Tabata resigns, Future DLC cancelled except Episode Ardyn, other announcements
I've just tuned into a pre-recorded special announcement, in which plans were discussed regarding the future of Final Fantasy XV. I'm updating this post as I listen:
1. Episode Ardyn is schedule for released in March 2019, but the other 3 episodic DLC of Aranea, Lunafreya, and Noctis have been cancelled.
2. This is in large part due to the FFXV team who were working on these titles moving on to Luminous Productions and proceeding to work on the as of yet announced new triple AAA game title.
3. As of October 31, 2018, Hajime Tabata has resigned from Luminous Productions and Squre Enix. He has decided to start his own business to work on a new project.
4. It appears Episode Ardyn will have a short animated prequel before the chapter comes out, perhaps like the Brotherhood anime but just a singular episode? Not sure.
5. Even though the other 3 DLC chapters will not be released, they still want to convey the story they wanted to tell from those chapters in "Some way, shape, or form".
6. There appears to be an expansion being added to the Comrades multiplayer in Decemeber. Added bosses, etc
7. Final Fantasy XV and XIV crossover! Miqo'te character gives out quest, and Garuda shown as a boss. Trailer at 22:30.
At 13:26 is a teaser trailer for episode Ardyn.
11-08-2018, 10:08 AM
Wolf Kanno
Well that was a dramatic turn. Oh well, I never felt like a lot of FF players even wanted the next set of DLC and considering the amount of hate Tabata has gotten lately, it's probably best he leaves SE anyway since he'll be a scapegoat like Nomura and Kitase if he stayed. Hope his future endeavors work out for him. Wonder who will be put in charge of Luminous Productions, especially since SE took a financial hit this past year due to it's development.
Ugh, now it's even more likely that Motumo Toriyama will be directing FFXVI. :simon:
11-08-2018, 11:18 AM
Fynn
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
Ugh, now it's even more likely that Motumo Toriyama will be directing FFXVI. :simon:
Please don’t go there. I beg of you.
11-08-2018, 12:21 PM
Vermachtnis
Shame. Lunafreya's episode was the one I was looking forward to. And that Miqo looks really out of place.
11-08-2018, 05:56 PM
maybee
This makes me wonder if Sakaguchi was the glue holding Square together and now that he's gone, everything has fallen apart- we just didn't see it till now because Nomura got lucky with Kingdom Hearts. Dragon Quest has always been good, but that was originally from Enix.
People think that they are going to try and length out Kingdom Hearts as much as possible now and they are going to try and milk Nier as much as possible as well. Kingdom Hearts has already been lengthed out to death, like one of those old medieval tortures.
Square is lucky that Dragon Quest is holding them, somewhat together.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
Ugh, now it's even more likely that Motumo Toriyama will be directing FFXVI. :simon:
Toriyama: The new protag is a pink haired girl named L....bightning..... Bightning.....Marron....
11-08-2018, 07:05 PM
Wolf Kanno
People were leaving even when Sakaguchi worked there. It was really a combination of older staff wanting more creative control combined with Square's transition from medium sized game studio to full on AAA Powerhouse that the PS1 era brought into existence. Then again, his departure did see a few major people go freelance as well.
Tabata is just surprising because his last project was a financial success despite the grumbling of the fanbase and he's relatively new compared to other high profile director/designers working at SE. Toriyama leaving would have been less of a shock since he's at least been with the company since the late 90s. If Yoshi-P quits anytime soon, this might become a bit more disturbing.
I'm just wondering where SE is going to find talent to run future projects? I doubt Kitase or Ito are going step in to direct new entries, Yoshi-P is busy with XIV, Nomura has KHIII and VIIR to screw around with for the next decade, and a lot of their other strong IPs are either Western studios or freelance ones. I mean it's not like they would convince Taro Yoko to make an FF. Not only would such a game be absolutely bonkers, but I imagine he would quit midway through the production like Matsuno did thanks to studio pressure.
11-08-2018, 07:19 PM
Freya
I think they stretched the DLC thing too far. You can only expect people to still be interested for so long. XV is at about 2 years now. I'm sure SE realized this and probably were having less and less sales for it.
We were talking about this in discord today. We're not sure if it was Tabata resigning first that caused them to cancel or they canceled and that was what pushed Tabata to resign.
11-08-2018, 07:41 PM
Wolf Kanno
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freya
I think they stretched the DLC thing too far. You can only expect people to still be interested for so long. XV is at about 2 years now. I'm sure SE realized this and probably were having less and less sales for it.
We were talking about this in discord today. We're not sure if it was Tabata resigning first that caused them to cancel or they canceled and that was what pushed Tabata to resign.
From what I've gathered, it looks like the studio pushing for the XV team to be Luminous and start working on new projects is likely the culprit for the DLC being cancelled, though I'm sure the lukewarm reaction to it didn't do it any favors. As for Tabata resigning, there could be a lot of reasons. He may have genuinely decided to leave cause he felt he couldn't make the games he wanted or there could have been more internal drama going on. We might get a better picture if more XV developers start resigning as well in the case for internal drama, but I don't see any signs of drama.
I think Tabata just wants more creative control over his future projects and considering half his time working on XV was him trying to "fix" SE's broken development thinking, he may feel he has a better chance of building a strong studio from scratch than trying to fight for change within a relic dominated by senior employees who don't understand the issues.
I mean when you realize that XV's announcement as a IP coincides with KHIII's announcement and we're already two years in development time difference between both titles despite both games being announced as being developed years before their official reveal, it shows that SE probably didn't take to heart his suggestions on how to fix the company's development time problem. Both KHIII and VIIR had their initial development scratched and restarted which doesn't seem like something you would want to do for two high profile games in light of having to bring in a new team to finish developing a ten year old IP they sat on so the procrastinating director can move onto said projects. I feel like SE didn't really learn anything useful from versusXIII/XV's development struggles, likely because the company is sticking to an outdated corporate structure.
