Raithos wrote: You're looking at that the wrong way man. There is no Squaresoft side. You can't split the company down the middle like that to make a point. Its been Square Enix since 2003 and they have a great development turn around with the exception of two games. Even if you don't want to count them for whatever reason, XIII-2, Lighting Returns, FF7 Crisis Core, FF Type-0 and World of Final Fantasy are full fledged titles. That's not even counting the 3 PSP remakes, the DS titles or Final Fantasy Explorers for 3DS. Or all of the PC ports.
Yeah Kingdom Hearts 2 came out in 2006, but since then we've gotten what 6 or 7 "spin offs"? And dude every single one is cannon. You have to play them if you want the complete story. What does it honestly matter if it has a 3 behind it or not? The time between mainline numbered titles is irrelevant when you look at allll the other games in those series that have released. And that's only two of their series. Its not like SE is sitting on either franchise and not putting out games for it.
None of that changes if you like a game or not, just saying that regarding the development cycles.
I get what you are saying. But we are simply looking at this in 2 different ways. You seem to be looking at it more as a gamer only perspective and I am looking looking at it as a hybrid gamer/business perspective.
First things first, the main Final Fantasy games sell more than the sequels and when you abandon the main games to make sequels that sell less, what is Square really doing as a company? Losing money thats what. Also you cant build up the franchise, and I hate to beat the FFXIII dead horse, but when you make a sequel to an already controversial game, and dont give your audience some thing fresh, you can start to stall out the franchise. Imagine if FF15 was able to come out in say 2012 or 2013 just a few years after FFXIII and FFXIV and by now have FF16 already and development going for FF17 Every 3 years is a great FF window to try to abide by but 2010 and 2016 to get ff15 and it began as a game that was announced 10 years Prior? Yeah and what do you know? Even FF15 itself was originally one of the FFXIII series games. Im just ready to get past XIII/Fabula Nova Crystalis collective by now. I would be 100% fine with the sequels if they didnt stop focus on the main series. When X-2 was being made, XII was also. I think its a matter of priority and I dont think Square is handling that well for a while now.
Second, its easy to ignore the fact that Squaresoft and Enix were once 2 different companies with respective IPs, but alas it was the case, there fore yes there is more than 1 side of the company, since they merged, and while they are one entity now, the original IPs from before they merged are still separate due to the past history (which is what my points before were specifically talking about). Also they acquired Eidos which gives another depth to the company and side of it. I actually think the Eidos games are the best handled under the Square Enix banner these days, ironic its the only games developed in the west? See how that works?
Now, lets get to the mess that is Kingdom Hearts series. Biggest problem here was putting out all these entries on so many different platforms that is considered cannon, and still ignoring the main games. PS2, GBA, DS, PSP, 3DS, Cell Phones, How many gamers were really going to purchase all of these systems to see the entirety of the story back when these came out? Its a horrible business decision to do that and kind of bogs down the series because its literally all over the place. So what did they have to do to make up for this? Release 1.5, 2.5, and 2.8, only problem now though is you start making people double down on the rare cases of those who did buy that extra system to play one of the games on the many formats they came out on. so making 1.5 HD and beyond was actually a great decision for the company, but kind of screws over gamers a little bit. I guess it was kind of pointless to have even bought Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance that were the bigger releases on the separate platforms BUT at least they are better versions of those games with the recent collections, and the new people that are jumping on board make everything easily accessible (which im assuming is alot because they sold like hot cakes), but again you run into the problem of buying games over and over. Which is actually a very smart business move in the long run and cleans up the mess they made when all these games initially came out. KH is milked heavily.
Square has had problems any way you look at it, and it seems they have struggled to manage their company, and keep their fan bases happy at the same time, and hope they dont piss off more people. Its hard to watch, every one was clamoring over wanting an FFVII Remake, we get it and there are all these problems and thats very unfortunate, but Square has done this to themselves so what can we really do? i just hope they arent diverting focus from FFXVI and beyond to make the FFVII Remake. I feel like FF fans are just itching for something new we havent seen, and I have no idea when we are going to actually get that.