I've seen a few vocal people discussing Final Fantasy XIII and how it's gone in a "bad direction". I've even seen one person blaming the merger with Enix for the direction FFXIII went in. I couldn't disagree more. It seems to me, given the history of Final Fantasy, that FFXIII is the result of sales trends, which is also, of course, the simplest explanation for why it is the way it is.
 
Basically, I propose that sales trends in the series are what has driven FF in this direction.
 
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original creator of FF, left Square to create Mistwalker after the bomb that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the poor performance of Final Fantasy IX, which was his baby and which was overshadowed by FFVIII in both reviews and sales. FF:TSW was an utter bomb and remains one of the biggest cinematic financial losses of all times while FFIX remains on the bottom half of most "top FF games" lists and remains as one of the poorest selling FFs of the post-16bit era (actually, I believe it had the worst sales of the post-16bit era).
  
Here's how things went with Final Fantasy:
 
After FFVII was a success, Square decided to break the FF team into two groups that would simultaneously work on the next two games in the series. This was well before the Enix merger. 
 
The team that created XIII is the team that brought you VI, VII, VIII, and X led by Yoshinori Kitase, and I think it's pretty obvious that XIII is the spiritual successor of these games. Look at the character archetypes and the style (both graphically and gameplay-wise)... the characters are almost uniformly taken from FFVIII, and the battle system is clearly inspired by these past games with a blend of VIII and X's systems. The Crystarium is just a new version of the Sphere Grid from X.
 
In The Gooch's (read: Sakaguchi's) absence, Yasumi Matsuno of FFT and Vagrant Story fame took over FF12 only to relinquish production to Kawazu of the even less well known SaGa series when he fell ill. Despite all these problems, the game turned out pretty well and was critically acclaimed, but the sales fell pretty far short compared to VII, VIII, and X. That said, even though Team 2 headed up production of FF12, it was inspired by the original desires Team 1 (again, led by Kitase) had for FFX in regards to an open-world approach.
 
Now take a look at sales historically and you get an image of why FF has gone this way. For reference, sales peaked with VII and were nearly as high for VIII and X, and X-2, a  game that cost almost nothing and had a very short development cycle, did fairly well also . Meanwhile IX and XII had significantly lower sales.
 
Is it any wonder, then, that FFXIII is basically a natural evolution from these particular games? Of course not. It's not surprising at all that the open-world nature of XII, for example, was abandoned after the game had low sales despite high critical praise. In its place is a world that's at least as constricted as that in FFX, which had just as high critical praise but significantly higher sales, with battles and characters more akin to that of FFVIII's, which had even higher sales along with high critical praise. 
 
I'm not reviewing the game yet because I haven't finished it. I can already say it's not my favorite in the series. But I predict sales of FFXIII will be quite high despite the complaints from many of the Hardcore Jaded Old-School Lamers (HJOSLs) out there that it's a bad game. After all, if nothing else, everyone basically agrees that the visuals are some of the best in a videogame ever, that the music is good, and the gameplay is at least tolerable. Plus, it's the first FF of this generation--you know it's going to be a big seller just because of that.
 
I think the real interesting caveat to FFXIII is the decision to co-create FFvXIII simultaneously, and to see how well FFvXIII sells once the dust settles from FFXIII. This is the major change made in FFXIII over the past games. FFX-2 was SE's first foray into this kind of development cycle, and it actually worked quite well for them, so we'll see how it pans out with this game.

I've seen a few vocal people discussing Final Fantasy XIII and how it's gone in a "bad direction". I've even seen one person blaming the merger with Enix for the direction FFXIII went in. I couldn't disagree more. It seems to me, given the history of Final Fantasy, that FFXIII is the result of sales trends, which is also, of course, the simplest explanation for why it is the way it is.
 
Basically, I propose that sales trends in the series are what has driven FF in this direction.
 
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original creator of FF, left Square to create Mistwalker after the bomb that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the poor performance of Final Fantasy IX, which was his baby and which was overshadowed by FFVIII in both reviews and sales. FF:TSW was an utter bomb and remains one of the biggest cinematic financial losses of all times while FFIX remains on the bottom half of most "top FF games" lists and remains as one of the poorest selling FFs of the post-16bit era (actually, I believe it had the worst sales of the post-16bit era).
  
Here's how things went with Final Fantasy:
 
After FFVII was a success, Square decided to break the FF team into two groups that would simultaneously work on the next two games in the series. This was well before the Enix merger. 
 
