To create cutting edge games, mind you. Graphics aren't a problem when you got all the other elements right, which has not been the case for Square since a very long time
Again, what's the problem with games like Kingdom Hearst: Birth By Sleep & 3D, The World Ends With You, Dissidia 012, 3rd Birthday (other than Toriyama's writing), Theatrhythm and many other good to great games they've released within the past few years? I'd say many of their games have still been at the top of their genres. They look great (on their respective platforms) and play great, partly because they've gotten their development pipelines "corrected" to being able to efficiently create fun content while not having to sacrifice the audiovisual side of things.
XIII-2, XIV 2.0 and the ever evolving Kingdom Hearts series show that they do listen to fans and understand what they've done wrong and what they've done right. While XIII-2 still suffered from Toriyama's writing and is far from perfect in other ways as well, gameplay-wise it's a big step forward from XIII in many ways and I doubt we'll ever see another XIII in terms of linearity and stripped down content (or screwed up development).
It's getting silly when all of Square Enix (of recent past as well as the future SE) is judged based on a few miss steps while ignoring they've been doing a lot of great work in the meanwhile and taking steps to make sure they don't repeat some of their biggest downfalls in the future. Sure, it still won't make Toriyama's writing any better, but it might still produce great games that are fun to play AND great to look at.
Besides, claiming graphics don't matter is really naive. Just make most of NeoGAF play a game with sub-HD graphics or a little bit of screen-tearing or framerate drops or bad ground textures and the bitching never ends. :| People who buy a console like PS3 do like to see that hardware being taken advantage of. I like that there's still one JRPG developer who still tries to push the technical side of things as well. Though I have no problems with playing Falcom's lower-budget RPGs, it's still nice to get a visual marvel like Kingdom Hearts at times as well. Of course if I have to choose between gameplay and graphics, I choose gameplay. But really, with many of Square Enix's games, I don't have to choose.
if they mostly focus on graphics it means they think everything else is fine, and they are wrong.
Where does it say they are focusing mostly on graphics? They are focusing in making a good game engine that lets them achieve their vision without running into constant problems like with the Crystal Tools, while also being able to take advantage of whatever the next-gen gaming consoles will end up being. Having a non-problematic graphics engine will help them focus on the more important stuff, like gameplay, instead of struggling getting even the basics of gameplay up & running and some content to go with that.
Again, one of the biggest problems they've faced this gen (and actually started to face during PS2 development already, it just culminated into the Crystal Tools fiasco) has been conquering technical problems due to them trying to maintain the scope of their productions. The infamous "HD towns are hard/impossible"quote sounds silly and downright incompetent out of context (and sure, there's some incompetence behind it with the CT), but when you know that they developed XIII in not much more than a year, HD towns were pretty much impossible with their schedule.
