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[mclem]

Stop making overly bloated 70 hour games, cut that shit in half.

It's not length that's the issue, the Shin Megami Tensei (for instance...) games are of that sort of length - if not longer - but for a fraction of the budget and dev time.

 

[Danielsan]

It's not length that's the issue, the Shin Megami Tensei (for instance...) games are of that sort of length - if not longer - but for a fraction of the budget and dev time.

Atlus is smart though. They don't use a ton of money to design lavish and unique environments (the dungeons are mostly randomly generated and somewhat bland) or CGI cutscenes. They also reuse a ton of assets (mostly character models) in all their games.

 

[nelsonroyale]

well they should take their time...otherwise they might begin to output more stuff of TLR quality (not really, completely different team)... Playing TLR on the pc and then going to FFXIII...wow... hope they drop UE3

 

[jax (old)]

well, they seem to have a lot of DS stuff coming out.. its the next gen shit that takes too long. And the experimental shit like LAST REMANENT bombed. I don't know why that title, never took off on my radar. bleh.

 

[OceansAndEarth]

well, they seem to have a lot of DS stuff coming out.. its the next gen shit that takes too long. And the experimental shit like LAST REMANENT bombed. I don't know why that title, never took off on my radar. bleh.

Sssh....RevenantKioku is lurking around here.

 

[RevenantKioku]

Sssh....RevenantKioku is lurking around here.

Hey, people are allowed to be wrong. It is no crime.

 

[starsky]

There's nothing wrong with The Last Remnant, too bad most people can't appreciate the game. If you prefer FFXIII than LR then keep on waiting. I'm sure it's great to play one JRPG game every 5 years.

 

[KTallguy]

The problem with most Atlus games is that they aren't for the mass market.

FF is a mass market franchise. It's also the biggest international brand SE has.
They cannot fuck up the games (and as much as I loved FF12, it wasn't as accessible as past FF titles and the sales reflected that), so they put a ton of time into making them as perfect as possible.

I am willing to pay much more than 60 bucks for a Final Fantasy title, simply because the quality of the experience is on a much higher level than most of the niche RPGs. I know that when I boot up the game, I'm not going to get shit like the below:

Star Ocean 4 cutscene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VovRLWR8MG4&feature=related

Infinite Undiscovery cutscene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlHZrBUimuY&fmt=18

I don't think it's wrong to expect a level of quality like this from games.
And I don't necessarily mean graphics, I mean the quality of the writing, cutscenes and dialog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPUYRPN1guo&feature=related

And I don't mean that there can't be any funny moments or humor, but the examples above, plus certain spots from Lost Odyssey... just kills my enjoyment. Hire better writers, people.

In before HAHAHAHAHAHAA HAHA AHAH

 

[mclem]

Atlus is smart though. They don't use a ton of money to design lavish and unique environments (the dungeons are mostly randomly generated and somewhat bland) or CGI cutscenes. They also reuse a ton of assets (mostly character models) in all their games.

Yep. Square are sort-of painted into a corner such that the audience for a Final Fantasy demands new and interesting visuals throughout the duration of the (as people have indicated, 50hr+) game; the demands from an audience for an SMT are instead for interesting gameplay mechanics and deep play.

Basically, they're currently a victim of Final Fantasy's success, and they're having difficulty keeping up with what the audience for such a game requires.

A couple of stab-in-the-dark predictions:

I wouldn't be too surprised if the basic initial retail package of FFXIII makes a loss. I'm expecting microtransactions for additional content to try to push back to profitability - and given the scope of the game, I don't blame them for it either.

I also wouldn't be too surprised if we didn't see another main-line FF this generation. I don't think they can release on Wii - much as I'd like to see it - since I think they'd percieve it as harming the brand if FFXIV didn't look as visually impressive as 13. I suspect they'll bank on the *next* generation having a Wii followup capable of doing visuals to at least match XIII and produce a FFXIV that's about equivalent - or a small visual increment - to XIII on all three platforms.

They're at a stage now where they *have* to maximise their market to sustain this business plan, I think. To be fair, I'm fairly certain that when they originally announced FFXIII for PS3 only, they thought at the time that they were maximising their market then.

