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Square Enix - The Next Generation?
Thanks to GameSpot for its feature regarding a Square Enix analyst's attempts to grow the company into the online and mobile arenas. This new strategy "...has two main themes - one that recognizes the limitations of the current-console platforms and one that acknowledges the fascination consumers have with online gameplay." The analyst, Ichiro Otobe, discusses the importance of community above all: "You need to have something like a Final Fantasy XI that can attract a certain community of people. In a way, our content is more a kind of bait to attract strong community, and the actual content is offered through the communication with these communities [of players]", and also has interesting theories on the perceived decline of the Japanese games market, suggesting it's "...actually a shift of users' interests. Most of the people spend time and money for mobile content, but most of the money is actually going to packet fees, which, in turn, go to network carriers."
It's Squeeeeenix!:)
Erdrick's masamune? Meteomore? Ahh, the possibilities are endless!!!
So in otherwords, the acknowledgement that running a MMORPG game without a hard drive built in is very hard and the fact that people are amazed at the fact that PC gamers have been playing RPGs with OTHER PEOPLE for years now. Basicly meaning that console MMORPGs will eventually mimic and merge with PC MMORPGs, as console RPGs have generally focused on strict linear storylines for one player.
Get on the Online bandwagon
For the record, I thought The Spirits Within was a good movie, and a fantastic technical achievement. However I can see why it failed miserably in the box office. The themes were very much in line with those of the rest of the FF series, unfortunately those themes are not that accessible to American audiences. Gaia spirits are a little too deep for Joe Popcorn I think.
BTW, why is it that we can render near photo-realistic faces on characters, but their hands look like rubber? I guess hands are REALLY hard to get right. I know that was one of the traits that really popped at me watching Spirits.
Actually not. Imagine taking this to a higher level, like, Neverwinter Nights, where one of the great things is that you can DM your game.
Now imagine that in a larger scale, maybe, or just simply in a way where players can set up lesser side quests (find my goat, kill that group of bandits, etc). Wouldn't that be great? The more experience you got, the more complex could your quests be. Maybe it would even be possible to create a map on your PC, and then link it to the server.
Now that would be fun.
I honestly don't see mobile technology being accepted as fast in America as it was in Japan. Americans seem to view their cell phones as a portable home phone, and not much else. In Europe, you see a rise in SMS/Text messaging that AT+T seems to be trying to emulate by pimping Ryan Seacrest on American Idol.
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In Japan, people were more accepting of downloading things to their phone, but I think a lot of people are wary of the current payment scheme for much of these things, which is a large minute-by-minute charge for the download. It goes against a lot of what Americans seem to enjoy paying for (i.e. a set price for each one instead of an unknown amount of time).
If mobile entertainment catches on in America, I see it as catching on on a much smaller scale... of course, brands like Square Enix, EA, and Sega getting into the mobile field might help draw people into it, but they need something better than the N-Gage to let people know that cell phones are ready for video games.
(Apologies if I ranted a bit, been a while since my last
Wow. What they don't mention AT ALL in this article is that squenix has a major online venture in china which is making up a big chunk of their revenues and winning fans and security in a market with four times as many people as the US.
Read jack phelps dot net
Given the fact that the Xbox sells poorly in Japan, I wouldn't count on it. Any game that Square Enix makes for GBA or PS2 is going to sell thousand of copies because the user base for those consoles is much, much larger: why spend money on porting the game to a platform that has a small user base when I could use that same money to make (or remake) a game that has the potential to sell a thousand times more if I release it in a console with a larger user base? That's why we have stuff life Final Fantasy I & II for the GBA and Dragon Quest V for the PS2 instead of any game for the Xbox.
FFXI was a perfect game for the Xbox, since it already had a hard drive and could connect online with minimal hassle, plus Square had already ported the game to PC. And Square Enix still hasn't released it for the Xbox. The console is not in Squeenix's radar as of now. And frankly, I don't think that porting or making games for the Xbox would count as a next level, anyway,
I also liked the movie a lot, but I agree that the content was a little different than what normal movie-goers expect. They obviously used the Final Fantasy name because it was recognizable by many people but ended up cursing it as a so called video-game movie. Another thing that stood out about this movie is that it was a joint-collaboration between US animators and Japanese producers at Square, unlike Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which I believe is an all Japanese venture (and it looks very good). Overall Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an example of what people should be doing with CG, American animators need to wake up and stop pumping out animations that are always kiddie-oriented and start making some more mature content like that which is represented in Anime. Well, that's what I think.
I liked it as well, and I agree with the point about the Final Fantasy name. Not only do I think it would have done better without it, I think I would have personally preferred a different title.
Sure, it shares a grand theme with the rest of the Final Fantasy series with Gaia. But the rest of the movie doesn't fit with the series at all. The games are all fantasy worlds with a bit of sci-fi thrown in. Some have more sci-fi than others, sure, the first part of FF7 was very modern, for example. But on the whole, the games are works of fantasy, hence the title. TSW wasn't, it seemed like it was an attempt to make it appeal to American audiences, but it just let me down.
To say it a bit more elegantly, in the game worlds, the sci-fi stuff is to an extent intruding on a world that was previously one of fantasy. In the movie world, it was quite literally the reverse.
Advent Children really looks like it's got it right, IMO. It still looks a lot more sci-fi-oriented than most of the games, but nowhere near the level of the first movie. The fantasy elements go a bit farther than, "ooh, ghosts!"
And they've got swords, which make all the difference.
The only people who want online are the HARDCORE community: the guys who we all are: the guys who actually follow the news in the industry, and the guys who talk about video games on message boards all over the internet. The percentage of gamers who actually use online is less than 10%. Yeah, overall sales of online games are up, but really, you can't tell me that Madden's millions of sales this year (again) are due to online play in the Ps2, right? People are buying games which HAPPEN to include online features, that doesn't mean that they're buying to play online, or that they're playing online.
I find it really stupid how many people and companies think that online gaming is something that's being embraced and desired by everyone, despite the fact that games which heavily use online features, such as MMORPGs, usually peak at about 500,000 units in sales.
Of course, the sole exception to this is FFXI, which people buy just because of the FF name. The sad thing is, I actually know about five guys who bought the game, and now can't play it because they didn't know it's an MMORPG.
I'd like to see developers pay more attention to the online ACTIVITY of their games, monitoring that ratherthan the sales of their games which have online features. I'm sure they'll get a better idea of the popularity of online, then.
Agreed. I often see the opinion on Slashdot that online play is the be-all-end-all of games, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because PC games are more popular here. FPSes and RTSes are more suited to online play than, say, Japanese style RPGs or platform games.
Online play often seems more like a marketing gimmick than a neccessary gameplay ingredient. Yes, it has its place, but not every game needs to be online.