Slashdot Mirror
Square Enix Facing Big Losses For 2010
eldavojohn writes "It's no secret that Final Fantasy XIV took a lot of heat early on, which required extensive damage control. And the Japanese tsunami (which appears to have added $7.5 million to their losses) certainly didn't help. But if what early investor reports are saying is true, then Square Enix is expected to report $148 million in losses for the closing fiscal year. Expect title cancellations (which might add to the hurt) and a very painful realization for the owner of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior (PDF). Perhaps a move to re-releasing classics will prove more fruitful than high development cost MMORPGs?"
In square-enix, the square is silent.
Why not...uh...find out what made the classics classic and do a bit more of that?
You know, games with interesting, non-whiney characters, non-linear story with some exploration in gameplay, music that is better tailored to each scene so it doesn't sound like they just put a track in to fill the silence.
How could a company that consistently produced quality entertainment for nearly two decades be reduced to a mere shadow of its former self? What happened? As probably one of the few people on /. that actually loved FFXI, I have to say, FFXIV was a complete waste of time. FFXI was fun, but it didn't age well, and there were a lot of things that SE could have learned from and done better. Instead of learning from their mistakes, they ended up making a less fun, more frustrating version of FFXI, and thought that making it pretty would solve everything. Well, it didn't, and now they're paying the price for it.
SE needs to go back to the mindset that they had when they were just Square. They need to stop cranking out duds every 3 months. We need games that are on the caliber of FFVI, Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears. Otherwise, the world will simply stop caring about them... that is, if we haven't stopped caring already.
My girlfriend LOVES the Tomb Raider games, in spite of the T&A. She loves the mythological aspects combined with the platforming/puzzle gameplay. Tomb Raider Underworld was so freaking buggy though, she gave up on it several times over the course of a year.
Ha, I forgot FF XIV even existed...
If Deus Ex: Human Revolution is done right, they'll be well into the black again.
August 11th, folks. Diaries should be marked.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's really that simple, squeenix has lost all manner of quality.
They just make ugly designs, annoying musc, 100% grindy gameplay and stories which grow less and less cool.
The main problem is that japans gaming culture and western gaming culture has grown more and more widely apart.
This really hurts their market.
They and GPG might have had another big money-maker with Supreme Commander 2, but they went overboard trying to solve the resource demands in big (skirmish) games (the TA-SC games are CPU-intensive). It wound up oversimplified to an embarrassing degree relative to its predecessors, to the point where many gamers loyal to the TA-SC franchise just didn't want to play it and stuck with Supreme Commander (I) and SC:Forged Alliance instead, in spite of the aforementioned demands. I learned to change my expectations and enjoy it, but it earned a lot of negative karma for what was done. I don't know whether it was Square Enix or GPG making those design choices, but it cost them.
They've been sitting on remaking FF7 for years. $150 million would probably be covered by just the initial release if they were to produce an updated version with modern tech.
Not that I care either way--I hated that game and pay less attention to Square with each year. But they _could_ do it any time if they only wanted to.
So are we finally getting a final final fantasy?
Who knows exactly how much FFXIV is costing them in development costs and server costs, but that ship has sailed. There's no point sinking money into something that will never turn a profit.
It's been seven months now. The improvements the game has made are minor at best. (The two biggest are that leveling combat classes is now possible, and that the market place works. Not well, mind you, but it works.) If you ask anyone playing whether or not you should, they'll tell you flat-out it isn't worth it.
This is not the sign of a game on the road to profitability. With every week that goes by, the ability to earn new players goes down.
Once they've stopped throwing money at a failed game, then they can start worrying about creating new games that people actually want to play.
But first, they've got to stop the bleeding.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
For extra credit, how much do you have to charge to cover sales, marketing, legal, management, blow and hookers.
Perhaps the game is just changing, and hojillion yen AAA titles aren't the sure thing they once were, is all. I believe it's still the case that no movie costing over $100,000,000 to make has ever lost money (yes, including Waterworld), but it doesn't follow that the same applies to games.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
They could have made a new Thief, a new Hitman, Legacy of Kain, or Timesplitters. What did we get?
A couple of lackluster entries from the tired Tomb Raider franchise while everything else sat on the back burner. They held back some of the most revered franchises of all time, and for what? What were they waiting for?
Square-Enix's problems mirror, to a large extent, those that have afflicted the wider Japanese gaming industry (including, once you discount early Wii hardware sales, Nintendo), during the current console cycle.
