• Final Fantasy Type-0: The Missing Pillar of Fabula Nova Crystallis

    by
    Wolf Kanno
    Published on 04-11-2014 07:01 AM
    6 Comments Comments
    Final Fantasy Type-0
    The Missing Pillar of Fabula Nova Crystallis



    Originally announced at E3 in 2006 for mobile phone devices and finally released on the PlayStation Portable October 27th 2011 in Japan, Final Fantasy Type-0 has had one very rocky road from its conception to its eventual phoenix-like birth. The game sold very well, selling nearly the same amount of units in its first four months that major PSP hit Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII had sold in its first year in Japan. As early as January 2012, the game was well on its way to hitting the one million unit mark. Despite this success, the game has never made a voyage beyond its homeland of Japan marking it as one of the few Final Fantasy games to never reach the West.

    This is a huge disappointment because the game has received strong reviews from both Japanese Final Fantasy fans and importers whom both consider the game to be ambitious and one of the stronger entries in the Fabula Nova Crystallis franchise. While Type-0 director Hajima Tabata has shown strong interest in releasing Type-0 in the West and despite the game having become popular enough to warrant several spin-offs including a new mobile game due this spring, Square-Enix has made little effort to even talk about a Western release of Type-0. This eventually led to an online fan petition called Operation Suzaku, which was created in the same vein as the somewhat successful Operation Rainfall campaign of a few years back to get the game a proper release in the West.

    There may be many factors hampering the game’s ability to see release. Probably the most notable issue was simply the game’s timing. It was released both in the waning years of the PlayStation Portables life cycle and during the fervor of the new PlayStation Vita’s launch, making the game completely lost in the media circus around the new system’s launch.

    This leads to the other issue that directly affects the Western release: the strange stigma that has hounded the handheld market since the original Nintendo Gameboy. Western gamers seem to be very skeptical of a handheld system ability to deliver a “full console experience” and thus handhelds tend to have a second class status among the Western gaming community. This is usually noticeable by sales trends where consoles tend to sell better in the West (including PAL regions) than handhelds, whereas the reverse is usually the true with Japan. For instance the PlayStation 3 has sold over 9 million units in Japan compared to the U.S.’s 28 million and change. On the other hand, the PlayStation Portable sold over 19 million units in Japan whereas the system only sold a little over 21 million in the U.S., despite being available longer than the PS3.

    One other issue stemming from the game’s timing also deals with SE being at a financial and career low point: at the time of the game’s release, SE was still trying to recover from the disaster that had been Final Fantasy XIV, which had been released the previous year and was still bleeding money from the company. Final Fantasy XIII and then-announced sequel were already divisive titles in the West, but many felt that XIV had been of a far greater stain on the series, to the point where then-Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada; openly apologized about the quality of the game and admitted that it had hurt the series reputation. The financial loss and the scramble to fix the game caused a huge financial burden on the company that saw the delay or cancellation of several projects within the company.

    While Type-0 may have been slated for an eventual Western release, the delay could have easily pushed prospects far behind what was eventually the end of its life cycle for the PSP. It took almost a year for Western news magazines to ask about Type-0’s localization and no one at SE seemed to know if such a project had ever been green-lighted. The only known info of a possible localization came from a comment by the staff in the Japanese-only Ultimania saying they were working on a Western release.

    Another issue with Type-0 may also be the fact that this game had the least amount of interest in the West of the three initial titles of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project. This could largely be due to the fact that when the game was originally announced, it was for mobile phones a small market in the West at the time caused a lost in interest. Even worse was that the initial promo simply showed the character Ace, who uses playing cards as a weapon made some news organizations wrongfully suspect the game would be a card game which were very popular on mobile devices in Japan at the time.

