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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.
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/
Still, at least it demonstrates one constant about MS: It learns.
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.
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The slashdot blurb is highly misleading. Mistwalker studio is still independant, they are merely making 2 xbox360 exclusive RPG's to be published through microsoft games. They aren't going xbox exclusive, they are still making the DS game, and they are free to other make games for PS3 and revolution.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
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?
"we can't play Street Fighter 2 or Tekken online because the latency is too much"
I refer you to
Dead or Alive Ultimate, playable over Xbox Live.
Street Fighter 2 for Matching Service. This used modems dialled into Capcom servers.
There are others. I should also point out that allowing levelling up in a beat-em-up is a bad idea, their gameplay mechanics are intended to be balanced and the winner is the skilled (sometimes lucky) player.
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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.
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 must be new to this console gaming thing. You're supposed to pick one console and love it with fiery passion. You're also supposed to hate the other systems and their users with equal zeal.
RPG dream team? it already happened back with Chrono Trigger.
Akira Toriyama doing the characters, Yuji Horii of Dragon Quest doing the story, and Nobuo uematsu doing the music.
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"