At the heart of this is a failure to evolve their games and franchises to reflect changing times and tastes. If often feels like the modern Japanese games industry doesn't recognise anything between "no change at all" and "total ground-up redesign". It's instructive to compare how the most successful Western developers have managed franchises and general gaming concepts over this time. If you look at the likes of Bioware, Bethesda, Bungie, Blizzard, Valve, even some of EA's own internal development efforts, you can see a pretty ruthless evolutionary approach to design. When a game comes out and the studio begins development either on a sequel or even a new property, the first thing that seems to happen is a look at what people liked and didn't like about the previous game, with this being factored into the development of the sequel.
Take Bioware as a case-study here. Baldur's Gate came out in 1998 and was pretty successful. However, it was the sequel, which came out a couple of years later, that really revolutionised Western RPGs. Why? Because Bioware had evolved the franchise, removing aspects of the original game that had been "a bit too pen and paper" for CRPG players (such as no-pausing-on-the-inventory-screen mechanics and large amounts of wilderness crawling) and had expanded the areas that had been well received (adding further complexity to the casting system, expanding character dialogue trees and so on). Once Bioware moved on from the Baldur's Gate series, they continued releasing RPGs that very clearly had BG in their DNA, but which shed some of the pricklier aspects of the old series, while borrowing popular elements of Japanese RPGs (such as the "active party" system). Then having reached a point where they faced a serious conflict between hardcore RPG gamers and the more casual crowd, they essentially "fork" their games, with the Dragon Age series pitched for the hardcore and the Mass Effect series for the action demographic. That isn't to say that Bioware don't make mis-steps - Dragon Age 2 feels very much like a mis-step, and Jade Empire can probably be seen as one with hindsight - but an evolutionary approach like this makes it much easier to get back on track after a wobble.
Then compare Square-Enix's management of its premier RPG property - the Final Fantasy series. There's no evidence of a planned evolutionary approach to the development of the series - just an odd mixture of clinging to past certainties combined with random-throw-of-the-dice leaps into the dark. There are elements of the Final Fantasy series on show in FF13 which feel like products of another era. Random encounters (and I'm sorry, but making them visible on the field map doesn't make them any less random encounters) have been pretty much entirely ditched in the West. Our developers have figured out that - surprise surprise - gamers don't like spending a couple of hours runnng in circles in a dungeon just to level up. Yes, levelling up is part of RPGs, but any Western RPG worth its salt these days ensures that it is done via interesting sidequests and subplots. And yet there they are, still at the centre of the flagship Japanese RPG series (and pretty much every other JRPG).
The throw-of-the-dice element seems to come in the way that Square-Enix completely changes its battle and level up systems (and often even wider mechanics) for each installment in the series. At times, this has been a strength. It does keep the games from feeling a bit too samey. But when the throw of the dice produces a result that people actually like, it inexplicably never seems to get developed any further. So, for example, FF12's move towards more open-world gameplay was pretty widely welcomed, even by people who didn't like much else about the game. Yet then FF13 comes out and is basically a 30 hour tunnel for the player to
Get me:
(1) A New Final Fantasy on a tablet and other portable device that, (2) While still pretty, (3) Has a fun and exciting mechanism incorporating touchscreen RPGing and (4) Isn't prepared by a poll of "things teenagers like". Make sure that it (6) Has a triage that goes: Gameplay, Immersiveness, Storyline, and then Graphics; and (7) Has an ability, in some form, to interact with other players, be it via Bluetooth or over the Internet.
You risk falling victim to being another dead game company if you continue to emphasize high-budget "Wow!" games over ones that will actually draw new players into the series. You don't have to abandon the concepts you've developed, but please, just try something new. Is that so much to ask?
I loved the first TR - what many people forget is that at the time it was incredibly innovative, it was the first big 3D platform puzzler. I was always a big fan of games like Flashback, that weren't just about combat and timing but had some logic problems to solve along the way, and this game took that idea and put it into a 3D world.
That and a smattering of mythology (I wasn't so keen on the later levels when the aliens showed up), and the fact that back then the spaces you were exploring felt huge compared to what we'd seen before, not to mention the clever way that combat was managed, meaning you felt you were in the thick of the action without managing a million button combos all added up to a fantastic experience. I don't think I really cared at the time that the in game avatar was a female, although it was still pretty unusual to see a strong female character lead in a game.
