Did not know that Tri Ace is in a that rough place

[Selphares]

I mean in a way the gae is really win or sink as a company,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQAFxpFxkHM

[TotemMX]

The user BoukObelisk on Reddit have a nice summary of this situation:

"So really weird stuff: From the looks of it, tri-ace has been developing Star Ocean 6 with minimal income after Star Ocean Anamnesis was shut down last year. Apparently some new projects fell through, some got delayed, and they haven't been able to land any new contracts to make up for the operating costs of their studio.

This is extra weird seeing how tri-ace is making their first console game since 2016 with Star Ocean 6 that's releasing at the end of this month. They finally return to the console space after their mobile game was doing well, and now they're facing insolvency? Crazy stuff

tri-ace is owned by NJ Holdings who acquired them back in 2015 when they weren't doing too well. Maybe the parent company will help out? Regardless, it's not looking very good.


For those who want to story of the downfall and rise tri-ace, I wrote up a short summary about their trials and tribulations during the PS3 and PS4 era:

• Around 2007, Square Enix didn't want to greenlight a third console Valkyrie Profile game and instead opted for the smaller budget Covenant of the Plume that didn't sell enough either.
  
  
• Both Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean 4 bombed and probably meant that Square Enix didn't want to greenlight another HD console game by tri-ace.
  
  
• Resonance of Fate (published by Sega) also bombed (same launch as FF13, what a great move by Sega!) and meant that tri-ace couldn't land another project by SEGA who themselves were also suffering from the HD console budgets.
  
  
• Failing to land contracts (this is why they made that Star Ocean engine demo), tri-ace took on a lot of smaller jobs (Frontier Gate and Phantasy Star Nova) and support work on FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns but it wasn't enough to pay the bills for everyone and this is where you see some of the key people leaving
  
  
• Around 2013 or so, for some reason, tri-ace in its former shell managed to land very low budget contracts for Star Ocean 5 and Exist Archive. But they were still hurting financially. Around 2015, tri-ace is sold to NJ Holdings that provides them a capital injection to survive and finish the existing contracts.
  
  
• Exist Archive was published by Spike Chunsoft and seemed like a Valkyrie Profile copycap made on a shoestring budget and a garish character design by Mino Taro (love plus) aimed at younger crowds. Norimoto still wrote the scenario, but the game lacked a budget and the art style clashed with the melancholic, dark theme of the narrative. The game bombed heavily in Japan.
  
  
• Simultaneously with Exist archive, tri-ace made Star Ocean 5. SO5 re-used a lot of assets from SO4 even and as far as Peter Bartholow's contact at Square Enix USA told him, SE wasn't happy with what tri-ace's results. The game was delayed a few months but still ended up being a critical failure and somewhat bomb which showed a lot of cut corners and a low budget.
  
  
• tl dr, tri-ace was a victim of the HD era in Japan and didn't have a publisher to help them out after a couple of their HD console games bombed and they got stretched thin on small contracts and outsourcing jobs and then the last 'fart in the wind' with Exist archive and SO5 in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
  
  
• 'Luckily', around the time SO5 was released, they simultaneously released the mobile gacha game Star Ocean Anamnesis that proved to be very successful that Square Enix was happy with and they've kept working on that and updating it for 5 years which is a decent to successful time for a live service gacha game. It was so successful that it prompted Square Enix to do the Star Ocean 1 First Departure R release. And now they're doing their first console game since SO5 with Star Ocean 6: Divine Force".

https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/xvsgpp/triace_announces_a_huge_loss_and_decreased/

[Selphares]

Nice summary, I was aware of some of the stuff but not all: I really hope this ones turns out well, blame nostalgica but I have a soft spot for the company and franchise. At least the latest trailer with all playable characters looks good and implies it is better and more complex than 5.

[askasys]

Anyway, you guys always mistype the name of that company.
Even on the Steam store the people in charge of setting up the page for this game, mistyped the name.

