Tag: Square Enix

Pre-Order FFXIV: Stormblood Today


Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion is nearly among us, so long as you don’t count June 20th as too far in the future, but you can make that time go by faster by pre-ordering your copy on PC or Playstation 4. In fact, pre-ordering will make it come faster, since Square Enix is offering a few days of early access as an incentive. Also coming with your pre-order is a pair of earrings and a wind-up red mage minion.

For $200, the collector’s edition will grace you with a rather hefty Zenos yae Galvus Figure, a cloth map of Eorzea, Stormblood art book, and three in-game items. It’s worth mentioning that all of the items in the collector’s edition are real, physical goods (except for the in-game items). You can check out the figurine at the Square Enix store. The store does note that for the PC version, Steam users must purchase the expansion through Steam, otherwise it will not work on their account. There is no Playstation 3 version as that version is sunsetting.

Final Fantasy Starlight Festival


Final Fantasy XIV’s Starlight Festival is currently underway. It will run until 31st December and has introduced plenty of fun things for players to do over the holiday period. Players are going to be tasked with bringing holiday cheer and gifts to the kids of Eorzea. By doing so they will gain access to event specific items and equipment. By participating in the Starlight Festival, players have the chance to acquire a Santa Claus inspired robe called the Starlight Robe. While it doesn’t have any combat effectiveness it is very fitting for the time of year and looks really cool. Players can also receive some other fun items to furnish their guild hall or house such as Snow Drift that puts a pile of different coloured snow on the floor, a new painting or some festive pillars. Players also have the chance to unlock a season specific musical score to add to their collection as well.

When you’ve had your fill of playing Santa you might want to spend some time in the Gold Saucer and gamble some of your hard fought money on the chocobo races or some of the other mini games. If you win big, then you might be able to afford that expensive weapon on the market or invest some more money into your guild. Once you’ve had your fill of gambling with pretend money at the Gold Saucer, then why not try out Red Flush Online Casino and try and win some real world money. They have a range of sign up offers, so you’ll be able to get started quickly. You’ll get to see if all that practice with Triple Triad in Final Fantasy XIV has taught you anything about the card games available on Red Flush Casino. Play your cards right and you might be able to win enough to cover your Final Fantasy XIV subscription or get yourself something special this Christmas.

In between participating in the Starlight Festival and gambling at the Gold Saucer don’t forget to complete your usual daily quests and participate in dungeons and raids. Whether you are a Dragoon, Monk or White Mage there is always plenty to do in Final Fantasy XIV. Don’t neglect your other classes this holiday either as there will be plenty of equipment to craft, food to cook and fish to catch. All of which can be sold on the market and the proceeds put towards further equipping your character or decorating your guild hall/house.

Square Enix’s Holiday Surprise Box Promises $80 Worth of Games


The end of the year is upon us, and that can only mean the return of the Square Enix Holiday Surprise Box. For $10, Square Enix gives you a bundle of games worth $80, but you don’t know what is in it until after you buy it. It’s a surprise box. To give you an idea on the caliber of items that might be available, here are the contents of last year’s box:

  • Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (2014)
  • Thief (2014)
  • Final Fantasy XIII (2014)
  • Life is Strange: Episode 1 (2014)
  • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (2014)

The box also came with coupons. This year’s box is promising 7 titles worth $80 plus a store coupon for a bundle that is “too good to miss out on.” Given that the box tends to come with games released in the prior year whose price/sales have declined, coupled with the fact that Square Enix didn’t release a whole lot in 2015, I am going to make my predictions for what will appear in the box.

  • Hitman: Episode 1
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
  • Murdered: Soul Suspect
  • Lara Croft GO
  • The rest of Life is Strange (or part of it)
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
  • Just Cause 3

Games likely to be out of the question (but not completely omitted) are those still selling for full price, or near full price, like Rise of the Tomb Raider which technically is a 2016 release as it came out on PC in January. I threw in Hitman because the first episode is basically at the same point of being the demo that Life is Strange was at this point last year. Expect the first episode to go free to play at some point in 2017 if recent trends continue.

What would you like to see in Square Enix’s 2016 Holiday Surprise Box? There are no wrong answers, unless your answer is Kingdom Hearts III.

(Source: Square Enix Press Release)

[Column] Final Fantasy XIV’s Patcher Is Still Busted Garbage


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For the record, I wanted this article to be an MMOments on how Final Fantasy XIV has been coming along, what changes have been made to the game, and what I did with my extra time allotted thanks to the welcome back campaign currently ongoing. I really did, I love Final Fantasy and XIV is one of my favorites, and yet here we are. Complaining about how the patcher is still utterly broken on a game developed and published by a company as large as Square Enix, and that is utterly pathetic.