Of course, once the media picked up on it it became just a novelty game about a stereotypical big boobed protagonist (who seemed to get enlargment surgery between iterations) and the whole series turned into a self parody - that was a real shame, but yes, that first experience of that first game WAS something special at the time.
Looking back, FFVII remains one of my favorite experiences. I tried to think more carefully about why on a recent replay.
The top thing had to be the music. It was just fantastic. Maybe I just like chiptunes, but even as late as FFX, it seemed like they had some notable 'background' tracks. Now it seems like they are all generic toned down orchestral pieces that aren't noticable at all and just barely tweak to fit the mood. Except for when they make some pop song to prop up somewhere in the middle of the game...
The open ended nature of exploration absolutely was up there. There are a lot of games that continue to get this part at least. One of the big moments when playing FFVII for the first time was leavinig midgar. Up until that point, I thought it was going to be a game like FFX or later turned out to be. Then when the world map presented itself, the contrast did a lot (for me) toward making midgar feel more like a cramped place with little control of your destiny relative to the larger world.
Another thing was how the story panned out. The general theme was certainly not new, but the details were so convoluted, I liked it. Of course, I like Crono Trigger and there was nothing partiuclarly complex about the story at all.
Finally, I think the lack of definition and no voice actors helped. I fill in the details with whatever I like. Crisis Core tought me I really won't like the voice actors if I get to make up my mind about how they should sound ahead of time.
The worst thing was the translation.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I have to agree. I keep trying to like new final fantasies because the old ones were some of the best games every made.
Every time, the game LOOKS phenomenal, and then I sit down to play and begin wondering "what the hell happened to this development house?"
The last good one was 7, and even it wasn't -nearly- as good as the hype produced of millions of kids whose first console was the ps1 seem to think it was. 8 looked so retarded I didn't even try it. I gave 9 a good 6 or 7 hours and it still wasn't drawing me in. to this day I can't remember anything about it except that one of my characters had a tail? I tried to play 10 like four times, and every single time I couldn't get past the fact that in the first 2 hours of the game you have about 30 seconds of button mashing actual playtime, and the rest is cinematic. 11 seemed like such a good idea and turned out to be worse than mmos that were out before it. "hey, yeah, I LOVE the idea of killing one mob, and then sitting for 5 minutes before I can kill another one. that's fun for a newbie! also, why can't i play on the same server as my friends without grinding gil for several days?" I didn't bother with 12. I am -still- trying to get into 13 but it seems to have suffered from the same disease as 10, and the fact that it keeps giving me new main characters every 20 minutes isn't doing much to endear itself to me. it's hard to get involved when you're presented with a new character, given vague hints about their personality and character motivation, and then they're gone (and back again!) in less time than a sitcom episode.
Final Fantasy 6 was a masterpiece, which is still the yardstick by which jrpgs are compared against, 2d or 3d. Final Fantasy 4 would have held that spot if not for 6. Final Fantasy 1 was and still is one of if not my favorite games of all time. I've bought it like 5 different times for 4 different systems.
What happened? Square's descent into "I don't remember how I did the excellence of my youth so I'm going to replace it with the pretty pretty 3d models!" makes even George Lucas look good.
I've wondered about this for years myself. A remade FF7, for PS3 and 360, with modern graphics, a few user interface tweaks and possibly a bit of bonus content on the side (like a new optional dungeon or something) would be an absolute gold-mine. Unfortunately, I remember some comments that came out of them last year, to the effect that it would simply be too expensive to remake FF7.
I'm not sure I can understand how this could possibly be. In terms of size and scale, the game isn't particularly different to other JRPGs. Lost Odyssey, which came out a few years ago now for the 360, had a perfectly acceptable level of current-gen graphics. Factor in that FF7's cutscenes are on the short side compared to those in... say... FF13 and it's hard to see how the price could truly be that prohibitive. I can only assume that S-E were thinking that if they were to remake FF7, they'd need to quadruple the length of all of the cutscenes, adding in a bunch of new Advent Children-style fight scenes and whatnot. That in itself illustrates a good chunk about why the company is going wrong.
8 looked so retarded I didn't even try it.
If you liked 7, you will like 8, except for perhaps the nostalgia factor you would likely have with 7 by now. Every game after that seems more than questionable to most of those that have played 7 or 8 though.
so you hate all post 7 FFs, but you still bought the majority of them? perhaps Square are getting mixed signals then, people bitching about your games but still buying them in droves doesnt exactly tell you that you screwed up.
