I found a way to help with the waiting for Final Fantasy XIII

[Dragonsoul]

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?

[Vivisteiner]

^On the forums Im on, thats what a lot of people think could well happen, me included. It just seems the perfect way to advertise a new franchise that they want to get off the ground. Everyone will buy The Last Remnant if it contains an FFXIII demo.

[Dragonsoul]

This is ultimate, if The Last Remant PS 3 version has a playable demo of Final Fantasy XIII, I'll get it! There was a demo(not sure if it was playable) of Final Fantasy VII in Tobal No.1 for PS 1 I think. There was a playable demo for Final Fantasy VIII in Brave Fencer Musashiden(I bought this game because of it, it ruled by the way!). Was there a demo for FF IX, FF X, FF XI, FF X-2? There was a playable demo of FF XII in Dragon Quest VIII.

Hey I thought of another idea, maybe there will be a playable demo of Final Fantasy Versus XIII in Final Fantasy XIII! Anyways, is Square Enix making any other PS 3 rpg's right now besides these three?

[Bolivar]

Not sure, but that'd be great, I'd be getting hte Last Remnant either way, but it would definately help boost the sales, and possibly help push PS3s at the same time.

[Dragonsoul]

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.

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!

[Melodies of Life]

The long wait probably has something to do with the fact that they're making 2 FF games simultaneously (FF XIII + Versus)

[Roogle]

The current trend, as interpreted by the graph provided by Dragonsoul, shows that each Final Fantasy has a longer development time than the last. This appears to be because of the development teams' desires to push the graphical limit of each game.

[Dragonsoul]

The long wait probably has something to do with the fact that they're making 2 FF games simultaneously (FF XIII + Versus)

Well kind of. You mean that part of the Final Fantasy XIII team is doing stuff with Final Fantasy Versus XIII I think. I checked into the resumes of the people working on Final Fantasy XIII. They are working on a lot of simultaneous projects alongside Final Fantasy XIII. Here's the specifics of what the main Final Fantasy team(FF X, FF X-2, FF XIII) have done or are working on since Final Fantasy X-2

Final Fantasy XIII - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Final Fantasy XIII team:
Producer - Yoshinori Kitase(Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, FF VII: PS 3 Technical Demo, FF VII: Dirge of Cerberus, FF VII: Crisis Core, Kingdom Hearts 2)
Director - Motomu Toriyama(FF VII: PS 3 Technical Demo, FF XII: Revenant Wings, FF: Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King, The 3rd Birthday)
Scenario Writer - Kazushige Nojima(FF VII: Before Crisis, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, FF VII: Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts 2, FF VII: Crisis Core, Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Character Designer - Tetsuya Nomura(FF VII: PS 3 Technical Demo, FF VII: Before Crisis, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Musashi: Samurai Legend, FF VII: Last Order, FF VII: Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts 2, FF V Advance, FF VII: Dirge of Cerberus, FF VII: Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode, FF VII: Crisis Core, The World Ends With You, FF Agito XIII, FF Versus XIII, Monotone, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Kingdom Hearts: Coded, The 3rd Birthday
Composer - Masashi Hamauzu(Musashi: Samurai Legend, FF VII: Dirge of Cerberus, Sigma Harmonics)
Art Director - Isamu Kamikokuryō(Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings)
Battle Director - Toshiro Tsuchida(Front Mission 5, Front Mission Online, Final Fantasy XI Expansions, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King)

Look at all those simultaneous projects that everybody has been working on! Here are the reasons that I think are causing Final Fantasy XIII to take so long to come out...

1. Hardware Jump from PS 2 to PS 3
2. Work started on the Playstation 2 but then was basically restarted for PS 3
3. Everybody's working on many simultaneous projects

I just want the game already! Roogle if you check the development time in months for each games they don't get longer each time but they alternate between getting longer and shorter. Here they are in order: ?, 12, 16, 15, 17, 16, 31, 25, 29, 20, 61 so far.

61 months already!! Just looking at that number gives me a bad feeling, I wish the game would come out already. Final Fantasy XII took a long time also. I kinda want to see Square Enix go back to their earlier days of working on less projects and just rolling out the FF games every couple years. FF X came out in 2001! FF X-2 was out in 2003(sequel to FF X though)! We had FF XI in 2002(Japan) and FF XII in 2006 but I'm looking at the time since Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy X was out in 2001 and Final Fantasy XIII will be out 7 or 8 years later! Enough with all these extra projects Square Enix is working on if those projects are going to delay development of the main FF team's games! Maybe they should seperate the teams more? Anyways, maybe it would have helped if Final Fantasy XIII wasn't announced at E3 2006, then we wouldn't have to wait 2.5 or 3.5 years for it to come out.

Anyways, it's taking so long, maybe it'll turn out to be a legendary game, just like when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out after a 5 year development cycle?

What does everybody think of those reasons I listed for the possible delay of FF XIII?

[Nifleheim7]

2. Work started on the Playstation 2 but then was basically restarted for PS 3

Um,is this your personal opinion or is it an official statement from S-E?

[Vivisteiner]

^Thats official. They had already done the story and gameplay. But FFXII took too long, so they moved it to PS3. They completely scrapped the gameplay, but retained the story. I dont know if they continued to develop the story further or not.

[Roogle]

I just want the game already! Roogle if you check the development time in months for each games they don't get longer each time but they alternate between getting longer and shorter. Here they are in order: ?, 12, 16, 15, 17, 16, 31, 25, 29, 20, 61 so far.

Yes, I see that the development times have varied over the years between shorter and longer. I meant that the development time has increasingly grown longer as games become more complex, and, to clarify, I think that the company can focus its resources into getting a game out a little more quickly than normal if they deem it so. I think that they have refrained from doing that with Final Fantasy XIII because of the scope of its project and series.

[Nifleheim7]

^Thats official. They had already done the story and gameplay. But FFXII took too long, so they moved it to PS3. They completely scrapped the gameplay, but retained the story. I dont know if they continued to develop the story further or not.

Hmm,interesting.My bet is they made some adjustments to the story to better suit the new game mechanics although how big or small these adjustments were,we'll never know.

[hhr1dluv]

I pass the time by playing all the FF games that I still haven't beaten yet. Probably by the time I've beaten all the games I need to beat, the game will be out.

As a side note, these are the games that I have strongly decided that I will play:
FF VIII, FF IX, FF XII, FF VII: Crisis Core, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Given my track record, this will probably take around 2.5-3.5 years to do.

[Dragonsoul]

Those are nice games! I looked at the resumes of the main Final Fantasy team designers on Wikipedia. Back in the early days of the Final Fantasy games, they would work on one, finish it, then do the next one. Gradually over time they also started doing other simulatenous projects, like Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts, and Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. This is interesting?

[Roogle]

Those are nice games! I looked at the resumes of the main Final Fantasy team designers on Wikipedia. Back in the early days of the Final Fantasy games, they would work on one, finish it, then do the next one. Gradually over time they also started doing other simulatenous projects, like Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts, and Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. This is interesting?

It helps to explain the increase in delays between titles. Square Enix has expanded over the years, but it still does not have the resources to produce so many high quality titles with as little delay as when they worked on single, isolated projects for months at a time.