The team that created XIII is the team that brought you VI, VII, VIII, and X led by Yoshinori Kitase, and I think it's pretty obvious that XIII is the spiritual successor of these games. Look at the character archetypes and the style (both graphically and gameplay-wise)... the characters are almost uniformly taken from FFVIII, and the battle system is clearly inspired by these past games with a blend of VIII and X's systems. The Crystarium is just a new version of the Sphere Grid from X.
 
In The Gooch's (read: Sakaguchi's) absence, Yasumi Matsuno of FFT and Vagrant Story fame took over FF12 only to relinquish production to Kawazu of the even less well known SaGa series when he fell ill. Despite all these problems, the game turned out pretty well and was critically acclaimed, but the sales fell pretty far short compared to VII, VIII, and X. That said, even though Team 2 headed up production of FF12, it was inspired by the original desires Team 1 (again, led by Kitase) had for FFX in regards to an open-world approach.
 
Now take a look at sales historically and you get an image of why FF has gone this way. For reference, sales peaked with VII and were nearly as high for VIII and X, and X-2, a  game that cost almost nothing and had a very short development cycle, did fairly well also . Meanwhile IX and XII had significantly lower sales.
 
Is it any wonder, then, that FFXIII is basically a natural evolution from these particular games? Of course not. It's not surprising at all that the open-world nature of XII, for example, was abandoned after the game had low sales despite high critical praise. In its place is a world that's at least as constricted as that in FFX, which had just as high critical praise but significantly higher sales, with battles and characters more akin to that of FFVIII's, which had even higher sales along with high critical praise. 
 
I'm not reviewing the game yet because I haven't finished it. I can already say it's not my favorite in the series. But I predict sales of FFXIII will be quite high despite the complaints from many of the Hardcore Jaded Old-School Lamers (HJOSLs) out there that it's a bad game. After all, if nothing else, everyone basically agrees that the visuals are some of the best in a videogame ever, that the music is good, and the gameplay is at least tolerable. Plus, it's the first FF of this generation--you know it's going to be a big seller just because of that.
 
I think the real interesting caveat to FFXIII is the decision to co-create FFvXIII simultaneously, and to see how well FFvXIII sells once the dust settles from FFXIII. This is the major change made in FFXIII over the past games. FFX-2 was SE's first foray into this kind of development cycle, and it actually worked quite well for them, so we'll see how it pans out with this game.

I need to play through IX again, such a good game.

You're right on a lot of issues here, particular over the different teams within Square and what projects they work with. While Kitase is a great scenario writer, when it comes to dealing with the press, he's no Sakaguchi. The last time I saw him in an interview, he tried to convince me that there was nothing cut from the PS3 version when they went multi-platform. He then practically said in the same sentence, that they weren't going to have a Japanese vocal track, because they wanted both versions (360 / PS3) to be the same. I'm not ranting over how the project went multi-platform, I'm just pointing out the obvious.
 
I think a little bit of why people's opinions of Final Fantasy are so warped is because they don't know the entire history of the series. It's not their fault, this is a series that has drastically reinterpreted it's main mechanics with each entry. Western gamers also didn't have half the series initially, if you think these basic concepts have not messed up peoples interpretations I would urge you to reconsider. Whether this is more reflective of sales can be argued, but looking back on the series as a whole (I've played and beaten every main entry) the design decisions that are in place in this game (XIII) don't surprise me in the least. There is an evolution over-time with the series, but defining it as something "better" over the another entry is difficult. 
Half of Final Fantasy VI was non-linear, Final Fantasy I, III, V all focused on intricate job/class systems, and Final Fantasy II had a character progression system akin to Oblivion for crying-out loud. The list goes on.
 
@Patchinko said:

" and the poor performance of Final Fantasy IX, which was his baby and which was overshadowed by FFVIII in both quality and sales. "

They decided to let other people take risks and follow market trends. That's all you had to say. You make good, sometimes great games by playing it safe, you just don't make classic ones. If they're fine with that, whatever.

Aww, don't pick on FFIX. Everyone seems to dislike it for various reasons. But, that game has alot of heart, and I really enjoy playing through it now and again.

I never understood the cold shoulder that was given to FF IX, it's so good.

