Why are you defending a corporate entity over consumers? I never said that Square Enix's decision was wrong on a corporate level, in fact, it's business smart on a corporate level, but on a fandom level, from developers to fans, it's sheer negligence on Xbox Kingdom Hearts fans. Say all you want about how small that category is: there's still a Kingdom Hearts fanbase regardless. Telling them that "Oh, you can enjoy Kingdom Hearts III singularly!" whilst telling the Sony fans that "these Remixes help provide the complete Kingdom Hearts III" is a terrible double standard and makes Square Enix look like a cold cash cow.
And again, I love Tai Yasue as a person and as a co-director. Doesn't change the fact that this response of his in this interview display's a complete sense of ignorance and inferiority for the Xbox consumers. His response was a clear double standard no matter how you try to factually justify it.
And before the "console wars" began, Xbox 360 was far more popular than the PS3 at the time for western consumers, and because of this, some people naturally though that getting an Xbox One would be the wise decision. You have to understand that some western consumers were PS2 Kingdom Hearts fans ---> Xbox 360 either because the PS3 was too expensive at the time or they simply wanted a change. Some of those very consumers could have been satisfied enough with Xbox 360 to move to the Xbox One. This isn't me trying to be entitled (as I don't own an Xbox One). I'm just dissapointed in the fact that Square Enix are doing nothing to cater to Kingdom Hearts fans on Xbox One beyond Kingdom Hearts III just because of "poor sales".
Except I am totally not doing that?
What I pointed out is merely the reality of what happened and why.
I'm gonna tell you something more then: If the "developers" themselves had their way they would probably not have announced bringing KH III to the Xbox One in the first place. KH was
never on Microsoft consoles and KH III now going to it was decided elsewhere, certainly not by the developers of the KH series.
Well duh, Square Enix IS a cash cow, that's what they do. If they can satisfy and cater to fans at the same time they will gladly do it, but they will
not place catering to fans above rational business decisions.
Even with things that
did have huge fan demand like the FF VII remake they didn't really follow up to until much later and then only on
their terms.
It has some vibes of ignorance, sure, however he was merely honest as far as I observed it.
Lol, the "console wars" began way back when there were only Sony, Nintendo and Sega on the market in the 90's.
Last time I checked this isn't true at all as while the Playstation 3 didn't dominate the market like the PS2 did (and the PS4 is apparently on the way to do right now), it did not really lose to the Xbox 360 either.
So far, the whole "Xbox"-line of Microsoft consoles does only really well in the USA.
In the european countries it does more or less average, although by now the PS4 is vastly outperforming the current Xbox while in Japan the coverage of it is absolutely abysmal. I haven't any information about Oceania or India/China, but I doubt that it is doing much better there.
Of course you have the right to be disappointed about this, but it is really nothing surprising and was to be expected considering
all other factors in the whole mix.
Nobody is defending a corporation. People are merely trying to explain to you why SE decided this and why there is likely no huge fanbase to even be worried about.
There are certainly Kingdom Hearts fans out there with only a XB1 but SE has no obligation to cater to them when they don't know how many of them exist and currently everything any company knows about the XB1 user base is that they don't seek out JRPGs on XB1.
Kingdom Hearts games never once released on Xbox consoles in the past, so how would they have built a fan base on those systems to even have a huge mass of them wanting the HD collections on XB1?
Why thank you.
Yep, right on spot.
Considering the bad experiences they already made with things like FF XIII or Type-0 for Xbox combined with the fact that most of the Xbox-userbase prefers different game genres it is still an oddity they even do Xbox versions for both KH III and FF XV, hence why I am pretty convinced that this idea was not brought forth by SE themselves but they were approached by other parties like Microsoft itself about it.
And guess what? SE is a cold cash cow. They follow the money, and maybe sometimes follow the wishes of fans if there is a huge enough demand. Keyword being "huge".
I still don't get why you expected any different.
And even with that keyword it doesn't really work often, key example being the FF VII remake.
They now make one, but the "huge" demand for it may have been there already a decade beforehand
and they are
not doing what most FF purists demand and just develop the remake to be a nearly 1 to 1 retelling of the original FF VII just with HD graphics and polished voice acting.
But again, no KH games have released on the 360, so why would these fans think that these games would suddenly be ported over? Looking at the history of the series and what consoles it has been on in the past should have been enough to inform consumers about what console they should have thought about purchasing going into this generation.
And yet poor sales are a pretty logical reason to. Why would you spend money to potentially lose it?
I guess one can make the case of "awakening false hopes" with bringing solely KH III to this console, but even that is rather thin since when looking into it it becomes clear that it is totally just a business decision.
Otherwise the notion that by looking at the history of the series one may deduce where the most attention goes to is completely valid.
Exactly, porting over the ReMixes would even contain an additional risk since not only is the "Xbox fanbase" in regards to KH very small, many of the more casual fans are also pretty disdainful and dismissing towards any KH title that has not a roman numeral in it so taking the time polishing the ReMixes all up for another console only for them then selling just as good as FF Type-0 would be a bad investment.
And any company that wants to be successful "hates bad investments".
That’s true. I don’t own an XBox, but SE were the ones who decided they wanted to make KH3 for that system. It seems a bit like a middle finger to not make an effort after the fact when the ReMIXes would be pretty convenient. I'm not sure why they have any reason to expect "poor sales" anyway if KH has sold pretty well on every other system it's been extended to (and those are many).
Do you have any concrete words on this notion? That SE really
wanted to go Xbox with this particular game of the series? Or was it more like Microsoft and Disney lobbying and demanding for it in addition to it having been just the start of the console generation?
As I recall Nomura and the development staff felt that 2013 was still too early to properly announce KH III so there was obviously some pushing done by the new upper management of SE and possibly Disney as well.
The make the effort for bringing KH III to Xbox One because they are required to do so by a contract, not because they really want to establish the KH series as a whole on Microsoft consoles. The prospect of profit simply isn't high enough to warrant it.
They expect "poor sales" because as said above already the Xbox-userbase is
known to be majorly interested in other game genres and japanese games regularily do poor on it. Then comes on top of it that outside the USA proper the console hasn't so much of a userbase to begin with at least when compared to the PS4 (70% market share in EU and even more in Japan).
