The PS3/Xbox 360 has been released for six years now and there has only been two FF games.

On the DS, there were 8 DS games released. Onthe PSP 6 FF games (excludign FF I and II and Type-0).

Square Enix needs to lift their production rate for consoles.

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It's no mystery that SE is a business and like any business, will try to recuperate costs by taking the most economic route. It's why XIII-2 came about and was produced in such a short span of time. Unfortunately, SE have become dependent on the their big franchise names, and even within that they seem afraid to come up with anything new. XIII got a sequel because it was the fastest way to make up for that ridiculous loss they reported in the last fiscal year. They've made a ton of PSP and DS games simply because it's cheaper to do so. Look at Dissidia 012 and Dissidia, how much difference is there? Pretty sure Theatrhythm isn't costing the company a whole lot to develop either.

On the flip side, it's not like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts are the only games coming from Square Enix. At the very least they've branched out and acquired a number of top tiered developers like Crystal Dynamics who are making the new Tomb Raider, and Eidos Montreal who did Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In fact, Square Enix's improved fiscal results so far are largely due to Deus Ex being critically and commercially well received. IO's now doing the new Hitman and United Front just announced Sleeping Dogs too.

Personally, I don't get why they don't just concentrate on one game at a time. The difference between their in-house teams and these studios is that the latter are just that, individual studios. I'm not familiar with their in-house numbers, but based on how long they take it's clearly being affected, be it by budget, too many projects, etc. As for sequels and spinoffs, it's obvious. Short dev time, faster turnaround.

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(February 15, 2012 08:40:35 PM)firefly0071 Wrote:  The PS3/Xbox 360 has been released for six years now and there has only been two FF games.

On the DS, there were 8 DS games released. Onthe PSP 6 FF games (excludign FF I and II and Type-0).

Square Enix needs to lift their production rate for consoles.

If you are talking about consoles, that's quite normal:

NES: 1983-1990- 7 years: from when the NES was released til FF III was released. 3 games
SNES: 1990-1994- 4 years: from when the SNES was released til FF VI was released. 3 games
PSX: 1994-2000- 6 years: from when the PSX was released til FF IX was released. 3 games
PS2: 2000-2006- 6 years: from when the PS2 was released til FF XII was released. 3 games
PS3: 2006-now- 6 years: blah blah blah. 2 games
(this list excludes sequels, compilations, and spin-off series.)

Though there is no confirmation on a new numbered title (XV), it's fairly normal to wait this long for more FFs. Everyone complains but Square had this history for it's whole 25 years of the FF franchise, It just took less time for a game to come out. Games are getting much more complex to make now (dude 8 and 16 bit graphics, background, game play=simple. 3D rendering, environments, game play=not simple)...not to mention human labor, time, and money. That and seriously, do you expect them to pull a game out of their asses like with the quality of XIII and Versus? It's ridiculous it takes a while to plan, write, design before they start actually making the game.

Handhelds; PSP and DS games don't really count because they are all either remasters, remakes, spin-offs, or sequels. As Colin mentioned they are cost effective and they make most of their money off those because they are fast/cheap/easy to turn around and sell.

Anyways I've probably repeated myself. I tend to be very passionate on this subject so sorry if I've offended anybody.

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(February 16, 2012 04:58:59 PM)Colin Wrote:  Personally, I don't get why they don't just concentrate on one game at a time. The difference between their in-house teams and these studios is that the latter are just that, individual studios. I'm not familiar with their in-house numbers, but based on how long they take it's clearly being affected, be it by budget, too many projects, etc. As for sequels and spinoffs, it's obvious. Short dev time, faster turnaround.

I agree with you there, mate. Just to use one example, X-2. It pretty much took half the time to make because the engine and half the character models were just copied over from X. It is indeed more profitable to do something like that because it does not cost as much to create.

As much as I think they are wiser business moves, I personally want to see new story lines, new worlds, new characters to fall in love with. And as Colin has pointed out already, we are not entirely sure with the numbers over at their studios, if they were to resource manage accordingly, (say a smaller team to work on the spin-offs and a larger team to work on new games, engines, stories...) then it COULD mean a faster turnover of games. BUT seeing we do not have the numbers, this is all speculation. Not a bad idea though

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