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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.'"
"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.
More Twoson than Cupertino
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.