Square Enix CEO feels Final Fantasy 14 'greatly damaged' brand

@Acosta02

In before I usually and always said: Yoichi Wada needs to get fired.

@Acosta02 Do they forget XI..
you could press a to attack & have a toilet break, and still be back before it animated

@Acosta02
Are you sure that ridiculous delays and shoddy final product releases weren't to blame...? Especially when numerous developers/publishers released games of equal quality in much less time...

@JohnFordColey FFX-2 was fanservice done right. It expanded an existing and beloved game world to tell a story of what happened after. It took a world centered entirely around the concept of death, failure and constant fear and took it to a new place in its life cycle where it had a chance to thrive and had nothing to worry about. It showed us towns of depressed, dying people living under near constant threat from an incredible destructiv evil, finally able to live their lives happily, to the point where that's almost all they did.

It explored non-linear gameplay structure (a Chapter system where you can flip to whichever pages you want whenever you want) and has what is generally regarded as the absolute best battle system of any of the final fantasy titles.

Did it go overboard with literal fanservice? Maybe. But was it a game made by an uncaring money-grubbing team cashing in on the success of FFX? Absolutely not. It was a lovingly crafted thorough experience that brought a lot of great things to the table, and best of all (if you played the game well enough and read all those pages I mentioned) reunited Yuna with Tidus, and did it well within accepted canon (Tidus' return was prophesized by the Fayth in FFX, who mentioned that he would disappear and also that he would return, although you had to go talk to them yourself to find that out, and the general idea is that the Fayth took him away as intended to set Yuna off on her journey that would save Spira a second time, intending the entire time to give him back to her)

"But it has girls playing dress up!!!!"

@FuzzyPierce

FFX-2 can be summed up as:

Good soundtrack.
Decent battle system, though a bit repetitive and sometimes a grind-fest.
Shitty story, I mean, immensely shitty story. Crapped all over X's story.
Fan service.

@JohnFordColey

I could not agree with you more, just a shameless cash in, FFX was my favourite PS2 game, so you can imagine how excited i was to play X-2!
I just kinda sat there for a few hours trying to play it thinking 'wtf...'
It's literally FF for girls... And I don't mean that in detriment to women I mean that's how they think girls want FF or something...

@The Joy of Painting w Bob Ross Not one thing in FFX-2 contradicts a thing from FFX. All it does is expand. It doesn't change anything that happened in FFX, either.

For example, it makes it clear "who" Tidus was. Tidus was a dream of the fatyh, a memory of someone from zanarkand, and FFX-2 makes it clear that he was a muddled memory of Shuyin.

@JohnFordColey

What can I do for you?! I can't hear you!

@FuzzyPierce I like FFX-2. I didn't realize how widespread the internet disliked it until years later. There was something fun and light-hearted about X-2 that was a nice change of pace from other FFs. One of my friends refused to play it because of the dress spheres and the slang, but I thought that was his loss for not giving it a chance.

I didn't really mind the fanservice or whatever. The one thing I really hated about X-2 was that EVERYTHING was recycled from X. Every single area, enemy, and boss. There was almost NOTHING new.

That is, except for that sneaky crap they pulled at the beginning that seemed to promise an expanded world, with the starting area, a new mountain temple that suddenly revealed itself from within the clouds or something. There were some new enemies there, and a new boss. Then the rest of the game, nothing.

It should've been a budget game considering they barely had to create any new content.



That aside, yeah, FFXIII damaged the brand worse than XIV. It's true regardless of sarcasm. But X damaged it worse yet, because it was the first game that had a linear, limited game world, distracting people from that fact with cheesy voice acted jpop idols.

@JohnFordColey

I don't think one game destroy the brand name. It is a string of event that lead to this. Since the departure of Sakaguchi and the fusion of Square Soft and Enix, FF is on a roller coaster ride. No game since FF10 was unanimously praise.

On a side note, I love and enjoy FF13 and the majority of my friend too.

@JohnFordColey I would say X did it.

A lot of fanboys will cry foul just because it was their first FF but really, anyone who had played the series up to that realize that's when it jumped the shark.