Even more depressing are the hoops that Square Enix forces its customers to jump through in order to get the game working, assuming it even does once you jump through said hoops. Among the various Steam, FFXIV, and Reddit threads I’ve seen with players working out how they got their patcher fixed, workarounds include downloading through a mobile hotspot, taking your PS4 to a friend’s house, connecting to a VPN service, taking your computer to someone else’s house, and the list gets even more absurd from there down to just relaunching the client upwards and occasionally more than a couple dozen times while praying that it eventually just works. What ever happened to the days of shutting off your anti-virus?

According to the ever defiant fanatics on the various forums, this is my fault, or my ISP for that matter, and nothing that can be traced back to Square Enix at all, totally. These people have no real technical knowledge or evidence to back their claims up, nor do they seem to agree with each other on the exact explanation, but it’s important to know that it isn’t Square’s fault. Evidently installation is like the one inch curb that, while thousands and thousands of other games, websites, and services have no problem passing over with no issue, Final Fantasy XIV on the other hand can’t handle the step without tripping and breaking its neck.

And I find myself sitting here, scratching my head, looking at every game I own on Steam, Origin, uPlay, etc (at this point probably somewhere over 1,000 titles) and thinking “I don’t have this problem on a single other game, I have never had this problem with a single other game.” None of them make me connect to a VPN, tether my computer to my phone, add domain exceptions to Internet Explorer, take my computer to a friend’s house, and I’d like to point out that this is with the PC version. The PS4 version is having the same problems. It’s a console, you boot the game up and it’s supposed to just work. Why is it that apparently Square Enix is the only company to not have figured out the horrifically complicated enigma code that is building a functioning patcher?

I really want to know, and I want Square Enix themselves to tell me. Let’s go on a limb and say that it is actually a problem that the ISP is causing, and I’m not being sarcastic. Let’s say Verizon is the cause of this issue because I am on FIOS. Why is it that Square Enix seems to be the only company triggering this reaction? What is so unique about this patcher that it can’t clear the hurdles that every other game I have played, be it downloaded directly or through P2P sharing, has managed to work around? Could it be because the service providers hate Square, or is it more likely that through a combination of bullheadedness and incompetence that Square’s patcher doesn’t work where everyone else’s does? On second thought, it’s probably easier to blame the ISP so you don’t have to fix anything.

Ultimately the only entity that loses out here is Square Enix, considering the countless threads I ran through from the past few months of people who had bought the game through Steam only to be unable to play it, then requested refunds, or those who had resubscribed or returned for welcome back campaigns only to immediately quit again because they couldn’t pass stage 1 (installation). These are people who aren’t going to come back, Square, the kind of disgruntled customers who, in later times, will look back on their last experience and not want to deal with that again for the hope that maybe you got your stuff in order in the meantime. These are people who will go to the other MMOs that don’t have that problem, or as I like to call it, all of them.

Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.

Square Enix Shows Sales Growth While Income Flops


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Square Enix has released their first half results for the fiscal year ending September 15, 2016, and the results are a mixed bag of positives and negatives. On the plus side, net sales for the first half of the year have exploded by nearly 25% thanks in part due to the release of titles such as Mobius Final Fantasy, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Despite this rise in sales, ordinary income took a fall, 35% lower than the same period last year.

Looking into the future, Square Enix is anticipating a massive rise in sales over the period covering October through November, for obvious reasons. The period covers the launch of World of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest Builders, Final Fantasy XV, and Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4) with the rest of the second half of the year seeing the launch of Kingdom Hearts 2.8, Dragon Quest Monsters 3, NieR: Automata. Square Enix’s list of upcoming titles further down the line include two much awaited titles: Final Fantasy 7’s remake and Kingdom Hearts 3.

(Source: Square Enix)

Final Fantasy XIV Teases Deep Dungeon


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Final Fantasy XIV is gearing up for the release of patch 3.35, which introduces the Deep Dungeon. The Palace of the Dead is a (to start) fifty floor, randomly generated dungeon that can be explored in groups of up to four players. Your progression in the dungeon is separated from that of your normal adventurer, starting everyone over at level one and granting experience and equipment as you fight.

Rewards from the dungeon include experience, cosmetics, tomestones, and gil. Rewards useful outside of the dungeon are based on what level your various jobs are going in.

Players who do not own the Heavensward expansion are limited to the first forty levels. Given the messaging behind the patch notes, it is safe to presume that more stages will be added to the initially fifty in the future.

(Source: Final Fantasy XIV)

Overwatch: Square Enix And Sony To Face Off


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Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda and president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia Atsushi Morita will be squaring off in the battlefield later this week. As reported by our friends over at MMO Culture, the heads of both developers will be putting together their own teams of six to fight it out in Overwatch (presumably not on Xbox), with the event to be streamed live online.

