Square Enix Takes ‘Large Loss’ on Life Is Strange: Double Exposure – Push Square
GuestGuestLogin | Sign UpPush SquareGuestLogin or Sign UpDoesn’t sound so strangeLife Is Strange: Double Exposure’s disconnect between critics and fans previously perplexed Square Enix, but it has since revealed what was probably obvious to many: Max Caulfield’s return failed to meet the firm’s financial expectations, and sales of the game were a “large loss” for the company.That’s according to Square Enix’s president, Takeshi Kiryu, who made the comment while presenting the firm’s latest financial report (thanks, TheGamer). Apparently, the loss on Double Exposure was somewhat offset by the success of Dragon Quest 3 Remake.Hard numbers were not forthcoming, and may never be known, but TheGamer notes that Square Enix has previously used the particular “large loss” phrasing to describe the sales of games like Guardians of the Galaxy and select Tomb Raider titles, so make of that what you will. Double Exposure seemingly tempted fate by closing with the tagline “Max Caulfield will return”; as it stands, we wouldn’t be getting our hopes up for a sequel in light of this reveal.Max Caulfield’s return should have been a sure-fire betAre you surprised Double Exposure did not meet Square Enix’s sales expectations? Did you pick the game up yourself? Let us know in the comments section below.[source resetera.com, via thegamer.com]About Khayl AdamKhayl Adam is Push Square’s roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the richest, most succulent PlayStation stories. With six years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.Comments 38Removed – unconstructiveReleasing in a busy period didnt help. Also the series has had its issues. The actors strike during Before The Storm, the god awful protagonists of 2, and the dull powers of true colours. Plus with the word Woke being thrown at everything and games being crap if not given a 9 in peoples eyes these days it didnt stand a chance. A shameShould’ve made it live service /sNot too surprising but still sad to see. I enjoyed it okay but it had too many issues. Released in buggy, unpolished state and weird monetization by Square didn’t do it any favors.More like double asscheeks.General consensus seems to be that the game is OK for the most part right until the end, in which the game becomes a narrative disaster.Interested to try this out for myself when it’s on a DEEP sale.I got like a wall of text about how incredibly bad it was from my best mate who is a lesbian and was the complete right time for the first game coming out and the entire scene that cropped up around it. If she didn’t like it then it was doomed, the same thoughts seemed to be echoed by a lot of the core audience for the games.”Are you surprised Double Exposure did not meet Square Enix’s sales expectations”I’m surprised if any game meets Squenix’s expectations, so no.@Dalejrfanfreak Didn’t work for recent FF games even after going on PC.The only successes they’ve had are traditional remasters/remakes.Square cannot blame exclusivity this time.I’m not surprised but I am disappointed. I really liked Double Exposure. I had never expected to see Max again so I had a wonderful time with it, but I’ve always accepted that LIS is fairly niche so I don’t quite understand what SE was expecting. Then again, since Tomb Raider 2013’s “failure to meet expectations” I’ve not listened to their disassociated ramblings anyway.Not yet play this game but i’m surprised it didn’t meet SE 10 million copies target sales /sThey pretty much sealed the fate of the game by releasing it in an absolutely loaded October. I know other companies have done it too, but Square Enix must be run by some of the biggest idiots in the industry if they expected it to somehow still sell.While I like some of the other games in the series better, I still enjoyed Double Exposure. It’s a shame Square Enix pretty much sealed the fate of the game, as I’d be shocked if this wasn’t the last.I have fairly liberal friends who were turned off by the game’s heavy messaging. The fatigue is real and not listening to customers when they vote with their wallets is just asking for more trouble.@Danloaded Honestly I think they oversaturated the Life is Strange IP. I played the first one and loved it. I played Before the Storm and liked it a lot. Then I stopped. Not because I didn’t like the series but because I blinked and suddenly there were 3 more games in the series I was behind on.@T-Prime85 TR didn’t even break even for a year, people always forget that partspending alot of money making what used to be an indy game had failure to meet expectations all over it.Double exposure is a good game better than life is strange 2for me the order goeslife is strangelife is strange true colourslife is strange before the stormlife is strange double exposurelife is strange 2Hoo boy, if you thought that Final Fantasy has a toxic fanbase, welcome to this one.@trev666 id probably agree with that order as couldn’t get in to 2 and gave up halfway into the 2nd episode and double exposure is the weakest of the ones I finished by far.This has probably killed off any hope of ever getting another LiS game now. Square sees no money, Square shuts down.I had great fun with Guardiand of the Galaxy. Not sure why it did not work out. Still did not check this LiS but I will do.