Something indeed felt wrong about VIII but IX did redeem the PSone trilogy even though we were already waist deep in over-exposition, FMV and tiring (long, unnecessary, frustrating) battle animations.

@FuzzyPierce sorry fuzzy... ffx-2 in the grand scheme of things sucked.

@(Unverified)

YES. Thank you.

FFX is like Deus Ex: Invisible War. If it was your first installment you might think the game was any good... unless you played any of the other games first. But those people would still be blind to that fact for some reason.

@bm111

Nah FF7 is my favourite but it doesn't stop me loving X.
X-2 though... I don't even count it as a real FF game.

@OrangeGamer

Wait, huh?

It sold over a million units in Japan day one (1.5 million its first week). It sold over a million units the first week in North America (it broke the sales record for the entire franchise in the first week btw). It's sold near 7 million units to date, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the #4 most wanted game in Japan behind FF Type 0, DQX and Persona 4: The Golden (according to Famitsu)

I'll concede the last one - as that's debatable public opinion, but it seems that the only thing broken here is your logic. It's fine that you didn't like it (if that's the case), but keep the negativity to your own head mm'kay?

I personally can't wait for this one - and I hope the popularity will probe SE into bringing over Type-0 too.

@Kagiroi
You can't argue that the first week's sales are indicative of any kind of love for the game. I ended up hating myself for purchasing FF13 over Yakuza 3.

But yes, there are still fans out there. Only you can't gauge them on week one sales any more than you can the initial box office pull of The Phantom Menace.

So because the day one sales were high it couldnt have damaged the brand? How does that work?

Where were you when all those day one purchasers flooded the internet with complaints?

People have to play a game to have a bad opinion of it. The more people that play a bad game the worse its reputation becomes.

@RickGhastly

I wasn't arguing that the game didn't have its faults. I'm arguing that he stated that the game damaged the brand. How so? It's sold generally as good as every other game, and the people want the sequel. So I'm wondering if it's true - or he's basing his opinion on the relatively few vocal reviews of the game?

From the statements given - I'm assuming 'damaged' means an all-inclusive diminishing of a brands credibility, popularity or design. In order to prove that - you'd have to provide evidence that this game was generally disliked by a majority of the people. This isn't true, so his statement isn't true. That's all I'm trying to clarify.

Oh - and you must have missed my statement that it's sold *near 7 million copies to date* So, if you think about it, it's sold *4 million more past the first week* which means...people still bought it over time. If this game so damaged the brand, sales would have come to a halt, don't you think?

Fact is, people will still buy a game even if the reviews aren't a shining masterpiece, and they might even like it despite someone else's opinion. Shocking, isn't it?

@Kagiroi

The game sold well and honestly I think that hurt the franchise more than if it bombed. Hopes were really high for the first Final Fantasy on this generation of consoles and whether you thought the game was good or not, many walked away disappointed. I think a lot fewer people will buy FFXIII-2, especially in America.

On FFXIV though, usually if a company has a screw up as large as this, the CEO is ousted. The game still is nowhere near where it needs to be(yes, I still play once in a while) even with all the changes. It's going to be another 6-8 months at least before it even gets near competing with any other MMO.

@Kagiroi

So you're saying that it's a good thing that Square-Enix pissed of 7 million people, because they gave Square money?

@Esposch

Show me evidence to 7 million pissed off people, and I'll recant my statement.

@OrangeGamer I think that they should have seperate the 2 online games from the main FF games.

The fact that they tied in 2 MMORPG to their main series and did the same with DQ10 may potentially lead to more harm than good to the series.

Fact is, most of the fans will never played it. I am not an MMORPG fans and I am sure a lot of the players will only play the single player main game.

Add to the fact that FF14 really got destroyed by the critic as the only FF main game to be rated below 80% at around 50%...that pretty bad.

As for FF13, review average is 83%, a lot of people including me love it, a lot did not love it, but it is no where as disastrous as FF14.

And people are anticipating FF13-2 in Japan, so that is a good sign.
DQ10, been an MMORPG, that is not a good sign...

@RickGhastly Then what is the best way to jauge fans of the love for one game?

