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How can it leak when it was announced at their own event?

If I recall correctly they only announced it because the leak was incoming. There were YouTube videos about how someone on the inside was being an idiot for putting their job at risk by leaking it. Also beyond the leak, just from looking at the trailer itself it's something that's not even worthy of being labeled as a proper teaser trailer from how little it reveals. And then you add in how many delays there have been for other KH stuff. The way things went with Dark Road and the way things are going with Missing Link do not inspire confidence in KH4 actually being something they've got a team of people diligently working on. Combine it with them announcing multiple rounds of layoffs and firings of employees and things look even more grim.

sounds like you need to lay off some of that doomer juice, friend

I have no doubt the game will release (KH3 did more than well enough to give them confidence that KH4 would do well). I just don't think it's going to be coming out anywhere near as soon as some people like to believe. Generally speaking AAA games are taking longer and longer to make each decade. Throw in companies restructuring to avoid bankruptcy and jobs in every industry soon to be replaced by AI and things really aren't looking good for prompt releases. It's also suspicious that two years into development they wouldn't have anything to show for it and be avoiding speaking about it.

2 hours ago, FadedSparkle said:

I have no doubt the game will release (KH3 did more than well enough to give them confidence that KH4 would do well). I just don't think it's going to be coming out anywhere near as soon as some people like to believe. Generally speaking AAA games are taking longer and longer to make each decade. Throw in companies restructuring to avoid bankruptcy and jobs in every industry soon to be replaced by AI and things really aren't looking good for prompt releases. It's also suspicious that two years into development they wouldn't have anything to show for it and be avoiding speaking about it.

by restructuring do you mean the alarming rate at which people are getting sacked?

@ocean's rage - That's only part of the equation. They're getting rid of their top personnel and putting new people in their place to give it what will almost assuredly be their last try not to go bankrupt. They are course correcting incredibly hard. In the case of Kingdom Hearts and other big IPs the main concern is ultimately what happens to the remaining people who worked on past games from those IPs if their new bosses don't get along with them or have a vision that clashes with their own? Some might just choose to quit rather than try to play nice with the new folks in charge. Others might get fired for being seen as expendable and replaceable.

There's also from their own official statements and their actions a very real chance that the company will go back to mostly releasing stuff in Japan only or taking six to eight months (or worse yet over a year) to release them for territories in the rest of the world. The company spent several years catering to North America and Europe and it didn't turn out to be anywhere near as profitable as they hoped.

Some of their releases that should've done well for them just by their name didn't do as well as expected. I.E Final Fantasy 7 Remake's sales started off promising, but in the long run the projection is that it will under perform. From the cost to make it to the cost of marketing they basically overspent and are stuck with diminishing returns.

I've wondered myself if Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't another game like that (haven't read anything on it, but I think it's pretty evident how expensive the game must've been to make especially with it originally not being made in the engine it eventually got completed for, and the marketing costs for it were probably high enough that they only broke even on recouping the cost that went into it).

Final Fantasy 16 also hasn't been the smash hit financially that they hoped for. I guess they burned a lot of their good will with Final Fantasy fans with how the release of Final Fantasy XV went and regardless of how well Final Fantasy 14 has done for them it has yet to have done well enough to recoup all of the money they've lost and are actively losing from the other three mentioned Final Fantasy games in this post.

Ordinarily a company as old and large as this one would make back those losses through smaller games, producing a bunch of cheap ones that would make them more money than went into their production and pouring the minimum budget possible into their marketing. But they mucked up on this front like crazy. Multiple smaller games they put out experienced delay after delay and were so buggy that they couldn't retain the attention of their intended audiences. Patches and updates only go so far at the end of the day.

They also got caught in the DEI trap, making their games with the DEI handbook in mind, ticking off all the wrong boxes. And hiring a mixture of temporary and permanent employees with the same manual in order to earn brownie points so to speak with a certain organization whom's goal it is to ensure that 50% or more of all media is LGBTQ+ friendly and DEI enough (for the record this is not an inherently bad goal, but the way the organization is applying pressure to force it instead of let it happen more organically and naturally is counter intuitive).

