Capcom/SquareEnix Yapping & Invincible VS. 🔴Full Stream🔴 (5-14)

Transcending history and the world. A tale of dudes and souls eternally retold. We all need to shine to see how far we come on our journey. Ever to go searching for deep in the night in my heart for that special life to show me with love. Show me with power. Got to get the edge of car on the baby. Got to get the edge of to carry. Yo, what's up, dudes? Hoy, just made it up here. Hi, chat. Gosh, how's it going? Uh, we out here. Hello. Hi. Hello. How's it going? Hello. Hot as [ __ ] in here. Um, a lot of stuff over the last couple of days, like a whole bunch of things that we got to highlight and talk about. Square's in big trouble. Square Enix, the ones that have way their profit margins are mad high on the latest one. What the hell are we talking about? No. No. Square's doing hella good. Investors are happy. Wait, what? We're gonna talk about that today. Um, the overall game sales are down, but to make up for the fact that they have no goddamn games, uh, their profit margins are are big right now. Like really big. And um, are we talking about something else? What? Big yapping. What? Oh, Squaresoft. No, Squaresoft is doing bad. I tell you what, bro. Where are they getting these profits from, though? [ __ ] have you not did you not Wait a minute. Are you just reading Twitter? um they're they're doing the thing that we've always said they need to do. They're diversifying their portfolio instead of just relying on uh like massive games, which they don't have right now. They don't have a bunch of big games. Um they made a ton of money throughout all of their merchandising and events and music and all that kind of stuff to turn them into like a bigger entity that isn't just like big AAA games because they have to right now. And guess what? It worked. It actually worked over the last like well you know few months or something like that. It actually worked. So um it's pretty crazy right to basically FF14 now FF14 is down right and that's that's the thing that's happening at the moment uh at least from the investors report at least the brief that I saw. I have to look at it some more because we're going to have to look it up. FF14 is down quite a bit but it'll that'll come back up. That'll come back up. It's not doing well at the moment. Yeah, but you know there's there's eb and flow. There's name is right there. Uh what's another studio that diversifies like that? Uh Bandai Namco. Yeah, that's definitely Bandai Namco. That's sort of how they stay afloat. You okay? I literally uh was trying to get as much exercise as I possibly could with with little time I had. Capcom does not do that, man. No, no, no, no. Capcom does not nearly have as much of a diversity portfolio. Capcom mostly makes all of their money on digital sales, dude. Like a lot of it. We're going to look at that, too. 93% of Capcom's game revenue is from digital sales. They are killing it. Why is that? Why is that important? Why is that crazy? That's important and crazy because they make the most money off of that [ __ ] That's where they make the most money. So, yesesh, dude. That shit's crazy. Um, so anyway, Easy Clap Games Company making money from games. You know, it be what it do nowadays. It be what it do. Tokon no gameplay and story mode was indeed a mistransation. Yeah, it sounded weird to me. It sounded odd, which is why I didn't want to talk about it very much. I'm like, the way this is being described seems a little weird. And then they came back within like the next day and they're like, oh no, no, there is gameplay in the tokcon story mode. And it's like, oh, thank god, dude. Thank god. Investors report wasn't going to announce games. No, Investors Report does not announce games. That is not where games are announced. What the heck, chat? We've been covering this [ __ ] for a decade. No, no, no. That be not where that is. That'd be not how that do. Um, so yeah, on on the docket for tonight, I really want to get back and play more Invincible Versus. We got to play it. Um, at least before things change. You know, there is there is definitely stuff happening in the background. The devs have been talking about it um that is going to change in the near future at some point. So, I want to get some time in, get some feels on how the game is right now. Soros, we beat it. We got Sorrowos with the true ending. Come on. You had to have seen the previous stream. We played it so much. We played it so much. Did you give your Soros review? Yeah. 9.5. I give it a little bit under Returnal. I think everything in Sorrowos is mostly better. Um, but it's not as fresh as as Returnal was because Returnal was fresh and uh Returnal. I liked the the story like the thematics a little bit more. Yeah, just a little bit more. Which one did you like more? Returnal or Sars? Returnal by like a tiny bit, but just a tiny bit because everything else outside of story and vibes um from Returnal is better. But bro, dude, I think the game play is better. I think the level design's better. I think uh I think that the o the overall way way you inter you engage with enemies is way better. It's just more fun. So yeah, combat. Yeah, Sos combat is way better than Returnal. That's what I mean. Um that's a big part. But like at the same in Sorrowos, yes, at the same point, Returnal was really fresh. Like you kind of know what you're getting into when you're playing Sorrowos, right? You kind of have a good idea of what this game's going to play like, what its mystery is sort of setting up for. Yeah, you know. Yeah, that's making that makes a bit of sense. And I checked my my play time at the end of Sorrowos. It was 14 hours. Um, so it's a significantly shorter game, right? It's a it's a much shorter game to complete on like first run and get true ending than what Returnal was cuz Returnal took me like 40 hours, dude. Um, and that's just because you Returnal asks a lot more of you because it is just harder, you know, and I think that's one of the reasons why Sorrowos isn't the sales aren't initially as good because what Returnal was asking the player to do early on turned a lot of people off. Uh, and I I kind of understand that, you know, I kind of understand that where it's like maybe didn't not everyone's super looking forward to the next game they do because of the way that Returnal was. Um, so anyway, I find them like almost identical in how much I love about each one. Uh, easily like one of the best games of this generation. Easily just absolute godlike game, dude. So, um, yeah. I mean, if you like arcadey shooters and stuff like that with great vibes and amazing visuals, best in industry audio, I don't know what to tell you. They pretty much hits like all of the all of the notes for me. There were very few moments of Sorrowos where I was like, "Oh, I'm not really having fun with this right now or I don't really like this, you know." So, anyway, the game doesn't appeal to you aesthetically. Yeah, I can get it why. The dark and grimy. Um, the dark and moody, which is Returnal. And this one is all about bright and aggressive. Like everything about Sorrowos is bright and aggressive and Returnal is dark and moody. Um, spooky and moody, you know. So, yeah, they were going for they were going for two different things, you know, two very different things. Did you do an MK MK movie review? Uh, I think MK2 is better than MK the first MK movie that came out in 2021. Yeah, I think it's better than that. I still think it's like a six. Um, I had many grievances. Many grievances, but I It was better. It was definitely better. Yo, sub, thanks for the raid, dude. Um, anyway, yeah, we're going to actually watch Keats's video on game balance. We have to uh go over some of the crazy financial reports and all that kind of [ __ ] Uh, but Keats put out, who was the lead combat designer on KI in season 2 through 4ish. um he put a cool video out on game balance and see if that like lines up a bit with the stuff that we've been talking about game balance-wise, you know, how games should be balanced for mostly fun at least at the start and then when it comes out then you have to start tackling [ __ ] right? Make it so that it's as fun as possible and then start hitting all the the weird shitty things without belittling the fun too much. So, we shall see. Would you do a spoiler discussion on MK2? Probably not because if we do a spoiler discussion on MK2, it's going to sound like we all really hate the movie. Uh that and I don't think we we I just didn't feel anything at the end of it, man. That's it. I felt like nothing. I couldn't remember what happened. Things happened so goddamn fast. There's just so much fighting for whatever reason. I was like, damn, this movie is definitely booking. Why are we fighting? What are we doing? Things are just happening, dude. So, it's like Yeah. So, Liu Kang versus Kungla fight is the best part of the movie. Easily the best part of the movie. But I don't know much else to say about it. It's It's weird. It's like they the movie felt like it was edited and designed like it was a Netflix thing where they're worried that you're going to walk out of the theater or something. And I'm like, why? You know, that's what they do now. They make it so that we have to make sure people are engaged all the time. Can't leave, you know? No talking ever. Um, anyway, we'll see. Can you do a dance? I dance all the time. Yeah, constantly. Zack Cat, thank you. Android Safe Ferris, thank you. Acid Bread Cris, what's up? Taspool, Goku, DBX, Xenoverse, Vex, Sera, True Heavens, uh, Craze, Hell, Rozom, Cyclops, Sleepy Tea Game, and Glockster. Appreciate it, dudes. Um, okay. Where is the first part? Uh, let me look it up. Hold on a second. Let's get the uh let's get the crazy stuff that's coming out of Capcom financials because it is pretty interesting. Uh let's look up Capcom financial report. Um reports of materials. There we go. Not in Japanese, please. Uh medium to long-term growth, sustainability. Which one is it? I want the quarterly. Where is the quarterly? Uh, it in Japanese. Why not? Uh, May 13th business performance update. And this it. No, I want the PDF. Give me the pitif. Hold on a sec, chat. I'm trying to find it. I want it in Japanese numbers. Damn it. Okay. Quarterly report financial results. Welcome back to the stage of history. Earning statements. Earning supplement. Yeah, I want the big fancy one with pictures and [ __ ] This is too much reading. Supplement. There we go. Okay, that's the one. This one. It needs colors, dude. It doesn't have colors. It's going to be tough. People are going to check out. I'm going to check out. Um, all right. So, big spot today that starts uh Capcom financial reports, their fiscal reports came out. You get to see how good games are doing, how good games have done. Um, there was a lot of games already that came out this year. They released a whole bunch uh early 2026. So, there's some pretty interesting things about their dormant IPs and what's going to be happening in the future in here. So, let's start scrolling through and uh take a look at this thing. Hold on a second. Let's see. So, hold on a second. We're just digital sales. Um, including digital licensing, mobile consumer, net sales. Pragmat 2 is already green lit. