Square just a business?

[Treize]

I believe that Square Enix is just a company and does many things just to make a profit. There are several examples of them doing things just to make money. Look at the numerous remakes that they keep spitting out. Does Final Fantasy IV really need to be on the SNES, Playstation, GBA, DS, and PSP? (With the sequel on cell phones (in Japan) and the Wii) They also have come up with several half-baked sequels to games for fan service. I haven't read much on the dissidia sequel, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is quite similar to the first one with just minor enough differences to make it sell. <_<

Obviously, Square Enix is designing their games to make them more appealing to the masses. I don't really mind this to an extent because it is quite costly to produce a high quality RPG now-a-days, and if it doesn't sell well, the company would go out of business quite quickly. However, if it becomes too mainstream, I think it looses its originality and ruins it for more of the hardcore fans.

Also, I don't think that Square Enix should look at a forum such as this one. Unfortunately most of the sales don't really come from the hardcore fans. I'm sure most of us would love more of a classic Final Fantasy game, but in order to sell well, Square Enix probably has to keep more with the times. I would say that those games really aren't in as much demand anymore when more advanced and more flashy ways of doing things are conceivable of producing.

I think more of the truly hardcore fans that love earlier Final Fantasy games are out of luck. I know, at least for me, it's getting hard to follow a series when the last game I really loved was made nearly ten years ago... (Am I still on track? )

[Zargabaath]

I think I can easily summarize why people wanted Dissidia and want Duodecim for the PS3: graphics. Which is sad because graphics are not the most important feature & hardly ever. It does seem that a portion of the gaming community focus too much on graphics.

I'm assuming that you used a spontaneous example when you said, "if they release 3 games adding 2 characters..." because we can at least say that we will be getting more than 2 in Duodecim, a world map feature, & Assist mode so far. I would say one feature that should have been implemented in Duodecim was a better multiplayer system besides Ad-hoc, but I see this geared more towards their Japanese consumers. Tightly packed country which increases odds of coming across another player.

From the news articles I've read about Final Fantasy XIII I would say that at least that game was geared more so for the masses - in the west - than previous FFs though the story and characters they used are not as appealing to the west. We can never be sure but I like to believe that they don't purposively try to make a crappy game; sure some of their design choices can be odd, interesting, or bad. Which is why I would like some information from the development team to get their take on why.

Forums are a place to get some consumer feedback, but forums are of a small sample size - well at least I would say a small sample size. A thousand member survey tends to average. On the other hand I would say that the director & dev. team should set out to create what they envisioned and not comprise or try to limit any comprise from their higher-ups and fanbase.

Trieze, I know what you mean about Final Fantasy IV; Final Fantasy V needs to be updated on the PSP.

No for the PS3!! We must have the graphics!!!!!!!! Though a PS3 quality Gilgamesh would be good.

[Meier Link]

I think I can easily summarize why people wanted Dissidia and want Duodecim for the PS3: graphics. Which is sad because graphics are not the most important feature & hardly ever. It does seem that a portion of the gaming community focus too much on graphics.

Or it could be the fact that some of us do not own a PSP and have no intentions of buying one and just want to be able to play a ported title on the PS3. Thats just me though. Already owning one Sony product that is superb makes it kind of hard to dish out the money for a PSP when there is only 3-4 titles that I want to actually play.

Back on topic. Square is DEAD. That is a simple fact. Square died the day the merger went through with Enix. Hence the move over from Squaresoft to SquareEnix.

Square as most of us knows it has been dead for around 10 years now.

Now on to being really on topic; SE is definantly a company now. Now doubts about it. SE is about profit.

Take XIV for example, they released a game before fully beta testing it and even in the beta that they put out they didn't listen to the negative responses.

FFVII DoC: could of been epic if they had not worried about trying to make a profit and more on game play, less linear story line and over all replayability.

In the end they chose to pump out something that would be profitable knowing the FFAC was coming up and trying to get new and old players of VII pumped about AC.

Then again, I can flip the coin and call us sheep. We linger on the fact that we hope that the next release will be the next epic game like some of the games of yore.

MQ had more potential then XIII, there I said it. Sad thing is I picked up XIII and only have 6 hours logged to XIII and I can comfortably say that. As sad as that seems.