This is not the first time that the two companies have met on the digital battlefield, playing a match on Call of Duty: Black Ops III on PS4 which ended in a major win for Square Enix. You can watch the highlights, it is quite the sight.

The announcement video is linked below, but you won’t understand any of it unless you speak Japanese.

(Source: MMO Culture)

[NM] Lara Croft GO


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The GO series turned out to be a real surprise hit when Square Enix announced Hitman GO for iOS and Android way back in the far flung past of 2014. You could cut the skepticism for Hitman GO with a knife, a rather cynical look toward what was perceived as the first steps of a company taking its IP down the dark hole of low quality mobile ports.

Thankfully, we were all wrong.

Next to Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO is easily the most satisfying puzzle game in recent memory and will likely remain so at least until Deus Ex Go hits. For the purpose of the review, I played Lara Croft Go on a Surface Pro 4 purchased through the Windows Store. The game is regularly $4.99, but is currently on sale for $1.99 for the next few days (as of July 8th, 2016).

At its core, Lara Croft GO is a fairly simple turn-based puzzle game. Movement of Lara and the creatures that inhabit each level are confined to a grid, forcing the player to take advantage of hanging from walls, using pitfalls traps, moving columns, and thinking several steps ahead to fight her way to the end of each area.

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Creatures in each zone will kill you if you stand in front of them, and can only be killed from behind or the side, or from afar with very limited weaponry. As you get further into the game, these creatures also become part of the puzzle itself, to be strategically herded or pushed to perfectly time your own movements.

There is a tendency in Lara Croft GO to fake the player out when it comes to repetitive puzzle solving. For instance, one level of the game has you using a specific climbing trick in order to trap and kill a lizard in order to clear your path ahead. Directly after, you come across another lizard in what appears to be an identical puzzle. Your instinct is to use the same technique, and for a moment you think the developers got lazy. Then you get to the end of the level and realize that, no, you actually had to get the lizard to tail you so he could flip the switch at the right moment.

And that’s the genius of Lara Croft GO, every time you lose and have to reset you learn a little more about the game. Every failure tends to be accompanied with the recognition of what was done wrong, what step was missed, and how to get a little further the next time around. It also stands to how well thought out each puzzle is that the game lets you think you’ve outsmarted the developers just long enough to make it all the more embarrassing when the game knocks you down a peg.

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The slow paced nature of Lara Croft GO means that, no matter how difficult the puzzle, you always have plenty of time to take in the surroundings and plan your next course of action. For $5, it’s a steal that will last you a couple of afternoons, more so if you decide to hunt down all of the collectibles. Like most puzzle games, there isn’t much in the way of replayability.

Regardless, Lara Croft GO is a gem proving the potential of mobile gaming that leaves you begging for more.

Score: A+ – No regrets

Additional notes – I deliberately left out any mention of the in-app purchases since they are mostly useless. For $4.99 you can unlock the puzzle solutions, which is pointless because walkthroughs exist for free. The game also sells a $1.99 pack of 3 costumes, purely cosmetic and ultimately pointless. 

Square Enix Sales Boom In 2016


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(Editor’s note: Before we dive in, I’ll remind viewers that Square Enix operates on a different fiscal year that ends March 31st. As a result, while most other companies are reporting their first quarter finances this month, Square Enix is on Q4 for the 2016 fiscal year. This is not a mistake on our part)

Square Enix has released its end of year results for the 2016 fiscal year, and the results are pretty positive across the board. Net sales grew 27.5% over the same period last year while operating income boosted 58% and normal income rose 49%.

Much of Square Enix’s success has been attributed to the strong releases of mobile titles alongside the console releases of Rise of the Tomb Raider and Just Cause 3. Over on the MMO side, the company also had a fair amount of praise for the continued success of Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X. While sales of merchandise derived from IPs increased, sales from comic books remained sluggish compared to last year.

Square Enix has a slew of titles ready to launch over the next year, including Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4), Final Fantasy XV, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dragon Quest Heroes II, Kingdom Hearts 2.8, World of Final Fantasy, and more.

(Source: Square Enix)

Square Enix Saves A Ton On Its Taxes


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Square Enix has announced that it expects to save 5.2 billion yen in total income taxes on its consolidated and non-consolidated statements of income for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016. In layman’s terms, the company is going to save a lot on its taxes. The actual figures will be announced when Square Enix publishes its income reports, but for those of you outside of Japan 5.2 billion yen amounts to roughly $47 million dollars USD.

Normally this kind of news wouldn’t make it onto MMO Fallout, but normally tax savings aren’t worthy of a press release and Square Enix thinks otherwise. For those of you just remembering your taxes, the deadline to file was yesterday.

(Source: Square Enix Press Release)