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Final Fantasy Creator Sakaguchi Joins Microsoft
Anonymous Coward writes " Microsoft today announced that Hironobu Sakaguchi, video game legend and president of Mistwalker game studio, has joined with Microsoft(R) Game Studios to develop role-playing game (RPG) video games exclusively for the next- generation Xbox(R) video game platform. Sakaguchi is best known as the creator of the "Final Fantasy" franchise, which has sold more than 60 million units worldwide, and was executive vice president in charge of game development at Square Enix Co. Ltd. until February 2001."
Maybe MS should buy 3drealms, then Duke Nukem Forever might get released.
Yeah, offtopic, but no one else seems interested.
Does this mean that they will stop making final fantasy for PS2, or just that guy will stop working on the final fantasy series :-/. I was pretty upset that Plastation lost Oddworld to xbox I dont think I could deal with a Final Fantasy loss too!
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
Wait a minute here. What is this I'm feeling? A love of the Final Fantasy series.... and yet, a pure disdain for Microsoft....
Head exploding in 5, 4, 3.....
(segmentation fault)
Don't take a knife to a gunfight, or even a knife to a knife fight. Take a gun to a knife fight.
1. He'd already left Square
2. Square still owns Final Fantasy
3. Yes, Microsoft is still evil.
- colin
This may help MS greatly in the Japanese market, where they have lagged behind both Nintendo and Sony. With a RPG industry veteran, they could make headway into the Japanese RPG market (extremely profitable). Good move on MS's part, a sign of brewing trouble for Sony, and an ever greater threat to Nintendo. In the battle for next-gen marketshare, it may all come down to exclusive deals and ease of developement. Nintendo does well in both areas, while Sony notably lacks in the second, MS has done well in the first (Halo etc.) and has done excellently in the second but never before had many genres in which their exclusive deals were of high quality and were seriously lacking in Japanese backing for the current Xbox.
http://chrono.posterous.com/
So, wait a minute. With this news, what happens to Mistwalker's announced DS title? The press release is about as clear as to what's going on (beyond the creation of some titles for Xbox) as mud.
When I'm stuck with Windows I can probably choose a Final Fantasy back for the Solitaire cards--no wait, that's Square's thing, not Sakaguchi-san's...NOOOOO!!! *turns red and fades into background after dying from shock*
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This brings up the question: what would an RPG dream team look like? Or rather, what aspects of each RPG would you splice and dice together to make the best overall experience?
Still, at least it demonstrates one constant about MS: It learns.
There, now we can cue that Victory Track...no...must...not...type it out...DADADADADUUHDUUHDADUHDAAAAH*does Cloud Strife freakout*
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
my guess would be Santa Clause
According to the article, Sakaguchi left in 2001. In that time period, FFXI, FF Crystal Chronicles, and FF:TA came out.
He's only the guy who created FF, he has no rights to anything that Square makes. What he's bringing to Microsoft is a totally different priginal RPG thing.
Whether or not that means he's totally abandoning his previously announced exclusive DS project, nobody knows.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Someone should kick you in the nuts not, just slap you in the face. It's Sakaguchi, NOT SQUARE OR SQUARESOFT.
He's been out of work since Feb. 2001.
Is that this may seem like a large coup, however just like their aquisition of Rare it may not pay off. It still remains to be seen if Rare will make a large impact on Microsoft's console(s), and this is under the same circumstances of an entity that has created great games in the past, but does not have the rights to many of those games so all bets are off. And just like Rare, it sounds impressive on paper right now, however we're talking about 2-4 years down the road, and then it's still only a maybe.
Slapped in the face? Why?
Since right now you own neither a PS3 nor a Xbox2 (or whatever it will be called), why is it a slap in the face that a developer announced they are working on titles for Xbox2? Doesn't it merely inform a future purchasing decision?
An Xbox RPG that isn't Star Wars or Hack and Slash. Not that I dislike KOTOR, hell I love it, but there is a certain draw to the PS2 for its vast RPG library. Hopefully the games released will actually be good :).
Beyond the Polygons : Because 50,000 polygo
Duh, 'cause Square and Squaresoft are gone, you mean Square-Penis. Sorry, typo, Square-Enix.
I can't wait to see the result of this. The Xbox just keeps getting better and better. Xbox Live kicks ass. Can't wait to add some more great RPG titles.
"Ideas without action are worthless."
The series as a whole maybe, but that does not apply to the games themselves. Name one FF game that was simultaneously released for more than one system. Note that even the collections of old SNES games that were re-released were still only released for PS1.
this is 10 times worst than when RARE went to MS
This is not Square going to MS. This is just one guy, who was far from embodying the spirit of FF, except maybe in the first few games, where he was both planner and director. Anyway, this guy did have a hand in capturing the hearts of millions of Japanese gamers, and so MS's motivation is quite clear. You've got to hand to them, this is an extremely smart strategic move on their part. Just having Sakaguchi's name attached to MS could really help break the XBox into the Japanese market for real.
Considering the wild back-and-forth direction that the Final Fantasy series has taken after the completely insane success of FF VII (PS1), from 'back to the roots' in FFIX, to the confusing X2, to the online experiments, I think there may have been too much attempted intervention by the upper management at Square. I think Sakaguchi definitely needs more room, and less fan outcry when he tries something new with a brand that they think can't be touched, and I think that is probably why he started the new development company.
Microsoft's Xbox division seems a lot more intelligently managed than the rest of their company is, and I hope to hell that they treat him right and he can come up with some good stuff there. I think it's definitely possible, and he certainly sounds positive about the whole thing. Here's to hope.
And, yeah, I'll be buying the successor to the Xbox.
Name one FF game that was simultaneously released for more than one system.