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Uh, so here's some pretty interesting stuff. Resident Evil Reququum is getting close to 7 million units sold already. and the craziest news in here, or was it Devil Devil May Cry 5 pushed another 2.7 million copies, dude? What in the hell? let's see. And DMC 5 is at currently 1. No, they're at 12 million. Wait, did I read that wrong? It's at 270,000. DMC 5 is at 12 million. Oh my god, dude. Big sales and stuff. Yeah, dude. Capcom does big sales and that probably contribute contributes to it. Uh, Street Fighter 6 is closing in on 7 million. Uh, it'll probably get there within the next quarter. Probably the next quarter depending on sales and new DLC and things like that. Um, here's the crazy one. The best selling Resident Evil game of them all is indeed RE5. My face is too small. um is indeed Resident Evil 5, dude. Closing in on nearly 20 million units sold for RE5. Holy guacamole, dude. RE5 and has now taken the crown. That's wild, dude. That's wild. It's 1.9 million. Uh this is by tens thousands of units. So that is 19 million. It's a lot, dude. Um, so anyway, Wesker, yeah, all that assist me money. Um, very interesting, right? Here's the other kind of interesting part. Monster Wilds has not moved very much at all. Even with the big updates and [ __ ] they pushed another like 100,000. They're still at uh 11 million. And Sunbreak is doing pretty good. Rise did even better, dude. Sunbreak and Rise out selling Wilds still. Still. Jesus, dude. Does it make Capcom's overall bestselling game? Um, I don't believe so. I think that technically goes to Man, I don't know. Does that go to That's a good question. I wonder if RE5 is individually the bestselling Capcom game now. H Street Fighter 2. It's almost impossible to gauge Street Fighter 2 because um Street Fighter 2 pushed like 8 million copies on the SNES. And they don't add all of Street Fighter 2 versions into one lump sum. So the arcade versions are different. The SNES version is different. All that kind of stuff, you know. So yeah, I think it still is Monster Hunter World. I think World is still the best selling one. Let's go down a little bit more. Um amusement equipment, other business, esports. you re you realize that Capcom is not that crazy diverse digital contents, you know, uh digital arcade ops, amusement equipment, and other businesses. Like I guess this is technically counting it as esports. I guess even licensing and IP probably only has so much. Um yeah, like Capcom isn't that diverse of a company. They really focus on like mega game sales and stuff like that. Uh let's see. 2026 and 2027 plan. So here's let me see if I can get an idea of where this is. Operating margin ordinary profit. So they're expecting to make a little more in the 2027 year-over-year. Huh. quite a bit more from 7:41 to 8:30. Interesting. No mega games mentioned in here, but they are expecting they released quite a bit of games this year, dude. Like that's the crazy thing. Like there was a sizable amount of Capcom stuff that came out this year, dude. So, I don't know. Um, they're actually expecting more next year, which is kind of crazy. So let's see if we can get an idea of what uh targeting global sales profit release new titles and catalog title sales new IP pragmata released in April is released this year. So it's not it's definitely this year. Um where's the thing that talks about their digital contents in general like what it was representing for their own their total sales. DMC 5 special edition is 10 bucks on PSN right now. That's the thing dude. They they are being very aggressive. Um digital units over the share is 93%. Dude, that is crazy. PC digital up to 54% and console digital representing 38% of that. That is crazy that physical units only represent 7% of their game sales now. Wow. Sales are I think it's s I think it's sales. I think Capcom is really smart about their sales distribution. It's also even crazier that Capcom is just now a PC company. It happened, dude. Like, and it's not even small. It's almost like 20%. Like, holy crap. Uh anyway, dude, from the last year over year, their physical units are down 20%. And their digital is up 17. Like, that's crazy. Um, and as as a heads up, what that means is that Capcom makes more money off this stuff. They make more money here than making discs and making boxes and all that kind of stuff. So very interesting. Japanese units representing only 10% of the the the selling the selling margin. 90% goes to overseas. Wow. Uh well this these [ __ ] are definitely a global company now. Like that was their goal like 10 years ago was to become a global company. My god, dude. 90% units from overseas sales now. Jesus, dude. Um, whatever their plan was, it's working. So, uh, 2027 plan, plan to continue diversification of store formats. Open nine new stores, 70 stores, focusing on offering experimental value on site. I hope they open up stores in other places than Japan. I really hope so. How much of that is the US? I don't know. Probably a a big amount. The US represents usually the majority of sales for most games. Um anyway, amusement equipment, other businesses, uh the movie, continuing leveraging IP through multifaceted initiatives, um Capcom Cup stuff, season 2 of Devil May Cry, live action Street Fighter movie. Yeah, esports and media. Everything's down. Everything is like kind of down. Interesting. Oh, no, no, no. It was up this year and they're expecting it to go down next year. So, they don't have a lot of stuff planned outside of that. Um, Capcom rich [ __ ] in 2026. Well, what I what I kind of dig is that you can see like you can see where the money's going and it's going into making [ __ ] you know, which is cool. Um, Capcom Philosophy stuff to be a company that captivates people around the world with our best-in-class immersive combat or damn it, I wish it said combat, but content. Damn it. I wish that said combat. Um, okay. Okay, 10% annual growth growth yada yada yada market overview yada yada yada. Uh, where is the wait a minute? Resident Evil peaked at or just crossed 200 million units sold across the franchise history. Uh, Monster Hunter hit 127. Street Fighter getting close to 60. Damn. Marvel vs. Capcom sitting here pretty. Look at it. Look at it right here. It'll never leave. Look at it. It'll always be in the top 10. Look at that [ __ ] Um, Ace Attorney, Dead Rising, Devil May Cry, Mega Man, Leading Brands, Digital Sales, Sales Strategy. I esports. Check this out. And this is the big one. Nurturing brands to be the next engine of growth. Leading brands with new IPs, sequels, remakes, and ports. talking about specifically, let's zoom in on this big zoom. Uh they mentioned specifically their leading brand says Devil May Cry, Mega Man, Dead Rising, Onimusha, Ace Attorney Dragons, Dogma, and Okami, which is funny because that's got a thing. That just had a thing. This don't have a thing currently. That's got a thing. That's got a thing. Like half of these actually have known things that are happening. Um, but still dragon's dogma being in there is pretty nuts. Like would that be deal that'd be that is a long time to have DLC, dude. You might as well just do dra you might as well just call it Dragons Dogma 3 at this point. Cuz if there's if there's a new Dragon's Dogma thing somewhere in the future and they're actually doing something with DD in some way, like 2027, it's been 3 years, you know? Might as well just call that Dragon Zma 3. Um, anyway, anything else special? Yeah, that's pretty nuts that all that stuff is there. This [ __ ] it's not good news. This is especially after like, and this is an interesting thing after what many teams have been talking about, AI to utilize important development efficiency and productivity stuff, which is fine. Tools to streamline routine tasks, free up time for creative work, which is fine. Um but generative AI use illustration I wonder it this is it's described as time used in routine tasks with development processes research draft generation user analysis interactive manuals error checks meeting notes the term Gen AI is so weird here because it's like are we actually making stuff because AI doing [ __ ] tasks that take too much time is good. I'm trying to make sense of what the hell this means. Um, generative AI as in like creating artwork, you know, that is not good. But they specifically t tie it to to utilize improvement in development, efficiency, and productivity, which is kind of like the [ __ ] we were talking about before, not vibe coding, like testing collision and [ __ ] like that. Like the the most basic rudimentary understanding of that is testing collision is something that you have to do on a ton of games and mundane [ __ ] that people don't want to do. And you can spend time Yeah. bug testing not everything but mundane [ __ ] so that you can actually get people that are good at doing things on more important stuff because guess what? The mundane [ __ ] takes away from the more important stuff. So this is a weird thing, right? There's a weird thing, especially considering how anti-AII they publicly have been, especially with after the Resident Evil fiasco, you know. Um, anyway, that seems to be about it. The craziest thing is them directly acknowledging uh directly acknowledging nurturing brands to be the next engine of growth. So, it seems that and let's go up to this diagram up here, which is interesting looking. Um, grow consumer title sales through marketing initiatives and expand the fan base with multiaceted IP use. Bro, what is this artwork right here, bro? Um, so digital and global sales, pricing, catalog sales that go into business, arcade ops, amusement media, character licensing, expand the fan base. