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Square Enix's new plan: Eidos focus = online games; Japan accelerating work on phones
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Wyndstryker
Member
Well, I think this might sum things up regarding classic IP's that SE has (or ended up buying).
Final Fantasy = shadow of it's former self
Dragon Quest = life support
Chrono = dead
Mana = dead
Saga = dead
Front Mission = dead
Valkyrie Profile = MIA
Star Ocean = killed
Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre = dead
Lufia = killed
Parasite Eve = lost
Anything else to add?
Final Fantasy = shadow of it's former self
Dragon Quest = life support
Chrono = dead
Mana = dead
Saga = dead
Front Mission = dead
Valkyrie Profile = MIA
Star Ocean = killed
Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre = dead
Lufia = killed
Parasite Eve = lost
Anything else to add?
Gone forever.
Seriously people ... it's not gone forever. The guy who is making Drakengard 3 has specifically said in interviews when asked about VP3 that he'd entertain the idea if his projects are shown to be financially viable.
In other words, people should buy Drakengard 3 and then this guy will probably get to make more mid-tier console games. But that involves more than posting online.
Deus Ex - Alive, but wary
Tomb Raider - Moaning (in pain?).
Hitman - On suicide watch
After over 10 years and no real legacy of kain game...I gave up on them as well. But at least they were churning out other good games....SE will ruin them as well.
Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!
Member
I remember when squares business plan was to release good video games
He's pretty right actually. TR is still my worst game of the year so far and while Hitman wasn't my worst of 2012 it was certainly up there. The entire company is a mess, both japanese and western sides.
That being said seeing them drag the remains of their formerly great IPs through the F2P/mobile/online mud still strikes a nerve with me.
VibratingDonkey
Member
I quite liked Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs. IIRC those games all sold decently. Eidos is on a good trajectory. Thief might be alright too.
Shame SquareEnix has to fuck it all up.
Shame SquareEnix has to fuck it all up.
Hmmm Dragon quest is still alive and well in Japan it's dead in the west though thanks to SE not localizing anything. Also I would say VP=dead not MIA.
The Bankslammer
Member
weeellllll uhhhhh at least just cause online sounds fun
Hard to say as of yet both games are still ways off.
No it isn't. It's not even close to Duke Nukem Forever level screw ups. The biggest crime with FFVsXIII was that it was announced too early when it wasn't even close to being a project that would be actually in development, but it's not as much of a screw-up as Duke Nukem Forever because that game WAS worked on (by several teams) and it was COMPLETELY rebooted for several times during its years of development. Some aspects of FFVsXIII/XV changed from original plans to how it is today (i.e. old school world map -> FFXII like overworld) & they've added some new ideas (desctruction in environments during battles), but the game itself is turning out to be pretty much like what Nomura envisioned with the project from the start. Even with the move to next-gen, they DIDN'T completely scrap what they had done before (you can easily see this in the E3 trailer, some assets are clearly not that much improved from the PS3 version yet). They've just been upgrading what they had to next-gen standards.
Versus XIII's biggest crime was that it was announced in 2006 when they had absolutely nothing prepared for its development. When Square Enix has ACTUALLY worked on the game, the development has provenly advanced quite smoothly (going from almost nothing in late 2009/early 2010 to the good looking build in January 2011 and the world being fully traversable in fall 2011). Other than some prototyping/planning/preparing for development, they didn't start development with VsXIII until FFXIII was done in late 2009/early2010. A couple years later they were dabbling with a cross-gen version but came to the conclusion that they'd rather abandon the PS3 version which was struggling to realize their vision and move fully to next-gen. They haven't completely rebooted the project at any point, they just moved to next-gen.
AFAIK they never really used Crystal Tools. From an early point onwards they were coming up with their own custom engine/customizing Crystal to fit their needs (since "vanilla" Crystal Tools didn't). And they just implemented parts of the Luminous Engine to what they had (lighting stuff, mostly), which sounded like a relatively easy process. You're making it sound like some huge deal when it isn't. It's silly to suggest that them implementing the lighting engine from Luminous means Versus XIII's development is some disaster. It's more like the kind of re-iterative process that goes on with EVERY game's development (see: DriveClub and how Evolution is implementing different AA & shadow solutions even this close to the game's completion).
It hardly drained any resources until 2010 when they got FFXIII out and they could start developing the game properly. All big developers do plenty of prototyping (see: Naughty Dog and their PS3 Jak & Daxter prototypes) and some games spend a longer time in that phase than others when they have other stuff to do that keep them busy. And even in 2010 when they moved on from that phase, Nomura has said they developed it with a relatively small team until mid 2011 when they started full development. Within a year from that they moved (fully) to next-gen and a year after that they showed a next-gen version to us, with a release probably a year or so from now. FFXV will pretty much be the biggest & most ambitious JRPG ever done, so it taking this long (especially with the chance to next-gen) is nothing too alarming, as far as comparisons to Duke Nukem Forever goes.
No they weren't. Not for 7 years and not full time even after some workforce was moved work on it.
Smart developers do all that? Uh... no they don't. And people always bitch & cry when they see developers cutting corners, so everyone should be happy that they didn't. Cutting corners for Versus XIII would have possibly meant stuff like no cars/airships, no fully streamed overworld etc., stuff that people are really anticipating from the game.
I'm so fucking glad you or stupid fans without any foresight aren't responsible for Versus XIII/XV. Nomura didn't want to cut corners and I'm glad they aren't. What Versus XIII went through as a project is nothing too different from plenty of other big projects, except that it was delayed by what problems Square Enix had at large that had very little to do with Versus XIII itself.