Final Fantasy XI Online (PC and PS2)
A lot of people here don't seem to understand that Sakaguchi left Square a while ago to form his own development company, Mistwalker. As Mistwalker is just a developer (not a publisher) all this means is that some Mistwalker-developed games are going to be published under Micrsoft Game Studios. This doesn't mean M$ is Mistwalker's only publisher.
This doesn't mean at all that a Final Fantasy game will appear on (another) Microsoft system (not counting Windows PC). More likely though is the Final Fantasy series jumping to Nintendo's Revolution if the PlayStation3's Cell processor Assembly code proves more trouble than its worth (Square already knows PowerPC Assembly well, which is what Gamecube games are coded in, and PPC ASM is not the same as Cell ASM).
Heck, even Nintendo published some of Square's developed games (Final Fantasy I/NES, Sword of Mana, Crystal Chronicles).
Interesting to note is that Nobuo Uematasu (the music composer for Final Fantasy's 1 - 10) is now working for Mistwalker. This means some diehard game music buffs are going to have to buy an Xbox Next when it comes out.
You lose. FFXI was released on the PS2 first, then ported to the PC MUCH later. Of course, then even later it came out for the Americans on the PC, then later on the PS2. Six months later it finally got off it's only simultaneous release in Europe, which hardly counts.
Besides, if you count PC releases, you're missing FFVII and FFVIII. But those were late ports, too.
Does this really have to become a Fanboy battle royale? Why can't we just all get along and say, "Hey cool, more video games!"
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/
Sakaguchi staked his reputation on The Spirits Within, driving it through the company and going as far as writing and directing it himself. And it tanked, big time, nearly taking Square with it. Just tanking might not have been enough to sink Sakaguchi if the movie was great, but it was really terrible. The writing was bad, the editing left much to be desired, and the story was ripped from the dull parts of a videogame. Collect 12 plants to open the doorway? Who wrote this? Oh, right, Sakaguchi.
I'm not saying that he deserves to have his career hamstrung for the rest of his life. I would hope that going through such an experience would make him more aware of the realities of what making games means, and more able to judge market forces. While in Japan someone has to take the fall for such a mistake, by US culture that's downright good experience, so long as they don't make a habit of it. Which Sakaguchi doesn't appear to have. I'd hire him.
As a side note, I love how Microsoft slips into the press release how the Xbox was the only console to show year-to-year growth in the US this year. That's right, while the Xbox is still being outsold nearly 4-1 in the US, and has an installed userbase one tenth of the leader, it's the only console to get closer to catching up!
The ______ Agenda
It'll be interesting to see how this turns the tides of next generation consoles. There seems to be a correlation where the system with the largest number of decent RPGs tends to take the lead in the console wars for any given generation of consoles (the SNES seems to be the first real example of this, with it's large library of RPGs it continued to dominate even against the Saturn, and held on for a long while until the Playstation started to get good RPGs, something the N64 never really had, and the PS2 continued the tradition by being THE RPG console).
I'm not really sure why this correlation exists, perhaps it's because RPGs tend to start comming out after the console wars have pretty much been won, or maybe it's because hardcore gamers tend to go with consols that have lots of RPGs, and they make the recommendations to other buyers.
Even if it brings one really good RPG to the XBox2 then I'll probably buy it, if the XBox2 gets a lot of good RPGs, then it could win the next console war.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
It was also announced that Romero joined MS...yet nothing changed.
Incorrect. I don't know for sure about the timing of the JP launch, but in North America the PC version came out about six months prior to the PS2 launch, as I recall. (For some reason I think it was swapped in Japan, PS2 came first, then PC, but I have no idea why I think that.)
Since "Final" Fantasy has 20 or so iterations of the franchise, and everyone loves Microsoft here, here's to hoping they release the only iteration ever of "Prodigous" Fantasy soon...
LOL I have a PS2 and a XBOX, and a GBSP, and a GBDS and am going to buy a PSP oh AND the PS3 and XBOX2...and upgrade my PCs!
RPGs for the XBOX have stunk it up except KOTOR...if they get more title and quality then it will be great for everyone...JRPG are releasing at a clip of about 10 a month and XBOX2 wont challenge this at all, but at least after you pop out a good racing game you have some options on the XBOX2 besides racing and spots.
MS just needs to buy Nintendo and get it over with.
As far as I'm concerned, Square was beginning to jump the shark way back at FF8. I liked FF8, but even then it seemed like they were reaching for interesting scenarios and developed characters. FF9 was a diamond in the rough in my opinion, but the fact that this guy seems to have forgotten how to be creative really dampens the impact of this announcement quite a bit.
Team Ninja, Dead or Alive, DOA XBV, Ninja Gaiden were all Xbox exculsives. Ninja Gaiden was probably the best action fighter ever. Those games hardly made a dent in the Japanese market.
The Japanese buy Japanese products. I don't think it matters what they would put on the Xbox2, they still wouldn't buy it.
Need we remind you that Cell and PPC are designed by the same chip design team at IBM? And I do mean it's the exact same people. And that the Cell is actually a PPC core with miniature helper cores? Lets not forget that Xbox++ is going to use PPC as well.
I have a feeling the next gen middleware will be nicely tuned and the hardware will have enough headroom that ASM would be ludicrous to use. And even if it wasn't, we are probably going to see some similarities.
(On a personal note, PPC ASM is a pain in the ass. It's not for humans, optimizing compilers only. Writing code in PPC is like writing a paper in XML.)
you want to have sex with a girl? find a bar, you'd probably be rejected less there...
best of luck to you. lol.
It wasn't a port. Not minding the different JP and USA release dates, keep in mind the PS2 and PC versions were developed at exactly the same time. They planned on a simultanous release. FF7 and FF8 were ports they weren't planning on at the time of the PS1 version's development.