(NB: Only referring to main-line FFs here, since that's the only one that absolutely thrives on graphical fidelity. New IPs and Dragon Quest are still able to do their own thing - as DQ has already proven!)

 

[Dead Man Typing]

Isn't this more of a problem with when games get announced?

I mean, MGS4 was announced 6 months after MGS3 came out in the US, then wasn't released until 4 years later.

RE5 was announced in October 2005, 7 months after RE4 came out, didn't get released until March 2009.

I'm pretty sure that Final Fantasy XIII was announced before FF12 was released in North America. I mean, can't they sit on this stuff until closer to release?

Shorter hype windows are what we all need. Ninja Gaiden 2's structure of being unvieled at TGS with a CG trailer and a gameplay demo, then released 9 months later, seems like a good system to me. Of course, you should delay a game if it seems like it'll turn out like Ninja Gaiden 2.

Nintendo's system of announcing Mario baseball and then releasing it less than two months later was pretty cool. I liked that Bungie didn't admit that they were working on Halo 3 until half way through the game's 3 year development cycle. Same with Epic and Gears of War 2.

Maybe it's a share holder thing, got to keep public confidence or something.

 

[Nirolak]

Isn't this more of a problem with when games get announced?

I mean, MGS4 was announced 6 months after MGS3 came out in the US, then wasn't released until 4 years later.

RE5 was announced in October 2005, 7 months after RE4 came out, didn't get released until March 2009.

I'm pretty sure that Final Fantasy XIII was announced before FF12 was released in North America. I mean, can't they sit on this stuff until closer to release?

Shorter hype windows are what we all need. Ninja Gaiden 2's structure of being unvieled at TGS with a CG trailer and a gameplay demo, then released 9 months later, seems like a good system to me. Of course, you should delay a game if it seems like it'll turn out like Ninja Gaiden 2.

Nintendo's system of announcing Mario baseball and then releasing it less than two months later was pretty cool. I liked that Bungie didn't admit that they were working on Halo 3 until half way through the game's 3 year development cycle. Same with Epic and Gears of War 2.

Maybe it's a share holder thing, got to keep public confidence or something.

Well, the issue here isn't so much a hype issue as a financial one.

Having around 120 people on the payroll for five years making a game is very expensive. Also, people who generally work on projects like this have a lot of experience, meaning that you're paying them more than the average employee.

That's really what he's getting at with the whole budgetary constraint statement.

People note Blizzard as one of the examples of a developer who takes a really long time to make games, but ends up making really good games. However, most people don't realize that a large part of the reason they get to take so long is because they have so few people working on the games they're making. StarCraft 2 has been in development for about five and a half years now, but for the first four years only 32 people were actually working on the project, which is about a fourth the size of an AAA development team this generation.

This is an issue Square has to face eventually, but there are quite a few routes they can take to do so. It'll be interesting to see which ones they choose.

 

[Kenka]

Well...


We talked about this with another member yesterday. S-E has indeed a problem. I often identify them with Wada himself but I am wondering if the problem has not reached the structure as a whole.

That's bad bad bad.

 

[SecretBonusPoint]

With FF12 it was somewhat clear what occurred to generate such a hold up with the game and the Matsuno ejection, and perhaps in the future he will feel like dishing the real dirt on the goings on.

With FF13, its certainly not as clear what the fuck has gone so ridiculously wrong with it to take this long. Really, the only thing I can think of is the tools they built the "White Engine" were hideously broken and not up to scratch, hence the creation of Crystal Tools. But we have far less of an idea whats gone wrong with FF13 as opposed to other big delays in the series.

Also of note is when Wada said Square we're aiming for global releases from "now on". What a complete clusterfuck of a disorganised company. I'd like to know what Wada and co feel when theyre overshadowed so completely like the razor edge competence at Capcom or KojiPro's methodical way of working.

 

[Nirolak]

With FF12 it was somewhat clear what occurred to generate such a hold up with the game and the Matsuno ejection, and perhaps in the future he will feel like dishing the real dirt on the goings on.

