FF Remake?

[champagne supernova]

next gen titles that can cost upwards of $20 million

I am unsure if people realise, but after listening to a lecture and talking to a senior publisher for Activision, you're looking more at $40-50 million to produce a AAA title game for PS3/Xbox 360/PC. There's a lot at stake with these huge budget productions, and the demands from gamers are insane.

There would have to be a lot of well thought out marketing and research done in order to pull off a Final Fantasy VII remake in a high budget project.

$40-50 million to start a game from scratch. Think about the hours of work that get put into thinking up what the game is about, creating characters, getting a story together. Then they create concept art for towns, characters, enemies which eventually get toned down and rendered.

Final Fantasy VII has a story. It has its towns. It has its enemies. It has its characters. Already designed. Actually, redesigned in Advent's Children - and apparently the Crystal Tools engine can render AC in real-time. So, that means they don't have to create textures for all the characters. And they can re-use parts of it for Edge and a few other places. And they've got the first couple minutes of the game done as a technical demo.

So, if you note all the things they don't have to do in creating the game, it'll most probably cost half to 2/3rds of a regular AAA title game. And, with one of the most rabid set of fanboys/girls on the planet, it could be one of the most profitable remakes in existence.

[Slothy]

So, if you note all the things they don't have to do in creating the game, it'll most probably cost half to 2/3rds of a regular AAA title game. And, with one of the most rabid set of fanboys/girls on the planet, it could be one of the most profitable remakes in existence.

Even assuming they could save that much from skipping the concept phase of the game and having the engine and some potential assets, it's still a huge investment, and you can't simply bank on it doing as well as the original, or that the very vocal fans of the game outnumber those who don't want a remake or didn't like the original. You've got to remember that most people in a remakes potential market have already played and formed an opinion on it, and many people don't like it or don't like it enough to buy a remake.

They'd still have to do some careful market research before going ahead with one, and there'd still be no guarentee that it would be more profitable than putting the same budget into handheld remakes.

[champagne supernova]

you can't simply bank on it doing as well as the original, or that the very vocal fans of the game outnumber those who don't want a remake or didn't like the original. You've got to remember that most people in a remakes potential market have already played and formed an opinion on it, and many people don't like it or don't like it enough to buy a remake.

They'd still have to do some careful market research before going ahead with one, and there'd still be no guarentee that it would be more profitable than putting the same budget into handheld remakes.

Advent Children (which was pure fanboy deluxe material) sold 2.4 million copies. And that could only be watched by people who had played FFVII if they had any desire to understand the movie. Crisis Core has sold 2.1 million copies (and one must understand that the PSP has one of the smaller ownership bases).

Anything related to Final Fantasy VII sells unbelievably well. And even if some original owners do not buy the remake, there is a whole new generation of young consumers who never played the original but have been brought up (in a gaming sense) with FFVII as this blazing beacon of all that is good with RPGs.

So, there is immense amounts of money to be made in a remake of FFVII. But I hope they're making a remake or sequel to Vagrant Story. One can only hope.

[Slothy]

Advent Children (which was pure fanboy deluxe material) sold 2.4 million copies. And that could only be watched by people who had played FFVII if they had any desire to understand the movie. Crisis Core has sold 2.1 million copies (and one must understand that the PSP has one of the smaller ownership bases).

Anything related to Final Fantasy VII sells unbelievably well. And even if some original owners do not buy the remake, there is a whole new generation of young consumers who never played the original but have been brought up (in a gaming sense) with FFVII as this blazing beacon of all that is good with RPGs.

So, there is immense amounts of money to be made in a remake of FFVII. But I hope they're making a remake or sequel to Vagrant Story. One can only hope.

Yes, all of those sold well it's true, but they're nowhere near the almost 10 million in sales that FFVII originally pulled. In fact, most of the entries since VIII are hovering around the 5-6 million mark. Which is where my point comes in. Yes, they could make an FFVII remake and if it sold 5 million copies it would likely be quite profitable. However, the return on investment wouldn't match what they get from stuff like the FFIII and IV remakes, or Crisis Core or Dissidia with only 1-2 million in sales. So yeah they could make an FFVII remake, or they could keep making twice as much return on their investment (or possibly more) with the smaller franchise titles they're putting out now. I know what I'd choose if I were out to maximize my return, and it wouldn't be a full blown next-gen FFVII remake.

[Rostum]

next gen titles that can cost upwards of $20 million

I am unsure if people realise, but after listening to a lecture and talking to a senior publisher for Activision, you're looking more at $40-50 million to produce a AAA title game for PS3/Xbox 360/PC. There's a lot at stake with these huge budget productions, and the demands from gamers are insane.

There would have to be a lot of well thought out marketing and research done in order to pull off a Final Fantasy VII remake in a high budget project.

$40-50 million to start a game from scratch. Think about the hours of work that get put into thinking up what the game is about, creating characters, getting a story together. Then they create concept art for towns, characters, enemies which eventually get toned down and rendered.

Final Fantasy VII has a story. It has its towns. It has its enemies. It has its characters. Already designed. Actually, redesigned in Advent's Children - and apparently the Crystal Tools engine can render AC in real-time. So, that means they don't have to create textures for all the characters. And they can re-use parts of it for Edge and a few other places. And they've got the first couple minutes of the game done as a technical demo.