The thing that is different about Versus XIII is that we heard about it 3,5 years before they could move on to the project. There are a lot of projects that undergo a lengthy planning/prototyping phase before the publisher commits any kind of meaningful resources to then develop that into a full-fledged game. They just don't announce these projects and sometimes plenty of these prototypes are cancelled and never even made into finished products. I mean, look at that one Ubisoft game that IIRC was originally some original IP, then a Prince of Persia game, then an original IP again, and now it might be the next Assassin's Creed set in Egypt. We just never hear about those projects (unless it's leaked) before it's "their time".
Again, Square Enix's biggest problem with Versus XIII was to announce it so early, when there barely existed an idea about it. Had they done it the way publishers usually do it, the first time we would have heard about it would have probably been when they showed the January 2011 trailer. If people didn't know Square Enix already had plans for the game in 2006, I don't think anyone would see any problems with the game not being done yet.
There's no way in the world they even COULD have released Versus XIII "years ago" (at earliest, it could have maybe been a mid to late 2012 or Spring 2013 game had they not moved to PS4Bone), let alone that they "should have" released it years ago. Nomura has a vision and I'm glad that impatient cynic people like you aren't deciding about these things. Versus XIII is a project that Nomura DELIBERATELY spend a long time in pre-production before moving on to develop it (though, this phase WAS somewhat lengthened by other problems Square Enix was facing, so at some point when they were ready to move on to its development, they had to help finish FFXIII and the like).
SpaceBridge
Member
We still have Atlus. Right? Right.....?
Some Nobody
Junior Member
A console version of just about any of these franchises (aside from DQ) would be a day one buy for me. I miss Squaresoft, because Square-Enix has been screwing up for awhile now.
As much as I would love any of these games I honestly wouldn't trust this SE with any of those titles anymore. As someone who has grown up with SE right back from the nes days I can't believe I would ever say I've lost faith in them. Its more than clear they simply do not and never will give a shit about their fans.
And then KH3 ... then XV-2 ... then XVI ... and on. They aren't giving up on console games.
We still have Atlus. Right? Right.....?
We will all be saved come November 24 (dont fuck this up atlus)
Versus XIII should have released ages ago. It's not merely a case of "announcing too early" - it's a case of initial intentions hitting development conflicts (re-prioritizations, perhaps difficulties with the game itself, etc.). You seem to be presenting this case that the game skipped an entire generation, and left the franchise hanging as a result, on purpose. It seems obvious that isn't true. I think SE would be in a much better place right now if Versus XIII had went through a smooth, consistent development process that resulted in a great game being released somewhere around 2010~2011.
"Nomura's vision", in all likelihood, is the last thing that should be emphasized here (aside from perhaps it being difficult for current SE to live up to).
UberTag
Member
Provided that Sega doesn't leave their games in Japan? Yes. We still have Atlus.We still have Atlus. Right? Right.....?
But Square Enix is dead. Frankly, I'll be shocked if Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 ever come out.
They should really just scrap development, grab whatever assets have value and make a smartphone game out of them.
They already publicly announced that it's in development. I'd say 100% chances. Same for Tomb Raider.
Wyndstryker
Member
Mobile games make them a fuckton of money. So no, this is not some 2009 fad. And online is not some fad that is going to go away, don't be stupid. Ubisoft, EA, Activision, Capcom, Take Two and pretty much every other publisher are pushing into the online space more & more aggressively and most of those have some mobile phone development, so why should Square Enix not have? Mobile phones as gaming machines are here to stay and it would be idiotic to ignore that, no matter how much some part of core gamers (me included) don't like mobile games.
UberTag
Member
Or a multiplayer online game with a $50 season pass to access all of the additional content that was deliberately stripped out of it.
Doesn't matter. They are all gonna end up doing mobile projects anyways. The spirit of Japanese game developers are dead. Everything is musou, card game, monster hunter clone and mobile.
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
So Eidos is going to switch to making the least popular Eidos games and Square is going to switch to making the least popular Square games. Genius.
charlequin
Banned
Every mainline FF in the last decade has had the same kind of disastrous, multi-year clusterfuck development. The last one to ship on time and in solid shape was FF11.
I will say that XIV assuredly had far, far more to do with SE's current sad state than XV did.
Sickboy007
Member
ZombiePlatypus
Member
Good god that's depressing.
The only way I see this turning around is if FFXV is released as an actual, intact, real game for consoles and manages to live up to the hype in quality, and sells heaping truckloads. Maybe then SE would see that they can still make money with normal games so long as said games are, y'know, good.
Wasn't the original, terribad version of XIV outsourced to some lowrent Chinese company? (I could be wrong here, but that seems to be the story floating around.) If, so, I dunno WTF they were thinking.
Blood Diamonds
Banned
:c
Well there's still Kingdom Hearts 3 and FFXV right?
I STILL HAVE HOPE
Well there's still Kingdom Hearts 3 and FFXV right?
I STILL HAVE HOPE
ZombiePlatypus
Member
How do you feel about Goofy and Donald being purchasable characters to join your party? Or purchasable summons and skills?
You bastards.
LOL, where is that from?
AcademicSaucer
Member
At this point, who is left to offer AAA jrpgs
nintendo with X and fire emblem x shin megami tensei ?
nintendo with X and fire emblem x shin megami tensei ?
Sickboy007
Member
Every videogame magazine from the mid-2000s?
ZombiePlatypus
Member
bobbychalkers
Member
Looks like EGM, seems familiar.
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