Speaking to Square:
Turns out their mismanagement wasn’t related to the western studios they dumped to Embracer, but their own fault.
With regards to Xbox – a good way to kill your brand is to pull support on high quality titles and only dump B and C-tier titles to it
With regards to PC – Epic Games Story exclusivity for any duration and piss-poor optimization will hurt you.
With regards to FF Pixel Remasters – y’all messed up by barely releasing them on physical, like wtf that was free money!
And lastly, you don’t help a franchise by releasing a mainline title that undermines every title that came before it. FFXVI was a DMC-like with bottom-of-the-barrel side quests and I can’t imagine that helping Rebirth at all considering its marketing is directly tied to how big that game is.


