Square Enix Wants a New Final Fantasy Every Year

[Something Amyss]

I don't think so. The problem is that even their own fans were complaining about the quality issues in 13, and if I recall correctly (and there's a good chance I don't) it didn't sell nearly as well as they had hoped. If the quality keeps dropping, obviously there will be those hardcore fans who buy every game, but they'll lose a large part of their audience bit by bit and won't be able to bring in any new players.

It sold like, a million units on day one in Japan. It sold another million by year's end. It sold a million in the US launch month. It has like an 85 aggregate on Metacritic and Gamerankings.

People may have complained, but they bought it. They'll probably buy the "fix," rewarding SEQUENIX for screwing up in the first place, and they'll continue to buy even if that sucks.

 

[masticina]

Not sure if this works with JRPG's but at least it will do one thing. It will yearly tell if they are on the right path or not

With FF XIII and FF XIV they had so much work with a whole new engine that when the games came out the market had changed allot.

With a two yearly thing one might had fixed a few small things.

 

[sturryz]

Wha... You know what, I don't care anymore. with the PC scene going so strong with such great indie titles, I stopped caring about mainstream gaming. Later nerds.

 

[Manji187]

Oh really?! Look release Versus and XIII-2, then give the whole series like a three year break to create some new series or titles and then get fans saying, "whatever happened to Final Fantasy, I miss it." and the BLAM! Final Fantasy XV.

Oooooor, divert all Square-Enix money towards the development of Just Cause 3 and Hitman. Just an idea. Or Kingdom Hearts 3. I hear that's missed.

That's actually not a bad idea from a customer perspective, but I bet the suits at HQ would start waving quarterly reports pointing out how much of a financial mess SE is in. So they are likely to milk the poor cow silly.

Considering it's money they want...why don't they release a FF7 remake (or sequel) with Versus XIII graphics and KH/ Dissidia style battle mechanics? If they did this and KH3 they would probably be swimming in cash.

They could still do that as a last resort but the real problem is that their creative well has run dry. It's not hard to create a new battle system, rehash old content and concepts and paint some tourist landscapes...writing an immersive story with round, growing characters, on the other hand, IS. It's time they started hiring professional writers. Heck, amateur writers would probably suffice.

Totally aside: if they will manage to shit out an FF game every 12-18 months, I wonder how soon we'll be playing FF XXX . Or will they have preemptively dropped the roman numerals by then?

 

[Daumantas Kasperavicius]

Thats what happens when activision is allowed to take a genre and then turn in into an anual thing. now we have EA , The dudes that made assasin creed( dont play it dont know it ) and Square enix wanting to follow the foot steps of activision. NOW i know sports game come out yearly, but EA wants to make BF and MoH a yearly thing. They want to release moh one year and bf the next. how fckd up is that !

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Oh for the love of... considering how bad the last few games were, couldn't they take a bit longer to work on the games than one year?!?!

But then again, I lost my faith in Square-Enix after they failed to make Kingdom Hearts 3 and instead resorted to stretching out the story. *SIGH*

 

[Pearwood]

So long as you can recreate the joy of Final Fantasies 12 and 9 go for it.

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

Oh no...no, no, no, no, no!

Square, I've respected you, I still do, but I will not watch you turn my beloved series into Call of Duty: RPG Edition.

Though, if this is going to be like FFVII through X, where you release consistently good games within a small time period, I'm all for it. Use the same engine for each game like you did then, so that it will cut down on development time and costs.

Considering it's money they want...why don't they release a FF7 remake (or sequel) with Versus XIII graphics and KH/ Dissidia style battle mechanics? If they did this and KH3 they would probably be swimming in cash.

They've stated numerous times that an FFVII remake would be in development hell for a long time if it was to be modernized like that. Much as I'd like to see it, it's probably not going to happen because it's such a huge timesink and will probably only cater to the about 50% (low estimate, here) of the fanbase that actually cares for FFVII.

I'd much rather see a V or IX remake anyway. Hell, how long did it take to make IV's DS port? Considering that the SNES versions of IV and V use the same engine, I'd say do the same for the remakes. Use the IV DS engine, recreate the FFV assets, and slap the game together. They could have that done in a year and a half.

