No it's not dude.
Pedant? Quite shallow? :lol You are funny, kev. It's as simple as the pipeline getting clogged by spinoffs some of us don't particularly care about.
Apparently you do care about them. Because they make you lose interest in something you once liked a lot....whereas I don't care about them at all....and never talk about them.
Considering they are a new company, no more than three years for a next-gen RPG is quite acceptable. As for how they "develop", yeah, it's different, I agree. But I didn't feel as though they cheaped out on anything at all, tbh.
Mistwalker is not developing these games, they are doing planning and scenario design (which I think you'd find is not the bulk of LO's 3+ year dev cycle). Feel Plus is new in name only, of course, having quite the pedigree themselves. They faced the same challenges Square Enix is facing now, except they don't have a year head start and 20 million to set on fire.
No it isn't. We both made it pretty clear: we wouldn't look at it like a normal FF because it's a spinoff. Look, some spinoffs can be good. Final Fantasy Tactics, for example. It's just that S-E is so obsessed with them, now.
I don't like spinoffs as much as the next guy, but I don't care about them and don't play them unless they are good. And if they aren't, I don't even look twice.
The point is you're making a lot of arbitrary distinctions about what should and should not qualify as a Final Fantasy game, what is and is not an acceptable development schedule, and then you're throwing in a lot of personal subjectivity to top it off-- which, of course, you are entitled to.