@Ultimapunch they murdered it with Life is Strange 2. True colors was a resurrection, and I want to play Double Exposure but it’s just damn expensive and I know I can wait for salesExecutives are always shocked when fans scores are lower than gaming media review scores. These same executives only give review keys to media that give them favourable reviews.Square Enix appears to have cultivated an incredibly toxic core fan base across almost its entire product base. People that seem to reject anything that is remotely different from the way they think it should be(which is the way it was when they first played it). Every Life is strange games should be exactly like the first, every FF games should be like the FF games in the 90’s.@Danloaded I thought True Colours was excellent, but the series has been up and down for a while, and the novelty is no longer there.Then they had pre-order 2 weeks early access BS, it was an easy skip.The first LiS remains the only game I’ve ever bothered to Platinum, as someone who doesn’t generally give a monkeys about trophies and won’t deviate an inch or 5 minutes from my path to get one.I played each episode as it was released and loved it in its day. It’s no longer the mid 2010’s though.My view is that they are flogging a dead horse.They should have left it alone after the first game. Move on. Create a new IP.Instead they kept milking and squandered the legacy with weak writing and political infestation. They’ve finally been walloped and been clearly told to stop.@themightyant i did enjoy true colours story but it didnt go far enough with her powers. The time rewind from the original was good for puzzles and the moments where it was taken away were great for tension. Seeing emotion was kinda weak and the times you could use the actual power resulted in bad resultsI think these on the nose, teen angst Americana dramas drove themselves into the ground.life is strange had it’s 10 minutes of fame..I don’t know is squeenix is just a big bunch of whiners hoping their complaints will make people buy more, or if they really expect all their games to sell like GTA5. On any case, they are ridiculous.Double Exposure really didn’t catch my interest so I never bought it. Same thing with True Colors. I didn’t really hate 2 but the first game and Before the Storm were the best games in the franchise imo.I don’t think that what I’m about to say is entirely or even mostly to blame for the soft sales – I think Life Is Strange has maybe just had its time.But as a massive Life Is Strange fan – except for 2, which sucks – I know why I haven’t bought this game yet. It was the weird staggered release where if you bought the more expensive version of the game you got the first two episodes a couple of weeks early.I wasn’t going to pay extra to play a bit of a game early and then have to wait for the rest of it so I just didn’t preorder it. Then the lukewarm response to the first two episode from fans meant that I wasn’t in any hurry to pick it up upon full release when I had other stuff to do. And then I kinda forgot about it.Honestly, if they hadn’t tried to nickel and dime people for partial early access I probably would bought this on day one.Didnt help releasing effectively a “Telltale” game with limited replayability at £50/$70I wonder why so many of these externally developed Square Enix games make a huge loss or at least do not meet expectations. Maybe the most creative department at SE is the accounting, which then creates virtual costs, to reduce bonus payments to the dev studios … Good old Hollywood accounting.OR: Square-Enix is really bad at guessing players expectations. “Gamers want NFT. Let’s sell Tomb Raider to finance our NFT world domination. Nobody is interested in Tomb Raider anymore…”I always loved their physical releases always leaving a episode of the disc. And i never heard about Square Enix being happy about salesnumbers only with cheap remasters.It’s a shame because I love LiS but they really did butcher this and possibly no further games sounds sad For me, my issue was the LiS series wasn’t consistent. By the time they swung back to Max, I simply didn’t care.Finished it, but the story didn’t hit nearly as hard as I expected. By the end, I feel like even the devs had no idea what they wanted to do with it – just twist after twist, but in a completely messy, incoherent way. The whole thing basically took place in one location, which felt pretty dull.Oh, and the forced diversity… pushing it to the point of being straight-up ridiculous. I’m open-minded and usually don’t even care about this stuff, but here, it was shoved in so aggressively that it was actually frustrating. And for what? Zero (!) impact on the story. Whether a character was gay, lesbian, or trans made absolutely no difference – it added nothing, it was just there because it had to be. Show CommentsLeave A CommentHold on there, you need to login to post a comment…58 PS5, PS4 Games You Should Buy in PS Store’s Mega March SaleRecommended PS5 and PS4 games in the latest sale12 PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for March 2025 AnnouncedPrince of Persia! Armored Core galore!GTA Online: All Cars and Vehicles Compatible with Hao’s Special Works Tuning UpgradesSupercharge your fleet with HSW’s new-gen upgradesSony Confirms PS Portal’s Status as ‘DadStation’ in Accurate AdA love that lasts a lifetimeRumour: Oblivion PS5 Remake Releasing Next Month Appears More and More LikelyUpdate: Original leaker shares moreGame ProfileTitle:Life Is Strange: Double ExposureSystem:PlayStation 5Also Available For:SwitchPublisher:Square EnixDeveloper:Deck Nine GamesGenre:AdventurePlayers:1Release Date:PlayStation 5Series:Life Is StrangeReviews:Life Is Strange: Double Exposure (PS5) – Hallmark Series Loses Its CharmGuide:Life Is Strange: Double Exposure Full Collectibles GuideWhere to buy:Buy on Amazon
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