Topic: Ubisoft's Profits Rise Thanks to Wii

[Deguello]

The thing about Square-Enix is that they are the antithesis of everything Nintendo preaches: they place great emphasis on presentation and expanding the immersion of the player and storytelling through every technical and cinematic trick in the book.  Nintendo doesn't build consoles that can handle what Square-Enix really wants to do, hence why we get Dragon Quest X (the series that prides itself by looking and playing like a glorified 8-bit game) and not Final Fantasy XIII vs. Wii or some such thing.

But this wasn't true of them before this generation, they didn't care about power, which is why they made most of their games for the market-leading market leader.  They didn't give a rat's ass about demographics.  And to tell the truth, it's not really true today, considering they've released most of their games on the DS, which is... well the weakest system out today (funny that nobody seems to care now.)  Is that handling S-E's "vision?"

If Nintendo wants Square's support, they're going to have to build a console that can do what Square wants to do.  Combine that with previous bad blood between the two companies from the SNES->N64 days and I think you have the reason why we never get Square-Enix's AAA titles (Dragon Quest IX and X nonwithstanding).

The DS?  I could have sworn Square Enix would have wanted for more graphical graphics to tell stories with.  Maybe it's because when the DS took off, S-E ADAPTED to the market's wants as opposed to leading a Pickett's charge into debt for the sake of Sony fans.

Bad blood means little if anything today.  If anything the GOOD blood between S-E and Sony has led to this strange loyalty to them that is counterproductive and inflating costs out the wazoo.  Seriously, just two PS3 games seem to be dictating their entire course.  Like there is an internal war between two factions.  The PS3 team (FFXIII and that other game), and everybody else.  Could you imagine if FFXIII had been announced as a Wii game in 2006.  It'd probably be out now, with no need to gouge fans for asking full price for a demo disc.  And probably that other game too.  And maybe they'd actually have some spare time for a few side projects, and maybe some of those side projects could be great games.  But instead we have this monolithic FFXIII that is lording over everything else, drawing resources while a WIDE OPEN MARKET, WHICH HAPPENS TO BE THE BIGGEST, is left untapped for... some reason.

[broodwars]

The thing about Square-Enix is that they are the antithesis of everything Nintendo preaches: they place great emphasis on presentation and expanding the immersion of the player and storytelling through every technical and cinematic trick in the book.  Nintendo doesn't build consoles that can handle what Square-Enix really wants to do

Interestingly enough, can't the same also be said of Rareware of old?

I don't think they're altogether comparable on that angle.  Yeah, both studios strive for technical prowess and both seemingly take an eternity to release major games, but other than that the two studios have little in common.  The closest Rare ever came in that era to delivering AAA cinematic storytelling experiences was Jet Force Gemini and Perfect Dark, and story never played a major role in either game.  Square also had the ability to make their tech work on the system of choice, whereas Rare just tried to do whatever they pleased on the N64, framerate and other issues be damned.  Whether that was due to being owned by Nintendo, I don't think we'll ever know but I doubt it.

[broodwars]

The thing about Square-Enix is that they are the antithesis of everything Nintendo preaches: they place great emphasis on presentation and expanding the immersion of the player and storytelling through every technical and cinematic trick in the book.  Nintendo doesn't build consoles that can handle what Square-Enix really wants to do, hence why we get Dragon Quest X (the series that prides itself by looking and playing like a glorified 8-bit game) and not Final Fantasy XIII vs. Wii or some such thing.

But this wasn't true of them before this generation, they didn't care about power, which is why they made most of their games for the market-leading market leader.  They didn't give a rat's ass about demographics.  And to tell the truth, it's not really true today, considering they've released most of their games on the DS, which is... well the weakest system out today (funny that nobody seems to care now.)  Is that handling S-E's "vision?"