11-08-2018, 09:06 PM
fat_moogle
Final Fantasy XV - what a disaster. It is and always will be "that game that wasn't Final Fantasy Versus XIII".
Was Tabata to blame? No. Square Enix were far too ambitious with the announcement of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project in 2006 and it bit them in the ass. Tabata was a victim of circumstance and was left to pick up the pieces and had to get the game out for getting the game outs sake. Thus we ended up with a game with its own anime series, CGI film and DLC episodes just to get the "full" FFXV experience.
Its a real shame. I wish him all the best with his new studio where he can work at his own pace and release the game when he's ready, not when Square Enix is ready.
11-10-2018, 04:38 PM
Vyk
All this nonsense makes me embarrassed to have been a Square fan. They are an incompetent joke these days. It's like being a Sega fan. It's ridiculous how clueless these companies are
11-10-2018, 04:42 PM
Freya
I think it's just when they get to be so big, they just start becoming an echo chamber within themselves. So strange decisions get made because everyone is "yes man"ing it.
11-10-2018, 08:16 PM
nirojan
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freya
I think they stretched the DLC thing too far. You can only expect people to still be interested for so long. XV is at about 2 years now. I'm sure SE realized this and probably were having less and less sales for it.
We were talking about this in discord today. We're not sure if it was Tabata resigning first that caused them to cancel or they canceled and that was what pushed Tabata to resign.
It was probably the latter. Wasn't he going to do FF Type-1 or FF Type-next or whatever it was called after the XV projects wrapped up?
Just started the Type-0 manga and it's pretty cool how much lore was compiled for that series. I really hope they still put out the sequel.
11-10-2018, 08:31 PM
Psychotic
Here's a prediction for the next 5 years: Square is going to move into the MMO and mobile markets full time and stop making single player titles. The global Android version (so no Japan or iOS sales included in these stats) of their mobile title Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire made $9m in just September, and couple that with Brave Exvius getting $4m and their other assorted titles getting $1m between them. Why would you go through the expensive troutshow that was Versus/XV again when you've got a license to print money for doing comparatively very little?
11-10-2018, 11:11 PM
Vyk
I'll be fine with that if they keep funding th Bravely Default studio and maybe other similar studios (rpg factory?). I have thought for a while Square could easily fill a slot in the market similar to Atlus and fund low budget indie style games and throwbacks. And in a lot of ways they have. I disagree with most of their big decisions anyway. And at least this would be more amicable than how Konami flipped the bird to fans and ran into the pachinko world. At least that way there'd still be a connection and conversation with fans
11-11-2018, 05:50 AM
Lone Wolf Leonhart
Quote:
Originally Posted by nirojan
Wasn't he going to do FF Type-1 or FF Type-next or whatever it was called after the XV projects wrapped up?
Yep. Here's a trailer for a game that's never going to come out:
11-11-2018, 06:09 AM
Wolf Kanno
I think they'll keep the main games going for the prestige alone. Despite XV's issues, the game has already sold close to 8 million units of which if they only received half of the game's cost, made them close to $200 million dollars, so it's not like the game was a financial failure, and has likely already made back most of it's costs.
EDITGA: I've been doing some research about Tabata's time at SE which lead to reading up on the development of some of his titles, and now I don't feel like the idea he quit because SE kind of dumps on him all the time is too far fetched.
He got drafted into working on 3rd Birthday while he was working on Type-0 his first game that could argued to be completely his, and SE nearly cancelled it so he would focus on 3rd Birthday instead. When he was asked to come onto the Versus XIII/XV project, he apparently found the game in such a bad spot development-wise that not only was SE's president considering cancelling that title and just starting over, but the Type-0 team didn't want anything to do with the project and Tabata had to convince them to sign onto it, and we now how that went.
As someone who has been dragged into troubled productions before, I can feel his pain.
11-11-2018, 12:33 PM
Fox
IIRC from what I read, Tabata handed in his notice at the end of August, and will be starting his own company. Rather than feeling pushed out after the cancellation, I think it's fairly likely that he thought "This was the biggest project I'm ever going to be a part of at Square Enix, it was a big success, now I can go and do my own thing."
Best of luck for him, and I don't exactly weep for the lost DLCs. They may have been able to make XV's story feel more complete, but at the end of the day they were unlikely to perform the miracles it needs.
12-17-2018, 08:01 PM
Wolf Kanno
Tabata recently spoke about his departure. Here's some highlights:
Despite the way it looks, Tabata actually left SE on very good terms and there are no ill feelings between the parties.
Tabata largely left because of motivation, and didn't feel like he could grow as a developer if he remained in the same environment. He also wished to make certain changes on how he did things but didn't wish to be a bother to his coworkers and parent company, so he started his own company to do so.
Before he left, he worked with the other developers to determining the fate of the remaining DLC. The cancellation of the DLC wasn't the cause of his departure.
With that said, Tabata regrets that the DLC won't be completed and apologized to the fans who were waiting for it.
Tabata's new company wishes to make AAA titles for all available platforms including DLC.
With that said, the company is still small and funded by the employees at the moment so it will likely be awhile before this happens.
He wishes to also keep the studio small to make it easier to manage, but he already has a staff.
One of the major focuses Tabata wishes to work on with his studio is fine tuning the development process. He spoke about the challenges of development and the issues with when a project goes into full development and third party companies are brought in on the project. He wishes to streamline the process and make it easier for all parties. He wants to make it easier to develop games.
