When are we expecting news?

[Luminary]

SE needs to take notes from Disney on distraction marketing and drop that KH4 trailer. Lol

What if he recently had to do something related to KH, and that's why it came to his mind?

I think you found my tinfoil hat!

But you never know! I think he gets a lot of love and attention from KH fans though in particular. So that may be why.

EDIT: We also have official confirmation of an Xbox showcase on June 9th at 1pm EST. I don’t think KH4 would show up there over SGF, but possibly in addition to a la E3 2018.

 

[Chie]

I think it’s important to keep in mind that we don’t really know yet what games they cut. There have been a lot of failures in the past few years that I can understand why they would pull back. Sometimes less is more. I’d rather them focus on quality output rather than churning out a bunch of low quality work.

They were games being made by human beings that were less than a year from release. I don't care if they were "bad".

 

[Liodin]

We also have official confirmation of an Xbox showcase on June 9th at 1pm EST. I don’t think KH4 would show up there over SGF, but possibly in addition to a la E3 2018.

Star Wars and Marvel trailers, back to back. They would break the Internet.

 

[Squood!]

Ok grandpa back to the wizard home.

Jk

 

[HakaishinChampa]

Star Wars and Marvel trailers, back to back. They would break the Internet.

The Pirates and Frozen trailers destroyed me back in 2018

I hope we experience something like that again.

If KH4 is coming out next year, in theory we should see a couple worlds be revealed this year. I don't know if they'd do Star Wars and Marvel back to back...

I think Star Wars will be the first reveal to get people hooked and whatever Marvel world will be the final world to be revealed.

A spiderman world would be perfect with Sora's new keychain grapple ability, imagine the hype seeing Sora in his own spiderman suit

Just imagining these world reveal trailers gets me excited

 

[Luminary]

Star Wars and Marvel trailers, back to back. They would break the Internet.

If Xbox did get in on it, there would probably be a trailer at the PS showcase too. So that would be three like it was that year! One of them was mostly just recut footage though. If they really want us to eat good, maybe the PS showcase would have a trailer focused on Quadratum with world reveals at SGF and the Xbox event

I think they’ll save one major world announcement for D23 though. Something on par with Toy Story when it was revealed there in 2017.

They were games being made by human beings that were less than a year from release. I don't care if they were "bad".

And yet how many complaints have we seen about how Missing Link shouldn’t exist even though it is also made by humans?

I hate it for the creatives involved that their work might not see the light of day. And I hope they can find other avenues to bring their ideas to life. As someone currently experiencing similar financial cuts at my company, I empathize with what they are going through.

But my point is that considering this is happening and we can’t change it, I hope they are moving away from the games like Foamstars and Avengers that have proven to garner little interest. Games that many would label soulless cash grabs. If forced to choose, I would rather see games like DQIII than another live service game with MTX.

I’m not getting any further into any kind of ethical or moral debate on this topic.

 

[Chie]

And yet how many complaints have we seen about how Missing Link shouldn’t exist even though it is also made by humans?

The microtransaction and live-service elements of games like Missing Link are not crafted by human artists, but by a mathematical algorithm figured out years and years ago by math experts hired by executives to figure out the most effective way to abuse people who are vulnerable to addiction out of their money. The reason Missing Link shouldn't exist is because it uses those explicitly malicious algorithms with the express intent of hurting people. (Obviously all the models and cutscenes and writing made by humans should exist and be used, but in an actual game.)

Perhaps I am assuming that when the CEO who talks like this ("In addition to our focus investment fields, we will also endeavor to create mechanisms that enable us to diversify our earnings sources. These initiatives will be the most important determinants of our Group’s ability to adapt flexibly to a changing business environment and to continue to create high-quality content.") and who highlighted blockchain + AI in his new year's letter says he wants SE to make less games, especially less mid-budget games, that the kind of things that are getting cancelled are, say, works akin to Dungeon Encounters, Voice of Cards, DQ Infinity Strash or Live A Live HD.

It's up to the reader if that's a safe or unsafe assumption.

 

[Antifa Lockhart]

Yeah, the new guy sucks just as much as the last guy.

 

[redcrown]

Does this mean KH won't have any smaller non mobile side games that aren't numbered titles anymore? Because I miss the era of games like CoM BBS and DDD, I know those type games are long past but Melody of Memory had given me hope for a revival of smaller KH side games to tide us over between main titles that aren't mobile games.

Even if this means main titles will come out faster I still think side games like I've mentioned still have a charm to them and they were a nice way for the series to explore different kinds of genres and mechanics and even stories that might not ever be part of the numbered titles for developer/company fears that it would make a main title too "bloated" and too distracting, making it easy for them to be dropped to the cutting room floor.

Now I guess we'll never get Kingdom Karts.

 

[Luminary]

Does this mean KH won't have any smaller non mobile side games that aren't numbered titles anymore? Because I miss the era of games like CoM BBS and DDD, I know those type games are long past but Melody of Memory had given me hope for a revival of smaller KH side games to tide us over between main titles that aren't mobile games.

Now I guess we'll never get Kingdom Karts.

