The New Generation of Square-Enix

[Wolf Kanno]

I was out late the other night with a friend, having a few drinks, when our conversation moved towards Final Fantasy and Square-Enix in general. Which ended up largely turning into a giant conversation about how upstarts Yoshi P, and Hajime Tabata have really turned the company around in the last few years by being more involved with the community and open about what they are doing instead of years of dealing with Kitase, Nomura, and Toriyama trying to be secretive and hush hush about every damn project they were working on. I feel that these two are the real people to maybe push FF into a much better direction and it might be good to see the older creators move on finally. For the first time in a long while, I actually have some hope for the franchise. Thoughts?

[Bolivar]

I'm not interested in the MMOs and I just don't find Tabata's games appealing at all. I lost a lot of interest in Versus XIII with the moves they've made over the last few months.

So obviously something like this gets me a lot more excited. I always have hope for the series because it's like BoB says, even if an FF comes out you don't quite feel, chances are the next one will probably be to your liking.

[VeloZer0]

I base my feelings for a company based on actual games I have in my hand and can play, not from organizational structures and promises. So no, as of yet I have no reason to be optimistic. I'll just keep going game by game until they can establish a trend of games I enjoy.

[Ayen]

I wouldn't bank on just two people turning an entire company around, but what they're doing is a start. I've been pretty open about my disdain towards Final Fantasy XV, but I've been appreciative of Tabata's approach. If I didn't want to review all the mainline games I probably wouldn't bother with the MMOs.

[Del Murder]

I agree with you WK. Even if you don't agree with their game design choices you got to love their approach to interacting with the fan base.

Every company needs new blood every once and a while to keep things fresh. That's not the way Japanese corporate culture necessarily works, and SE took a big hit to its credibility in the last few years as a result. It seems they are on the turn around now.