And then they try to fix it by spending even more on the next title.

I don’t get it.

It has resulted in some fantastic, well-selling games, but it was never going to reach the universal “literally everyone is playing this” level they seem to keep thinking will happen “any second now”.

Sony?

Final Fantasy is owned by Square Enix.

I suspect Sony pays them very little for the timed exclusivity, still that does help.

But the mismanagement I’m referring to is less to do with the platform availability (though that doesn’t help) as it is with Squenixes habit of consistently over-estimating final sales, and thereby overspending on development and scope.

Squenix did it with Tomb Raider, they did it with Deux Ex, and then axed the franchises entirely because they “failed to meet sales projections”. They still sold like hell, but “underperformed” because Squenix had completely bonkers expectations, and thereby also spent way more than warranted.

The marketing budget for Shadow of the Tomb Raider was apparently more than a third of what they paid for development, and even the development cost was questionable.

The exact same pattern is happening with Final Fantasy, where they try to fix waning sales by going bigger and bigger, instead of more efficient and consistent. I hope they wise up before they axe FF, too.

Intergrade is an increbile game. I loved it.

Squenix is still missmanaging the shit out of their franchises, and I will be waiting for Rebirth to be discounted and on PC.

Waited for the PC version of Intergrade, and then a sale. It was absolutley fantastic IMO. But I will still do the same with Rebirth.

Squenix keeps trying to spend more to get more, and it never fucking works.

It’s always “our titles are performing below expectations and we will be forced to axe the project” when the whole reason things are going south is that they somehow thought there was a market to make hundreds of millions, then spend accordingly.

And when fans aren’t interested in buying one game three times for full price:

Rebirth didn’t need to be bigger and better than Intergrade. It just needed to be the same quality level (which was excellent, now with Rebirth its overshooting the sweet spot by a mile) and cost less than full-price.

What? Squenix overspending still didn’t result in proportianlly higher sales?

No way! But surely, next time it’ll work!

If youre unfamiliar, squenix keeps upping the budget when they get “hits” expecting the return to scale. Then when it doesn’t, they use it as en excuse to abandon the franchise.

They did it with Tomb Raider. They did it with the new Deus Ex games. I really really don’t want them to do it Final Fantasy, as I really enjoy the modern games.

No work today. Gonna make a cast iron pizza. Then play Satisfactory until I get sleepy.

I still author all my posts, I just make the repetitive parts a little less repetitive.

As the title suggests, this is strip number 19 out of 91, so you’re missing a lot of context. Check out the community for the previous posts.

The creature is Stinky, a being that will eat anything, and smells incredibly bad. Moomin is trying to offer Stinky something else to eat, because Stinky is currently set on consuming his house.

Moomin, the hippo, invited Stinky into his house because he was tired of entertaining hundreds of guests overstaying their welcome. He feels guilty for being a bad host, and feels that losing his home might be well deserved punishment.

Batteries catch fire. Very large ones, or many cells together can mean a very hot, very dangerous fire, with the occasional violence of a cell bursting.

Being in close contact with something like a phone when that happens would cause burns, but they don’t “explode” with very much force. (Relatively speaking. You wouldn’t get lethal fragmentation for example, I don’t think)

The note 7 batteries didn’t really go boom in the way an actual explosive does, though the reaction is a sudden and fast release of thermal energy, its not that much energy in terms of explosive devices.

So no. You can’t “hack” a phone and turn it into a bomb using just the hardware that is already inside. You could start a fire, and that could be deadly, but as an explosive device the battery in most phones is not that potent.

And the moon showing through the half-eaten wall in the second panel.

Yesterday’s comic also had a family of owls hanging out. Jansson loved to add lots of tiny details in her drawing.

S-pankkia ei kuitenkaan syytetä rikoksesta, vaikka pankin tietoturvakäytännöt mahdollistivat varkaudet.

Mitä

Python skills + pythorhead lemmy lib

Midriff, fang, AND braid?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAÄAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Just gonna leave two community mentions here…

!militarymoe@ani.social !morphmoe@ani.social

For real. I’ve seen kids years younger than when I started pedaling scurrying around on these, and it instantly clicked why it’s a much better way to learn to stay upright on two wheels.

I wish my first bike had been something like that. Training wheels stop a bike from leaning into turns, so they don’t teach you anything about what it is like to ride without them.

Casual?

Casual!?

DIVER! YOUR SALUTES MUST BE COMMITED AND DEMOCRATIC TO THE CORE. DO IT LIKE YOUR HOLDING THE HEART AND SOUL OF SUPER EARTH IN THAT FIST!!

They’d have taken gold by just standing there and explaining their logic to the judges.

Out of the pan into the fire. Moomin cannot catch a break.

A lightning rod, yes.

He touched their barometer, a holy item, as it heralded approaching lightning storms.

As they approached the rod from all directions, surrounding him, the Hemulen climbed up the pole in fear.

He would have been fine though, Hattifatteners are only dangerous during storms, when they’ve been struck, as they carry the energy of the lightning.

Outside of that, they’re quite harmless, though he did upset them by messing with their stuff.