Square Steps Back from 'No FF on 360' Remark

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Square/Enix has stepped away from a comment made by Executive Producer Shinji Hashimoto. Wednesday we discussed his comment, which would seem to indicate that Final Fantasy titles won't be coming to the 360. Square took pains today to specify that he was only referring to current plans. "A spokesperson for Square Enix told GamesIndustry.biz, 'Hashimoto-san was talking about the current situation' - which would suggest his comments shouldn't be interpreted as forward-looking. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said he expects the next Final Fantasy to appear on PlayStation 3 exclusively - but observed that Square Enix will face a tough decision. 'The series has always been single console and given the Xbox 360 sell through in Japan, it would be hard to put the next Final Fantasy installment on the 360 only. Square Enix faces a dilemma: put the next game on the 360 only and alienate Japanese fans, depart with tradition and make it multi-platform, or go with PS3 as an exclusive and deal with the backlash from the west. I view Square Enix as a tradition-bound company, and expect the last alternative to be chosen.'"

Comments

Solution:

[Dancindan84]

Go back to Nintendo! I'd be interested to see
1) If the wii had the horsepower for what they want
2) How the Square guys would take advantage of the wii design

Re:Solution:

[penp]

The more recent Final Fantasy games (I'd say from VII on) have been increasingly driven by technology while not expanding significantly on gameplay. Sure, XII had a number of changes, but by making the game more or less play itself (or, if you prefer, drastically changing the player's role in battle to being more of a coach) it had gone too far in the other direction. The possibility exists that motion-sensitive control would also be too radical of a change, but the Wii would allow them to refocus on game design as opposed to making some very pretty cinematics. Talking about recent Final Fantasy games, you quote from VII on? Doesn't anyone realize that game is now ten years old? While I agree that it is a trend, it's hardly anything recent. I'd also like to note that the gameplay of Final Fantasy XII is nearly identical to the MMO gameplay of Final Fantasy XI, so it's not really as much of a change as most would say. Personally, I really enjoyed XII, because it was the first one since VII to have a story worth mentioning without solely (the key word here, of course) relying on pretty cinematics.

Square's changes in gameplay usually have less to do with how the game is controlled (i.e. which controller is used) and more to do with how the game has control (the introduction of the Active Battle System, the various different magic systems, job systems, the License Board). The gameplay has always been essentially a bunch of menus, but what effect those menus have on the game is what changes from game to game. I highly doubt Square will be diverting from a format which has given them success for twenty years.

Flamebait

[ivan256]

Square Enix faces a dilemma: put the next game on the 360 only and alienate Japanese fans, depart with tradition and make it multi-platform, or go with PS3 as an exclusive and deal with the backlash from the west

That is just pure flamebait, and shouldn't have ended up on the front page of anywhere but an Xbox360 fansite.

Why is it flamebait? The subtext to that one sentence is that the PS3 is going to fail in the US, and ignores the fact that Final Fantasy titles usually sell as many copies in Japan alone as they do in the rest of the world. He, and everybody else with two or more brain cells, knows that there isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that a Final Fantasy game will ever be an Xbox360 exclusive given the non-existence of the platform in Japan, and that the next-gen race isn't even close to decided in the rest of the world. So why post the false dichotomy except to troll?

Re:Why does it have to be exclusive?

[Applekid]

"When you make a crossplatform game, it is limited by the lowest hardware specs of each console. maybe graphics for one, storage medium for another, and persistent objects for a third."

Now that's just silly. If all they're doing to change from building for Platform A to building for Platform B is changing a command line switch in their compiler then they deserve to be LCD'd.

Good porting means balancing and mitigating the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. If Console A has less graphical power than Console B, then THAT version might get geometrically simpler models or smaller textures or a lower framerate. If Console C has the juice to perform full physics on a moving car while Console D doesn't, your build for Console D will have a simplified physics model.

I mean, PC gaming has had those tweakable settings for over a decade, to compensate for the varied power in each machine. Naturally developers know of this.

