STOP THE F&%@ING PRESSES!
You may want to sit down because I am about to blow your F&%@ING mind.Are you sat down?
Yoichi Wada, the president and CEO of Square Enix announced today that... You're not going to believe this... That SE takes too long to make new games.
I realize you are no doubt stunned by this announcement. I will give you a few moments to try and resolve this unbelievable news.
In other news, the president and CEO of Take Two announced that Duke Nukem is taking a little while to be released.
SE saying they take too long to produce games is like finding out water is wet.
This is not news.
Apparently, the people upstairs (and by upstairs, I mean three floors up and 5133 miles to the left) thought that this would be a stunning revelation for Square Enix fans.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily true or untrue, but Final Fantasy XIII was originally shown in 2006.
Two thousand and six.
Currently, it is 2009.
Carry the two... Find the remainder... Calculate the integral...
Yeah, that's three years for one game.
Now, I'm sure this is going to be one hell of a game. If the bajillion screenshots and previews have anything to say, it's going to make every other game look like someone threw up on your television.
But three years?
Seriously?
Three years is a friggin' eternity in today's world. We're used to instant gratification, instant satisfaction.
I wouldn't have to wait three years for a kidney.
I could have adopted TWO children from China in three years.
As amazing as the game will be, I don't think that in any way justifies waiting three years between games.
Yes, yes. I know they released games in between.
Still doesn't mean three years makes sense.
Now, before you start saying things like "good things take time" and "they're focusing on producing a superior product" or "shut up, [GM]Dave, you over critical bastard", let's remember that I'm on your side here.
I'm not saying they should start popping out Final Fantasy shovelware every other month. The brand obviously deserves the respect of producing highest quality titles.
The Crystal Chronicles series notwithstanding.
But there has to be some happy medium between high quality and excruciating development time.
I would settle for a few jaggies if we could shave a year or so off the schedule.
Hell, stop making every character look their clothes were chosen by blind clowns. That would HAVE to save some time.
"Needs more buckles. Start over."
Honestly, if there's anything worthwhile in them admitting that they take too long, it's that we finally know that they have noticed it, too.
It's not just us.
Maybe we'll start seeing new FF games more than every three years.
Yeah... I'll just be over here holding my breath.
posted by Goblin Smithy @ 6:12 PM
17 Comments:
SE may take too long between releases but your faithful readers are on top of the FPs!
I'm not sure how I feel about the gaps between major FF releases... I kinda like thinking of FF drops like good concert tours.
Anyway, no matter how FFXIII turns out I'm sure it'll be a major seller.
What a revelation indeed. Honestly it didn't used to be so bad, 2 years in between FF's or so and throw in a DragonQuest and so forth. However since 2006 waiting for an SE has been a royal pain.
Looking forwards to a better and quicker schedule, but not too quick I don't want craptastic Square games either.
While 3 years does seem like a long time... it is a long time. But you know what? Final Fantasy is almost always a high quality product that is AWESOME to play. But if they start producing a final Fantasy (insert number here) every year-year+1/2 or so, next thing you know we'll be on Final Fantasy 218 in 7 years (exageration, or course).
I'm not saying they SHOULDN'T try to speed up the production, but each FF tends to be very unique to one another, and making too many too fast will most likely hurt their creativity and each games uniqueness and sheer girth. I dont want to see the day where I pay 60bucks, pop in the new FF, play for 5 mins, watch a 3 minute cutscene, and the game is done. That would be... I can't think of a word witty enough to describe how much that would suck.
Of course, if XIII turns out to be crap after ~3 years, then that will suck even harder. I wait, I yearn, I drool for awesome games. I skip over crap.
SquareEnix and Blizzard are my favourite game companies, as they are willing to spend more time to ensure the quality of their game, it is not good for financial growth, but I just love their spirits.