I have the impression a lot of gamer didn't like FF8 from internet forum, yet me and all my friends love it. Same goes for FF13.

Furthermore, cosplayer love to cosplay FF8 and FF13 characters. Lightning is a fan favorite, she is one of my favorite character and I love the other character too.

Want to replay FF13 but on 360 this time to see the difference, but there is too many good game out now so not planning to do it soon and by the time I might play it again, FF13-2 will be out.

@singleandlovinit How can one be certain that ALL the people who bought the game actually...hate it and not love it?

Not EVERYONE who play and enjoy/hate the game will go and spend their time voicing their hate for one game.

I think I was more concerned about enjoying the game and finishing it in one month spending 100 hours than going in on the internet to rant about how much i love the game.

IMO I always felt everyone who check and comment on gaming forum/blog are more mega fanboy and haters than anything.

Because if the people that flame FF13 so much and it should be 7 millions of them, why the heck they didn't pour their love and buy 7millions copies of Valkyria Chronicles, Muramasa Demon Blade, Lost Odyssey (who barely got 1 millions worldwide sales and is unknown to a lot of fans, i wonder if they even cosplay them), Tales of Vesperia, etc.

@Kagiroi I agree that we can't quantify the numbers of haters nor do we have concrete evidence of the number of people loving the series.

Having said that, sales was good, no doubt. Average meta and gamerankings reviews is around 83% which is great.

The same can't be said bout FF14 with about 50%, the worse rated main series game. i don't even recall seeing a FF game since FF4 been lower than 80%, that is unthinkable!

@Kagiroi I contributed microscopically to those sales numbers because FFXIII was the first current-gen FF game. It was supposed to be an epic adventure that redefined JRPG's, but sadly I it wasn't. The game was not worthy of the FF name and after such a long wait that really sucked! We didn't get to play a great game and Square trashed the brands reputation. Add to that the surreal failure of FFXIV and now I won't even think about buying FFXIII-2 until the afterthoughts are published.

@Kagiroi you are forgetting its multiplatform... 7 mill isnt as impressive across 2 platforms

@MizuInu 83% is not great for FF. 83% is great for a low budget studio's first try. For probably the most expensive game to ever come out of Japan 83% is an absolute disaster.

Know what else sold well and got an 84% metascore? Resident Evil 5. Know who lost their job after the reviews came in? Resident Evil 5's producer.

@Umbassa Investors won't let him admit that until they've released XIII-2.

@Umbassa
ff13 drew flak, but at least was playable as a game. FF14 was an alpha they charged full price for.

@Umbassa Wait, huh?

It sold over a million units in Japan day one (1.5 million its first week). It sold over a million units the first week in North America (it broke the sales record for the entire franchise in the first week btw). It's sold near 7 million units to date, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the #4 most wanted game in Japan behind FF Type 0, DQX and Persona 4: The Golden (according to Famitsu)

@Epoque I think you mean Versus 13.

@Vuvuzelas Duke Nukem Forever sold a lot of copies too.

Im sure most FF fans dont consider the online games anymore a real FF than Crystal Chronicles and all those spinoffs. They could care less how bad the online games are. Maybe 14 ruined Squares chances of ever having a successful MMORPG but it sure as hell didnt do anything to the FF brand.

FF13 on the other hand demolished the FF brand as that was a "real" FF. I think Square has one more chance to make a good FF. People will give this next FF a chance in hopes that theyve learned from their mistakes but if they dont deliver then the future of FF is screwed. I cant think of a series that has survived after 2 consecutive flops.

@Faceless Troll Yeah and had a 30 point lower average score, what's your point?

@Vuvuzelas That if you think sales actually mean the game was good you're probably an idiot.

@Faceless Troll Incidentally Modern Warfare usually manages to score a pretty high rating every year.

@Faceless Troll

It's less that sales indicate whether a game is good, it's more of an indicator that people don't care and will buy the game anyway. Reviewers are generally overrated anyway, as is a singular persons' opinion.

@Umbassa

Agreed - talking about one tiresome load of boredom.

@EffinNinja What he said. Only something like that would bring me back to the brand.

@Cafecito That's not bringing you back to the brand, that's bringing you back to 1997