Do you think so? I've, like I said, made the experience that people turned their back on Falcom and either left completely or just don't bother anymore. The part that adapted is active though, as mentioned (no idea how it's on Twitter as I don't use social media). The reviews for VIII are better (from fans) but there is the saying: "Fool me once, bla, fool me twice, bla". This would be the third time for the Ys series and I'm definitely done at this point.Re: fandom, I've come across many older Falcom (and Japanese PC game) fans on Twitter who talk about the newer Falcom games here and there, rarely in a negative way. The actual long-time fans in Japan are probably too busy to play something like Ys VIII or Sen no Kiseki III these days, but they could offer more nuanced responses on the subject than just words put in their mouths.
Falcom is the only tangible company in this instance though, it's not like I have any connection to Softbank. And I can say: "I did my part", at least on the games' side (importing is expensive). Also, don't forget, them switching from PC to handheld isn't the only problem.Falcom only abandoned PC development because SoftBank dropped their physical PC game distribution. President Kondo mentioned before how much Falcom depends on physical sales of products in Japan. Going digital-only would still have put them in the red well before spending way too much on a new distribution contract or self-publishing infrastructure. They made a difficult commercial decision that ended up saving the company after games like Zwei!! II bombed (neither Ys Origin nor Trails 3rd sold as well as mid-2000s games either); meanwhile things were promising on the PSP side. Ys Seven, for better or worse, succeeded and made the platform transition clear, but I don't think Falcom's development culture and priorities are irreversibly ruined just looking at the quality put into Ys VIII.
Please reconsider wanting "them to fail." Some people have worked at Falcom so long it's become their life's work, and it's never cool to want financial/job-related problems on people you've never met (who probably work their asses off to make huge games in such a small team). Previous startup developers formed by ex-Falcom employees (Quintet and Gruppo1) didn't last too long on their lonesome, either, and the market's even riskier now should Falcom disband and its employees want to start a new developer.
Like I said, I'm bitter. Usually, it subsides after talking a while about this and that but then, after several months, a new thread like this will pop up and it will be the same all over again (like this is). The market is in bad shape and has been for a long time. One shouldn't be putting people down because they are compromising themselves to earn their living, but that's still hard to do when you are passionate about something, even after all this time.
It's not really "just" about saving time. It's about creating a realistic world and usually, warping is pretty counter-productive in that regard...unless it fits the lore.I've played through Ark two times (one on Nightmare) using Catastrophe. Remembering distinct and fly-over areas of the game is less of a problem than I expected, and warping didn't spoil my appreciation of the game world. And I'm not sure how any of this makes me or most others "the lazy gamer" when it really just saves time and fixes the game's pacing, which wasn't that great to begin with.
What I said above applies, not gonna try again.This would be actually annoying if Ys VIII didn't come out and show that old Falcom's still around where it counts. I'm also disappointed in their recent direction with Kiseki, but there's still much of the series to go.
To be fair, there aren't that many people on NeoGAF that play old PC games (it's more of a console community after all), let alone Japanese ones. You will always find the odd person here and there that knows a lot and played a lot (not just in this regard but in general) but they are always the exception. And to be fair, Mask of the Sun isn't Falcom, it just bears the series' name.Even the Ys community thread's neutral on Seven, and elsewhere I've seen lots of positive reception in addition to a vocal audience criticizing it. True hyperbole comes from someone saying Seven or Celceta's the worst game in the whole series, often ignoring Ys V or Mask of the Sun out of convenience. The most useful conversations about a game's quality come from complex argument, but even without that I think most people enjoyed and like Seven, though fewer love it. Same goes with Celceta in a lesser sense (I just played through the PC version, patched, and had a better time than I expected).