State of Play… first possible place to see FFVIIR since a long time ago.

[Nazyrus07]

So reasons why I think it's totally possible:
1. Kingdom hearts 3 is already out and it had plenty of time to make its sales.

2. Square Enix said in their recent Investor meeting thing that they would be making announcements in the lead up to E3, whether or not that's FFVIIR, we don't know, but it can perfectly be part of it.

3. Square Enix has shown big games before the huge event of E3 in the past. They did it with KH3 since its marketing started and began to snowball, FFXV did as well, and other big titles in the past. They (SE) are not tied to the logic of waiting for E3 to show their big stuff every time, they have a different marketing idea than some fans still think.

4. Nomura and Kitase hinted "7" and "long awaited" for 2019, with Nomura also adding "various presentations planned", this could line up with part of what SE said about various presentations before E3.

5. Nobuo Uematsu slipped in one interview that the planned original release date was going to be 2018, but it didn't happen. I'm personally thinking it's because they wanted to 100% on KH3 since it was so close to release already and now that it's out, they have a better window to market it fully without KH3 being affected by it anymore.

6. Square Enix said as well in that investor meeting of theirs, that they plan to have a revenue of 40-50 billions ¥ by Q3 2020 fiscal year (Q4 of 2019 basically), which is double than Q2 and Q3 of 2018 together. Let's be honest, not even all of their lesser franchises' games planned for this year combined can achieve something this huge alone, they need a BIG title to come out with it. People think the Avengers game can do it, but let's be honest, they haven't really proved yet to announce a game super close to its release yet, and they haven't shown literally anything of it ever since it was teased, they haven't even talked about its development, in comparison to Final Fantasy VII remake which, while yes, it has had scarce information, at least it has given out updates as "it's going smoothly" , Nomura confirming the fake news to be fake, a key art, actually two trailers so far, etc. Not even the Spiderman game, being as great as it is, made Sony THAT much money to make such a huge difference in revenue. This is mostly my personal point of view in all of this by analyzing the situation and the facts, I think that Square Enix would only be this cocky about 40-50 billions ¥ with their biggest franchises, and one of them of course is Final Fantasy, so I think the giant that they will use to achieve this has to be FFVII Remake. As you saw in points before, everything is already leading up to it, they have teased it more than enough and now that KH3 is out, FFVIIR is the next thing that has been in development for long enough to get it's first episode/part.

Whether or not it gets shown on monday, it won't really take away the fact that it could have been possible to be shown at it, even if it doesn't get shown. SE has shown stuff before E3 events before.

Let's be honest as well… that even if it's not Final Fantasy VII Remake, they need a BIG game to be shown at State of Play (or let's just call it Playstation direct, lol), if they intend to keep people hooked to this new type of presentation of theirs. If they are gonna start with a new method of marketing / presenting software, might as well start doing it big time, right? Plus they gotta show they got good stuff to expect while they are not attending to E3, might as well do it now before the others get all of the attention by then, lol.

I'm hopefull for either FFVIIR, Death Stranding, Last of Us 2, any of those… what do you guys think or hope to see?

 

[ChipNoir]

Myeh. Given Square's blase handling of marketing as of late, I can't say I have my heart in it to expect anything on Monday.

 

[Nazyrus07]

Myeh. Given Square's blase handling of marketing as of late, I can't say I have my heart in it to expect anything on Monday.

I mean… this is just the usual drought between the release of their latest game and the start of snowball marketing of their next big one. Once they start they will go all in just like they did with KH3 and FFXV during their year leading towards release. It's gonna happen eventually lol

 

[Tetsujin]

No one should be expecting anything big from this imo.

Regarding point 6, I'll quote myself from another thread:

So I have taken a closer look at that income projection thing that people have been getting hyped up about and two things stand out to me:

People expecting something big in Q3 of fiscal year 2020 (which would be Oct - Dec this year) based on misreading FY2020/3 which means fiscal year ending in March, not Q3 of that FY.
Secondly, people thinking Square Enix expects a spike in income because of one big title.
This is not so much a forecast or expectation but a mid-term target that they set for themselves about 2 - 3 years back. This amount of sales etc is something they hope to achieve on a consistent basis by the end of FY2020/3 going forward through "natural growth" and all that rather than them expecting a sudden spike due to a single title for that particular year.
Whether that goal will be met by that point is another question of course.

 

[ChipNoir]

I mean… this is just the usual drought between the release of their latest game and the start of snowball marketing of their next big one. Once they start they will go all in just like they did with KH3 and FFXV during their year leading towards release. It's gonna happen eventually lol

Square Enix says a lot of things it never actually manages to deliver.

 

[Nazyrus07]

No one should be expecting anything big from this imo.

Regarding point 6, I'll quote myself from another thread:

Here is the thing, I don't expect the big income to be just thank to FFVIIR, but you can't tell me that it will happen with the lesser big games they have planned if this is double than Q2 and Q3 of 2018 combined. One big title doesn't make it happen alone, but neither does lesser games without a big one. Something big has to come out alongside whatever else they have planned to achieve these figures in revenue.

Square Enix says a lot of things it never actually manages to deliver.

Lot of things =/= everything they say every time, tho. We can't treat them like this for every damn time they open their mouths you know

 

[leadmyskeptic]

We can't treat them like this for every damn time they open their mouths you know

We are at the end of a long, information-less rope, and on the verge of hanging either ourselves or someone from SE with it. Yes, we totally can : )

 

[Tetsujin]

Here is the thing, I don't expect the big income to be just thank to FFVIIR, but you can't tell me that it will happen with the lesser big games they have planned if this is double than Q2 and Q3 of 2018 combined. One big title doesn't make it happen alone, but neither does lesser games without a big one. Something big has to come out alongside whatever else they have planned to achieve these figures in revenue.