Not trying to be an ass here, just pointing out that so long as people still buy their stuff, square thinks they're golden.
Apparently that trend seems to have shifted for FFXIV
my only real expierence with FF is crisis core on the PSP, which i liked, if not for the suddenly inbeatable bosses
People, what a bunch of bastards
in retrospec, 8 doesn't look as dumb as some of the ones after it, but at the time it looked like such a huge departure that I didn't have any interest in it, and never bothered to pick it up. not when I had competition like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II on the Dreamcast (It took me awhile to get a Playstation).
Well the last tomb raider was quite good and a good break from the 20th rehash of the same the same goes for the next tomb raider, there is a new deus ex in the line as well. Ah yes I would love to see another Thief title. But for me both series are not really the same without Warren Spector and Doug Church at the helm.
Timesplitters
yes fucking please! Bring me a new timesplitters and i will buy it outright, hell, if needed i will buy a new console to run it on. TS2 was pure unadulterd briliance, the most fun i've had multiplaying any FPS and TS:FP put in an awesome storyline too, not to mention a much more expanded multiplayer mode, the level editing was groundbreaking
People, what a bunch of bastards
Isn't that pretty much all they've been doing tons of already?
But they keep insisting on remaking crap like FF2j.
What they should probably do is something like
1) Remake Final Fantasy VII
2) ????
3) Profit!
People have been screaming and shouting for an FFVII remake for 10+ years. There are people who would sell their souls to Sony for a remake of that game. Yet they're absolutely adamant that it's never going to happen. There's a market here waiting to give them full high-end retail prices for a game that is already done and just needs a graphical revamp.. take the money!!
I think there are quite a few who wouldn't mind a remake of VI either.
It's all well and good saving an FFVII remake for a "special occasion" but that's never going to happen if S-E go bankrupt.
Either that or go back to making *new* FFs that don't suck. For that they'll probably need Sakaguchi back (preferably Uematsu too)
Sony is what has kept me from playing any of the new FF series. Why?
Initially the incredibly high cost of buying into the PS3. I can just about by a shitty used car for what they wanted for it when it was first released.
Then what happened? The price remained relatively high. This part is fairly normal - I typically wait for the price to drop a bit (and it has) and then start measuring out ways to justify such a purchase. But here's the thing - Sony's given me absolutely no reason to *invest* in their console. Particularly with their maneuver of removing OtherOS which was a major selling point for me. And hell, now the recent nonsense with them getting hacked AND losing critical customer data doesn't help one bit.
So let's take a look at the market now:
We've got the Wii - which has a few games I absolutely love. The Mario franchise is one that almost always tries to be innovative in some manner and defines new game styles (Mario Galaxy and Paper Mario are some examples that come to mind). Plus the ability to download and play SNES games on there is a big selling point as well (Super Mario RPG anyone?). However, there isn't much more for me beyond that unfortunately. One big con for me is the relatively small list of games that can be played over the network with friends. But the price is spot-on for what I feel it's worth all things considered.
Now, the Xbox 360: I'm not a huge Halo or teabagging fan but the Xbox 360 DOES have a shit-ton of games out - MANY of which are supported by the Live system. The price is a bit higher but I haven't seen Microsoft shaft their customers on the Xbox nearly as bad as we've seen Sony do. While the titles aren't my absolute faves that I've played so far - I feel confident I could find something I'd enjoy and could play with friends online.
For those reasons I'm considering heavily in investing in an Xbox 360. I think it'd make a good media player - from what I've read so far it supports a pretty robust set of features for that functionality (by all means correct me if I'm wrong). I think the game selection wont leave me hanging. And fuck, it's not Sony.
you shoulda made another Dragon Quest for the PS console. Dragon Quest Valley of the Cursed King was one of the greatest games ever.
Where does the signature go?
I felt that FF12 was pretty good - you might want to give that a try.
FF13 was a massive disappointment after 12.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It's all pure optimism that "this time, it'll be like the old days", combined with respect for previous work. It's like people who keep going to see anything lucas, whedon, or tarrantino put out.
Crisis core was ok. I played it for several hours but the incomprehensible square plot "it'll all make sense by hour 30, we swear. just sit there and be confused at who these people are and why they're doing what they're doing for now" kinda drove me off. And this is from a guy who loved Grandia xtreme, which had one of the thinnest rpg backstories of all time (because the gameplay was worth it).