With FF13, its certainly not as clear what the fuck has gone so ridiculously wrong with it to take this long. Really, the only thing I can think of is the tools they built the "White Engine" were hideously broken and not up to scratch, hence the creation of Crystal Tools. But we have far less of an idea whats gone wrong with FF13 as opposed to other big delays in the series.

Also of note is when Wada said Square we're aiming for global releases from "now on". What a complete clusterfuck of a disorganised company. I'd like to know what Wada and co feel when theyre overshadowed so completely like the razor edge competence at Capcom or KojiPro's methodical way of working.

Well, at one point Square did admit that when they first made the White Engine they didn't document anything so they had to go back and spend six months documenting it before they could actually figure out how to use it. That had the be one of the low points of Square Enix history.

Edit 2: Found the sources referencing it, but may be hallucinating the six month part: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=15623497&postcount=74

 

[Kill Your Masters]

Well, at one point Square did admit that when they first made the White Engine they didn't document anything so they had to go back and spend six months documenting it before they could actually figure out how to use it. That had the be one of the low points of Square Enix history.

Really!? Sounds unbelievable...

 

[Pein]

they take too long and the games they put out for 360 are average to bad, when wada looks at what capcom have done this gen he probably ducks his head in shame

 

[arstal]

A good game that comes out late, will be forgiven in the end.

A rushed game will never be forgiven.

Then again, the problem is SE these days tends to produce games that are late, and not good enough to be forgiven.

 

[Diablohead]

they take too long and the games they put out for 360 are average to bad, when wada looks at what capcom have done this gen he probably ducks his head in shame

is awesomesauce

 

[hayama987]

Well, at one point Square did admit that when they first made the White Engine they didn't document anything so they had to go back and spend six months documenting it before they could actually figure out how to use it. That had the be one of the low points of Square Enix history.

how does a company that's been around so long and created so many engines/games fuck up something like that? do you happen to remember where you saw the quote?

 

[jax (old)]

is awesomesauce

I own this. But I've never put it into the x360.



....


was kind of excited to play it then I read that it had bullshit dogfights or some sort of massive issue. turned me off.

LOL





and I don't read neogaf enough to truly identify personalities (in reference to the RevenantKioku and my remark's quote)....



SQUARE just needs more console titles to establish a console presence. The handheld stuff, I've only played Crisis Core.

 

[AniHawk]

how does a company that's been around so long and created so many engines/games fuck up something like that? do you happen to remember where you saw the quote?

Seriously, QA should've caught that.

 

[SuperDowns]

I'm sure it's great to play one JRPG game every 5 years.

Actually it is.

 

[SecretBonusPoint]

Well, at one point Square did admit that when they first made the White Engine they didn't document anything so they had to go back and spend six months documenting it before they could actually figure out how to use it. That had the be one of the low points of Square Enix history.

I would very much like to read where that quote comes from, because I haven't encountered it yet and I already have a shit-eating grin just thinking about reading it.

 

[Nirolak]

how does a company that's been around so long and created so many engines/games fuck up something like that? do you happen to remember where you saw the quote?

It was from this conference (fourth and third paragraphs from bottom), but a different article that reported on what he said more directly. Trying to find it again...

Edit: Here's another one referencing it: http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/rpg/finalfantasy13/news.html?sid=6186627 (Last two paragraphs).

I may be hallucinating the six month figure now that I think about it, but still trying to find the article I read back then.

 

[Deleted member 30609]

Well, at one point Square did admit that when they first made the White Engine they didn't document anything so they had to go back and spend six months documenting it before they could actually figure out how to use it. That had the be one of the low points of Square Enix history.

Edit: Refinding the source. I realize this is rather hard to believe.

wow if true.

 

[Johann]

They should visit ND and insomniac, they know how to produce good games fast.

You have to consider just how expensive it is to make an RPG. They require so much work and money if you want to stand out. Even the PS1 Final Fantasy games had budgets with eight digit figures and over a hundred people working on it. That is why the productions values of Final Fantasy games were unmatched and continue to be unmatched by other JRPGs.

