Cognition Dissemination: tri-Ace Needs Help… Again

tri-Ace is in trouble. Japanese outlet Gamebiz reported that the company’s sales and financials fell into the red during the last fiscal year, a drop of around 42.9 percent in financial accruement year-over-year. They lost far more than they made, which has pushed the company into a state of insolvency. They were unable to obtain more work to cancel out the losses thanks to cancelled projects and services ended. The shutdown of mobile title Star Ocean: Anamnesis globally could have contributed to this, a fate that perhaps couldn’t be avoided if it wasn’t making enough money to keep the “gacha” service going.

It appeared that tri-Ace’s troubles would be behind them when they were acquired by Nepro Japan in 2015, with the developer pursuing more mobile projects in exchange. Their then-new parent company was deep into free-to-play games at the time they subsumed them. But they’ve worked on a mixture of mobile and gaming platform titles since then, including the likes of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness and Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky, alongside remastered rereleases of Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Resonance of Fate. But this plan has only kept them alive for so long.

Basically, the company’s fate is riding on the success of Star Ocean: The Divine Force, the sixth mainline Star Ocean installment due for release on October 27th — two weeks from Thursday — worldwide. If that game doesn’t perform well enough, they’ll need immediate help from another company in terms of more projects, or a buyout if Nepro is willing to sell them.

One such company that could use them is Square Enix, publisher of the Star Ocean games, along with the Valkyrie Profile titles and Infinite Undiscovery. Square Enix green lights a lot of projects these days, could use further tri-Ace projects. The company recently released Valkyrie Elysium, an action-based spinoff of the aforementioned Valkyrie Profile series developed by Soleil, so perhaps — maybe — they would be willing to green light the real third game in the mainline series fans have awaited since Valkyrie Profile 2 in 2006. They could green light another kind of project too; just something to help them out.

Hell, maybe Square Enix could even buy them, considering how long they’ve been partners. But this may not be the expense the company wants with how they’ve recently shed off parts of the company, especially if they’re doing this to make themselves more attractive for a buyout. Time will determine if those admittedly flimsy rumors of a company that begins with “S” and ends with “ony” buying them out comes to pass.

Another suggestion I’ve seen in my scurrying of the internet — a dangerous activity that I do not recommend — is that Nintendo buy them. They purchased Monolith Soft which has provided great support in the form of the Xenoblade Chronicles games, so logic suggests they could do the same with tri-Ace. But I can’t imagine that Nintendo is paying much attention here. tri-Ace has contributed nothing to Nintendo platforms over the years, with their last title being Beyond the Labyrinth for 3DS, published by Konami. They don’t make all the decisions for ports to platforms, but the Resonance of Fate port they published was left off Switch despite the game being capable of running on it. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for here is tri-Ace pitching an attractive project to Nintendo that they’ll help fund.

The third suggestion, largely one of my own, would be for them to partner up with Bandai Namco to work on a new Tales of game. The publisher could use the help considering how long it takes develop the games these days — there was little more than a five-year gap between the releases of Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise, a record amount of time between installments. It might still be attractive to Bandai Namco that tri-Ace was established by former members of the Tales of Phantasia development team who worked at Wolf Team in the mid-1990s, the development of which was previously largely spearheaded by Yoshiharu Gotanda, who still works at tri-Ace after all this time. Whether this happens will depend on how The Divine Force is received critically.

If all else fails, then, uhhhhhh, maybe they can turn to crowdfunding? Titles like Eiyuden Chroncile: Hundred Heroes and, most recently, Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood were funded through Kickstarter, successors to the Suikoden, Wild Arms, and Shadow Hearts franchises, respectively. Perhaps they could, as a suggestion, make a title that combines the best of Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile. Whether this will be feasible will depend on how the company’s finances are after The Divine Force releases.

The above should hammer home just how much is riding on The Divine Force’s performance for tri-Ace. Too many smaller Japanese developers have either closed, downsized, or have been subsumed

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Cognition Dissemination: Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth’s Mobile Port, and the Chances for a New Game Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix Couldn’t Have Blown This Harder Cognition Dissemination: The Square Enix/Embracer Deal Will Benefit Everyone Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix Should Have Held Their Own Showcase