Yoichi Wada stepping down!

[edczxcvbnm]

I have not been a fan of Square for a long time. Their big tent poll games always seem underwhelming now. I wanted to see what the stats where on what they have released since 2007 and it all became clear. They have released 37 games that they developed or had a hand in developing since 2007. 25 of those games are on the DS or PSP. One of them was an arcade game and the 2 on the PS2 were nothing more than an update to an already released game (FFXII Internation and Kingdom Hears Final Mix+).

That leaves just 10 (one also came out on the DS) games on the Wii,360 or PS3. Those games are as follows

Dragon Quest X: Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
Mario Sports Mix
Soul Eater: Monotone Princess
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII-2
Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix
Final Fantasy XIV
The Last Remnant

That does not look like a very sexy line up. I think they are stretched too thin at Dev and work too much on the handhelds. Nothing wrong with handhelds but they have not exactly been releasing gold their either.

Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy
Dissidia Final Fantasy
Dissidia: Final Fantasy Universal Tuning
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection
Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light
Snoopy DS: Let's Go Meet Snoopy and His Friends!

Those are my favorites and some of the others are probably fine just not up my alley like the FF Tactics games, Chrystal Chronicles or Kingdom Hearts.

I don't know...to me they have not released anything really exciting in years. I look down the list and here is what stands out to me as cool at a glace (despite what I really might think of the games...I hate FFXIII for example)
FFVII: Crisis Core
The World Ends with You
Final Fantasy XIII
The Last Remnant

I have played 2 of those games and only 1 I liked.

To me, change can't come fast enough.

[Del Murder]

The World Ends With You was a great game and probably the last original thing SE has made.

[Aulayna]

The World Ends With You was a great game and probably the last original thing SE has made.

Agreed, fully.

[Wolf Kanno]

Wait wait wait... You're telling me the Executive Producer for Unlimited Saga, quite possibly one of the most reviled games released by Squenix in the last decade is going to be put in charge of the company...
RIP
Square Enix
2003 - 2013

Okay, sarcasm aside, I'm not sure how I feel about this, while I certainly don't like the direction Wada took the company I do have to respect his ability to turn Square's financial debacle from the early 2000s back into a profitable company and god knows that Eidos seems to be having some kind of damn Renaissance now that they are under SE's umbrella; but I'm kind of happy this may mean SE will get some much needed reorganization. I doubt this will effect any current projects being released this year, but I do hope this means that someone will finally take a much needed look at SE's Japanese in-house development and streamline it so we don't have to wait entire console generations to see crap get released from the Japanese studios. Hell, maybe Type-0 will get a worldwide release finally and Versus XIII might see more daylight than cryptic updates about future cryptic updates. Course this is all speculative and for all we know, this reorganization of upper management will have absolutely no effect on the developers side of things (which is incredibly likely) so I wouldn't exactly be pulling out the chardonnay and getting reading to sing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" just yet.

[NeoCracker]

I still haven't played Unlimited Saga...

[silentenigma]

Break out that new bottle of wine!
-Chrono Break
-FF7 without ruining it again
-Sakaguchi returns
-Nobuo, Mitsuda, Matsuno
-New ambitious IP
-(As if any of that will happen....) ;_;

[Spooniest]

Break out that old bottle of wine!

Fixed that for you

[Wolf Kanno]

Found a new article that explains what Wada leaving and the financial loss SE is expecting may mean. Its does sound like they plan on restructuring their development side of the business which sounds like a good idea.

[Spooniest]

Show of hands:

Who'd like to see what SE does with limited resources?

[silentenigma]

Fixed that for you

Good eye, thank you.

[edczxcvbnm]

Show of hands:

Who'd like to see what SE does with limited resources?

Make another MASTERFUL Final Fantasy movie?

That they spend $500 million making?

[Pumpkin]

Wait wait wait... You're telling me the Executive Producer for Unlimited Saga, quite possibly one of the most reviled games released by Squenix in the last decade is going to be put in charge of the company.

I know I have played Unlimited Saga, but I cannot for the life of me remember anything about it other than the case. Don't know why. Why was it so reviled?

[Rostum]

Found a new article that explains what Wada leaving and the financial loss SE is expecting may mean. Its does sound like they plan on restructuring their development side of the business which sounds like a good idea.

Thanks, that's a good read and some good insight!

[Loony BoB]

Show of hands:

Who'd like to see what SE does with limited resources?

Make another MASTERFUL Final Fantasy movie?

That they spend $500 million making?

I think that goes against the idea of 'limited resources'.

[Wolf Kanno]

Wait wait wait... You're telling me the Executive Producer for Unlimited Saga, quite possibly one of the most reviled games released by Squenix in the last decade is going to be put in charge of the company.

I know I have played Unlimited Saga, but I cannot for the life of me remember anything about it other than the case. Don't know why. Why was it so reviled?

It did well in Japan, but abysmal abroad. Largely because the game decided it would be a great idea to bring back the concept of dice rolls from PnP RPGs, so every time you performed any kind of battle action you had to deal with a modified slot reel (think Tifa's Limit Break) and it was pretty easy to botch everything. It also had an unstructured story and a terrible board game style world map, with equally cumbersome controls. The SaGa franchise has always been known for being really experimental but Unlimited SaGa took it to a whole new level.