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. It's kind of what they have been doing. Why is this alpha the Street Fighter alpha like Ryu? Interesting. It looks like NBC 1. Um, they consider those three main IP their business model. Gotcha. Between Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter. I mean, that makes sense. It's NBC4 artwork. Now, I know this artist, this this uh he or she has done work before. I think this is the same person that did the cover art for the Marvel vs. Capcom collection, dude. anyway, you know why I'm curious on this [ __ ] What is the future? Like seriously. And and to me it's like I get where the future is for the majority of Capcom stuff. The future is over here. The future is within these IP brands that they're looking at that they want to expand upon. They're big IPs. They are once again triple dipple nippling down on their big IPs and making them come back in a big way which is smart and there's a commitment to it to also leverage that with new IP every once in a while. However, um it leads me to wonder like where the hell does the future go for the fighting game side? They're all doing very good. Games are being made, dude. Like, we have to keep making stuff. It's clear that Street Fighter isn't going anywhere. Like, where it goes from here is going to be pretty interesting if it gets changed at all. if this is the ultra Street Fighter 5, you know, but at this point it's like, dude, if we don't if we get an announcement this year for the next Capcom fighting game in some way, that will still have been 4 years ago that Street Fighter 6 came out. No, three years. It'll be three years. By the time it comes out, it would be like four years, even if it was announced next month. So, regardless if that's CBS3, regardless if that's Marvel vs. Capcom, which it's not, regardless if it's Capcom Allstars or Darkstalkers or anything, right? Um, or a new IP. They could legit do a new IP fighting game, which would be fascinating considering they have so many characters to work with. I'm very curious, you know, like I don't it it seems like that should have that should have happened significantly earlier, but I feel like we forget that the Capcom Fighting Division was releasing a ton of [ __ ] over the past few years in the form of these Capcom Fighting Collection one and two and NBC Collection, dude. So, yeah, it it's not like they haven't been doing nothing. They pretty much gave us almost every single Capcom fighting game we've been bitching for. Almost every single one um for a very long time and they all became real in some way. So, it's not like they've been gone and only working on Street Fighter. No, there's definitely there's definitely been stuff that's happening. So, anyway, this is fascinating. Company's doing good. I'm really curious what the heck the future is for uh the fighting game side because there is very little fighting game talk in here outside of just Street Fighter continuing in some way. You know what I mean? Capcom's doing very good at the moment. Yeah. Um anyway, that's the first one that is the first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they specifically like the thing about Gen AI which makes me not as adamant against it is that they they said they're using it to allow more creative work from people, right? Like that was the specific mention of it to take away from like effectively um timewasting tasks and put things put creative work back in the hands of people instead of you know instead of people having to do busy [ __ ] which is like this is the way it should be. Um, this is the way it should be. I guess they won't reveal more. Yeah. I don't know. That's probably also there for investors, you know. They specifically state their user feedback going to game development. Yeah. Yeah. This is good news. Common rider, thanks for the five gift subs, dude. It's also investor stuff. Yeah. You have to realize this. This is for the people that have like millions of dollars and stuff and like the Saudis and everybody that's backing everything now. Yeah. Did Bandai Namco also have their investors report come out? Because they're also in the same boat as like Square Enix and Capcom, right? How's Bamco doing? I've been trying to like keep up with them. How many shares do you do? I have uh of Capcom. I don't think I do. No, I don't keep track of any of that [ __ ] dude. I have financial adviserss like people that handle my [ __ ] for over like 10 years because I the last thing I want to do is look at numbers go up and down, bro. I'm like, we'll talk once a year and I just don't want to have to be the one to like do this [ __ ] Most don't invest in the overseas markets. Yeah, it's true. I'll send you a card at Christmas. How do you think the new mobile monster hunter will do? I don't know. I know it's good. You're happy they haven't forgot about Dead Rising. Dead Rising fans are allowed to be happy, Max. Let them have this. Yeah, sure. We need to have that more often where it's like the voice in my head. We need to have that. I need to have the voice in my head. People allowed to have this opinion, Max. It's fine. And I come back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. Dead rising wind. That'll probably happen. Um, let's look at the Square Enix one because that's Here's here's the next big one. Square Enix news. Okay, so the Square Enix financial report came out. Shockingly, they're doing pretty good from my base, small brain understanding of what's happening. Their game sales are down. However, Square is a very diverse company um with a lot of means to make money and believe it or not, their profit margins are really good right now. So, uh it's going well. And granted, we've all known this is going to happen. It's going to be a dry spell of Square Enix for the next like year or two where there's just not going to be that many releases. You know, there's the big hope that eventually Final Fantasy 7 part 3 is going to be near soon, but uh is that going to be close? Is it going to be far? Is Final Fantasy Final Fantasy 14 holding the ship? It is holding the ship, but from what I understand, it's not doing as good, which is why the expansion is probably going to be a big deal. Um anyway, hold on a second. Let me see if I can bring up the Square Enix Good. That's good. That's good. That's good. That's a good sound. Even better sound. Where the hell is this [ __ ] The [ __ ] Even good sounds here. Elliot comes out next month. Yeah, you know, it's like things like that. Like there's just not that many big games. Dante Shadow, thanks for the 115 months. Why is this boy? Thanks for the 40 months, dude. Does still have Tomb Raider? No, that's long gone. Uh, Tomb Raider is in the hands of Amazon right now. I think Amazon games technically is the publisher. Reex financial results for 25 to 26 are in. Yeah, let's click on this. This is a good summary as well. Let's see. Beep. All right, let's start scrolling through. Um, so a couple of the things I'm seeing is that their overall uh revenue is down minus 16% year-over-year, but their operational profits are actually up. So, this means in terms of digital sales and overall like game sales and stuff like that, they're not doing as good as before just because there isn't any massive mega budgeted releases. You know what I mean? There's just not much happening right now. But the weirdest thing is that across amusement and you know all these things in here, merchandising publication, there's just a lot more stuff that Square Enix has going behind the scenes. Uh apparently they're doing pretty good. Apparently like merchandising is up like by a lot. Publication is about the same. Amusement's up by a little bit. So, Square Enix is doing like the smart thing where they found a way to diversify themselves and allow them to make money outside of just making games. Yeah. The Magic the Money uh the Magic the Money. Damn. Magic the Gathering collab. Magic the money collab. That's Damn. How did I Wow. Uh was pretty much just a a money print, right? It just printed money for them. So, that was smart. That actually worked out very well in their favor. Um this isn't the big report. Hold on a second. Um, let me open up a plank. Hang on. It'll [ __ ] all freaking [ __ ] There it is. Still not it. Uh, let's see. Here's the big things of note from what was in there. Operating profits up, which means they're letting go of nonprofitable stuff and also presumably cutting costs. This is um from from Reddit when the reports just came out. Merchandising segment is up a lot. Operating profit, gaming side, HD games uh drop is now stabilizing even with a slight increase and the operating profit is slightly up. MMO uh is minus 26% year-over-year and minus 31% operating profit. So 14's not doing great at the moment, but that's because they're on the cusp of a big update, all that kind of [ __ ] Um PC browser dropped by a lot of revenue. That's weird. Most interesting part, if you look at profit generation, HD games and mobile games are pretty evenly split. Of course, 14 being one of the games that's driving most single-handed MMO profit generation is still impressive. Who's is still making them most of their money? Uh 14 still managed to lose a role in the major cash cow in 2024 and 2025 most likely. Uh and that's about it. The interesting part and I'm trying to find out where their financial reports are because this isn't the only news investor relations allow earnings releases May 14th. Yeah. Let me see if we can pull something out of this. Hold on. Hold on. Um, there's no pretty pictures. There's no pictures. So, March 31st, where was the projected shareholder uh investment for next year of what they're projecting? Where is that at? Oh, pretty pictures. Nintendo has pictures. I got the wrong one. Oh, you know who had it? I think it was Genki. Yeah. Hold on a second. 