The high prices of recent low budget Square games are hurting their brand long term

[Shazam]

Maybe its just me, but I feel like Square games would get so many more sales if their prices weren't so insanely high. This game despite not having AAA production values is over $70 in Australia and I'm guessing around $50 USD, which is far above what people would generally pay for AA games with lower graphical fidelity like this. A lot of RPGs have sold hotcakes and become cult classics through low pricing that makes them more easily accessible to Steam players on lower budgets who are mindful of their purchases, like Undertale.


A lot of gamers will also weigh up a big price tag for a game against another, for example a player might think "should I pay $70 on Baldurs Gate 3 and its 100 hours of game time, or Fantasian Neo Dimension, which while great is a PC port of a mobile game and not a franchise I have full trust in yet?" In this case, nearly everyone is going to pick BG3, and even hardcore JRPG afficionados will hold off on purchasing Fantasian Neo Dimension until it goes on sale, greatly hampering sales.

I'm not a sales manager, so I probably don't have all the details and MAYBE whoever holds that role at Square knows something I don't, but as an avid fan of Square Enix games, I can clearly see that a lot of these games Square is releasing for insanely high prices on steam have very low numbers of reviews which point to equally low sales numbers.

If we go by a rough estimate of profit by multiplying the price of another recently released $70+ Square game, Romancing SaGa 2, by its review numbers (which is of course lower than the actual sales numbers but still indicative of the number of people who bought the game), the profit comes to about 18,322,139 Yen or $188,168 AUD. However, if Romancing Saga 2 hypothetically sold at $25 AUD and possessed 19000 reviews similar to a recent indie story focused game like Slay the Princess, actually let's be cynical and just give it 10000 reviews, similar to Gothic 1, that's a profit of 24,335,000 yen or $250,000 AUD. In fact using these examples, at a benchmark price of $25 you only need 7526 reviews roughly to break even with the current sales of the game here, which would be easily achievable given its' overwhelmingly positive review score. If they priced their non-blockbuster games lower, not only would Square Enix still make equal or overall profit, but their games would reach a larger audience of budget conscious people and make larger ripples in popular culture, which is what originally contributed to the longstanding popularity of their franchises (FF, Kingdom hearts, DQ) to begin with. For some reason Square thinks selling A or AA games like Romancing Saga at full price and having very few sales or cultural impact is a viable business model, but I really don't think that it is.


Fantasian Neo Dimension only has 260 reviews, which is only around $19,500 AUD!!! Extremely low sales for its' incredible quality! There are viral Youtube videos with MILLIONS of views pining for old school Final Fantasy games, yet Sakaguchi's latest epic, which perfectly fills that missing niche, is underperforming due to extremely high prices and poor marketing. Remember, if this game sold for only 25$ and had roughly 10,000 reviews, it would have made over 10 TIMES the profit it has made right now, and will have been played and discussed by 40 TIMES more people! Is there some fatal flaw in my reasoning here? I seriously am scratching my head at why Square is gimping their own gross sales and cultural impact - which they solely need as their brands are waning in the public consciousness - with these steep prices for low budget titles and remasters of 30 year old games. It doesn't seem very sound business sense wise.

[FafnirChaos]

Their are shills who drink up anything with a SE logo - SE basically preys on them, and because they can get away with it, they price their games around that.

Octopath traveller 1 is 90 dollars canadian, and has never went down in price - Their triple A games I've seen drop, or just are cheaper in general.

It was a bad idea for mistwalker to allow SE to port this game - the price point is a big reason people avoid titles like these - and the reason we'll get so many other discussions both past and future about it.

It nice this game got released - but I would just wait for a sale.

[Катюша]

Square Enix are known for their incompetency. However, most AAA developers seem to be immune to haemorrhaging money. I do wish some of these companies finally got their comeuppance.

[Dragon of dojima]

To be fair sadly this low budget phone release has been their best game since maybe ff14 imo lol

[ContraWars]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Their are shills who drink up anything with a SE logo - SE basically preys on them, and because they can get away with it, they price their games around that.

Octopath traveller 1 is 90 dollars canadian, and has never went down in price - Their triple A games I've seen drop, or just are cheaper in general.

It was a bad idea for mistwalker to allow SE to port this game - the price point is a big reason people avoid titles like these - and the reason we'll get so many other discussions both past and future about it.

It nice this game got released - but I would just wait for a sale.

Octopath 1 is on sale all the time. I bought it for $36.99 CAD almost 3 years ago.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by ContraWars:

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Their are shills who drink up anything with a SE logo - SE basically preys on them, and because they can get away with it, they price their games around that.

Octopath traveller 1 is 90 dollars canadian, and has never went down in price - Their triple A games I've seen drop, or just are cheaper in general.

It was a bad idea for mistwalker to allow SE to port this game - the price point is a big reason people avoid titles like these - and the reason we'll get so many other discussions both past and future about it.

It nice this game got released - but I would just wait for a sale.

Octopath 1 is on sale all the time. I bought it for $36.99 CAD almost 3 years ago.

Oh yes FOMO is a Great solution.

[ContraWars]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Originally posted by ContraWars:

Octopath 1 is on sale all the time. I bought it for $36.99 CAD almost 3 years ago.

Oh yes FOMO is a Great solution.

What FOMO? Games have a high price, and they hold a certain value, but the publisher lets it go on sale all the time.

You are complaining about a 90 dollar game and saying it never goes on sale, and I specifically remember it being on sale half-off multiple times per year, and I literally went back to see what I paid for it almost 3 years ago.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by ContraWars:

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Oh yes FOMO is a Great solution.

What FOMO? Games have a high price, and they hold a certain value, but the publisher lets it go on sale all the time.

You are complaining about a 90 dollar game and saying it never goes on sale, and I specifically remember it being on sale half-off multiple times per year, and I literally went back to see what I paid for it almost 3 years ago.

It's FOMO tactics to spend that money on that game before a timer runs out, or you have to wait, for it to come again.

Their using that to replace the old model of lowering their games - nobody in their right mind is going to pay 90 dollars for the game - they'll wait for a sale, probably forget about it, because of better deals.

If they just lowered the price to 42 dollars, they'd get better sales, and they won't have to give it such a steep discount.

Their banking on psychological pricing to get consumers to accept their new model. The old model worked great and people would buy their games in mass.

The good thing about it is, i don't need to own all SE products, so my money can go to other places instead.