The other thing not helping matters is just the pricing of everything. Who with enough of a brain will just fork over $70 or more for an unfinished product? Even gamers who once upon a time defended things like micro-transactions and ads in video games are turning away. The state of the economy in most of the developed world all around the globe is another problem. If people can't afford to game they're not going to. And the industry at large is feeling that.

Edited May 15, 20241 yr by FadedSparkle

Woah waduh

All this yap for kh4 ?

You guys must be excited

43 minutes ago, FadedSparkle said:

@ocean's rage - That's only part of the equation. They're getting rid of their top personnel and putting new people in their place to give it what will almost assuredly be their last try not to go bankrupt. They are course correcting incredibly hard. In the case of Kingdom Hearts and other big IPs the main concern is ultimately what happens to the remaining people who worked on past games from those IPs if their new bosses don't get along with them or have a vision that clashes with their own? Some might just choose to quit rather than try to play nice with the new folks in charge. Others might get fired for being seen as expendable and replaceable.

There's also from their own official statements and their actions a very real chance that the company will go back to mostly releasing stuff in Japan only or taking six to eight months (or worse yet over a year) to release them for territories in the rest of the world. The company spent several years catering to North America and Europe and it didn't turn out to be anywhere near as profitable as they hoped.

Some of their releases that should've done well for them just by their name didn't do as well as expected. I.E Final Fantasy 7 Remake's sales started off promising, but in the long run the projection is that it will under perform. From the cost to make it to the cost of marketing they basically overspent and are stuck with diminishing returns.

I've wondered myself if Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't another game like that (haven't read anything on it, but I think it's pretty evident how expensive the game must've been to make especially with it originally not being made in the engine it eventually got completed for, and the marketing costs for it were probably high enough that they only broke even on recouping the cost that went into it).

Final Fantasy 16 also hasn't been the smash hit financially that they hoped for. I guess they burned a lot of their good will with Final Fantasy fans with how the release of Final Fantasy XV went and regardless of how well Final Fantasy 14 has done for them it has yet to have done well enough to recoup all of the money they've lost and are actively losing from the other three mentioned Final Fantasy games in this post.

Ordinarily a company as old and large as this one would make back those losses through smaller games, producing a bunch of cheap ones that would make them more money than went into their production and pouring the minimum budget possible into their marketing. But they mucked up on this front like crazy. Multiple smaller games they put out experienced delay after delay and were so buggy that they couldn't retain the attention of their intended audiences. Patches and updates only go so far at the end of the day.

They also got caught in the DEI trap, making their games with the DEI handbook in mind, ticking off all the wrong boxes. And hiring a mixture of temporary and permanent employees with the same manual in order to earn brownie points so to speak with a certain organization whom's goal it is to ensure that 50% or more of all media is LGBTQ+ friendly and DEI enough (for the record this is not an inherently bad goal, but the way the organization is applying pressure to force it instead of let it happen more organically and naturally is counter intuitive).

The other thing not helping matters is just the pricing of everything. Who with enough of a brain will just fork over $70 or more for an unfinished product? Even gamers who once upon a time defended things like micro-transactions and ads in video games are turning away. The state of the economy is most of the developed world all around the globe is another problem. If people can't afford to game they're not going to. And the industry at large is feeling that.

last i checked the massive lay offs were happening in the west not japan. so i don't think nomura and the gang have a new boss to worry about

Hallo frenz

Where’s this earnings call I hear of

I am in denial

All the 100% trustworthy and reliable khtubers told me KH4 was next im in denial

thats your mistake. believing clout chasers

1 hour ago, Silent Multiverse said:

thats your mistake. believing clout chasers

clout chasers was great gummi ship theme

it's just weird that they didn't mention KH4 and FFXIV

it's more likely that they forgot

they probably will announce something this summer and then put it into their annual report, can't spoil in a public document

yeah I can see that happen

9 hours ago, ocean's rage said:

last i checked the massive lay offs were happening in the west not japan. so i don't think nomura and the gang have a new boss to worry about