" This is a great blog and a fantastic look at some details in the series that I wasn't aware of.  I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind me asking:  1)  How do the characters hold up to previous entries in the games?  I'm not looking for specifics here, just generalities.  I'm trying to remain as spoiler free on this game as humanly possible.  2)  If the game isn't open-world, does it still encourage late-game (or even earlier) exploration and back-tracking, similar to some of the fun stuff in prior games? 3)  Similarly, are there a lot of side-quests or extra stuff to do? "

  @vidiot said:

" You're right on a lot of issues here, particular over the different teams within Square and what projects they work with. While Kitase is a great scenario writer, when it comes to dealing with the press, he's no Sakaguchi. The last time I saw him in an interview, he tried to convince me that there was nothing cut from the PS3 version when they went multi-platform. He then practically said in the same sentence, that they weren't going to have a Japanese vocal track, because they wanted both versions (360 / PS3) to be the same. I'm not ranting over how the project went multi-platform, I'm just pointing out the obvious.
 
I think a little bit of why people's opinions of Final Fantasy are so warped is because they don't know the entire history of the series. It's not their fault, this is a series that has drastically reinterpreted it's main mechanics with each entry. Western gamers also didn't have half the series initially, if you think these basic concepts have not messed up peoples interpretations I would urge you to reconsider. Whether this is more reflective of sales can be argued, but looking back on the series as a whole (I've played and beaten every main entry) the design decisions that are in place in this game (XIII) don't surprise me in the least. There is an evolution over-time with the series, but defining it as something "better" over the another entry is difficult. 
Half of Final Fantasy VI was non-linear, Final Fantasy I, III, V all focused on intricate job/class systems, and Final Fantasy II had a character progression system akin to Oblivion for crying-out loud. The list goes on.
 

@Patchinko

said:

" and the poor performance of Final Fantasy IX, which was his baby and which was overshadowed by FFVIII in both quality and sales. "

Sales yes, but quality? :/  I loved both games, but I would be hard-pressed to say VIII was leaps over IX in quality.  Regardless, good write up. "

@Sparky_Buzzsaw

" This is a great blog and a fantastic look at some details in the series that I wasn't aware of.  I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind me asking:  1)  How do the characters hold up to previous entries in the games?  I'm not looking for specifics here, just generalities.  I'm trying to remain as spoiler free on this game as humanly possible.  2)  If the game isn't open-world, does it still encourage late-game (or even earlier) exploration and back-tracking, similar to some of the fun stuff in prior games? 3)  Similarly, are there a lot of side-quests or extra stuff to do? "

  You're very right in that this feels like an evolution of the classic FF's, but what we need to keep in mind is that this is it's own game, not just a rehash. I don't think anyone can actually argue that this is a bad game - despite all of KaosAngel's criticism he still gave it 4 stars and called it a "great game", for example - but most of the criticism shows up when we compare it to previous FF's. Even ignoring the possibility of nostalgia clouding our judgement, comparing this to the old ones in terms of quality just doesn't work. I can go on all day about how the characters are like VIII, the music is like X and how I wish they would bring back towns or whatever, but in the end it doesn't do me any good. It doesn't give me the slightest idea of how good this game really is. Yet, I find myself guilty of doing this exact thing for the simple reason that the game is called "Final Fantasy". A perfect example of a brand name hurting a product.  
 
What I'm saying is we need to judge this by what it is - not what its predecessors were, what it could have been or what you wanted it to be. Not only are the FF's in question spread out over 4 generations, but each and every one of them reinvent themselves, making direct comparisons tiresome and in the end futile. We should be comparing this to more modern JRPG's such as Lost Odyssey and The Last Remnant.  
 
I do enjoy an objective view of the FF series evolution though (like this thread), I just think we need to be careful when judging the game itself.     

Nice write-up!
 
I think a big problem for Square is trying to keep things fresh in a new Final Fantasy game while simultaneously garnering newcomers to the franchise all without alienating die-hard fans. 
 
To be honest, it's not because of the negative feedback that i've heard of, but I'm not that excited for FFXIII. Sure, I'm anticipating it, but I'm not "excited" about it. It's more like I'm anticipating it just because it's another entry into a franchise I've already liked, or because it's such a big game that if I miss out on it when it releases, then there's no use playing it afterward, at least that's the kind of mentality most people seem to have for a big release like this. I'm not sure what to think of Versus yet, think I'll wait for a price drop on that one if I'm really interested.

" Nice write-up!
 
I think a big problem for Square is trying to keep things fresh in a new Final Fantasy game while simultaneously garnering newcomers to the franchise all without alienating die-hard fans. 
 