10 hours ago. No. Who was tweeting about this? Damn it. Ah, hold on. Was Audrey talking about it, too? No. This is funny. You have to say this. No mention of Kingdom Hearts at all in the Square Enix financial report. Jesus. Even they're trolling. Okay, chill. Chill. Leave him alone. hold on a sec. Chat just had these links and they've vanished. Uh, trying to find this [ __ ] Yeah, here's an interesting one. Um, check this out. Screenix says their plan is to strengthen their IPs by creating more customer contact points. They will use all their divisions of games, book, music, merchandising, and amusement um to maximize and expand their IPs such as Final Fantasy. And this is sort of similar to that like thing we saw with Capcom, which is like how one thing leads to another leads to another of how they have like a supporting ecosystem in some way. Yeah. Collaborations. Is that in here? Do they talk about digital entertainment business? This is specifically games, um, merchandising, theme park, cafe, merch, amusement, comics, music. No, they don't talk about, um, leveraging IP some way. Uh, that would be neat. There was talk about possible things happening with licensing. That would be cool. Second, I think it was in this thread. like Vega and Street Fighter and nothing else. Trying to find this [ __ ] chat on can't just browse Twitter on while streaming. You'll get destroyed. Yeah. Where is this come? Damn it. I don't have the source. Yeah. Let's put Tifa in Tekken. Wow. This is interesting. They say that the sales of older games are the best that they've been in three years. Successful promotional initiatives and multiplatform releases. I think that was also um probably a contributing factor of that is FF7 showing up on uh probably on Switch 2. Switch and Switch 2. That starts to make sense. Tactics also coming back in some way. I wonder if they consider that an old game. Final Fantasy Tactics. Like what's considered what constitutes as old? Probably switch two ports. 81% of its game sales are digital. They sold 26 million units last year. Damn. Welcome back to the of history. Trying to find it. Hold on a sec, chat. Where the hell was it? I'm so pissed. There was a number that was breaking down um what their forecast is for next year, which is going which is possibly very telling of what we can expect because they can't lie on this [ __ ] They can't say it's a equal, three equal, sequel, dequal. Um, they can't say that [ __ ] but in their financial reports, they got to say some [ __ ] Operating margin, equity, a dequal. Yeah. Is an unsequel is a sequel that, you know, unscrew. No, they're actually doing pretty good. As of right now, they're actually doing pretty decent. some parts aren't doing the best that they have before, but other parts are holding steady. You know, man, I need to go into this thread. Hold on a second. Where the hell is it? Where was this? Looking. Looking. Looking. Lord, are he looking? I thought I had this and I can't find out where in the presentation it is. Yeah. So, this is interesting. This was one part of the report. Check this out. Let me take a look at this. Enhance productivity by optimizing the development footprint in the digital entertainment segment. Establish mid to long-term pipeline to achieve a shift from quantity to quality. And after the current three-year mid-term business plan, aim to release major titles mainly in key IP steadily. Okay, so the thing that has effectively made Square suffer the most and diminished Final Fantasy as an IP, which is just true, um, is the fact that youngans get one game in their entire childhood or even teenagehood, you know. So the the ability for people to stay interested is just not possible. Three years of rebooting 26 to 27 and after fiscal year 28. Um it's talking about switch to integrate. Plans to release major titles. Plans to release multiple titles on multiple platforms and plans to release major titles on a consistent basis. Gotcha. So the consistent basis is not going to be happening until like fiscal year 28, which does make sense, right? They need time to get started on this [ __ ] They need time. Any time to work on Final Fantasy 67. Oh, here it is. Check this out. Uh, Square forecasting. Hold up. Where the hell did it go? Thank you, browser. Jesus Christ. What the Where was it? Square is forecasting uh 298 billion yen in revenue for fiscal year 27. A slight increase compared to 26, and there wasn't that many games this year. It seems like Everold is the main event for fiscal year 27, pushing potential part 3 to April and beyond, which is a pretty good assessment. Um because financial [ __ ] doesn't lie, dude. I cannot find this to make it smaller. I cannot. Financial [ __ ] doesn't lie. So, here's the crazy part. It is what it is. Uh at this point, there's been the presumption that for many of us, like, hey, brother, um it'd be really cool if part 3 dropped in a similar time frame as all of the other games. You know, that would still be putting it with a three-year development cycle and all that [ __ ] but this is legit true. uh fiscal year of 2026 ends in like March 31st. So, the bigger question we got right now is, hey, uh when the hell's part 3 potentially coming out? Is it going to make quarter 1 next year? And granted, this game has not even been announced yet. They're talking about it, but it hasn't been announced. But also the prediction of this year to next year being comparable is like uhoh that means that [ __ ] ain't coming out. If it it that at least in my eyes Final Fantasy 14 is going to be the bane the big thing that will cement itself. This is also kind of interesting. Square's forecasting yen for revenue in 27 fiscal year 27. So that's April 1st, 2027. A slight increase compared to 26. Could be wrong, but it seems like Everold will be the main event for 27. No. Well, maybe, but Everold comes out in like January, right? Everold's January. So the majority I think the majority of sales they would get from that if not operating revenue probably is going to come from fiscal year 26. That comes from this year. So I don't know. either way, they're still reporting a similar amount of like profit revenue uh or revenue just in general for the following year past April, which um which likely means if part 3 is coming out next year, it ain't coming out before March, right? It ain't coming out before March. So that is a high likelihood. You got to understand games don't come out when they're ready, chat. Games come out with very specific timing um so that they can hit like profit margins and stuff like that. Like these are companies. Games don't come out when they're done. They come out when they're supposed to. So most of the time. So, that being said, this does paint a picture that maybe, just maybe, uh, FF7 remake part 3 does not make the presumed first quarter of 2027. There's a good chance, but at the same point, I think we have to start asking some some more bold questions. Does that mean this gets announced in a month? because most of us are like, "Hey, this shit's getting announced in a month, right? It's happening. They're talking about it." But they're also they've also talked about it a lot before previous events as well. They've also talked a lot about it before some before the Game Awards last year. So if summer games fest or potentially a state of play happens, if the game is not coming out within that 8month window, which is they and again just throwing it out, they probably don't want to announce something like a year before it comes out. They probably don't. So if it misses that eight-month window, then when is a more apt place to make an announcement for it? maybe the Game Awards this year. So, that's the crazy thing. My My assumption now is that whatever we thought to be true, it's not a prequel. It's not a sequel. You know, is it going to lead to Dura Cerberus? Is it going to come out this year? [ __ ] we know nothing. That's crazy. Now that this financial report has come out, we almost felt like, oh, dude, we might we could see, you know, we can see the light in the distance through the forest. But at this point, I don't know, dude. I actually don't know. It doesn't to me, it was like a 95% guarantee that this [ __ ] could get announced within a month. And now I don't know because if it's not coming out in that time frame, then that's a very long time to announce a game ahead of its release date, which is something that they've not really wanted to do for a while. Didn't Hamaguchi say it was soon? [ __ ] Sorry to call you a [ __ ] but [ __ ] Um, he's been saying that for almost a year, dude. Like there's even before Summer Games Fest last year, I wore my FF7 shirt because there was a chance cuz they were saying soon. They were saying as soon as early as like last year before the Game Awards. Like we all thought it could be at the Game Awards, dude. So granted, it would be crazy if you have to wait anymore because it feels like we've been waiting a lot. It feels like I'm kind of ready, you know? That's all I'm saying. I I all I all I have to say personally is that I feel like I'm kind of ready for this [ __ ] I want to I think I want to know something about it now other than just being told things that are that that kind of line up with what's in my head. That's what everybody's doing right now. They're being told things trying to create a picture in their head and then they say something and it comes back and it paints a completely different picture. You know what I mean? So it's a longass wait for a trailer. Yeah. They could possibly do a teaser. They could possibly do a full gameplay reveal. I don't know. I don't know. Either way, this absolutely paints a picture that Final Fantasy 7 remake part 3 is not coming out in the same time frame we think it might uh as at least as the other games. It might actually drop similar to part one where part one is somewhere in April. I think that's the earliest possible time frame it could be. I'm down to wait, you know. It's just that I feel like I'm ready to see something. Square Enix is is doing okay right now, but that game's got to come out soon. And I I hope we don't have to wait until like the latter half of 2027 to eventually see something on that [ __ ] So anyway, if we're talking Summer Games Fest this year, um getting a teaser, like a small teaser would be something. A teaser is something. But I I I was really hoping that at Summer Games Fest we would get a an actual trailer and like gameplay reveal, you know, the same way that Jeff had that at SGF in 2023, you know, big old gameplay reveal type of thing. So, that's what I want the most, but it still seems like we might have to wait for that big gameplay reveal until maybe at the end of the year or maybe like Tokyo Game Show. Stings, man, that [ __ ] stings. Oh, man. It's just a tip. Anyway, that's about it. That's about it. April 30th, 2027 calling it. Yeah. Yeah, that was close to what part one was. Part one was around that time frame. 