So, if you note all the things they don't have to do in creating the game, it'll most probably cost half to 2/3rds of a regular AAA title game. And, with one of the most rabid set of fanboys/girls on the planet, it could be one of the most profitable remakes in existence.

Hmm, I don't know about that. Perhaps they have a lot of material they can use, but I still believe they'd need to spend a lot of time in the pre-production phase. There is only so much they can use from the film and the tech demo, and as I said a gamer's expectation of AAA titles is just the most insane thing ever, so attention to detail is going to be the most expensive aspect of the project.

But damn I'd love a remake of FFVII.

I am unsure about sale figures and all that stuff though, I really am not one to look into it. But I am assuming it'd sell very well.

[Wolf Kanno]

They could always do a toned down remake and just use the same graphical style of Crisis Core/Dissidia/Kingdom Hearts II and then save the next gen cgi to the actual major cutscenes like the original.

This could cut the budget down to something a little more reasonable and it would use a format that many of the in-house developers are accustomed to so making it will take less time than normal. Besides, I feel this animation style suits the original character designs of VII better as I've always felt VII (and Nomura) should stick to his anime roots. I feel this would be a safer process of doing a remake, stick to the game original design roots, and would appease all but the most die hard of fans.

[Bolivar]

well, it's a game he gets asked about all the time, first response is FFVII. But if you remember last year when they had that DSigma XIII Z whatever the hell event, they said they had a huge announcement for PS3 owners that would be so huge, it would counter the multiplatform announcement for XIII. I think it ended up being Advent Children Complete, and the fact that it would have a demo of XIII on it in Japan.

Yeah, so I'm already preparing myself to be let down.

Lastly, I just don't know if a FFVII remake would work anymore. Uematsu said he would totally sign on for it, like he has for the other remakes, under the condition that they keep everything the same. This is an unfeasible condition. Some of the camera angles, like an overhead view of Cloud when he's talking to Tifa and Barret... this just wouldn't work anymore if the game was made in HD.

But WK had a good idea about that. I've never really thought about it like that, but I'm sure the fans would cry for blood if it wasn't the utmost quality graphics throughout the whole thing. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I would like realistically proportionate Cloud. I was... almost a little disgusted when I saw his face in the Tech Demo.

Probably Kingdom Hearts III.

[Rostum]

As much as a fully-fleged high production HD remake of FFVII would be cool, I'd presonally be more in favour of this kind of style (of course I am just talking art style, not graphical quality which many gamers don't seem to understand):



By the way, does anyone know where that is from?

Anyway... It doesn't look like Nomura is hinting at an FFVII remake at all. I think this is very lame, not because I want an FFVII remake, but just because of how vague Square and Nomrua are in what direction they are heading. That and the fact that they want more Cloud cameos... Which could lend itself to the announcement being Kingdom Hearts related, and that would be even more lame as we pretty much just got Days and Birth By Sleep.

Well, I'm honestly sick of Square's vague announcement of an announcement type marketing strategy. But I'd love it to be an original IP, or maybe a revisit of the Mana series (done right), or even a third Chrono game.

[Roogle]

That picture looks like it is from a game in the Itadaki Street series.

I hope that the announcement is a Final Fantasy VII remake because the original title has not aged very well. I remember being confused at certain plot events because I could not tell what was going on due to the graphical limitations. The scene where Cloud attacks Aerith after the Temple of the Ancients was particularly confusing to me.

[VeloZer0]

I hope that the announcement is a Final Fantasy VII remake because the original title has not aged very well. I remember being confused at certain plot events because I could not tell what was going on due to the graphical limitations. The scene where Cloud attacks Aerith after the Temple of the Ancients was particularly confusing to me.

I think it was supposed to be confusing.

Have you ever played the PC version? It doubles the resolution (or is that quadruples? I never know) making the sprites much less jagged and looks a lot better in general. Even without adding detail a lot of older 3D games look much better if they can just render at a higher resolution and look less pixilated.

[Roogle]

No, I have not played the PC version.

Much of my confusion is probably because of the fact that I have not played the game since I was a child. I recall that most events that confused me were the parts that Sephiroth would take control of Cloud, but, as I mentioned before, there are a couple of events that stick out in my mind.

- Cloud at the Honeybee Inn if he chooses not to go to bathe with the musclemen.
- Cloud and Aerith after the Temple of the Ancients.
- Cloud and Aerith at the City of the Ancients shortly before her death.

These are events that, I think, given today's technology would be much more meaningful and less confusing even if they were intended to be confusing.

[Depression Moon]

Threads of Fate II


:</>D!

Hell Yes!

[Rostum]

Threads of Fate II


:</>D!

Hell Yes!

Let it die, let it die...

[Rase]

Nomura: No on Final Fantasy VII Remake, yes on Cloud cameos (andriasang.com blog, 01.23.2010)

On the always hot topic of future developments for the Cloud character, Nomura said the following: "Fans are looking forward to an oft rumored remake of FFVII, but I don't believe this will happen for the time being. However, it's possible that he will appear in other titles as a guest character."

[Rostum]

I guess no one reads my posts.