I honestly can't see wanting the stuff shown prior to Tabata taking over since they barely showed anything aside from some prerendered concept videos and I honestly don't think Nomura really got anything done up until that point. If he had anything actually figured out prior to that then he had a good six years to make a game out of them and in the end they had nothing to really show for those six years aside from some character designs, names, and a few videos. Honestly if it's not Kingdom Hearts related I think he's one of the least productive game developers I've ever seen. Expect the FFVII remake for PS6 in 2030.

If he was actually working on it that long with a team and had so little to show for it I'd say he's lucky he still has a job but it's Japan we're talking about so he'd have to literally bankrupt the company to get the boot (hi sakaguchi! )