It's double that of two quarters because it's for an entire year. For comparison, their operating income for FY 2018/3 was 38.1 billion Yen.
The idea is that by the end of FY 2020, they want to grow enough that they can hit 40 - 50 billion yen (of operating income, not revenue!) consistently. That is not a one time prediction for this year, this is what they want to do every year going forward at minimum.
So it can't be an indicator for something huge coming up, because by that logic they would from now on need something huge *every* year.

 

[donkeyjack]

Nope. We should wait honestly.

 

[Dashell]

 

[looneymoon]

come on guys... you should all the know the formula now

announcement of an announcement of an announcement in which we will see a remixed compilation of footage that we've already seen

packaged with a new line of Cloud's Fenrir "Mako friendly" motor oil. Service your car in style. ¥50,000 ($500) per change. Only available in Japan.

 

[Keveh Kins]

^I've never seen it summed up so beautifully

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

^I've never seen it summed up so beautifully

Plans to announce the release date are being postponed at this very moment as the marketing department scrambles to adopt this suggestion.

 

[Gary Caelum]

It's double that of two quarters because it's for an entire year. For comparison, their operating income for FY 2018/3 was 38.1 billion Yen.
The idea is that by the end of FY 2020, they want to grow enough that they can hit 40 - 50 billion yen (of operating income, not revenue!) consistently. That is not a one time prediction for this year, this is what they want to do every year going forward at minimum.
So it can't be an indicator for something huge coming up, because by that logic they would from now on need something huge *every* year.

Damn, did a lot of people completely misunderstand this? I thought 2020/3 meant just the third quarter, but I've just googled it and it apparently refers to the entire year (the /3 apparently just signifies that the year ends in March)

So this probably isn't that good evidence for FF7 at all then. Woops.

Even Gameinformer falsely reported this then: https://www.gameinformer.com/2019/02/19/square-enix-expects-a-major-game-release-later-this-year

 

[Tetsujin]

Yep. It's funny because I had a feeling something is probably being misinterpreted so I had to research it myself. Meanwhile it gets reposted everywhere else x.x
If I wasn't on vacation I'd propose to write a fact check article or something.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Lol I wish I was less ignorant about business terminology!

Well, I guess it could still be coming this year anyway, given that they're predicting an increased income. But it's certainly less definitive than I thought it was.

They do say look out for the time leading up to E3 for announcements though, so I imagine it's console-related rather than mobile.

 

[Theozilla]

Even if the Remake isn't planned for the third quarter of SE's 2020 fiscal year (Oct-Dec 2019), there's still the original plan from 2017 to have the Remake out within three years from then http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/17q4outline.pdf
So the Remake coming out in fourth quarter of SE's 2020 fiscal year (Jan-March 2020) wouldn't be much more of a wait IMO.

And the 3Q FY2019/3 Financial Results Briefing by SQUARE ENIX HOLDINGS held on Feb. 5, 2019 document http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/19q3Outline.pdf

Does seem to support the notion the Remake will be released in the 2020 fiscal year (which ends on March 31st 2020), whether it's the third quarter or fourth quarter isn't that big of a difference.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Does seem to support the notion the Remake will be released in the 2020 fiscal year (which ends on March 31st 2020), whether it's the third quarter or fourth quarter isn't that big of a difference.

Yeah it's still consistent with the idea, and I think there's a good chance it'll release this winter. But there are other explanations as well when you take into account it's the yearly income rather than quaterly, which is what I mistakenly thought.

If it had been the quaterly income of 40 billion, that would've pointed much more to the fact that it was expecting to come from a small number of extremely big releases (because they don't tend to release too many games at the same time, out of fear they'd compete with one another), so FF7 would seem the only explanation for that (even then, the numbers might not add up).

With it being the yearly income, an alternative explanation is they just have a lot of smaller (than FF7) games coming out throughout the year, moreso than in recent years, but that FF7 is not one of them. Most of those hypothetical games would be shown off at E3, which fits with their briefing. So maybe they have 4 AAA games, including the Avengers, coming out in July, October, December, February. That could account for it.

 

[Theozilla]

I suppose it’s possible, but I would be pretty surprised if the first part of the FFVII Remake did not come out before the Avengers project game and/or after fiscal year 2020 ends.

 

[Gary Caelum]

If they've had a full team of several hundred people working on it this entire time (5 years-ish), it seems like they might need to get it released quite soon for purely financial reasons.

Very few companies are like Nintendo, where they just delay things as many times as they feel is necessary. I don't even know how Nintendo manage that, given that they're publicly traded.

 

[Theozilla]

Nintendo has a huge amount of money in savings alone, not just assets. I think that’s why. Also it is a company that has existed since the 19th century.

 

[Gary Caelum]

They're still publicly traded though, so have investors who want to see a return on investment. So there must be some pressure to see things released on schedule, even if people understand they can afford to delay things when necessary.

Maybe it's just the fact that they know Nintendo has such a good record, so that when something's getting delays, it might mean they have a Breath of the Wild caliber game on the way (so it doesn't lose that value, because their expectations are raised). I dunno.

 

[hian]

Worth that their projected operating income of 2019 is at 30 billion yen, and that has not yet been met according to the Q3 report.

To expect it to rise to 40-50 billion is still a huge increase, one year or not, especially seeing as, as far as I know, SE don't have any major titles for Q4, meaning comparative yearly operating income for FY 2019 is near 10 billion lower than previous year, and that FY 2020 is expected to return to form or exceed FY2018, wich, if I'm currect, was the year FFXV released.

This to me, seems to suggest we're seeing at least one major release in FY 2020.

 

[Theozilla]

FFXV was released in fiscal year 2017 (April 2016 to March 2017), not FY2018.