Square Enix demands money from Microsoft for the release of its games on Xbox

Published by 23 May, 2023 0 likes

The Game Informer portal has published a large article dedicated to the game Final Fantasy XVI, which is now positioned as an exclusive PS5.

And it reveals the whole essence of the Japanese publisher Square Enix. As you know, in the last couple of years, games companies often ignore the Xbox family consoles.

The media reported on the conflict between Microsoft and Square Enix, but no one went into details.

Presumably, the situation was affected by unsuccessful negotiations and weak sales of games on the Xbox platform.

However, in an interview with GI, the Japanese directly revealed the reason - Square Enix uses a kind of blackmail tactic, requiring platform holders to pay for the very possibility of publishing games on their consoles.

If the other party refuses, or its offer is not generous enough, then the port goes under the knife.

"Final Fantasy is one of Square Enix's important franchises - along with Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts.

When we start development, we turn to several platform holders about the release of the game. . .

After that, they come back to us with their proposals," Naoki Yoshida, producer of FF XVI, told reporters, who also referred to friendly relations with Sony and the latter's help in porting the project to PS5.

This approach is perfectly complemented by Sony's policy.

As it became known recently, the company has been paying third-party developers for a long time so that their games do not come out on competitors' consoles.

And just the representatives of Square Enix have integrated perfectly into this configuration. It cannot be said that Microsoft is a victim.

The "Greens" themselves bought out and continue to buy out the temporary exclusivity of games for their platforms and services. A textbook example can be called. . .

Rise of the Tomb Raider from the same Square Enix. However, it is interesting how much the industry has changed over several decades.

So, at the time of the NES, studios paid Nintendo for the opportunity to release their games.

Taking advantage of its dominant position, the platform holder imposed strict restrictions on the number of games produced (no more than five per year), and also demanded to buy back the cartridges produced at a fixed price.

Such a policy eventually resulted in a story with Konami publishing house, which created two fictitious companies (Ultra Games and Palcom Software) to circumvent the limit of five games in the United States and Europe.

Well, the trial with the company Tengen, which, due to restrictions, established the production of unlicensed cartridges for the NES, eventually became one of the reasons for the fall of the big N monopoly.