Yoichi Wada resigns as Square Enix CEO

You and I both, but it won't happen...or at least be worthwhile without Matsuno onboard. Only he can properly work the world of Ivalice, and anything less would be a travesty.

Moreover, while Vagrant Story itself stands as the greatest game ever made (uncontestable fact, by the way), I have a feeling that it wouldn't be the hit they would need in order to bring things back up. A new Final Fantasy Tactics? Probably not. They seemed to wear thin on the Game Boy Advance and PSP stuff with it.

Honestly, they need a Final Fantasy game that will be as big of a hit as FF7...and that ain't happening any time soon unless they have something phenomenal in store for PS4.

Really, they are relying heavily on Western business right now with Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, etc. However, if you look at the fact that Russian sites are selling those CD keys for fractions of what they would be new (Direct2Play has Tomb Raider for $27 and Sleeping Dogs for $18), it explains where the PC sales are going.

Either way, here's the real problem: the industry is too busy trying to create these $100m+ games and realizing that they are not going to see that kind of return. Call of Duty is its own thing, and yes, it makes shitloads of money. However, it's CALL OF DUTY. It is appealing to the lowest common denominator. Gaming publishers think that throwing money at their game will make people care more about it in a broader spectrum, and it's simply not true. Instead, they need to start refocusing their monetary investments on games, reduce the amount they are offering to developers overall, and try to get games with realistic boundaries in order to remain profitable.

For instance, something like Tomb Raider did NOT need the kind of budget behind it that it had. They could have offered less overall and the developer would've managed the game accordingly. It not only would've launched sooner, but it would've been within a more realistic boundary. From everything I've heard, the game is mostly a linear walkthrough anyways. Therefore, why not get that out there - the character and story aspects - and see how people react to THOSE first? Meanwhile, you make it a good game.

Darksiders is a prime example of how a developer took a concept and game that everyone was looking at with cynical and skeptical eyes and blew expectations away. They didn't have nearly the budget that Tomb Raider had, I'll guarantee that. Nonetheless, the game resonated with people, had great word of mouth, and in turn...they got cocky and made Darksiders II into a bloated piece of software (that was still good, but nowhere near as good as the first one).

The gaming industry just literally needs to calm the fuck down on all the spending and instead start working with managed expectations and realistic budgets. Once that happens...and developers are willing to fall in line with that...then it means we can see less studios and publishers shutting down.

At the rate of loss these reports for Square Enix are going, they will be going the way of THQ within a year's time.

Yeah, but Final Fantasy wasn't a one-trick pony. Final Fantasy 1 was obviously a hell of a game, two and three presumably sold a lot, four is one of the most remembered ones, I don't know much about five, six is often considered the best alongside seven... what I'm getting at is that the franchise has been a cash cow for a long time and unlike Call of Duty, at least every entry is its own thing and easily identifiable.

The problem with Final Fantasy right now, from a completely outside and amateur perspective, seems to be bad management. How long did it take FF13 to actually come out? And 14 sucked? And Versus is nowhere to be found? I think the series still has that brand recognition and still has enough people interested in to release another blockbuster if someone can get Square Enix's act together and do these things in a timely and budget-friendly manner.

And no more MMO's.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply FF was being beaten to death since the beginning, just since the Square+Enix+Eidos totality.

You're totally right, though. A horrible stretch of management.

@believer258 said:

14 has been completely remade and is going to be re-released. Versus is rumored to have been changed into FFXV for PS4. Type-0 was a PSP game that came out in Japan only in 2011.

Will we finally get a Jrpg where the fat dude isn't the joke character now?

I still wouldn't bet on 14 doing better than it did at its original launch, and if it does I really doubt that they'll even be able to make as much as it cost to develop it.

The issue with Versus is the very thing I was talking about when I said that it was "badly managed" above. Changing it to be FFXV was probably a good idea, but that still doesn't change the fact that it's been in development for eight years or so. If Blizzard releases two games after a developer has started on theirs, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Iwata will soon follow.

KH3, FFXwhatever Versus, FFVII HD. Turn the ship around, SE.