It seems that this development model has scaled terribly when applied to HD gaming. We are seeing Square-Enix experiment with middleware and simultaneous releases in order to alleviate these problems. However, when you have an in-house engine, it's very difficult adding new people to the development staff since they have to learn the engine and get up to speed with the others. The combination of the in-house engine and the growing need of manpower for a HD game could explain why the game is taking so long. It's very much possible that FFXIII would be the last of its kind.

 

[SecretBonusPoint]

Murata also talked about some of the things the team working on Crystal Tools did right and wrong in the first year and a half of development. Getting the first version of the software up and running in just a year was a victory for the publisher, but he said the team realized far too late that they needed a technical writer to provide developers with proper documentation for the engine.

During the audience question-and-answer portion of the presentation, Murata was asked if the engine could be licensed to outside publishers, similar to what Epic Games has done with its Unreal Engine 3. Murata said it was possible in the future, but it wouldn't be possible right now, partly because the lack of proper documentation regarding the ins and outs of Crystal Tools would make it difficult to support.

Wow. I don't even...

Its a bit unclear however on whether they wanted a technical writer to annotate everything so the engine could be used by teams/devs outside of Square or if they really did let one small group of dudes make some complicated nonsense tools that no-one else in the department knew how to even touch :lol

Indeed the timeframe mentioned there would suggest it was a year before they realised their mistake. :lol :lol :lol

 

[Phoenix Fang]

... for PS3

Other than Final Fantasy 11 (Windows port) and Last Remnant, what other game has Square developed for the 360?

 

[eznark]

That's more the fault of Unreal Engine 3, isn't it? And TLR installed on the HDD plays just fine. And if you're still picky, PC version? (Ew?)

Installed on 360 it is still shit, but damn it is much much improved on PC. Finally started it this weekend after giving up on 360 version.

 

[Diablohead]

I own this. But I've never put it into the x360.



....


was kind of excited to play it then I read that it had bullshit dogfights or some sort of massive issue. turned me off.

LOL





and I don't read neogaf enough to truly identify personalities (in reference to the RevenantKioku and my remark's quote)....



SQUARE just needs more console titles to establish a console presence. The handheld stuff, I've only played Crisis Core.

It's no ace combat or sim but very arcade like gameplay, you should at least try the first few stages as the game warms you up with a few dogfights up to epic huge army battles with cruisers all around you, plus the music is some of the best game/action music i've heard this gen (personal tastes of course)

 

[LiK]

no shit

 

[Kenka]

Other than Final Fantasy 11 (Windows port) and Last Remnant, what other game has Square developed for the 360?

Unfinite Undiscovery, the game with a shitty name.
Star Ocean 4.
Sylphinad Something.
Final Fantasy XIII, still work in progress.

Himuro ---> yes.

 

[jonnybryce]

Unfinite Undiscovery, the game with a shitty name.
Star Ocean 4.
Sylphinad Something.
Final Fantasy XIII, still work in progress.

Himuro ---> yes.

developed by tri-ace
developed by tri-ace
developed by everyone except se
doesn't really make a point b/c we don't know how long it delays the ps3 version

 

[Ponn]

It would still take 3 to 6 months to come out on the PS3 in NA after the JPN release anyway. So we'll see how long it takes to come out over here this time. Could be shorter or longer.

October/November 2010.

 

[Kittonwy]

What's so funny if I may ask?

Insomniac is rushing their games way too much, R&CFTOD still turned out to be quite good, but Resistance 2 was so rushed that neither visuals nor gameplay held up because both were missing a lot of the touches that would have really made it a good game, it had quite a number of hastily designed levels duct-taped together with cutscenes and could have easily used another year in development, their leviathan level demo wasn't even ready to be shown at E3 last year, their 1+ year development cycle is starting to hurt the quality of their games.

Wada is trying to play with fire here, it's not that his job isn't secure per se, but if they start rushing out their games and their AAA RPG games like FF start becoming B games like Tales, their IPs lose a TON of value, that's something they can never get back.

 

[Pojo]

No you do not. You create amazing games that stand the brutal test of time.

Take as long as you want with XIII. The only thing that irritates me is that the game will be held back for PS3 owners in America because of the whole 360 simultaneous release fiasco.