It was perfectly true before this generation.  The GameCube and the N64 before it had major issues with insufficient storage.  You couldn't put FMV (at least in the amount that Square uses) or whatnot on the N64 and still have room for a game, and with the GameCube mini-discs you're looking at using a fair number of discs to do one game.  And mind you, even setting that aside you have to deal with the fact that Nintendo has never been fond of the RPG genre outside of the Mario RPGs and (in Japan) the Earthbound/Mother franchise.  Why should Square bother with the Nintendo consoles when they could do what they wanted in a more economical fashion on the PS1 and PS2?  For that matter, why bother with the Xbox,  which completely bombed in Japan and seemed to court the RPG market about as well as Nintendo did in that era?

If Nintendo wants Square's support, they're going to have to build a console that can do what Square wants to do.  Combine that with previous bad blood between the two companies from the SNES->N64 days and I think you have the reason why we never get Square-Enix's AAA titles (Dragon Quest IX and X nonwithstanding).

The DS?  I could have sworn Square Enix would have wanted for more graphical graphics to tell stories with.  Maybe it's because when the DS took off, S-E ADAPTED to the market's wants as opposed to leading a Pickett's charge into debt for the sake of Sony fans.

Bad blood means little if anything today.  If anything the GOOD blood between S-E and Sony has led to this strange loyalty to them that is counterproductive and inflating costs out the wazoo.  Seriously, just two PS3 games seem to be dictating their entire course.  Like there is an internal war between two factions.  The PS3 team (FFXIII and that other game), and everybody else.  Could you imagine if FFXIII had been announced as a Wii game in 2006.  It'd probably be out now, with no need to gouge fans for asking full price for a demo disc.  And probably that other game too.  And maybe they'd actually have some spare time for a few side projects, and maybe some of those side projects could be great games.  But instead we have this monolithic FFXIII that is lording over everything else, drawing resources while a WIDE OPEN MARKET, WHICH HAPPENS TO BE THE BIGGEST, is left untapped for... some reason.

Setting aside the issue that the PSP seems to be perceived as a badly-designed piece of hardware that has only fairly recently developed something approaching a decent library, the big issue with developing a AAA-grade title on the thing is development costs.  Considering the PSP is fairly close to PS2 tech, when you develop on the thing you're basically injected a PS2-caliber budget to make a game tha will sell at handheld-caliber price.  It's just not economical to develop on the PSP unless you're going to do something fairly cheap and easy.  Square has no real reason to work on it, though they have put out some major titles like that Final Fantasy VII spin-off on the thing.

[Deguello]

It was perfectly true before this generation.  The GameCube and the N64 before it had major issues with insufficient storage.

But again, what about the DS?  That's the monkey wrench here.  DS holds much less space than a PSP disc.

It was perfectly true before this generation.  The GameCube and the N64 before it had major issues with insufficient storage.  You couldn't put FMV (at least in the amount that Square uses) or whatnot on the N64 and still have room for a game, and with the GameCube mini-discs you're looking at using a fair number of discs to do one game.  And mind you, even setting that aside you have to deal with the fact that Nintendo has never been fond of the RPG genre outside of the Mario RPGs and (in Japan) the Earthbound/Mother franchise.

This is probably going to blow your mind, but the 5 top selling RPGs are Pokemon games, and yes, they do count. 

Square didn't leave Nintendo for the N64 because of space issues.  That's a myth.  They left due to the high cost of developing high quality N64 games when the PS1 had already established itself as the market leader in Japan.  What DIDN'T happen there, was Square making FFVII a 5 year-long dev-time, unsustainable project while farming out spinoffs to the PS1, Saturn, mobile phones.  They moved all their things over, kept a laser-like focus market leader and didn't look back, and thus had a time of prosperity that ended with them wasting $100 million (in 1999 money) on a movie that bombed, and then having to merge with Enix.  And now they are doing it all over again.

[Plugabugz]

Infernal wins. All other discussion comes third.

[mac<censored>]

The thing about Square-Enix is that they are the antithesis of everything Nintendo preaches: they place great emphasis on presentation and expanding the immersion of the player and storytelling through every technical and cinematic trick in the book.  Nintendo doesn't build consoles that can handle what Square-Enix really wants to do

Er, the thing is that square sucks at story-telling and immersion -- they certainly have placed a lot of emphasis on presentation and graphics, but the main effect seems to be that they're churning out same creaky cardboard melodrama with higher resolution and more polygons...