7727 is always the guess. People say that, but how does that make any sense? 7727. Like, you only like it would only make sense if it was 7777, dude. Like if you want to make like a historical date out of something, you can't have like a couple parts of it. Like what? You can't have like just a chunk of it. Like I don't know. That seems odd. Yeah. December 31st, 2027. So they barely make the 30th anniversary. Yeah. Oh god. Welcome back. All I'm trying to say is as much as it seemed like an absolute slam jam thank you ma'am guarantee that this [ __ ] was going to get announced possibly in a month. I don't know anymore. At this point that gift sub bet was going to be kind of lower. I'll be real dude. When we eventually get to that point that gift sub bet was going to be a little bit lower and now I think it's going to remain pretty high. I don't know. I don't know. The original was 7797 in America, right? Um I don't know what the American release date was. I don't know if it was in July. Thought it came out in like September. Thought it came out in September. We're going to get a crazy taxi trailer this year. No, it doesn't exist. Yeah, it was like 9797. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, interesting news. What if they release on April 27, seven years after their first remake? Yeah, I mean, yeah, like uh FF7 remake part one. What was the release date? What? That was on April 10th, 2020. April 10th. Which would be funny because that that puts that game like within days of the fiscal year, which would be funny. Huh. I thought it was later. It was supposed to be March 3rd or something like that. Yeah. I remember. I remember. Was there anything good to look forward to in the Capcom or Square Reports or just more questions? Um, cap most of the Capcom [ __ ] was good. It was actually good. It was them talking about utilizing their old IPs and [ __ ] like that. So, that's legit good news. Katakawa reports a dust. Yeah, Dust Blood's coming out this year. They're saying it. They're saying it, dude. That shit's this year. I I am not surprised if Dusk Bloods is shown at a at a Nintendo Direct in the near future. If there is a Nintendo Direct and it has a beta, I would not be surprised. I don't know if it'll be Shadow Drop, but I think they would have a beta. playable at SGF. Nintendo at Summer Gamesfest. That's never happened. At least not like there's there's Switch games at Summer Gamesfest, but Nintendo being a presence there has not actually happened. So that I don't I don't know about that. the real Carlos. Thanks for the seven bucks, dude. Where'd I get the thumbnail from? The artwork. I think it's from a mobile game. Um, hold on a second. These other super chats. Go up here. Shadow Mape, thanks for the 20 unrelated. Happy 4year anniversary since Kingdom Hearts 4 got any news. I didn't say this. Uh, today is the day those screenshots dropped and nothing else. I know Kingdom Hearts 4 isn't a real game, but I don't want to hear it. I have the right to grieve. Thanks for the 20 bucks. Um, damn. You guys are like me after the FF7 remake trailers. Um, and in fact, damn, no, it's actually going to go longer because when we first saw that state of play in May, that was four years. It's worse. It's actually worse. It just for me, time goes by faster now because I'm a father. So, that was worse. You right. What Drake album you listening to first? I don't play basketball anymore. Sorry. Rumors to say to play next week. I hope so. That'd be cool. That'd be pretty cool. Um Oh, hey, it's Dandy. Thank you. Anything else, chat? I do want to check out Keith's video. He's in the chat. I know he's up late. um about game balance and stuff because there was some there was some interesting stuff that happened in the game in in fighting game balance for uh KI towards the end of that game. You know, I don't know if there's anything in the Bamco report. Do they mention anything about Tekken? Is Tekken doing okay? State of play with a teaser and summer game with a full-blown trailer. Oh, [ __ ] a chicken. Oh yeah, we need I Let's watch the Keats video. Um, and then we'll check out Hamaguchi's Twitter or the the Twitter posts from Hamaguchi cuz he's been talking a lot. They're not saying [ __ ] dude. Like people are people are deeply looking at what Hamaguchi is saying as like a confirmation bias of like what they think the story is going through. And he's talking a lot. And no [ __ ] like every single time they say something, it contradicts the [ __ ] they said before. And it it is a complete like a a complete not commitment to one thing or the other. Like it is hilarious, dude. They they just do like the whole point of it. It's not a red herring. What they're saying is likely true, but it's you're unable to pull conclusions like the end of [ __ ] Rebirth, dude. Like that is the whole point is that the the next game is supposed to have a mystery of some kind. They have said that as well that they do not want that mystery to be solved until the final game. So nothing nothing is is supposed to come to conclusion. They are being so careful with how they describe [ __ ] that they do not want you to come to any direct conclusions. Everyone thinks they're right right now. And everyone the the the worst part about it is that everyone thinks they're right and they're calling everybody else stupid which is which is why Final Fantasy Twitter is so toxic as [ __ ] because all the conversations go start off with oh man I think this is happening. No no no it's oh man I think this hap this is happening and I can't believe you could be so blind and stupid like the dumb [ __ ] you are for not seeing it. Oh, I it isn't just, oh, yeah, there's a lot of this stuff that means this, so it it definitely is going to mean that. Look, the developers said this. No, it's it's phrased in these stupid bastards don't even know how to read and they did not read that this was said, which is clearly how it is. And it's like, like for some reason, every sentence has to belittle or put the other side or like a a a juxtaposing thought has to put it down. The only way you can validate the thing you feel is real is to put something else down, which is immediately invalidating to me. Like that's the part where I just check out. Like there's just not I I see people the only way they can get their point across is to make somebody else look stupid or try to make somebody else look stupid or a group of people look stupid. That's the only way because the only the only thing they understand is conflict. Conflict is the only way that you can get your point across by making somebody else look dumb. And that's just not the way it works, dude. Having somebody else's side seem stupid does not make your side seem better. It doesn't like that's just not true. It's just not true. Anyway, let me pull this video, dudes. Let me find that link. Hold on a sec. Got it. Got it. Uh, so I was sent this from Keats a few days ago and for those of you that don't know, uh, worked with Keats on KI. He, uh, was the lead gameplay designer, right? I was doing video story [ __ ] and he was out here making all the characters and stuff like that with the team. So, they went through a lot on the KI side balancing and going through uh, the checks and balances of making like a fighting game. And this is like the biggest one where you really have to like respect a lot of fan feedback and how that game was was a lot boy howdy. Um Ki fans with balancing was definitely something. So and me and Adam sort of vibe a lot on how [ __ ] goes in fighting games like what makes fighting games fun, what makes them enjoyable. Some of that stuff is missing from a few modern fighting games in some way for the sake of like chaos and overall player balance. But he has a point in this as I open up the beginning of the video that I kind of agree with that like game balance is not a real thing. It's a thing that kind of happens like and it's the same thing that I've talked to people about where if somebody comes up to you and they're like and you don't know who they are and they ask you a question they're like I'm looking to get a fighting game. Which one is the most balanced? What does that tell you about that person? Right. Immediately based on that question, if somebody is asking you, hey, I'm looking to get a fighting game, which one is the most balanced, you you should know at that point that they don't really understand much about fighting games. So, you just want to get the one that's like the most fun with the most characters. Um, which is fine because that comes from a perspective where they've never played enough fighting games to know that almost none of them are really balanced, dude. Like people just want to feel like they could win. And if they if they hear that a fighting game is balanced, that means you have a chance of winning more. Like in their