It is tri-Ace

not Tri-Ace or Tri Ace

[BareNakedSlayer]

I'll say this, I'm not really surprised. Tri-Ace (gotcha askasys) had quite a pedigree going back to the PS1 days. But if you look at their substantial list of games, many just weren't that good. I mean, the last game I played from them was Star Ocean Last Hope, and it's a stinker. It was only my love of the franchise that landed me the 10 hours I got out of it, before quitting.

In their defense, they try to innovate, I just don't think they are very good at it. The last game I really enjoyed from them was Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, that is like 2006? But you really had to buckle down to get some of the systems, it was a little obtuse. I guess I enjoyed Lightning Returns enough too.

All of that said: I played the demo for this game on PS5, and everything I hated about the last Star Ocean I played was fixed. It was very good feeling, ran great, felt responsive and was interesting. It kind of channeled one of the best parts of Xenoblade Chronicles X, running around the world and finding stuff there, going into and out of battles was great. It's not as open as that game but the traversal and how you pick things up along the way, how you can get really vertical on all the maps, those are really really good.

I'm still gonna wait for final reviews here, and I fear the story is just spent at this point, but I think this one is honestly as good an attempt at saving a company that I have seen. They are really only suffering from poor writing, and you only get a couple of hours out of the demo so that isn't a fair look. I just can never stand the dissonance you get out of a lot of Japanese games. It's bleak, your ship blew up, most of your crew is lost, probably dead. So when you run around picking stuff up on the map yelling "AWESOME", it just leaves me with some inner cringe that I can't hold back.

[Selphares]

"I just can never stand the dissonance you get out of a lot of Japanese games. It's bleak, your ship blew up, most of your crew is lost, probably dead. So when you run around picking stuff up on the map yelling "AWESOME""
To be fair most suffer from it

[Streamwatcher]

I had a good enough suspicion with their radio silence, not just from their "profit generator" gacha games shutting down, Valkyrie Elysium using a pretty dated, free engine and this game looking...well...

It's a darn shame, Tri-Ace is a great developer responsible for great classics from my youth.

[askasys]

Originally posted by Streamwatcher:

I had a good enough suspicion with their radio silence, not just from their "profit generator" gacha games shutting down, Valkyrie Elysium using a pretty dated, free engine and this game looking...well...

It's a darn shame, Tri-Ace is a great developer responsible for great classics from my youth.

What does Valkyrie Elysium have to do with tri-Ace?
They are completely different developers, but in the most total way. You are comparing apples with bananas.

You're criticizing this game a little too much, it hasn't even been released, you don't have any evidence whatsoever of what it might be like, other than just a little Demo that doesn't represent the final game.

This whole discussion makes no sense, OP linked a video of a youtuber expressing opinions, not facts.

And about bankruptcy, that's hogwash, and it's obvious that tri-Ace went into a loss, the game has yet to come out, they spent everything to produce it.

Think about pre-ordering the game instead of complaining about the air.

[Streamwatcher]

There was a rumor that Square had "borrowed" devs from VE's team for this(And that VP is originally a Tri-Ace franchise, it's just they weren't wholly involved for VE), and considering their fiscal year, I can see why they want to pump out the JRPGs at the time even if it meant damaging the quality of the products.

How dare I have higher expectations! But the least I can do is expect this game to be their swan song if they do fade away.

[Arndell]

I actually liked Star Ocean 3 the most and it's not all nostalgia, i played it a couple years ago on an emulator, "The universe is a simulation" is not the same as "they woke up and it was all a dream"
The simulation was so advanced and using freaky quantum computers to simulate it, that it became real enough to allow the beings within it to move into the real universe and exist normally, like yes it was a simulation made for entertainment, but the tech used was so advanced it functions as a real universe, albeit an artificial one.


Star Ocean 4 was completeable but meh, I don't really remember it and have no desire to play it again but it wasn't too bad, at least not bad enough that I remember anything standing out.