 

[Kachiporra]

They should stop making games and start making movies.

 

[MDSnowman]

Square needs to realize that the fans don't want RPGs like FFXIII. They want more old school RPGs, however the only place you can find anything like that now is on hand held systems because no one bothers making them for consoles anymore.

So rather than hitting us over the head with how pretty they can make the cut scenes and the endless hallways they make us run down maybe Square can go back and look at the fun things they were doing a decade or more ago.

Until I see that they can do that I'm avoiding FF titles like the plague they are.

 

[RJ Dalton]

So, FF wants to be like CoD? Does that mean they'll have criminally short single-player campaigns, but try to make up for it with an emphasis on competative multiplayer where thirteen -year-olds with microphones can spam racist comments at you and talk about fucking your gramma till her eyeballs fall out?

 

[Pandabearparade]

But hey, maybe being under a tight schedule will force them to innovate and change things up. Or maybe not. We shall see.

Innovation and a tight schedule worked out well for Dragon Age II!

Oh, shit, my sarcasm-meter just exploded.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Oh joy make it worse by making more of it......

But hey, maybe being under a tight schedule will force them to innovate and change things up. Or maybe not. We shall see.

Innovation and a tight schedule worked out well for Dragon Age II!

Oh, shit, my sarcasm-meter just exploded.

Didnt work much for dragon age 1 either........

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

And I want to build an army of hyper-masculine minotaur soldiers to take over the world and promote a socialist health-care plan that ensures adequate supplies of whey and carbohydrates for everyone whilst ensuring alternative meat-based products that no longer encroach upon the moral standard bovines have on not being eaten, and enslaving any anime-watching, final-fantasy playing, picky-scarffing, cat-ear wearing, sub-180 pound goofballs who dictate that bodybuilders are brain-dead gym-junkies with no more skill and ability than a t-bone steak.


...but some things just shouldn't be done. Wish Square Enix would come to that realization.

Still--though I've never cared for the game, from what comments I've read, it seems the biggest standpoint is that another sequel would be cool, but time and effort should be spent in making good sequels, rather than poor sequels every year. And I could agree with that standpoint on a lot of things, so yeah, I guess that's where my totally irrelevant opinion rests.

Ah well, quantity over quality I guess, at least that's what we've learned from Call of Duty.

Daymn, dawg. Them Call of Duties just got nailed. You rock'em, homie.

I mean I agree. Good point. Funny too.

 

[standokan]

Ah well, quantity over quality I guess, at least that's what we've learned from Call of Duty.

 

[Omnific One]

It's strange how Bethesda makes a game every 3 years or so, yet it has enough money to buy up id and a half dozen other companies....

Gosh, it couldn't be because they make good games that sell... could it?

Square Enix makes mediocre games that sell. As bad as Final Fantasy XIII was, it sold 6 million copies. That's alot of money.

It was riding the nostalgia wave. I expect XIII-2 to sell under 4.5 million copies; gonna be a lot harder to convince people this time.

Plus 13 had a very long dev period, even if it didn't come out as expected. Imagine what will happen if they do the same thing, but compressed down to one year dev time. Not pretty.

I think that extremely long dev cycle doomed the game. Even if it were the second coming of Morrowind(LOL), expectations were too high. How many times have you heard people say "we waited 5 years for this?"

People didn't like Final Fantasy VIII, that's ok though because IX was only a year behind it.

Yeah, if they want a long dev cycle, they need to make sure what they are doing is what the fans really want. Otherwise, they are just shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[Cenequus]

I love the pic they used on the main page as thumbnail.Those kids look like it's animated Jersey Shore.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Heh, good one Square. You have a worse punctual-game-release track record than Valve, and even then, your games aren't nearly as good... currently.

 

[Norix596]

That sounds like a pretty tall order -- Call of Duty games are pretty short (and let's face it, they don't seem to do an excessive amount of work updating the multiplayer each time) but Final Fantasy games are ridiculously long with lots of high high budget kinematics these days.

 

[actar411]

What they don't realize is we don't want another Final Fantasy game. We want Kingdom Hearts 3 on console!!