realistic expectations from games like Deus Ex, Tomb Raider and Hitman to account for the losses elsewhere. There are MUCH better ways of framing that, though, as Square is essentially using its Western devs as scapegoats rather than saying the hard truth: Final Fantasy is underperforming sales wise.

Said like someone that never played it. In respect, Uncharted is just male Tomb Raider made casual. So I guess the new Tomb Raider would be a female Uncharted...if Uncharted was a slightly open world survival game with upgrades and weapon crafting, but well done on the third person platform comparison though.

Tomb Raider isn't really a good example, it's just female Uncharted.

Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and Sleeping Dogs disagree.

All I know is that Tomb Raider is amazing and is definitely GOTY quality.

Well that's discouraging. Human Revolution was very fun and atmospheric.

Fuck's sake mate, calm down a just a touch I was merely having a bit a of fun. I think Patrick is capable of withstanding my poor attempts at humour, and if he doesn't want his typos to be a running joke, then maybe he should read his work before pressing SEND (just another joke, don't get tense)

As for typos I am merely some ignorant forum lurker hammering out my vitriol with my big hairy keyboard mashing hands. I give myself the right to misplace apostrophes, mizspelll words or even just go smsx,xx'[s;/sa,.a,áam,szmzxmjzk,zzxjk zn with my big fists. Last time I checked Patrick is a journalist. People actually sign in, or even pay money to read his writing.

And (yes I know its grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with and, but i've done it and it feels soooo good) I don't give a shit about his ever more thundering typos because most of the time he has something pretty interesting to say/report but when it gets to the point of subverting the entire meaning of the opening sentence of your article, I say its time to get a copy checker.

@fminus said:

That seems like a little extreme of a mindset. It's basically the same justification a lot of people use against Call of Duty games, which are very similar each iteration. If you're bored of entire genres because they've been done before, you're quickly going to run out of games that interest you. Almost nothing is completely original, now, or in the past.

It pains me to say, but Ubisoft is the only publisher with guts left that tries to experiment a bit and try new IPs, as much as I hate Ubisoft for making Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon just another arcade shooter thing, they are really the only one left that actually tries.

The other one was THQ.

All the others are banking on existing IPs, and are now looking at the back catalog of what they can re-make and re-invision. It's super cool for fans of such series, but as an avid gamer since the 80s, it's just more of the fucking same.

I look at steam every day, and there is virtually nothing that I want to play, even now that there was the summer sale, I bought exactly 2 things, one being the Titan series from Puppygames and the other one being Awesomenauts.

Not a single damn blockbuster like the latest Farcry or Assassins Creed interests me in the slightest, I've played those game 20 times before, they are all the same with a new coat of graphics.

I'm not saying that's bad, cause people still dig those games, but there's also the other side, where people would actually like something new, and publishers need to realize that and invest heavily into it, or we're looking at another industry crash right around the corner.

Also game critics need to start being more judgmental on the games. And not hype them to oblivion when the game presents one new feature and everything else is a carbon copy from a game before - like the new Tomb Raider which could be called Assassins Creed.

According to Best Buy employees I know, BB makes ~$5 when they sell a $60 game. Now I don't know who's taking a cut or where from, but if you're seriously pulling in ~$150 million each on Tomb Raider and Hitman, and you're failing to make a profit? You're doing something wrong, guys

Square Enix banks on the Final Fantasy name too much, and for the second time it looks to threaten to bankrupt the company.

Their MMO just stinks of what the Sprits Within movie did to the company, and I am willing to bet that Sony will not be there to save them this time.

This. Final Fantasy is nothing but complete garbage anymore. XIII was an on-rails abortion and nothing more needs to be said about XIV....but because they screwed em up..even though these other games sold well enough to make any other company happy..they were "disappointed" because somehow Square fucking up Final Fantasy and losing assloads of cash is the responsibility of EIDOS apparently.

Tomb Raider was fucking awesome. Deus Ex HR was pretty good. I didn't play much less buy Hitman but..yah.

Square..go to hell. I'd rather these "disappointing" games than the garbage you fart out now-a-days

Deus Ex, Tomb Raider & Sleeping Dogs are some of my favorite games. To say they are failures is not something that company needs to be saying. To sell over 1million copies is pretty damn good. They made 3 single player games *Not counting tomb raider multi as an option* that were marketed pretty damn well I thought and sold above 3million each. How is this a failure? We are not talking Call of duty or BattleField here.

