Square Enix Cancels Future Final Fantasy XV Development, At Least We Have The Benchmark With DLSS Support

[dmartin]

A few months ago the creation of Luminous Productions by members of Square Enix made us wonder if this could affect the development of Final Fantasy XV for PC. The company had to reorganize its resources and that affected the roadmap for this project, which has finally been cancelled. The departure of Hajime Tabata, director of development, has made Square Enix decide to cancel any further development, including DLCs and patches alike, for the game. This especially hurts the PC version given it is in need of some gameplay fixes sooner than later, as the comments on the Steam store page would tell you. The company is having a rough time lately, as it reported a $33 million loss in its latest financial briefing.

The demo-benchmark of Final Fantasy XV was in fact one of the surprises at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series announcement, and thanks to it we were able to see how DLSS technology effectively posed a promising alternative to traditional anti aliasing techniques. With the project ending in the current state, we'll have to forget about these theoretical enhancements, and other eye-catching new features such as Vulkan API support.



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[RCoon]

The fact they funded, published and released Quiet Man is beyond my comprehension.

 

[Vayra86]

That is unfortunate, another nail in the RTX coffin.

/s

 

[ShurikN]

Wait... the game is out and available on PC... the title confuses me.
They said that all future DLCs are canceled.

 

[INSTG8R]

The fact they funded, published and released Quiet Man is beyond my comprehension.

I get emails from the all the time pushing games that just look like shovel ware. It’s really no surprise.

 

[berniebennybernard]

You guys need to do more proofreading because the title, content, and overall grammar for this article is horrendous.

Not to mention the title should be more appropriately titled "Square Enix Cancels Final Fantasy XV DLCs for PC".

FFXV was released on PC back in spring. They're cancelling the DLC only and the article made no mention of that.

 

[Vayra86]

You guys need to do more proofreading because the title, content, and overall grammar for this article is horrendous.

Not to mention the title should be more appropriately titled "Square Enix Cancels Final Fantasy XV DLCs for PC".

FFXV was released on PC back in spring. They're cancelling the DLC only and the article made no mention of that.

They are cancelling all development on it. And the current state of XV on PC is... really a fiesta of broken promises.

 

[Nokiron]

They are cancelling all development on it. And the current state of XV on PC is... really a fiesta of broken promises.

Yeah, but this is very incorrect:

"The departure of Hajime Tabata, director of development, has made Square Enix decide to cancel the PC version that many expected"

https://store.steampowered.com/app/637650/FINAL_FANTASY_XV_WINDOWS_EDITION/

And it's not just affecting PC, but the console as well. All versions.

 

[ArbitraryAffection]

You guys need to do more proofreading because the title, content, and overall grammar for this article is horrendous.

Not to mention the title should be more appropriately titled "Square Enix Cancels Final Fantasy XV DLCs for PC".

FFXV was released on PC back in spring. They're cancelling the DLC only and the article made no mention of that.

The article isn't that bad. It read OK to me.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The fact they funded, published and released Quiet Man is beyond my comprehension.

SquareEnix is a mere shadow of what those two companies once were individually. Games of real quality are few and far between at this point. They have the potential to be great and have a ton of great franchise assets, they just need to remember what made them great to begin with, focus on quality instead of profits. The artistry of the craft of gaming is a lost ideal lately and that is really what is degrading the industry as a whole, not just SquareEnix.

 

[SIGSEGV]

very ugly with dlls

 

[Divide Overflow]

When did Square Enix get bought out by EA?

 

[lexluthermiester]

When did Square Enix get bought out by EA?

 

[Vya Domus]

I mean this is golden, Nvidia's only selling points about their new technology become less and less relevant before we eve got to see them in action.

 

[phanbuey]

I mean this is golden, Nvidia's only selling points about their new technology become less and less relevant before we eve got to see them in action.

yep... this is going to be one of those 'options' in the game like the other tech hypes that came before:

PhysX
ShadowWorks
Hairworks
MFAA
TXAA
HBAO+

It will make the game look marginally better/different with a monstrous performance hit... and Ultimately will only be worth it at lower rez when next gen tech comes out.

 

[HTC]

It's what know as the "wrong priorities" issue.

Devs are trying to outdo one another by focusing on the visuals instead of focusing on the game's story / play ability. Don't get me wrong: visuals ARE important but also secondary to the game's core.

 

[bug]

I mean this is golden, Nvidia's only selling points about their new technology become less and less relevant before we eve got to see them in action.

Damn innovation, you should buy only video cards that include vertex shading and nothing above that

 

[Steevo]

yep... this is going to be one of those 'options' in the game like the other tech hypes that came before:

PhysX
ShadowWorks
Hairworks
MFAA
TXAA
HBAO+

It will make the game look marginally better/different with a monstrous performance hit... and Ultimately will only be worth it at lower rez when next gen tech comes out.