Wow... someone actually correctly identified the primary culprit I am stunned. FFXIII was shit, FXIII-2 was mediocre, and I don't know if anyone outside of die hards gives a crap about FFXIII-3.... but they still sold okay and XIII-3 will probably do "decent". FFXIV though sold terribly, saw around 90% of it's players quit after one month, and was pretty much the most poorly received well known mmo in the last five years. More interestingly, it also probably cost more to make than any of the FFXIII's and made less than 20% of what they did.

NEW CONSOLE GENERATION SHAKIN' SHIT UP AFTER 7+ YEARS OF STAGNATION

I have a hard time believing 14 cost that much considering one of the reasons it was a flop was that there was nothing in it. It was just the 3 starting cities and a couple big empty copy-pasted zones at launch and the only things to do were grind exp or watch story cutscenes. There was no endgame, there were no quests, it didn't even have an auction house or mailboxes. It seemed more like the winner of a 48-hour "make an MMO" gamejam.

well they are putting a lot of time and resources into FF14 for it to be a failure so i would bet it will at the very least gain the same crowd as ff11 did. The problem is ff14 is a all hands on deck project to re-release that has impacted many of the others projects I'm sure.

@phantomzxro: If you liked Final Fantasy 8 you should by all accounts like XIII as Lightning is essentially a female version of Squall/Cloud (equally as dry and uninteresting to boot!), the gameplay is superb and the narrative is strengthened by its linearity; kind of a converse of XII though XII had much better art design and world design.

So here's the totem pole of good companies: From Software. That's it. Okay now that that's over with the debatable bunch is headed by Nintendo, Square, Capcom, and Naughty Dog.

I liked all the FFXIII games so your opinion is not shared by all.

@believer258 said:

Nope, it ceases to be ironic when you remember that Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within almost bankrupted Square little more than a decade ago.

Is this your only gimmick?

@liquidprince: That's fine, I would however argue that you're in the minority.

Well, FF13 sold 6.7 mil compared to 3.1 mil for 13-2, so there's that. Also, 13-2 is a different game to 13 so the sales of one may not reflect all that well on the reception of the other one.

Finally, we really shouldn't be using sales numbers when we're trying to discuss quality - that's just silly.

This sort of issue is unfortunate; their Western type output has been great and even XIII-2 was supposed to be better than the previous (which was no ta bad title by any means, but the linearity pissed people off). And Square-Enix is probably the only publisher that reliably puts out games that I like, and is willing to not just rise the cinema train by being flexible enough to prioritize the actual gameplay that makes up 90% of the experience.

I'm still curious how much updating their franchises into new directions has helped or hurt them. The mix of commentary on games tends to skew toward dismissal for following a predecessor to closely, or whining and complaining about any changes between releases (on forums like Neogaf anyway, Giantbomb's are pretty much sane). Its kind of weird thinking that Square probably needed to modernize their franchises, but going forward they should releases at least one more game in Deus Ex HR, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, and Tombraider that is pretty much exactly like the previous (maybe some tweaks to address specific complaints of small scope).

I have never understood the complaint about Final Fantasy in general: An issue for FF is that it is entirely scrapped and rebuilt every iteration. For modern games, this is absurdly expensive and risky and example of the issue with the Japanese side of the industry and the challenges they had this generation.

That's a pretty good point. I'm pretty sure Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 were in the works less long than XIII versus has been. I think that's a good benchmark for the difference between polish and development hell.

They brought this on themselves.

Well you bring up interesting point and lightning did feel very much in the same spirit as squall/cloud but I would like to think it worked in 7 or 8 better because of the supporting characters rounding out the main character in each game, while lightening was very much stand offish 70% of the time. Its sad that even lightning and sarah don't even feel close and their sisters.

Now i don't know about your case for superb game play and narrative strengthened by linearity because all that seems very debatable as a whole. If you ask me the story was weak and convoluted but hey i liked ff8 story so I'm not here to judge or lay down anything other than option.

Lastly you have a pretty narrow option of good companies because i could see naughty dog and Nintendo easily falling into good companies category. Also Square could easily fall into bad at this current time.

Isn't it exciting?