It really pains me to see all these titles selling like this, because I was one of the people who was genuinely hyped when he announced plans to bring back this mid-tier of franchises.
The thing is, even then I knew that they weren't going to be selling like they used to and that's why I don't quite understand the strategy that's at plan here.
I feel with Square Enix we've seen multiple times now these franchise revivals or mid-tier games that aren't given suitable budgets. Or maybe it's just that the budget is being spent in the wrong places. Like Star Ocean 5 pulling it back to one planet and being a relatively short game, even if I though the production values were fine. Bravely Second having to re-use a load of content from the first game. And I feel the next casualty will be SaGa Scarlet Grace.
Like, this games all look fine, impressive in places (I thought SO5 was graphically decent) and then you get feedback that they're short or missing expected content or recycle a load of stuff.
And I don't get it. Either just make a mid-tier game with a mid-tier budget spent in the right places and expect mid-tier sales from it, or go all out with it and hope it succeeds, like they do with Eidos. Their Japanese output is in this weird middle ground where it's not one but it's not the other and it ends up being a load of ehh.
Obviously WoFF doesn't quite fit in with this, since production values on that seem higher than usual.
S-E had a very sucessfull 2010-FY with FFXIII and DQIX (their revenues were declining year after year since 2007), after that it cratered. FFXIV 1.0 wasn't ready, but Wada really wanted two mainline FF on the same year, and look how wonderful things worked out. And after Deus Ex: Human Revolution every single western developed product became a financial failure because those never shipped enough copies (and in the end Hitman, TR became bigger than ever before).
Wada's ambition of world domination (let's become one of the TOP 5 publishers in the industry, yay!!) was something they couldn't really handle, or maybe it was possible, but not under his guidance. He was a man of vision, no doubt about it, and perhaps S-E's current success in mobile gaming should be credited in parts to him, since they were developing titles for phones before they became a behemoth. And of course Eidos was a very key and important addition.
But, since Matsuda became CEO they don't know what it means to lose money anymore and they easily surpassed Wada's best year without needing a mainline FF or DQ. He might be doing something right, even though I'm unsure if Eidos is happy since I feel they will need to ressurect all their series again.
And personally speaking I'm much more satisfied with their current line-up, even if some already mentioned games deserved more budget (or maybe SO5's problem is that tri-Ace can't produce like before). At least now I can look forward to a bunch of stuff, being those AAA, mid-sided or small instead of just the next Lightning game and a DQ spin-off/remake for 3DS that won't be localized and has no worlwide appeal - something I believe is a bit important. (and, btw, no DQ spin-off stopped them losing money during XIV's demise era).
I feel the crux of the issue is that (and this applies to both CEOs) Square Enix is having a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that what defined them for 20+ years (high end singleplayer console games with a side business in handheld) is not what defines them today (f2p mobile games with a side business in MMOs).
Wada's approach was to basically cut out the mid-tier and try to make a fairly large number of swings at being relevant in AAA again.
Matsuda's approach is to greenlight a bunch of games in the franchises they used to make, but give almost all of them notably conservative budgets so that if they sell poorly, they don't eat too much into Square Enix's major profits from mobile and MMOs.
Matsuda's approach is certainly the one that does a much better job ensuring Square Enix's profitability, but it also hamstrings them significantly in terms of ever actually getting their dedicated device division back on track on in terms of prominence and profitability instead of just presence and revenue.
You can see this shining through in Final Fantasy XV the most. Both CEOs were totally dedicated to making sure that project had whatever it needed, because both really, really, really wanted to see it succeed. There's constant marketing and fan communication and feedback opportunities and demos and promotion in every way possible. They even swapped out the senior staff team when they felt Nomura was never going to get it into a shippable state. One interpretation of this would be that the project cost a ton of money, so they *really* want to make that back, but I think that's actually a very small factor overall. Final Fantasy XV's actual mission is to prove that Square Enix Japan can actually make a AAA console game that's relevant in 2016, because if they can't, what on earth are they even doing trying anymore?
Compounding this issue, it doesn't help that they have so much staff that's trained to make dedicated games instead of what they're currently good at. Since Japan is pretty averse to layoffs, they need to employ them to do something, which has resulted in this flood of mid-tier titles (or in the Wada era, the collection of canceled and failed attempts at notable console games), trying to get premium games to work on mobile, and bragging to high heaven whenever any of their teams full of traditional staff manages to make a successful mobile or online hit. The newest incarnation of this is their push into Japanese eSports. They even have a new mobile MOBA by second highest staff member on Lightning Returns (who was also the lead battle designer for FFXIII and FFXIII-2, the most praised element of those games).
I'm curious to see what their next wave of titles looks like. A lot of the games Matsuda greenlit when he became CEO have released (or are doing so shortly), so when those teams announce their next games, we can get a sense of how he's responding to the issues they've seen.