To be honest, it's not because of the negative feedback that i've heard of, but I'm not that excited for FFXIII. Sure, I'm anticipating it, but I'm not "excited" about it. It's more like I'm anticipating it just because it's another entry into a franchise I've already liked, or because it's such a big game that if I miss out on it when it releases, then there's no use playing it afterward, at least that's the kind of mentality most people seem to have for a big release like this. I'm not sure what to think of Versus yet, think I'll wait for a price drop on that one if I'm really interested. "

You know, I've never really looked at it this way, and I think it actually makes a lot of sense. After all, what do sequels to best-selling games usually bring to the table? An evolution of what made it a best-seller in the first place. The Final Fantasy games are no different. SquareEnix simply looked at their sales figures, realized that trying new things were bad for sales, and decided to go back to doing it in a way that did give them good sales. 
 
When you look at it that way, the only one to blame for the complaints of Final Fantasy XIII is the consumer. When SE tried something different, the consumer didn't buy it. In essence, the consumers did what we always preach: they let their money talk. And all Square Enix did was listen. 

If SE has some creative minds that want to create crazy and new battle systems then they should apply them to a new IP and stop using the FF name to test their shit. VII and VIII where classical active turned based jrpgs as well as VI, those games are the prime of the franchise and the type of game that the loyal fan base is waiting in a FF game. 
Sakaguchi is the only hope we have to deliver a new epic franchise, he already tried to apply the old concepts to Lost Odyssey and that's a hell of an JRPG if you ask me, he will surely surprise us with his next big game, Lost Odyssey was a technical mess in a lot of ways and definitely not a graphical demostration of what a 360 could do, but you have to think that instead of using an expensive and time consuming  in-house engine and going through a 4 year development cycle, he just focused in the story and having great voice acted voices for every language. 
It's sad how an FF game launch was a big thing and now it is not even being considered a day one purchase by its fans, I remember being hyped for every game all my life, they were supposed to get better, just like the hardware they are running but instead we get some stupid series of hallways that lead to a cutscene

Nice blog but i have to disagree on one thing.

FFX12 sold more than 5.2 million. So,it was really not such a bad sells result.

" @Valkyr: Like I think Ryanwho mentioned somewhere, the reason experimental shit gets called FF is because it increases the chances of it selling, big times. Not everyone of the 5 million+ people that buy the main series franchise are die hard video game fans and probably don't even know who SE is. Higher chance of them buying something with FF slapped onto the title. As for the rest of your post, whoaaaaa opinions. "

"

Nice blog but i have to disagree on one thing.

FFX12 sold more than 5.2 million. So,it was really not such a bad sells result.

"

" @Zenaxzd said:

" @Valkyr: Like I think Ryanwho mentioned somewhere, the reason experimental shit gets called FF is because it increases the chances of it selling, big times. Not everyone of the 5 million+ people that buy the main series franchise are die hard video game fans and probably don't even know who SE is. Higher chance of them buying something with FF slapped onto the title. As for the rest of your post, whoaaaaa opinions. "

I know, but that's the kind of wild marketing that is devaluating SE as a dev, take the Mass Effect hype for example, the first game was a new IP and it delivered some great quality, now the ME2 hype is even bigger than XIII's which is a 20 year IP, so what happened?, we started trusting more Bioware because the AAA backlog is amazing, SE made a joke of itself with all the milking of their IP's "

"

Nice blog but i have to disagree on one thing.

FFX12 sold more than 5.2 million. So,it was really not such a bad sells result.

"

Why all the IX hate? It's the best in the series.

" Why all the IX hate? It's the best in the series. "

" @KaosAngel: No way man, it really is.  It's a homage to all the original 16bit games, taking the best aspects of each.  Add an awesome cast of likable characters, and a non-punk ass, emo protagonist and how can you lose? "

Lol I aint trollin'
 
I agree with you on Necron but I don't with the rest of your points . Vivi was awesome, Dagger is way deeper than the "woe is me princess" role and Quina...is Quina.  The rest of the cast are awesome and memorable in their own ways, which is more than I can say for a lot of the others in the series.
 
The graphics weren't simplified, just a different art style, and technically more impressive than 8's, which imo, were trying far too hard to make the game look "real."
 
There's so much to 9, and there's a ton of awesome moments and scenes, an epic music score, and the best use of Moogles and Chocobos the series has seen so far.

" @KaosAngel: No way man, it really is.  It's a homage to all the original 16bit games, taking the best aspects of each.  Add an awesome cast of likable characters, and a non-punk ass, emo protagonist and how can you lose? "

" Why all the IX hate? It's the best in the series. "

I'm glad it changes.  The same FF7 or 8 with just new characters, world and story would bore the hell out of me.