head, that's usually how it works, right? No fighting games are balanced, dude. In fact, like the majority of fighting games have gross matchup charts of like seven threes and things like that in some situations. Some games more balanced than others, but usually the games that are more balanced are more homogenized where characters just can't really express themselves in ways. So, it has to it it has to be balanced in some way. You know what I mean? What makes fighting games always interesting to me is the fact that they're imbalanced. It's up to you to counter that balance with other characters and [ __ ] like that. You can't just take character A and fight character F and just expect it to be a five5 every single every single match up along the way. It doesn't work that way, dude. So, it's what makes it's what makes somebody on stage picking Hugo against one of the best characters in the game and winning such a ceremonious event. Because when people are good with the things that are harder to use, if not as good as others, then it is awesome. It's amazingly cool. you know, um, fighting games are not [ __ ] weapon crafting and, uh, you know, what the hell's it called in War Zone and [ __ ] The fighting games are not gunsmith, dude. It's very different. So, anyway, I'll stop yapping and uh, let's see what Keith has to say about What is game balance? If you're into competitive games, I'm sure you have a pretty decent answer. But, can you answer me this question? How do we know when a game is finally balanced? Let me take you back to the early 2010s. That's a good question. League of Legends is one of the most popular competitive games of all time. And on February 16th, 2011, the developers released a patch containing the following change for Vladimir's Sanguin Pool. Removed oncast bonus movement speed. The player sentiment after playing the update was rough. Users rushed online to express how bad this change felt. Vladimir's play rate plummeted and his win rate also decreased. But here's the twist. The developer had forgotten to submit the files for that particular change and so it never actually went out to players. Chat, could you believe how much competitive games in general are based on vibes? Can you believe that? That is the realest [ __ ] something that didn't even happen, like a placebo effect that didn't even happen. Placebo patch notes had a tangible change on how people perceived the game. Vibes were down. Nothing actually changed. Crazy. Crazy that that all competitive games are like this [ __ ] dude. If vibes are down, it doesn't matter how good things are getting. Vibes are down. If vibes are up, it doesn't matter how weird and dumb [ __ ] is. Vibes are up. Game balance isn't real. Good intro. Okay, I know that might sound ridiculous and dramatic to some of you, but give me a chance before you rush to the comments to light me up. Let's define some terms. Game tuning is the act of adjusting a game to achieve a goal. Tuning is a very real action that developers take. Game tuning is real. Game balance, however, is not an act. It isn't something you do. It's a goal. Generally developers and players alike want to achieve the goal of game balance when players give feedback. Very good visual for anybody that knows where this comes from. This episode of The Simpsons, very good use of this visual representation. Back to developers, they often do so with game balance in mind. Developers tune the game to try to achieve balance. Again, tuning is the act, balance is the goal. So, while tuning is easily defined, we need to ask, what does game balance as a goal even mean? If, as we just learned, simply telling players that something in the game has changed when it has not can so deeply affect their perception of the game's balance. True. Game balance isn't real. That's right. Game balance is mostly just vibes. Yeah. It's It's not like like the game becoming balanced is not like a tangible like thing that you build towards. It's a it's a hope that you eventually get there, but not like we did it. Like, you know, a balanced game is just five fives across the board for the most part. But they're vibes that really matter. Whether you're a developer tuning a competitive game or a player interested in playing or discussing these games, let me explain why game balance isn't what you think and share some of my techniques for tuning competitive games. But first, why should you care about my view on this topic? Let me introduce myself. My name is Adam Hart, but you might know me as Keats in the fighting game community. As early as age six, my dad and I would compete with each other and create new games together. I started playing fighting games when Street Fighter 2 hit arcades in 1991. And I got the competitive Tommo and James Goddard who Keith's worked alongside in KI season 2. Shout out to James probably being uh 17 years old here or something like that. Jeez, man. James was the dude that I was up late at night uh in Chicago and he was he was trying to get ultras and I was sitting here trying to get them in the game in the video uh and recorded and cool looking and we were literally like burning the midnight oil to get these things functioning. He worked on um he's he's actually the creator of DJ in Street Fighter Jet around 1997. The lack of nearby tournaments led me to running my own local events, which got me hooked enough to start traveling the country to attend regional and major tournaments, which led me to evolving my own events into the regional major series ultimate fighting game tournament or UFGT, which popular fighting game commentator Ultra David has called one of the most influential tournament series in FGC history. Thanks. very much. Uh Keates, what was the first U what was the UFGT I went to before it all became combo breaker was when we KI was there for like the first time and I think that was like 2014. It was 2014 because it was happening like right around the same time frame as TJ in the works or some [ __ ] I'm trying to remember back when all this was going down. TJ was hot in the oven. It was UFGT9. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. That was a wonderful tournament. It was It was small, but a wonder. It It was the most grassroots [ __ ] ever, dude. I scored an EVO top eight medal in 2011 by getting seventh place in Tatsanoko versus Capcom Ultimate Allstars. I was the editor-inchief of top fighting game website show.com for many years, writing about news, events, and I have to give uh shout outs to Keats and the SRK crew at the time. greatly beneficial in my expansion as a content creator because there wasn't many fighting game content creators um around that time frame and the majority of videos that I was putting out for the games at the time were making front page of SRK and like event hubs and things like that and that was a big part of me like becoming you know even a notable person at all co-hosting their weekly podcast wake up SRK I got into game development when I created Divekick with my wife and friends and then I joined Iron Galaxy Studios to release a commercial version. We also fought each other at E3 2010 in Ultimate in in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 vanilla and we both won shirts, right, Keats? I mean, you were you were definitely there. You won a shirt because you had to like beat 10 people in line or some [ __ ] And me and Keats were one of the few people that did that. And I still have the shirt. It's dilapidated at this point. Yes, you still have that shirt signed and framed. It's sick. I also helped Iron Galaxy Studios with Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Online, Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, and Darkstalkers Resurrection. I then served as lead combat designer on Killer Instinct, the 2013 version season 2, and for the rest of the game's development cycle, and then as lead designer on Rumbleverse on Divekick, Killer Instinct, and Rumbleverse. In addition to my many other duties, I was in charge of game tuning, and I interacted heavily with community. In other words, trying to achieve competitive game balance has been a major focus of my career as a game developer since 2012. Get a lot of it. Seeing a lot of Rumbleverse fans in my chat is going to make Kates feel very good. Chat, during this professional experience, I came to view Game Balance very differently than I did at the start and very differently than most of our industry. The proof of this view is in the pudding. Endgame Killer Instinct is still considered by many to be one of the greatest fighting games of all time. With major tournaments still ongoing, a lot of players feel its balance is among the best in the entire genre. But before I jump into the meat of this talk, I want to share a quick word about the examples I'm going to use in this video. I lived through nearly all of the events I'm going to reference, but the ones I was less close to required me to do some research. I did my absolute best to represent the facts and feelings of the time. And I want to make it clear that if I use an example in a negative way that I'm not disparaging the people who made those games, made those design choices, or players who love those games. I want to acknowledge that all of us developers are trying to do the best we can at a very difficult task. We've all made mistakes, me very much included, and I'll probably make more mistakes in the future. The point of this video and its examples isn't to point fingers or say I'm the best or something like that. It's to use our history to observe lessons to help you understand my perspective on game balance. Cool. All right, let's begin. Before we get started, chat, hold on a second here. Do me a favor and uh go ahead and follow the channel. Here's Ke's video. Go ahead and follow a channel. Leave a like and stuff like All right, hold on a second. Let's get into it. What happened to you? You're at the GameStop reading the back of the box for the latest competitive game, and the bullet points say 16 playable characters, 12 fighting stages. The game play is very fair. I bet you couldn't wait to get home and play the