The saga of Final Fantasy XVI’s flop seemingly refuses to end as Square Enix themselves aim to turn their failure into a multi-part release.
A quick summary, Square Enix for the better part of several years have focused entirely on producing bottom of the barrel WOKE garbage, poorly written dung with unlikeable characters and cringe dialogue such as Forsaken, combined with exponential financial failures from the likes out Outriders and anything with the Marvel badge of shame have put the company in dire straits.
Despite the fact that Square Enix seemingly wish to sit and squander long since abandoned IPs, they’d rather desperately try and milk as much cash from the Final Fantasy cash cow through bogus partial remakes of Final Fantasy 7 that seemingly usurp the original’s creative decisions with woke political pandering and of course the censorship of female characters whether they be pixelated or 3D, Square Enix are desperate to garner as much cash from the Final Fantasy franchise as physically possible by taking cash checks from the likes of Sony as a limited time exclusive title for the PlayStation console before taking yet another fat check for a PC exclusivity on Tim Sweeney’s Chinese Spyware Game Store.
We can’t forget that it was Square Enix who pioneered the current normality of the $70 price tag for a “AAA” video game.
All of their attempts have been futile, with continued mainline installments of the franchise focusing entirely on action rather than the raw essence of what Final Fantasy once was, with the release of Final Fantasy XV they really hit a point of no return with the abolishment of a turn based system.
But then Final Fantasy 16 hit store shelves.
Over 60% price slashing in Japan and still nobody wants it, a week after launch mind you.
Though not quite as cheap as Forspoken, of which Square Enix thought best to dispose of excess copies at landfill.
Exclusivity deals with Sony couldn’t salvage another financial hit for Square Enix with continually spamming the Final Fantasy franchise with each subsequent release garnering fewer and fewer sales, hardly anybody at all were lining up to partake in yet another action packed embarrassment with Japanese sales having dropped a staggering 90% in the second week after release down to just over 37,000 copies.
Final Fantasy XVI happens to be the most violent and “gorey” entry in the franchise, and it also marks a first, the first Final Fantasy release to feature stunning and brave man on man lip locking action, I can’t understand why consumers didn’t want to buy this game.
I guess the Japanese are bigots.
The only thing I’ve ever heard about Final Fantasy XVI were all the usual journalists shilling endlessly for the game, which only managed to sell three million copies during its first week of release worldwide, which for a Final Fantasy title is pretty piss poor.
Despite hopelessly singing the games praises, Square kept insisting that sales were “strong” and that Final Fantasy XVI would only do better as time move forward.
Square Enix CEO, Takashi Kiryu eventually came out and stated the truth. That being the fact that Final Fantasy 16 did not “meet the high end of the company’s expectations.” and of course rather than self reflecting upon the fact that the company seemingly only produces only garbage with political pandering for $70 instead Square Enix blamed such sale figures on the PlayStation 5 and its “limited user size”.
Square Enix’s operating income was down 79% in Q1 2023 alone, stock prices are down almost 20% over the past month.
Naoki Yoshida, producer of Final Fantasy XVI instead of “taking the L” and reflecting upon his failures instead decided to throw a sook over his latest trainwreck.
Yoshida was featured on a TBS special program where he shared an insight to his daily life affairs and the like but the important bit of information comes from him addressing the negative feedback he and his team at Square have received from disgruntled Japanese fans of Final Fantasy.
During a segment of the program, Yoshida had this to say regarding comment criticism of his efforts in ruining the Final Fantasy franchise.
“It’s like there are many people who are just yelling at you—people I’ve never seen, met, or even talked to. And there are so many of them. It’s strange. What did we ever do to you guys? I don’t get it, seriously. I’m fed up.”
Please feel bad for this corporate sleaze for producing terrible products, because he gets mean comments from random individuals on the internet, don’t you know that people have feelings? Be considerate.
This is the same guy who tried to crack a joke regarding the release of a PC port of Final Fantasy 16, blatantly admitting how far up Sony’s arse Square Enix as a whole find themselves in.
“What did we ever do to you guys?” Gee, I wonder. Apart from ruining the Final Fantasy franchise by turning it into a westernized Devil May Cry knockoff for $70 I can’t really think of much else, Sony / EGS exclusivities whilst butchering all of the JRPG / RPG elements that made Final Fantasy known and loved all for the sake of pandering to feminists abroad. Well done you.
Now that you’re caught up with the impending liquidation of Square Enix and the failure of the Final Fantasy franchise we can finally skip ahead to the actual topic at hand, that being the infamous Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Who the fuck even is Hironobu Sakaguchi?
I can guarantee that majority of the modern consumer base or anyone post the release of Final Fantasy 13 know jack shit about Hironobu Sakaguchi, which is hilarious considering how he was the very man who spawned the franchise as a latch ditch make it or break it attempt in the video game industry, if he were to fail with Final Fantasy he would give up completely so needless to say it did the opposite of fail.
It was a tremendous success, so much so that Sakaguchi decided to stay along for the ride making more video games with then Squaresoft. Everything that the man worked on was a success, Square were hailed as the absolute kings of the JRPG genre throughout this timeframe., but that all came crashing down with his productive efforts of the Spirits Within movie.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a spectacular clusterfuck of a movie, it bombed so damn hard it almost costed Squaresoft’s merger with Enix which otherwise would have sank the company entirely.
This caused a rift between the creator of Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi and his new working partners brought in through the Square / Enix merger. His last entrant in the franchise that had his creative mind at the helm of was Final Fantasy IX.
He left Square, he left Final Fantasy behind him after drinking his sorrows away in Hawaii for two years, finding Mistwalker, other former Squaresoft team members left to join Sakaguchi such as Nobuo Uematsu.
Hironobu Sakaguchi went on to create more games such as Blue Dragon, The Last Story and Lost Odyssey which are games if you already havent experienced yet are well worthy of a look, Xenia and Dolphin emulators have your back.
Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked. Similarly to how Hideo Kojima cut ties with Konami and the Metal Gear franchise, Hironobu Sakaguchi had abrupted disconnected himself from Final Fantasy and Square Enix but miraculously, Sakaguchi has sung his praises of Final Fantasy XVI.
This is just beyond pathetic, Sakaguchi proclaimed Final Fantasy 16 of being a true Final Fantasy title despite of course having next to nothing in common with the titles created under his helm, the very reason why Final Fantasy is a household name in the gaming industry mind you. Sakaguchi has sold out, not only for a company he abrupted cut ties with but for a franchise he hasn’t so much as cared about in over a decade.
Square Enix haven’t so much as mentioned his name or paid him his due diligence as they continually bastardize his creation turning it into what you see today, just as how Square Enix are deluded into thinking Final Fantasy is a brand name people care about anymore, they’re equally deluded in thinking people care about the creator of a brand name no one cares about.
This is just sheer disgusting desperation in a poor attempt to validate a dying franchise.