@patrickklepek: A point that always comes up these days when people discuss Squenix-Eidos' financials is the question of whether the Japanese developer's largess is what's sinking the company and Eidos is being used as a scapegoat despite their titles performing relatively well. Does a professional understanding of the situation support this kind of argument or is it established fact that titles like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider had budgets that were independently too high to make a profit off of the kind of sales they got, regardless of how much money FFXIV is losing?

Oh "Greed". will you ever learn?

"Square Enix is in a tight spot because there are compromises that are made, investments that are made that should not have been and things that they didn't invest in but should have," he said. "Communication is very lacking."

Something tells me what he's alluding to here is that they have dumped a lot of money on FFXIII, and other games that have been delayed time and again for years (e.g. Versus XIII which is now XV) and invested so much that they lost a lot and at the same time were hedging their bets on the Eidos properties and probably they didn't give enough of a marketing push (just theorizing here) and when they didn't meet the financial milestones that they wanted, they labeled them as failures.

I think the Japanese side of Square Enix is just trying to throw around the blame. Hitman, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex did their job, expecting them to do more than they did is ridiculous. The Final Fantasy brand has been degraded over this generation with 13 not hitting as big as they would have liked and 14 being a fucking train wreck.

Early this generation it looked like Square Enix was in one of the top spots making smart moves with key acquisitions and it seems like they are just pissing it all away.

Hopefully the new Deus Ex is not being hurt by all this insanity.

The games I was most intrigued with and heard the most about were disappointment? I've even bought all these games and enjoyed them all except Dues ex. In my opinion they should look at themselves with what happened this last generation before pointing fingers. Come on Square... Stop blaming others for your misfortunes.

Fixed. That was the topper on a shitshow clown college that SE had sank to since 2000.

Sounds like D'astous was trying to say that a lot of money wasting and ignorance were happening within the corporation.

I personally think Final Fantasy siphons so much of their money, that everything has to be monster hits just to make up the amount spent on that tired ass franchise.

I looooooooove Deus Ex Human Revolution and had a super good time with Hitman Absolution. Tomb Raider sounds like it was very positively received overall and hopefully I'll be able to get to that by year end.

Semi-related: Sleeping Dogs is freakin' awesome.

Now, Square Enix isn't the developer for these games but the point is that their name wasn't just mud to me anymore, at least a little bit. If Thief 4 doesn't turn out half as well as Hitman did, I'm blaming SE and hoping they don't take Eidos and company down with them.

Also I'd like to hear more, Klepek-style, about how these games did so well... yet apparently not good enough. If big games like these continue to "underperform" how do their companies continue as well as they do? Or are they saying they only made great heaps of money and not THE GREATEST heap of money (aka standard stockholder over promising/whining)?

Tomb Raider and Hitman collectively sold more than seven million copies, and that's considered a failure. This guy should probably find a new industry.

I've said it before and I'll say it again,

Fuck Square, Save Eidos.

@jackel2072: I've also been wondering about why initial retail sales and shipped physical copies are so important these days still. Companies have to be making a lot up through digital distribution in the long run.

If your business model requires all games you make to sell more than 3 million to be successful, then your business model is fucked.

I want a Sleeping Dogs 2.

well i hope this gets sorted, because the run of games coming out of them lately have been real solid. for a while this seemed like a great marriage of east and west. then the whole comment about 3.5 million units being sold was a disappointment. i mean how many did they have to sell for it to be a success?!

They have made some pretty decent games* I get that Square Enix is not doing so well*, but it someone might explain* how releasing highly regarded and good selling games; is a strategic failure which is not working. I would love to hear it.* I could have a wikipedia article in and of itself with your typo's and grammatical mistakes in less then a paragraph. Before you cite someone else's failures, count your own mistakes. Thanks for the read @patrickklepek.

Eidos has been making most of my favorite games the last few years, Deus Ex HR, Sleeping Dogs, and Tomb Raider were all amazing, if they were really viewed as disappointments, there is seriously something wrong with expectations.

So the rumor is that those games are a sales disappointment because their projected sales figures were adjusted higher, so that they could make up the losses incurred by having to completely revamp Final Fantasy XIV. Setting goals beyond reasonable expectations in the hopes that they are met is not sound strategy, but it seems to be with Squeenix's modus operandi of externalizing all blame.

I miss square soft