game so you could experience the fairness firsthand. Let's be real, fairness is not a selling point, and people don't generally buy games because they're fair. Why do people buy games or download them in the case of games that don't require a purchase? Here's the crazy part. I I I think I disagree with this a little bit. I think fairness is a selling point to to extreme casuals. Not like people that understand things and play things a little bit like the most extreme casuals of just like I just want a I just want a fighting game to put on the shelf, man. Like I just want one to be there. I just don't I have a sports game. I got a shooting game. I got another shooting game. I need a fighting game, which is a large percentage of people that buy this [ __ ] In all honesty, like though that's the audience that fairness and balance is important to because they they feel that way, you know. Well, the game looks fun. You can do a bunch of cool stuff in it. Explosions, style, mastery. Every person's definition of fun is unique, and the type of fun they seek is their primary motivator when deciding what to play. People also buy games because of FOMO. Their friends or their community are playing, and they don't want to be left behind. Gamers will often play a game we don't love just to keep up with our friends. Even outside social pressure, such as everyone's playing it, can trigger the desire to not be left behind. Back before post-launch live service update cycles were the norm, the point of a sale was all that mattered. As a developer, if I could get you to buy your Super Nintendo copy of Street, the relationship ended there with you ended right then and there. Wouldn't have mattered to me how long you played the game or what you thought of the game balance or the fairness or any of that. Even if the game was deeply unfair, you'd likely only be playing it against your local friends who were good enough at the game for that to even really matter. So, as a dev, I'd just hope that I did a good enough job to make you want to buy the next version of the game in a year or two. Now, game development and marketing costs have skyrocketed. Development timelines are only getting longer, and the way consumers interact with competitive games has completely changed. After your initial purchase or download, it's important for developers to keep players playing. If they aren't playing, they won't be around to buy DLC and fill the online matchmaking cues. So now it's become just as important to keep players from quitting as it is to get them to buy or download the game in the first place. That's a very good point. Yeah. And it's funny is that KI was kind of at the epicenter of that. It was the the the game to start that [ __ ] where instead of waiting like a year or two for a new title update, KI was just like, "Here's characters a year. Get ready. Here's a new season. Here's a new season. Here's a new season." You know? especially if the game is free to play. If you want to stop players from quitting, you need to fully understand why they quit. Players quit because sometimes it's not about the game itself, and there isn't anything you can do. Maybe a new game came out and pulled their attention away. Perhaps real life happened and that drastically lowered the players free time. But there are reasons that players quit that you can at least somewhat control. If a game becomes more frustrating than fun, players will quit. If a game becomes more thoughtless than engaging, players will quit. So to summarize, games no longer are sold in a box and left as is. Competitive games need to last for years just to justify the rise in cost of development. Developers are expected to keep players engaged in playing. That means frustration is a real problem that must be dealt with. Boredom is a real problem that must be dealt with. And so developers decide on goals and then they tinker with their games. And this gets called rather interchangeably game tuning or game patching or game balancing. But each of these terms has their own definitions and we should not use them interchangeably. Let's reiterate the terms as I've defined them. Game tuning is the act of making adjustments in your game in an effort to achieve a goal. Game patching is the act of deploying updates to the game. And game balance is merely one possible goal of game tuning, right? But what is a balanced game really? How do we know when a game is finally balanced? Five fives across the board. Most boring [ __ ] in the world. Is it when every weapon or character is used equally or wins equally? Is it when the players have nothing left to complain about online? Are these things even possible? When we tune a game, we're looking to reach some specific measurable outcome. So, a problem we're about to run into is that game balance doesn't have just one definition that everyone agrees on. Each part of the audience for your game is looking for something different based on their own ideas of what successful game balance looks like to them. Most players primary driver for wanting game balance is the idea of fairness. They think they want a game in which all options are equally viable and they can rank up or win a tournament with any character or weapon or team. Yeah, I understand why this is the way to th this is the reason these these it's not that these feelings don't exist. They exist. Like a lot of people feel this way about this [ __ ] but there's a reason behind it and it simply becomes it comes from inexperience, right? just not really knowing like how the genre works or how competitive game works in general. You you would expect there to be a fairness to everything like across the board that they choose. They want a game where the tools they use are objectively powerful but are perceived as fair by others and that those tools are rarely used against them. If the game doesn't feel fair to an individual, that individual gets frustrated. Viewers matter a lot to any modern competitive games ecosystem. And the viewer's primary driver for wanting game balance is variety. They want to tune into live streams and see like a lot of different characters and team compositions and weapons represented to keep things interesting. And this is also important nowadays um because a lot of fighting games lately aren't super entertaining to watch. They're really engaging at like high level. Don't get me wrong. the decision-making and all that kind of stuff and even execution in some ways is really profound and mad cool. But there's a weird thing about older games and it's that the the way you can play them is so varied that just through the act of doing like one thing like moving around you can greatly tell the difference of a good player to a bad player. Um, and there's a game that's happening with that right now, which is where I'm having a lot of fun, and that's with Invincible Versus. Dude, the high level of Invincible Versus looks like such a goddamn different game than any other level of the game being played right now. Same thing with like Fatal Fury. The high level of that game is crazy looking. Want to see lots of play styles interacting with each other, especially when viewing tournaments. It's a lot less fun when the top eight character selections look like this. If the choices being made on screen are too repetitive, viewers get frustrated. And this third one, yeah, we'll talk about this one later. So, how do developers figure out how to tune the game? People hate saying the same [ __ ] over and over again. More variety. One common strategy is to survey or talk to players to see what it is they want changed. Another common strategy is to use telemetry to look deeply at data that represents real in-game outcomes, such as use rates or win rates, to try and make it so that things make sense mathematically. Tekken uses this a lot. Yet, despite trying all of these things, competitive games so often struggle to achieve good game balance. Why is that? Let's break down each of the traditional methods for making tuning decisions and see where they tend to go wrong. Let's start with telemetry. Data lies. On the first day of my high school statistics class, our teacher shared with us a quote from early 20th century Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Steckle. Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures. That quote really stuck with me. As it turns out, if you're clever, you can use data to prove almost any point you want. Or worse, data can convince you of a false truth. Data can be very useful in convincing your development teammates of a design direction, but it's much less useful for finding the right tuning decision to make for your audience. Checking telemetry from League of Legends, you might find that the item Maji's Soul Stealer has an absurdly high win rate, often close to 80%. But this statistic is highly misleading. The item is rarely purchased unless you're already winning, which means the player purchasing it was already very likely to win before making the purchase. Yeah, if it's just not around as much. It's like it it it dude this is the the same [ __ ] where people were telling me um Lars has a has a has one of the highest win rates in Tekken. You stupid bastard. It would usually be accompanied by you dumb [ __ ] you stupid bastard playing one of the characters with the highest win rate in Tekken. And and I'm like mother like the only reason that is is because he is like the bottom third of used characters. like he's not popular. So the amount of people that are playing him are significantly less than the people that are playing the characters more like the more popular characters. Like 75% win rate, 16% pick rate. It's like, dude, come on. The developers understood why the win rate for this item was the way it was, and that kept them from making the mistake of trusting the numbers alone and making a poor tuning decision. This means that in order to find guidance within the numbers, you need an extraordinary amount of context. Let's say that you look at your character pick rates and one of the characters is very underreresented. Do we have any idea why just from the numbers