    These factors would have killed most interest at that point, but disappearing off the news map with Versus XIII also didn’t help. Eventually the game was moved to the PlayStation Portable and according to Hajime Tabata, the game was completely reimagined to the point where the team chose to change the game’s title from XIII~Agito to a non-numbered entry called Type-0 in order to distance itself from the original XIII project and show the game as its own standalone title.

    All of these points are simply conjecture and until we hear from SE we may never know what kept this title as Japan-only. All we know is that it may be a crying shame as Type-0 features many of the elements that fans have been clamoring for a while such as a return of an old-school-style world map, chocobo breeding, a darker story dealing with the horrors of war and actually showcasing blood and dying, an action RPG battle system, and a cast of characters that are genuinely likable. Hopefully fan efforts like Operation Suzaku can convince Square-Enix not to let this game become another Final Fantasy III and be lost to the rest of the world for a long time before eventually getting released. Until then, check out the game’s intro and hope.


    This article was originally published in forum thread: Final Fantasy Type-0: The Missing Pillar of Fabula Nova Crystallis started by Wolf Kanno View original post
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    2. Final Fantasy Series,
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    Comments 6 Comments
    1. Skyblade's Avatar
      Skyblade - 04-11-2014, 12:04 AM
      I hate to break it to you, Wolf, but you're behind the times. We already know the fate of the Western release. We had a statement by one of the localizers who described that most of the localization had already been done when the project was scrapped. One of Aulayna's articles also mentions a statement by the game director making the same statement. It also mentions his interest in bringing Type-0 to the West in some form when Agito is released, both for the fans and so that the full experience will be available for Agito.

      Hopefully the company's new insight into the market that exists for JRPGs will help convince Square to follow through on this.

      Also, I think you're wrong to say that it is "one of" the best things to come out of the Fabula Nova Crystalis project. It is THE best thing to come out of it. FFXV is not yet out, and even if it were, I'd always been more interested in Type-0 anyway (and after playing it, I can say it sets a high bar for FFXV).
    1. Freya's Avatar
      Freya - 04-11-2014, 07:01 AM
      Actually, recently Kitase and Toriyama read over fan comments and questions about localization and replied to USgamer commenting ON localizations.

      Quote Originally Posted by Yoshinori Kitase View Post
      First, I’m surprised that you (the readers) know the Square Enix games very well (perhaps even more than we do!). Your analysis, which included not only information on the localization quality but the specific names of the people who worked on the translation, was extremely valuable. Sometimes we get fixated on the sales and review scores for other internal titles, so the feedback was especially helpful. Nonetheless, I was reminded once again that one of the best ways to improve the quality is to reflect on our past success within the company. I’m also very glad to hear that the overall localization quality of our titles has generally improved.
      This was two days ago. So they have recently addressed localization, not exactly about Type-0 but still.

      They get in these worlds, these bubbles, and then are shocked when it's popped. From my own personal experience when I met the two of them at the Lightning Returns PR event last year in San Francisco, they were shocked when asked what they'd change to reflect older fans opinions since in general many didn't like Lightning. They were surprised and instead of generic questions and answers, he was shocked and then had to think about it. After that, we saw some more changes and tie ins with older games, such as the Locke outfit and the Yuna outfit. Now it wasn't exactly what we wanted but our comment got through some what.

      So don't discount the fans, especially a reach out like this with USgamer. As my PR rep explained to me was that Square Enix EU and US care more about fansites and whatnot, but Japan, not so much. They probably don't have the direct interaction with them over there as we do with western developers, here. I wouldn't be surprised if this pushes it out.

      I'm still hoping for Type-0 and it is possible it can be released.
    1. Wolf Kanno's Avatar
      Wolf Kanno - 04-12-2014, 04:04 AM
      Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
      I hate to break it to you, Wolf, but you're behind the times. We already know the fate of the Western release. We had a statement by one of the localizers who described that most of the localization had already been done when the project was scrapped. One of Aulayna's articles also mentions a statement by the game director making the same statement. It also mentions his interest in bringing Type-0 to the West in some form when Agito is released, both for the fans and so that the full experience will be available for Agito.