I will say that I haven't paid full price for any FF post-7, at least.
Many people will not pay again and again and again for the same game. I bought them once, I personally am not going to buy them again.
Unless they are happy to exist simply as the shadow if their former self, they are going to have to make new games that people want to pay for.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Everyone talks about a FFVII remake (and with good reason, that's a huge cash cow waiting to be milked), but personally I would pay top dollar for a SoM remake that allowed me to play the co-op multiplayer feature over PSN.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
honestly all the FF games seem to look the same to me. i think they need new art direction and to focus on what made their old games classics to begin with. actually a more open hybrid game breeding games like elder scrolls/FO3 and the Final Fantasy franchise could be cool.
re-release couldn't hurt if they add value, and i'm not talking about just porting chrono trigger to the iPhone. i would totally buy a re-release of FF7 with updated graphics and gameplay for the Wii or the PC.
I'd rather just fire up my NES again then shell out more money.
The only time I'd buy a remake is if it got significant improvements, FF7 comes to mind as a game every nerd wants remade.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
VII isn't even that great. I 'enjoyed' it when I played it back in 97 but it wasn't mind-blowing like III/VI was. I think the SNES Final Fantasy III/VI was their crowning achievement for the series.
If a Final Fantasy game MUST be remade, I say do a word-for-word, scene-for-scene remake of Final Fantasy III/VI or, even better - Chrono Trigger. That was another amazing game. I've played through Trigger at least 10 times and I probably haven't even gotten all the endings. I'd also love a true sequel to Chrono Trigger, seeing as how Chrono Cross was just... awful.
Mileage varies, of course... I didn't like 8 because none of the characters were all that likable, but every other game they've done I've enjoyed. 12, my only real complaint was the whiny teen hero. 13 was good, pretty much what I expected, though it could have cut down on the opening cinematics and guided gameplay.
That's something they need to cut down on in general. They need to allow us to get IN to the game faster and actually start doing things. Cut down on the cutscenes, get us interacting with the characters asap. But other than that, I enjoyed the story and the look and feel of the game.
11, I played that at release, and I still play it today. They've put a lot of work into that game and they're continuing to revamp it. I'd say it's better than ever now.
14 was very pretty, but suffered with a clunky, laggy interface. I haven't played it enough to really get into the story, but so far it seems pretty engaging. I think they were pushed to release that game WAY too early, it's still in beta phase. They're listening to customer feedback, though, and I think they'll make good changes to it. In a few months, it will be a game worth playing.
So, my advice to SE:
Stop with the Whiny Teen Hero. Angst is good for characters only when they have a REASON to be angsty, and only when it moves the plot along
Cut down on the cutscenes. Those are the most expensive parts of the game anyway. Short, occasional cutscenes can enhance a game, but longer ones detract from gameplay by basically taking control away from the player. If I wanted to watch a CGI FF movie, I'd just pop in Advent Children again.
Do more to connect the player to the character. We need to empathize with the characters we play, we need to like them, and we need to feel like we're sharing the adventure.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I agree, the first one was a breakthrough. It wouldn't have mattered WHAT the character was; male, female, hermaphrodite, small blob of goo, the gameplay was just that good that it still would have been successful. Maybe not AS successful, but still... :P
And as for T&A... hah, polygonal uniboob, no thanks
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I think two simple things would go a long way towards recapturing the magic that Square game used to have:
1. More interactivity
2. A fucking editor
Actually, that would help other games too (I'm looking at you, Metal Gear Solid). The fan favorites all have these attributes -- there is no more of the game than there needs to be, and the player is actually allowed to play it. Up through FF7 Square did both of these well. Things like stopping a speeding train or doing exercises to keep warm in a blizzard required the player to push buttons in sequence. Cut scenes were only used for huge vistas or key events, which made them more exciting. Dialogue was short and (mostly) meaningful. Things got slowly worse after that, culminating in FF12, which had almost no world interaction (it's an MMO engine) and was so padded with side-quests that the main plot lost all urgency. I haven't played FF13, but I hear it's even worse.
If Square can make the jump back to good game design, I think there's hope for Final Fantasy. It's not like Metal Gear or Star Wars where the director's vision is inherently a bad game.
Visit the
I would agree about FF 12. I've been waiting for Fran and Balthier to make a comeback in their own skins ("The gods are toying with us") for a couple of years, preferably on PS3, and preferably with fewer schizophrenic cliches about "crystals."