And no, world of warcraft is not one of the great games they made (just a 'good' game), and FF12 storyline sucks (but man, I am going to get one of those airships one day, the game is beautiful).. But I am willing to wait for whatever game they are going to release, I hope I can live long enough till the release of FFC (100th)
And by the way, from how fast EA can come out a game, I do not like EA at all, most of the EA games are tasted like hollywood action movies.
I don't mind the wait so much as why we wait in < insert any place but Japan >. When I am waiting on Final Fantasy because they are filling the game with extra chars, story bits, npcs with information that will actually lead me somewhere useful - these are good reasons to wait.
When I am waiting because they, at the 11th hour, decide to make the game multi-platform for Microsoft to make extra money... that's not really a good reason in my opinion.
Shortened: If I'm waiting, it should be for content, not monetary expansion of selling platform thought up after the creation.
Sometimes I feel SE is going the way of EA - in another words "all about money".
X-2... I will just pretend it was never created.
FF12, couldn't finish it, too boring.
Story wasn't engaging, gameplay was just '/facepalm'. If I wanted grindly gameplay I would have just fired up WoW.
And the license board was just full of fail. Half the @#$%ing time you couldn't see where you were going on it!!!!
Throw in the remakes/re-release of their old stuff...
Money makes the world go round. /sigh
Hey FFXII was great, its the first game where you could go to sleep while your characters level up all by themselves (with the right gambit combo) :P
But tbh I don't care how long I wait if the waiting time improves the game in the end.
well, there -was- a time when their flagship turnaround was a year and a half, and their old record was about a year between 8 and 9.
I guess now that they can't simply "hide" the fact that some of their projects are actually mostly outsourced (like anything tri-Ace), the delay feels worse than usual and they feel the need to admit it.
S-E. You've got over 100 programmers alone! Just how many teams do you -have-?
I have to agree with dave...
but i do think that part of the reason it takes too long is because they don't focus on one game at a time.
"Final Fantasy XIII is coming out in 2006!!"
3 years later they've released 3 new games NOT titled "Final Fantasy"
However, Star Ocean 4 is AWESOME. <3
Yeah FFX-2 was a crime against the players. And FFXII ... was like the recruitment game for FFXI ... do this - but with people.
If the coming XIII is not up to par I'm going to seriously lose faith in the series and that would be a tragic thing as I am pretty much utterly devoted to Final Fantasy, so if it takes longer to get it right, I am ok with that. If they still get it wrong... I don't know, I guess we all need to riot.
FFX-2 wasn't bad, at least not the battle system.
So, [GM]Dave, which Final Fantasy, other than 11, is your favorite?
Darkfall took 8 years, still isn't finished, and won't have 80% of the mechanics the fans were originally promised. Would gladly trade aventurine for SE any day. I don't mind long development cycles, just make sure you're confident with a hard release date before you start dropping teaser information, you know?
Game companies these days have no marketing hype skills at all.
Darkfall is by a rather small company. They just don't have the resources or the money to go on a huge marketing campaign or to push out a product out the door in 5 years.
My point is companies shouldn't start releasing info and hyping a game so long before they're ready to release that the information flow becomes a trickle and people lose interest after a long way before it comes to market. Aventurine drummed interest up for DF about 2 years too early. Look at what bioware's doing with tor, slow info release, that'll slowly build up as it gets closer to release date, that's the way it should be done. Don't push your major marketing long before it's ready. Aventurine's initial hype made sense, small company, drum up interest to attract investors, but a few years later, they pushed with warcry interviews and the game was still a good way off, the public interest came too early.
FFS! SE takes too long to produce a game? Did someone wake up from a Dev brainstorming (Read: BS) session and come up with an epiphany?
Dev: Hey guys you know what? We take a long F#$%^NG time to produce our games.
I love SE to death dont get me wrong. The FF series is always bound to produce something amazing.... with exception IMO that FF12 trash.
Anyway lets see some KH3 Woot Woot!
I guess if you could do it faster you have a right to talk. As you don't, shut it. Its really interesting how people who can't do something tend to snark at the people who are doing it.
well that was a disappointing wait
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