      Hopefully the company's new insight into the market that exists for JRPGs will help convince Square to follow through on this.
      Well first off I wrote this awhile ago and never saw Aulayna's article cause I wasn't here.

      Second, I would say it is still relevant to really look at all the issues this game ran into and why we got screwed out of it. I also feel that it's not really over either. I mean we may never see the PSP release but considering the Vita needs some love and the director has mentioned he wouldn't mind porting it over, there is still a chance we may see it before a decade comes and goes and it's released in the FNC HD Collection.

      Also, I think you're wrong to say that it is "one of" the best things to come out of the Fabula Nova Crystalis project. It is THE best thing to come out of it. FFXV is not yet out, and even if it were, I'd always been more interested in Type-0 anyway (and after playing it, I can say it sets a high bar for FFXV).
      I am simply trying to keep my bias away cause it's not as appealing. I personally can't wait to bury the XIII trilogy in the annals of history but considering Versus/XV is still on the horizon and I can't say one way or the other how it will turn out, I feel it would be better not to make a very decisive declaration.
    1. Mercen-X's Avatar
      Mercen-X - 04-14-2014, 02:27 AM
      I think you got your numbers reversed Wolf. It makes no sense to say "Japan sold over 19 million units whereas U.S. sold only a little over 21 million"... you see what I mean?
    1. Bolivar's Avatar
      Bolivar - 04-14-2014, 04:55 AM
      The PSP absolutely dominated the Japanese market in the latter years of its life, consistently topping the weekly hardware charts for a good stretch of time. Publishers took note and began releasing an impressive slew of swan song titles that rank among my favorite handheld games ever. Unfortunately, this was the same time the system faded from the West, partially due to its notorious levels piracy and homebrew. Those games never enjoyed the same success here as they did in Japan and the localization pipeline accordingly dried up. While there were a few isolated campaigns to bring a few of those titles over, they never teamed up for a cohesive movement like Operation Rainfall. It's a shame, because a lot of those JRPGs were much more deserving of one than the Wii games were.

      There is a glimmer of hope for Type-0 and the others in that Sony has an internal team headed by Gio Corsi and Shahid Kamal dedicated to funding games on Vita that would otherwise not make it to the platform. They did have a Twitter campaign for #JRPGVita, where they surveyed fans for what they would like to see localized/ported and confirmed that they have made progress in the effort, with announcements forthcoming.

      If anyone is interested in bringing over games like these I suggest reaching out to those guys on Twitter as they are very approachable and interact with fans quite a bit.
    1. Wolf Kanno's Avatar
      Wolf Kanno - 04-14-2014, 05:51 AM
      Quote Originally Posted by Mercen-X View Post
      I think you got your numbers reversed Wolf. It makes no sense to say "Japan sold over 19 million units whereas U.S. sold only a little over 21 million"... you see what I mean?
      I know it looks weird but this has to do with a numbers game. The population of Japan is a little over 120 million according to some 2010 data, the U.S. on the other hand is about 314 million people, so Japan's population is almost a third of the U.S. population. So in Japan about 1/6th (very rough guesstimate) of the population picked up the game, whereas in the U.S. it's roughly 15%. If you look at sales data of video games, normally the U.S. sales figures are about twice as high as Japans if not larger but this has more to do with population numbers. Funny enough, our sales number for FF titles has been in decline since FFX, with Japan often beating or having roughly the same sales numbers as the U.S./PAL regions.

      Basically my point is kind of similar to the Eidos sales debacle a year or two ago where the sales numbers look incredible, but these games were expected to sell significantly higher and were considered commercial flops despite high praise. It's just the usual BS of marketing where they expect higher numbers than what they got despite getting pretty good numbers. I'm not trying to devalue 21 million units sold, I'm just saying that from the companies perspective, they were hoping for better.

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