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."

Comments

May ensure the Japanese Market

[suyashs]

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.

Re:If you don't know the history, RTFA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Front Mission 4 was fun,

Don't know, I don't like giant robot games.

so was Kingdom Hearts

No, it wasn't. It sucked. Two words: Gummi Ship. A lot of people claim to have liked it, but I've yet to have anyone explain why, other than it was a Square and Disney game. Guess what - that doesn't count.

and so was Tactics Advance.

No, it wasn't. One word: judge. The game play was long and boring and the "laws" only served to be confusing. For example, "Attack" wound up meaning using the "Attack" ability, not attacking via specials; "Sword" wound up meaning attacking (but not using special abilities) with a specific equipment type called "Sword" that was distinct from katanas, rapiers, and various other types of - well, swords. "Holy". WTF is considered "holy"? I don't know and the game won't mark what's considered illegal, leaving you always curious, but considering that breaking the law basically cost you a character made experimenting an effort in "test, then reload".

Dragon Quest 8 is being received fairly well, though I haven't played it personally.

Enix game. Enix makes a lot of good stuff, that never got released in the US. I had hoped that might change, but... nope. Instead we get Full Metal Suckage.

Star Ocean is Enix's deal, so you can hardly blame them for that.

Wanna bet? Who knows what it would have been like if Square had been kept out of it.

FFX-2 is debatable.

Well, here's my entry: pure, unadulterated, crap. Dress grid? WTF? There's really not much to say other than it sucked. The missions ensured a disjointed story line, the characters were simply annoying, and the combat was traditional "choose your cutscene" Square style.

Sorry, but Square hasn't released a good game since FFVII, and that game merely mediocre.

Re:Slight addition.

[Anonymous Coward]

People have said that the plotline of an average Final Fantasy game can't be compressed into a movie. But I've been thinking, it could make a good opera. Or rather, a series of operas like Wagner's Ring cycle.

I'm thinking that Final Fantasy 6 would be perfect for this. It had a great cast of characters, a melodramatic villain, an epic storyline, and having an opera scene within an opera would be just over the top enough.

Where RPGs go, so goes my $$$

[miyako]

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.