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Square To Expand Into Online And Mobile
GameDailyBiz is reporting that Square Enix is looking to expand further into the online and mobile markets. While they already have an MMOG (FFXI) and a mobile game (Before Crisis), they see those markets as moneymakers for the future. From the article: "Although there seems to be no indication that Square Enix will be attempting to shift away from its core competency of small and large-scale console RPGs, the company is looking to further invest itself in the rapidly growing wireless and online sectors. Wada specifically pointed to Japanese financial realities almost requiring involvement in the wireless market, and when wireless numbers are included with the traditional console figures, the Japanese video game industry actually isn't in a recession at all. 'Running a business that depends on the software sales through retailers has become a thing of the past,' Wada told Yomiuri."
You'd think with their ... experience with Final Fantasy XI, widely heralded as "the worst MMORPG to ever disgrace the genre", Square-Enix would have learned to stay OUT of the online business and concentrate on their core compentancy: making excesively long computer animated cut scenes that make no sense.
I suppose I really should wait until their other online games come out, but based on Square-Enix's current downward spiral, I can't imagine them being any better.
They haven't even gotten to FF5 and FF6 (3 US). Chrono Trigger has a way to go.
FFVII would NEVER fit on a handheld without being butchered beyond recognition. Too many FMVs, the game is too long for a handheld and without being multidisced, it'd never fit. Oh and porting to either system would be a programming nightmare. The PSP is designed for widescreen usage (complete graphics rehaul) and the DS uses two screens one of which is a touch screen (don't use the touch screen and you look like an amature developer).
They ported Dragon Warrior III to the GBA before. It was nowhere near as good as the SNES version, butthe fact that they did it means its not gonna happen again anytime soon.
I've been thinking about this very issue.
I personally think they could do it. I've got the original playstation discs here, over 400MB on each disk (out of 600-620) is movies. You could do the movies realtime.
Even without the movies you'd still have almost 600MB of data. The current maximum DS cart size is apparently 128MB, although I doubt that's a technical restriction.
At the end of the day, although I believe it could be done, it won't be. It wouldn't be anything like a straight port and I just don't see Square-Enix bothering.