Don't forget they will penalize "other" unnamed manufacturers and will claim its open source while requiring a NDA and not allowing anyone to see whats happening under the hood of the software if they choose to use it The developer will end up failing as they rely too much on a single supplier that isn't producing any consoles (majority of sales) hardware making the game 10X more difficult to port to console, or from console, and then rinse repeat with future shitty titles with non-industry standard software and other game studios....

 

[darkangel0504]

Nier Automata still not fixed

 

[moproblems99]

SquareEnix is a mere shadow of what those two companies once were individually. Games of real quality are few and far between at this point. They have the potential to be great and have a ton of great franchise assets, they just need to remember what made them great to begin with, focus on quality instead of profits. The artistry of the craft of gaming is a lost ideal lately and that is really what is degrading the industry as a whole, not just SquareEnix.

You have just described the entire gaming market in just a few sentences. With the exception of CDPR, I don't think many publishers/studios care about the total package.

And for the record, CDPR is not the god of gaming, they just have been our last bastion of hope for the last few years. Except for Gwent. That is a black mark on them (for me). I really liked Gwent in TW3 more than the full game.

 

[bug]

You have just described the entire gaming market in just a few sentences. With the exception of CDPR, I don't think many publishers/studios care about the total package.

And for the record, CDPR is not the god of gaming, they just have been our last bastion of hope for the last few years. Except for Gwent. That is a black mark on them (for me). I really liked Gwent in TW3 more than the full game.

I wouldn't exactly fault them for Gwent. It's a cheap, casual title and it had a free beta so you could see whether it floats your boat or not.
And keep in mind that besides their stance against DRM and fantastic story telling (thanks in no small part to Sapkowski's novels), their execution was nowhere near flawless. Both the first and the second Witcher titles had enough problems upon release to warrant an enhanced edition. But they stood by their work and released those for free to everyone.
It's this attitude towards their customers that I admire. It's this attitude that made me preorder Witcher titles even if I'm pretty much against preordering any video game.

Treat me like a potential criminal with online activation and always-online requirements even if all I do is play by myself? Keep your precious, no hard feelings.

 

[Vya Domus]

With the exception of CDPR

Ah yes, our lord and savior CD Projekt Red. Don't kid yourself, they love money just as much and haven't got the chance yet to try and pull off the same stuff like most other well established developers with dozen of games in their portfolio did. After all CDRP hasn't been around for long and nor have they been exactly a powerhouse pumping game after game.

 

[rtwjunkie]

You have just described the entire gaming market in just a few sentences. With the exception of CDPR, I don't think many publishers/studios care about the total package.

There are a number of high quality, fun AAA games that incorporate both great visuals and great gameplay/story, but you’re right they are indeed the minority.

 

[moproblems99]

Ah yes, our lord and savior CD Projekt Red. Don't kid yourself, they love money just as much and haven't got the chance yet to try and pull off the same stuff like most other well established developers with dozen of games in their portfolio did. After all CDRP hasn't been around for long and nor have they been exactly a powerhouse pumping game after game.

I never said they didn't like money. However, they had the perfect chance to do with TW3. And they didn't.

 

[Vayra86]

yep... this is going to be one of those 'options' in the game like the other tech hypes that came before:

PhysX
ShadowWorks
Hairworks
MFAA
TXAA
HBAO+

It will make the game look marginally better/different with a monstrous performance hit... and Ultimately will only be worth it at lower rez when next gen tech comes out.

Minor exception: temporal AA is common these days and TXAA did put the foundation for that. Similarly, FXAA also came out of the GameWorks corner. And for PhysX, there is no better performing alternative on the market. HBAO+ is virtually standard issue in every game as an option, and yes, it does improve the wobbly mess we call SSAO. I'm also ready to believe that DLSS has potential to further improve AA methods and efficiency - but I'll reserve judgement there until I see actual ingame numbers, not onrails benches.

My judgement of GameWorks is 'hit or miss'. It is very clear that these investments did further gaming in a broad sense, and many technologies are industry standards by now, but another part of it simply serves as a hidden marketing tool, Hairworks is a great example of that. GameWorks however also represents Nvidia's belief that if you don't carry and build it yourself, it simply won't happen. And in that belief they have been proven correct time and time again, as opposed to AMD that tries to leverage 'the industry' to make the investment for them, or MS with DX12 saying 'implement mGPU yourselves'. Most devs have many other pressing issues to worry about first, and these 'features' tend to end up on a backlog with the lowest possible priority.

Ironically, with Nvidia's RTX, they have chosen the AMD route of pushing new technology, and this is also why I don't believe in it. Even if Nvidia drops bags of money, they don't magically add a workforce to actually make it happen. This FFXV example is just one of many yet to come.