There’s still a possibility of non-numbered titles. It really depends on how KH4 does and whether they think a smaller title would turn enough profit. Once they have their AAA pipeline ironed out and profitable again, they could start branching out again. I wouldn’t expect anything until after KH4 though. My guess is they’ll see how it performs in comparison to KH3 and then assess from there what to do next.

 

[Chie]

I would say using games like that to seriously develop the story has been dead since X launched, yeah. We've gotten 0.2 and MoM since then, but in terms of full stories with new casts and settings that develop the story outwards in multiple axis at once, that's exclusively been the purview of service games ever since (and also X Back Cover, which was pretty cool).

 

[Luminary]

Tickets for Star Wars Celebration in Japan next year go on sale Thursday. The event dates are April 18-20th, 2025. I could see SE wanting to use that event to market Star Wars being in KH4. But at the same time, I don’t know they’d wait that long to “reveal” Star Wars since we already know it’s in the game.

Maybe they show some of it between now and D23, but save the Vader reveal for SWC. Especially if they do something like my theory of Tattoine and Endor/Death Star being two separate worlds/visits at the beginning and end of the game, respectively. (Remember how KH3 revealed the worlds more or less in order of appearance in the final game.)

Of course, this would mean a release more likely around late spring/summer rather than early next year.

 

[Chaser]

Who knew PS5 exclusivity would actually hurt sales of Rebirth and XVI.

While they really do need to expand to multiple platforms on day 1, this is less about the sales of those games and more about how in recent years Square Enix have created and released a bunch of smaller games, close together, that got middling reviews and low sales. They want to do less of that and make sure their games are up to a new standard.

Voice of Cards, Various Daylife, The Diofield Chronicle, and Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth all came out within the same month. Then the next three months had Triangle Strategy, Harvestella, Tactics Ogre Reborn, Romancing Saga, Dragon Quest Treasures, Star Ocean The Divine Force, and Crisis Core Reunion.

That's a lot of games and probably like two of them got good reviews and sold well. The rest would have been seen as a sales flop. They're now changing their strategy to develop less games of that scale, to mitigate the loss of money from developing those games with little to no return.

If they pull their heads out of their asses, they'll get their games on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC (including Steam cause lord knows PC gamers won't shut up about the injustice of Epic Games Store) instead of delaying ports by a year+.

 

[Launchpad]

Crisis Core Reunion dropping so close to Rebirth had to be confusing for the less invested consumer. They're awful for shelving ongoing projects, absolutely. But they could stand to be more strategic with said smaller projects, while also pricing them accordingly.

 

[NoWay]

Could ML be one of the cancelled games? Although I hate the fact that it’s a mobile game, I’m excited for the story and wouldn’t want it to be cancelled

 

[Chaser]

Could ML be one of the cancelled games? Although I hate the fact that it’s a mobile game, I’m excited for the story and wouldn’t want it to be cancelled

Doubtful with the beta starting on the 2nd.

 

[Luminary]

Hopefully they will take some of the projects off the shelves one day. An ideal to me would be two AAA games per year and 2-3 mid-budget games per year. Can’t speak for everyone, but the pacing and pricing definitely had a big impact on my ability to play a lot of those mid-budget games. If I counted right, there were 9 games released in a 13-week period in 2022. It isn’t fair to the devs or players to release that many games back to back. Each game should have had more time to breathe and get sufficient marketing.

Unfortunately, execs wanted to rush out as many games as possible because they didn’t have faith in the individual products and likely didn’t want to pay the devs for longer dev cycles or invest more in the marketing in these titles. They deserved better and I hope this move at least prevents this from happening again even though it sucks in the short term.

What also sucks about this is that a lot of the smaller games were developed by outsourced studios. If they were relying on these games but now have lost their funding, they could suffer significant losses as well. Could even have to close down if they don’t find new publishers to fund projects. Reminds me of what happened to Fortress.

Honestly, if SE is writing off these games developed by other studios, I wish they were required to option the publishing rights to another company or investor to fund the game. They wouldn’t even have to give up ownership of the IP itself. Just give other interested parties the chance to finance and support the projects’ completion.

I’d like to know if there was anything h.a.n.d. was working on whether for KH or TWEWY.

 

[Launchpad]

I'm really hoping that they change focus on how they advertise this game compared to how they did with KH3. KH3 was advertised as an epic culmination with twists and turns, each trailer exposing more crucial story elements. Then, in the end it turned out (in my opinion) to be another stupid Kingdom Hearts game like always, hardly worth building up in such a big way. If KH4 has a short press cycle, I'm hoping it's a lot more like FF XVI's pre-release media blitz.

Hardly any big story info shown in trailers outside of the bare essentials, no teases, not too much dialogue. Just show us the Disney worlds, and for the love of god, put more spotlight on the gameplay! KH3 was very fun in spite of some design oversights, and by the end of the DLC it was an incredibly brisk and snappy action game that provided me with dozens of hours of satisfaction. Lean into that shit more. Kingdom Hearts is EASILY on the map when it comes to great big-budget action games. It's a tough genre to succeed in, and they've absolutely earned the pedigree to make most of their trailers about THAT.

Kingdom Hearts fans are already going to buy it, so they need to stop making 'entertaining' trailers that exist to hook those that are already hooked. There's still a broad public opinion that KH is dumb, and a Disney game that rests on its franchises rather than its inherent quality. They should just flex their systems more.