Takashi Kiryu replaced Yosuke Matsuda as president last June as part of the restructuring. And more changes are pending. To be fair Takashi Kiryu isn't an outsider, but considering all of the positions he previously held within the company in a very short time (he only joined the company in 2020), this is more a situation of trying to put someone in the best position to solve issues. Time will tell if he has the leadership skills and vision for the company as a whole to save it. Also after Japan shut down during the pandemic they not only let a lot of people go in their offices over there they flat out closed the offices and sold the space off.

Small note about the changes in who has been at the helm, it seems like they intentionally change the president every decade and some change or so. Yoichi Wada [who took over from Hironobu Sakaguchi (who had a very short lived reign from March or April 1995 until the penultimate quarter of 2001 and left the company behind entirely in 2003)], was in the position from 2001-2013, was replaced by Yosuke Matsuda in the last quarter of 2013 who has now been replaced by Takashi Kiryu as of June 2023.

All three of these individuals were specifically put in the position to save the company by the way. Wada was the one who helped them recover from their mistakes during their last years as Squaresoft and instrumental in the merger with Enix. Matsuda technically both saved them and screwed them over since for every one of his good moves he made two bad ones. Regardless he was the one who saved them from going out with a whimper instead of a bang when they were making the transition from the PS2 era into the PS3 era.

Now Kiryu has to lead them through their current crisis that came about as a result of a combination of some of Matsuda's bigger mistakes, the pandemic, and a rapidly changing gaming market and gamer customer base.

Edited May 15, 20241 yr by FadedSparkle

also, this is different. disney has the power to decide if they are done with kingdom hearts. not square enix.

shh its a conspiracy. They want you to believe the trailer exists

https://tenor.com/view/you-see-it-is-part-plan-explain-gif-20448886

https://tenor.com/view/you-see-it-is-part-plan-explain-gif-20448886

Teaser*

Wish fulfillment on my part, but I want there to be a Mirage boss in Agrabah if it returns, and probably (if her voice actress from the show returns) have Goofy remark in a cutscene featuring her "Is it just me fellers, or does she sound kinda cute when she's angry?".

Because she also voiced Sylvia in An Extremely Goofy Movie.

https://tenor.com/view/goofy-movie-excited-aroused-bae-surprised-gif-16576726

https://tenor.com/view/goofy-movie-excited-aroused-bae-surprised-gif-16576726

15 hours ago, Silent Multiverse said:

also, this is different. disney has the power to decide if they are done with kingdom hearts. not square enix.

True, but only to an extent. If Square Enix went under Disney wouldn't exactly have any other options than to pull the plug on KH entirely or look to another developer to continue it. And while KH can certainly survive without it at this point part of the series premise of being a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover would be lost entirely. Of course Disney could Disney and buy the Final Fantasy series from Square Enix. Also considering the mess that current day Disney has become the race could be said to be on for both them and Square Enix on who goes bankrupt first.
 

Spoiler

My bet would ultimately still be on Disney surviving by the skin of its teeth since I've always thought that if they could survive World War II they could survive anything.

 

Edited May 16, 20241 yr by FadedSparkle

26 minutes ago, FadedSparkle said:

True, but only to an extent. If Square Enix went under Disney wouldn't exactly have any other options than to pull the plug on KH entirely or look to another developer to continue it. And while KH can certainly survive without it at this point part of the series premise of being a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover would be lost entirely. Of course Disney could Disney and buy the Final Fantasy series from Square Enix. Also considering the mess that current day Disney has become the race could be said to be on for both them and Square Enix on who goes bankrupt first.
 

  Hide contents

My bet would ultimately still be on Disney surviving by the skin of its teeth since I've always thought that if they could survive World War II they could survive anything.

 

you think disney is in danger of bankruptcy? the biggest corporate empire of them all?

yall know that time the us army mounted an aa gun in disney's lot during ww2