Star Ocean 5 though, I found that so bad I assumed it was the last in the series, it was so lazy, very short and the whole game was junning between two towns on either side of a field with one trip up to a ship for a little.

tri-Ace clearly have / had talent and can make a good game, but the fact is they haven't for ages, as much as I liked Star Ocean 3, it appears that most people only like the first 2, so them shutting down is just the price that's paid for their bad performance.

[AH-1 Cobra]

It doesn't bode well for this game. Just a few things that would be typical of yet another fail: Rushed, overhyped, feels incomplete, lots of bugs and performance/optimization issues. We don't even have minimum and recommended specs posted yet!? Are they literally waiting until the last minute to test this ♥♥♥♥?

All I can say for Tri-Ace, is step up and prove you can make quality games today, or you might want to consider getting into pachinko machines like SNK. This could either be one of their best games, or it could be the final nail in their coffin.

[Selphares]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

It doesn't bode well for this game. Just a few things that would be typical of yet another fail: Rushed, overhyped, feels incomplete, lots of bugs and performance/optimization issues. We don't even have minimum and recommended specs posted yet!? Are they literally waiting until the last minute to test this ♥♥♥♥?

All I can say for Tri-Ace, is step up and prove you can make quality games today, or you might want to consider getting into pachinko machines like SNK. This could either be one of their best games, or it could be the final nail in their coffin.

I have the same feeling. I hope it works out but if it is a desaster it is likely better fo them to be let go. It would be still sad, since I and maybe others have quite a history with them.

[Arndell]

Originally posted by Selphares:

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

It doesn't bode well for this game. Just a few things that would be typical of yet another fail: Rushed, overhyped, feels incomplete, lots of bugs and performance/optimization issues. We don't even have minimum and recommended specs posted yet!? Are they literally waiting until the last minute to test this ♥♥♥♥?

All I can say for Tri-Ace, is step up and prove you can make quality games today, or you might want to consider getting into pachinko machines like SNK. This could either be one of their best games, or it could be the final nail in their coffin.

I have the same feeling. I hope it works out but if it is a desaster it is likely better fo them to be let go. It would be still sad, since I and maybe others have quite a history with them.

The situation feels a lot like the path Bioware took / got forced down.
Bioware was truly great, EA bought them out, Bioware became the failure it is today.

Im not sure if tri-Ace always worked with Square-Enix for all their games? But it's a similar pattern, they used to make truly great games that people were excited for just by franchise name alone, then something happens behind the scenes and Star Ocean 5 happens.

I hope this is a good game, but it's also very possible Square-Enix just wanted to kick the dying cash cow a few more times to see what drips they could get out before they put it down.

[Selphares]

I still think the biggest Problem of 5 was that it either had a way to low budget at the start, or got cutted without a warning. One scene in the game even implies it when they leave the planet amd say it is unclear when they will return, to just do it one scene later. tri-Ace itself often worked as programmer for hire, they even had the ff7 Remake until Square removed them. Square Enix itself would be ruined if it was not for ff14, their recent buisness choices were really stupid.

[Arndell]

Originally posted by Selphares:

Square Enix itself would be ruined if it was not for ff14, their recent buisness choices were really stupid.

Yes, this specifically is why i'm equating tri-Ace with Bioware and EA.

Without the FIFA franchise EA would have closed down (or changed) many years ago, but just like Square, they have decades of success money to cushion their dreadful choices and a single very profitable cash cow in the form of FIFA.

This all feels very similar to Mass Effect, (Even down to Star Ocean 3 / Mass Effect 3 having endings people didn't like :P) and Star Ocean 5 / Mass Effect Andromeda destroying what was left of the franchise fans.

[Rahlence]

This is what happens when you destroy your fanbase. They brought it on themselves. I have a lot of fond memories of star ocean 2, but the series went downhill quickly after that. Good riddance to bad rubbish when they go under.