FF 13 had some gorgeous girl warriors, but I've seen enough smouldering lesbian rage in 67 years to last a lifetime. Give me a scathingly funny neurotic like Lady Ga Ga any day.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
its becouse after 10-2 they tryed to chgange the ff games from the classic hits they have always been. from the turn based battle systems attempted to make them realtime all failers then 13 comes out and they took out freeroam. 14 is a mmo that was a bug ridden mess still tryed to change the game. and yes 10-2 was pre merger.
Croft inherited her billions, rewrote her family pedigree, trashed the manse and has been in a smouldering petulant rage ever since. I think she's miffed because Amanda is straight, so we'll never see the old Tomb Raider again.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
I just realized the subject should say are, not aren't.
And yes, I agree wholeheartedly with chrono trigger being remade/getting a sequel, though, didn't it get a DS remake?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Trigger got a re-release on the DS or Advance, I believe and it had a small bit of extry content to make it meld better with the terrible Chrono Cross, but it was just a re-release much like the PSX version. I'd like to see a true current-gen graphics version. There was actually an amateur remake out there but it was killed off by Square pretty quick. I'm pretty sure there are still some screenies of it out on the Intertubes.
After their latest RPG game did not do very well, then they have one last shot to make it up. If they made an RPG, a really good, innovative one, as their one final shot at making it again. It will be make or break, their final chance. Maybe make it an RPG set in a fantasy world. They could call it Final Fantasy since it could very possibly be there Final Fantasy.
The world is how you make it
...maybe they could stop releasing TERRIBLE GAMES?
I'm still waiting for a proper Chrono Trigger re-release/remake.
High res character sprites, environments in 3D using hand-drawn textures. Leave the original story as-is, but add a bunch of side quests, and some more cause/effect time travel events...
They do that while us original Chrono Trigger players are STILL ALIVE, and they just might make people forget about a couple-few years worth of TERRIBLE GODDAMN GAMES.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
nm
Apparently they got hacked too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13394968
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I'll be sure to look for them when I have the time.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I agree with you about 100% on FF12. I thought the story was good (though it certainly could have been better if they'd stuck with Basch as the protagonist) and it was pretty, and i liked having a relatively open world. However the combat bored me to tears. Rather, it bored me into stopping halfway(?) through the game when the story went on hiatus during the various fetch quest stuff and the gameplay was left trying to maintain my interest by itself.
I did eventually pick it up again and force myself through to the ending shortly before FF13 came out, and i'm glad i did for the sake of the story, but even FF13's combat system was better than FF12. At least in FF13 i had _something_ to do during combat, even if 95% of it was automated.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
They've been doing that for years. Just look at how many times two of their best games, Final Fantasy IV and VI, have been re-released or remade.
The big problem with Final Fantasy games getting worse with age, the way I see it, is that the series, and many classic turn based RPGs, didn't evolve enough where many other genres and series have. Twenty years ago when Final Fantasy had such a strong following despite tiny pixellated graphics, they had something other games didn't. In an age where points were what mattered and most games had but the simplest of plots, Final Fantasy had characters with personality and background (relatively speaking to other games at the very least), and there was drama. While the rest of the game was spamming "Fight" over and over and healing when necessary, there was a story with endearing characters traveling together and meshing in odd ways. Fast forward to the turn of the century and Final Fantasy still tries to make their games this way. However, the other games have grown up by now. Castlevania, Grand Theft Auto, even Metroid and Super Mario are fleshing in their characters and trying to create a story. Except these series were already actual games. The end result is that pretty much any game you pick up will attempt Final Fantasy's dramatics alongside actual gameplay. Now I'm sure some will argue that some people don't want to play games that require cat like reflexes or hold greater chances of failure, but the classic RPG engine doesn't necessarily have to evolve towards action. Strategy RPGs continue the turn based tradition of Fight/Magic/Item/etc but with added depth that keeps random encounters or grinding or whatever from being the monotonous chore that it usually winds up being. Final Fantasy Tactics went this route as a matter of fact. Now while I haven't played FFXIII word has it that they made it linear, took away from the town going experience, and I know that as far back as FFX the World Map stopped being a thing. That sounds to me like a step backwards from precisely the thing that gave FF its magic.
How about actually coming up with some new content instead of rehashing the same tired crap?