Surprise Surprise...

[Wolf Kanno]

...Square-Enix has their Jump Fiests event later this month in Japan where they highlight up coming games and as usual, Versus XIII will be a no show.

This is starting to get into Duke Nukem Forever territory where it's kind of funny that it's trapped in Development Hell.

[Jinx]

How is this news-worthy?

[Goldenboko]

that's why it isn't on the frontsite

[Jiro]

I wish there would be an announcement on why. I don't care if they're saying "yeah we really don't know what we're doing" so long as this pretending that Versus is still fine stops.

[Del Murder]

lulz

[Formalhaut]

SE: "Maybe if we don't speak or mention the very existence of Versus, noone else will remember!"

Glad to see that SE is still taking the See no Versus, Hear no Versus, Speak no Versus approach to it.

[Karifean]

This is becoming something like Ultima 9.

[Raistlin]

I can only imagine that SE thinks that if they never mentioned Versus XIII ever again, everyone will forget about it.

[Ouch!]

There's also the possibility that this has to do with the development cycle for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Since the lackluster reception of Final Fantasy XIII and the absolutely dismal launch of Final Fantasy XIV, I wouldn't be surprised if Square Enix is running damage control in advance and trying to contain expectations for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. As ARR moves into beta in the next month, I imagine they're really going to start pushing their marketing efforts towards that as it has become an absolute make-it-or-break it release for the company. They can worry about Versus XIII after they get ARR out of the way. If development is ongoing for Versus XIII, by the time the litmus test of ARR is over, they would potentially be able to move directly into a campaign for Versus XIII (and I wouldn't be surprised to see it rebranded in some way to distance it from the FFXIII trilogy).

That's the overly-optimistic outside shot possibility, though. Vaporware is entirely more likely.

[DMKA]

They're not being quiet about it though. They're just not being very loud about it.

On October 30, 2012, Julien Merceron, CTO of Square Enix, was interviewed at Paris Games Week. He was asked about the current status of Final Fantasy Versus XIII and replied with the following statement: "Yoichi Wada and I are working hard with the team making this game. The team has huge ambitions for the game and I think that the level of ambition they have is extremely complex to achieve. That said, Yoichi Wada and I will push this team as far as they can go. So we are all working very hard with this team. Frankly, I believe that the moment the game is fully unveiled to the public, people will think it was worth the wait!"

That was less than two months ago. If the theory that it's vaporware and they were hoping people would forget about Versus was true, I doubt they'd go around insisting that the game is still in development and coming along great. Also, why would they come out and say Kotaku was full of crap when they conjured up the very same rumor a few months back? None of that makes sense. They certainly aren't getting anything out of lying about it still being alive and having to repeatedly waste time addressing it.

I honestly don't think there's some convoluted disastrous reasoning as to why the game hasn't come out yet; it just hasn't come out yet, more than likely due to several factors regarding SE's company as a whole.

Nomura is really the key man on the project, and he's got a lot more on his plate besides it, including an insatiable determination to release a Kingdom Hearts title every year. I think these things have far more to do with the prolonged development than fanboy butthurt or anything like that.

[Wolf Kanno]

The issue here is that the interview you quoted says absolutely nothing about the games development and it wasn't even an official announcement just a reporter cornering a Squenix employee and asking about the game, of which the employee gave a very stock business answer that reveals nothing. SE only really talks about the game when other people bring it up, but for a game to be in development for this long with little to really show for it, this means one of three things: Either something has happened during the development process that has slowed the project down considerably, most likely the staff is trying to build an overly ambitious game engine from scratch which was what happened with FFXII; or Nomura is getting in the way cause he's literally making the team put in every ambitious idea he wants even mid-development and he's making the team redo whole sections of the game that don't meet his standards; or three it's what Ouch! said and it's the higher ups interfering to make sure other projects go smooth while possibly doing some executive meddling of the project themselves.

There is also the fourth reason, which is "all of the above" which I'm beginning to suspect might be the problem. Nomura had some ambitious ideas and the game most likely required some new technology that no one had done before to get it running so a lot of the development is probably this but once it did get running we had the sub-par reception of XIII and the disaster of XIV so SE both wants Versus XIII to stay dark so they can try to salvage XIV but also they are probably getting some heavy focus group going over every part of this game cause SE wants it to succeed. I also suspect that SE may have realized the game in it's current form couldn't work on the PS3 and they may be stalling for the next console cycle.

It just gets exasperating cause there was that one interview with Wada shortly after the Kotaku nonsense, where he mentioned watching a mind blowing video of the city models. That was it, no screenshots, no actual video. For a game that got accused of being vaporware, SE did very little to really calm down the rumor which is why it's still prevalent among news sites and forums. You would think they would have given people something, instead the company just sent a verbal statement saying "We're still working on it" which is the same thing that happened with Duke Nukem Forever.

[Laddy]

I think Square Enix is trying to be cautious to avoid another FFXIV, which I understand.

However, by keeping so much information out of the public's hands is just making people get discouraged and lose interest. I'm really excited to see what they do with it, but I want info, dammit!

[Wolf Kanno]

I understand about being cautious with spilling a release date and wanting to keep it in development to make sure the quality is good, but this doesn't mean they should be doing an info blackout on the fans. Revealing more details or showing a few more trailers is only going to improve anticipation and increase sales. I don't know what their marketing department is thinking. I mean at least show the trailers you have at the big expo's. Part of the reason people think its vaporware is because the game has been absent completely from major events like Jump Fiesta, TGS, and E3, at least pull an FFXII and XIII and just bore us with the trailer you made three years ago just to confirm to fans its still in the works.

[Jinx]

I understand about being cautious with spilling a release date and wanting to keep it in development to make sure the quality is good, but this doesn't mean they should be doing an info blackout on the fans. Revealing more details or showing a few more trailers is only going to improve anticipation and increase sales. I don't know what their marketing department is thinking. I mean at least show the trailers you have at the big expo's. Part of the reason people think its vaporware is because the game has been absent completely from major events like Jump Fiesta, TGS, and E3, at least pull an FFXII and XIII and just bore us with the trailer you made three years ago just to confirm to fans its still in the works.

I'm not sure if I agree in this case. It's been--what, seven years now? And people are STILL bitching about this game? People want it. That says something.

Maybe this time aroudn Square has learned, "Oh wow. We make the worst games. No, really. Maybe if we don't hype the trout out of it, people won't expect the greatest game ever, and will have low expectations."

[Goldenboko]

Or more likely they've run into development problems Sam. xD