 

[TheRagnCajun]

Squeenix holds themselves to such a high standard with the FF series, which is a big part of the problem.

 

[GitarooMan]

No shit, where the fuck is Kingdom Hearts 3?

 

[ethelred]

well why make us wait for them to make a port to 360 <_<

The only thing that irritates me is that the game will be held back for PS3 owners in America because of the whole 360 simultaneous release fiasco.

It still amazes me that people actually believe this ridiculousness. I suppose that amazement will never go away, as long as such credulous dupes persist.

 

[ChoklitReign]

What's 3D Realms doing these days?

 

[Kittonwy]

Squeenix holds themselves to such a high standard with the FF series, which is a big part of the problem.

I would much prefer if they don't turn FF into another tales or suikoden, once you've burned out a series, it's much harder to create another one that is as popular as FF or DQ.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I think Crisis Core is a good balance. It didn't take forever to come out and it was 20-30 hours?

Announced E3 2004, released around the world from late 2007 through mid 2008. Really not so different from what seems to be the current situation with XIII and Crystal Bearers.

I'm pretty sure that Final Fantasy XIII was announced before FF12 was released in North America. I mean, can't they sit on this stuff until closer to release?

Hell, Final Fantasy XI was announced the same night as Final Fantasy IX... and it still didn't take 3 years for it to come out.

 

[Torquill]

Really, the only thing I can think of is the tools they built the "White Engine" were hideously broken and not up to scratch, hence the creation of Crystal Tools. But we have far less of an idea whats gone wrong with FF13 as opposed to other big delays in the series.

It is my understand that these are the same things. White engine was an internal code name while Crystal Tools is the official name.

 

[antiloop]

What's 3D Realms doing these days?

Helping SE with FFXIII so they can finish FF:Versus in time for 2012.

 

[kswiston]

It's crazy how long the wait time between Final Fantasy titles has gotten in recent years.

 

[brandonh83]

"We make too many shitty Finar Fantashy Sheven spinuff and other pointress burrshit because we keep hinting to fans that we are going to finarry rerease a Croud and Sephiroth buttsecks simurator-- with One Winged Angerybuttsecks playing in the background-- so that the closet animu porn freaks buy in hopes of finary having their dreams granted, but it makes us the monies and therefore it takes us too rong to make the games that people actually want rike FFXIII."

Fixed.

 

[Die Squirrel Die]

Squeenix holds themselves to such a high standard with the FF series, which is a big part of the problem.

That's why a Final Fantasy can sell 5 million WW, whereas most other jRPGs would be lucky to break a million. SE's challenge will be to make their development more efficient without significantly impacting the polish or production values that makes the series popular with people outside of the genre enthusiasts.

And wasn't the delay to Crisis Core something to with the director wanting specific people on the development team who were tied up with KHII? I seem to remember reading an interview with him (or maybe it was a more senior producer) that said that development on Crisis Core didn't begin in earnest until KHII was finished.

 

[Kill Your Masters]

1997 - 2002 just proves that you can make high budget AAA games in shorter time spans. What happened?

 

[radioheadrule83]

"We make too many shitty Finar Fantashy Sheven spinuff and other pointress burrshit because we keep hinting to fans that we are going to finarry rerease a Croud and Sephiroth buttsecks simurator-- with One Winged Angerybuttsecks playing in the background-- so that the closet animu porn freaks buy in hopes of finary having their dreams granted, but it makes us the monies and therefore it takes us too rong to make the games that people actually want rike FFXIII."

Fixed.

:lol

 

[Yazus]

I think Square Enix problem is that they are just maing too many games at the same time.

I mean remember when SE was developing all that DS ports/chocobo stuff + Crisis Core + Dissidia + FFXIII + FFXIII Versus + FF Agito XIII + Crystal Bearers + Echoes of Time + Last Remnant

The fuck?

How many fucking teams they have? Just have two or three of them and focus on the mainstream sagas (FFXIII, DQ and new IP/Spinn Off) alternating them like this
-1 Year: New IP/Spinn off
-2 Year/3 Year: DQ
-4/5 Year FFXIII