Developers go to where market share is

[Astarica]

Unless you're talking about a company that's actually owned by a console maker, there's no loyalty in the 3rd party world. If Wii has 95% of the market, Square will probably find a way to get FF13 on that instead even if it means scrapping the grahpic engine they've been working on. It's not like Square stayed exclusive to PSX out of loyalty to begin with. It's because PSX/PS2 had a huge dominating position in the market, coupled with some technical/political issues (i.e. feud with Nintendo, plus N64 was delayed so they couldn't develop for it even if they wanted to).

When N64 wasn't going anywhere, 3rd party had no problem jumping ship (but still develop for the dominant Nintendo handhelds). No reason to assume it's any different for Sony. And if PS3 really manages to take off, expect FF13 to go back to exclusively PS3 again.

Re:I don't understand...

[asuffield]

why doesn't MS just tell Square - Enix, hey give us the exclusive and we will pre-pay you for 10 million copies. That should help the XBOX sell a few units at the tough (for outsiders) Japanese market and help bury the PS3... A very good investment IMHO.
And Square whether traditional or not, is still a business, so I can't see offers like that rejected "by principle".

Japanese are not like Americans. They need to make a profit. They do not feel compelled to maximise their profit at the expense of all else - in fact, they often loathe that attitude. Many things are more important to most Japanese businessmen and executives than profit, particularly if they are traditionalists. Not everybody there is like this, but Square-Enix is run by some fairly traditional people. If Americans are slaves to the bottom line, then Japanese are slaves to tradition and pride.

A Japanese company would rather stick with somebody they know well and have prior connections with, than "shop around" for somebody who will give them a 10% lower price. They will not normally abandon a current partner unless they are mistreated or they are at risk of losing money (ie, making a loss, not just reduced profit).

If you want to make a traditionalist Japanese executive incredibly angry, offer him a bribe to switch to your company. It's a direct insult. If Microsoft even proposed something like you suggest, it would inspire hatred of a religious fervour, and it would be likely that no Square-Enix title would ever run on any platform made by Microsoft, ever. They may be able to win FF by persuasion; they will not be able to do it by throwing money around.

Re:Why does it have to be exclusive?

[CaseM]

Good porting means balancing and mitigating the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.

Please note that you said "good porting". That's the problem. Many ports are shit and do get held back by the lowest common demoninator. Xbox owners were constantly receiving substandard ports of PS2 games because the PS2 happened to be the main development platform last generation.

Re:PS2 = shitty hardware

[7Prime]

Honestly, am I the only person who thinks that, regardless of horsepower and snazzy mapping effects, hardware anti-aliasing is the SINGLE most graphically enhancing thing out there? Seriously, the difference between the GC and PS2, at least to me, is like night and day because of it.

I saw Need for Speed: Carbon, on the PS3... and I swear, with all the flickering (on a large screen HD display), it looked like it STILL didn't have anti-aliasing. I'm going out on a limb here and am going to say that any Wii game, in 480p mode with anti-aliasing, looks better than a PS3 game at 1080p without it... regardless of what kind of gimicks they use.

If it turns out the PS3 doesn't have hardware anti-aliasing, I'm going to laugh.

Re:They have 3 options:

[Firehawke]

Um.. no. They didn't "crawl away from Nintendo", they left because Nintendo insisted on using cartridges on a platform where it was obvious they couldn't handle what Square was aiming for.

Secondly, as has PREVIOUSLY been noted above, Square's stuff sells about as well in the rest of the world COMBINED as it does in Japan. At a 50% ratio, it makes sense to stick with the devil you know and not have to rebuy all your devkits and retrain. As for the Wii, Square's always been more interested in pushing graphics boundaries. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see a traditional FF title on Wii, but they're FAR more likely to do spinoffs.

By the way, Akira Toriyama only did work for two series of any relevance to this-- Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. There's no reason to say "poached" as he'll do work for pretty much anyone who pays the cash for it.

In other words, you're talking out your ass on every single point here.