I found a way to help with the waiting for Final Fantasy XIII
I've planned to buy a Playstation 3 when Final Fantasy XIII comes out. Instead of being in a situation where I'm annoyed at waiting another year and a half for Final Fantasy XIII I found something to help out with this wait. I know of the PS 3 and Xbox 360 Square Enix rpg The Last Remnant, which will be out this year. I'm hoping now that the PS 3 version will include a playable demo of Final Fantasy XIII. If that's the case then I will be waiting until this Fall to get a Playstation 3 and get The Last Remnant, and play a demo of Final Fantasy XIII!
This new hope of mine helps out with the wait. I hope The Last Remnant is going to be good. I thought it would be out this Spring though, oh well.
What do you think?
Why is Final Fantasy XIII taking so long to come out?
This is a list of the original Japanese and North American release dates for all the games developed by the main Final Fantasy team. I listed how many months each game took in development for it's Japanese release also.
Code:
Final Fantasy I 12-18-87(n/a) 7-12-90
Final Fantasy II 12-17-88(12m)
Final Fantasy III 4-27-90(16m)
Final Fantasy IV 7-19-91(15m) 11-23-91
Final Fantasy V 12-6-92(17m)
Final Fantasy VI 4-2-94(16m) 10-11-94
Final Fantasy VII 1-31-97(31m) 9-7-97
Final Fantasy VIII 2-11-99(25m) 9-7-99
Final Fantasy X 7-19-01(29m) 12-20-01
Final Fantasy X-2 3-13-03(20m) 11-18-03
Final Fantasy XIII n/a(61m so far) n/a
Final Fantasy IX 7-7-00 11-14-00
Final Fantasy XI 5-16-02 10-28-03
Final Fantasy XII 3-16-06 10-31-06
Final Fantasy V. XIII Spring 10? Fall 10?
Notice how IX, XI, XII, and Versus XIII are listed in a seperate section. FF IX is made by a partially different team. FF IX has the same people working on Producer, Game Designer, and Composer as FF VIII. FF IX has different people working on Director, Character Designer, Scenario Writer, and Art Director than FF VIII. FF IX was originally not planned to be part of the main FF series. Also, FF XI is not developed by the main FF team. The team that worked on Xenogears and Chrono Cross split up after Chrono Cross. Some went to Monolith Soft and made Xenosaga 1-3 and some stayed with Square Enix and worked on FF XI and it's expansion packs and the upcoming "Rapture" mmorpg. FF XII is not by the main FF team, it's made by the Yasumi Matsuno team. This FF XII team made Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII, then since then we don't know where most of the team is at now. Final Fantasy Versus XIII is the same team from Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2.
Ok, now let's get back to the issue of the length of time it's taking for FF XIII. Here are the months in order for the development time for each Japanese release of FF 1-FF 6: ?, 12, 16, 15, 17, and 16. It takes a year or a year and a half for those games. After FF VI Square Enix had some work to do to get into 3d gaming. It worked on the "Final Fantasy VI: The Interactive CG Game"(search on wikipedia for FF VI) to get more used to 3d. Then it worked on FF VII and from FF VI to FF VII was 31 months, including the unknown length of time spent working on FF VI: The Interactive CG Game. It took a bit of work to jump from Snes to PS 1. Final Fantasy VII took 25 months, although Square didn't make anything similar to FF VI: The Interactive CG Game this time, but maybe they wanted to spend a decent amount of time on FF VIII considering how successful FF VI was, maybe they wanted to top it. After this Square worked on FF X and it took 29 months, but this included a jump from PS 1 to PS 2. Don't forget that FF IX was made by mostly a different team. After FF X the team worked on FF X-2 but they reused graphics and the development didn't take as long, only 20 months. FF X-2 came out in Japan in March 2003. Since then, we are now in April 2008, 61 months later! We have no Final Fantasy XIII yet. We got FF XI and FF XII but those are from different developmental teams. Also FF Versus XIII is coming out, but it's not from the main FF team.
I'm wondering how come this game Final Fantasy XIII is taking so long to come out? I know there is a jump from PS 2 to PS 3 but that can only be part of the story. Maybe some members of the team were busy since they helped out a little with some Kingdom Hearts stuff and Compilation of Final Fantasy VII stuff. Maybe there is some problem in the development. What are your theories on this? I'm excited! :)