alone? Is it because the character's too weak or are they difficult to use? Or do they lose matchups to some of the most common characters? Or are they just kind of ugly? Without the reason why, this data is effectively useless as a means to understanding what changes to make in your game. Early on in Overwatch's lifespan, developers saw the use rate of the support hero Symmetra was low. And so on December 13th, 2016, they overhauled the character, changing the way her move set worked. Developer design notes said they wanted to make Symmetra feel more active and give her more meaningful contributions to the team went up. The players were somewhat happy, but achieved. She still wasn't very popular to a damage role. Many Symmetra players lost their fun in this overhaul, and some physically disabled players could no longer play the character at all. The use rate dropped below the original version while simultaneously making the player base upset without understanding why the use rate was low to begin with. Tuning the character, or worse, reworking them entirely is like throwing darts while blindfolded after being punched in the face. Was the pick rate low because Symmetra was weak? Or was it because her toolkit didn't fit in well with the dominant strategies running the game? Or was it because she was only fun to a certain type of player? And if I may ask, is it even a problem that her pick rate was low or that the game has niche characters that aren't tournament viable? Well, is it? Without context, data is often worse than useless. It can make you think a problem exists where there isn't one, and it might lead you to making decisions that remove the fun of some of your players. Data without context is dangerous. We should also consider that data is almost never qualitative, and it's easily skewed. Developers that use telemetry to observe the win rates of various characters and weapons will find obvious and large differences when they start to sort that data by player rank. But can we really trust a qualifier like player rank to sort and understand this data? Ranking systems are only good at sorting people who use them a lot. Consider that there are tournament level players who do not play ranked mode often at all. And when they do, they may be much lower ranked than their actual skill level due to their lack of ranked play time. You must also realize that not everyone in the top ranking bracket is of equal skill. And so this can affect a character's win rate rather drastically even within that segment of players. And within that segment, you may find that certain strategies or characters are barely used at all. Think about what else goes into the win rate. This a 1v one game or a team game. Is the character difficult? It's funny cuz at like these levels things like scrub killer characters almost don't exist. you know, characters that will actually like ream platinum and below because their the counters to their strategies is not immediately obvious, that [ __ ] just goes away. Like because once you know what to do and you're refined and toned enough in the game to have an understanding of how to counter it, it's like, oh well, now that's just not even a viable strategy at all. You know, certain strategies or characters are barely used at all. Think about what else goes into the win rate. Is this a 1v one game or a team game? Is the character difficult or easy to use? How do we interpret the stats of a character who thrives in online matchmaking but struggles to place well in full tournament brackets? How close are the games best character specialists to reaching each character's known potential? And what don't we know about a character's potential? Yoshi perfectly understand the quality of our win rate data. we simply can't learn enough from it to identify if we even have a problem to address, let alone possible solutions to that problem. Maybe we can spot a lopsided matchup with data from time to time, which can be really helpful in knowing where to look, but it isn't at all helpful in figuring out what to change. Remember, data will lie to you. Using Street Fighter 6's publicly available telemetry, we can see such a case in action. Doulam, Lily, Honda, Rasheed, Blanca, and Kimberly are the bottom six characters in terms of use rates and ranked both across all ranks overall and when isolating the master rank players. And yet the characters with the highest win rates in master rank are in order, Kimberly, Dawson, JP, Blanca, Rasheed. And I'm assuming this gets to the point where the reason that is isn't because the characters are inherently like better. It's that they're being chosen less and the people that are good with them are good with them. They're character specialists, the majority of them. So they cook like they will cook the majority of players because you just don't know how to fight against this [ __ ] So this is almost the exact inverse. And player conceptions of these characters place in the tier lists bear no relation to any of this data. Most players think Blanca and Rasheed are high tier. Honda and Lily are low tier. and ideas about Doulam and Kimberly's strength vary wildly. This data could easily lead you to believe that these six characters are weak due to underuse or make you think that they're too strong because of their high win rates. Data without context is dangerous. Yes. Yeah. It doesn't even mean anything. But even trying to apply proper context to your data is almost impossibly difficult. So, if we trust doesn't really have much value, we should probably talk to the players in our community, right? After all, they play the most. They're often extremely skilled and they know the game pretty pretty damn well. Well, unfortunately, even though No, this is so bro. You chats. Look what this says. Players also lie. If there is one thing that you do not want is to tune a game based on like the high level of the game. You do not want to do that because the intention behind it like downplaying is at legendary levels lately in like all genres across the board. But we saw this happen like intimately with KI at many points, right? Like this this was a big deal uh at several points of like to try to make it seem like that your character isn't doing good so that the other character can get nerfed. and don't mean to. Players frequently lie, too. If you've been in or around GameDev long enough, you've certainly heard the phrase, "Players don't know what they want." This isn't entirely true in my experience. There's a relatively well-known clip of me from the wonderful fight on Killer Instinct documentary by Hold Back to Block in which I tell an anecdote about a time when the KI community rallied together. I think what he I think the better way of describing it is that of players not knowing what they want, people don't know how to describe what they want, right? And that's the big challenge is that people have a tough time communicating, especially over the internet. People let their emotions get the best of them. Like the aggressive thing comes out or the overtly positive thing comes out instead of finding an eloquent way to describe what you're feeling and what should change as a result of it without affecting other stuff. That's hard. Like that's just that isn't just a balancing thing. That is that's hard in general for people to communicate even what they want from [ __ ] and really wanted us to nerf Drago. Specifically, his ability to heal himself by landing fireballs during his instinct mode made them feel like they had to kill him three times instead of two. But nerfing his healing, as they had requested, would have cut away at the character's core identity, and a large part of what makes him unique and fun to play. The community was laser focused on seeing the healing as the problem, and their view of the game was that JGO was either too strong or too frustrating to play against, depending on who you asked. Whether this was the true state of the game or not is not relevant. They believed JGO was a problem and their perception, no matter how flawed, is the reality they live in. To tune games properly, you must accept this. A player's perception is their reality. So instead of succumbing to the community pressure campaign and nerfing Jgo's healing, we took a different approach that allowed us to maintain his fun and unique healing gimmick while weakening some of the more brainless parts of his kit that allowed him to negate his intended weaknesses too easily. The community cooked us pretty hard for a few weeks, insisting that this wasn't the change they asked for and wouldn't make a difference. But a few weeks after that, complaining about JGO had all but stopped. Players knew they wanted a weaker JGO. It's just that their idea of how to do it would have had way worse knockdown effects on the game and JGO player base than what we landed on. And of course, a very small number of JGO players were unable to adapt to the changes that we did end up going with, and they either switched characters or quit the game entirely. That sucks, but it's a natural part of the tuning process. You can't please everyone, but you can limit the negative blowback of a nerf if you're thoughtful. Was Jgo too strong on paper? Did he even need to be nerfed in the first place? Believe it or not, it doesn't actually matter. Ultimately, players were frustrated and something had to be done about that. The something we chose weakened JGO, which is what the players wanted, but the way we did it strayed pretty far from most of the common complaints. Yeah, this is the uh this also is related to the same [ __ ] that happened in Guilty Gear where no matter what you do to make adjustments, the goal is to create like happiness is the goal is to make like people enjoy something to to to expand more. It's good for the overall longevity of the game, but you might have to make a sacrifice, right? Like some hardcore like JGO players in this case are probably going to drop off, which is honestly fair. This was the same [ __ ] we were describing before Guilty Gear Strive came out because it was…

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