I rarely go off on rants, but moogley boogley this trout fiesta of a game triggers me so hard, so sorry in advance for my ruffled jimmies.
The fact that it did well financially, honestly, if anything, is bad news for anyone hoping for great single player experiences.
Given that SE has long been saying they want to move to a games as service model (i.e. basically games where the base game is either free, or paid for, usually multiplayer, and then you pay for additional content, micro-transactions etc. and then they rehash it every couple of years - just look at what they're doing to Dissidia for a taste of what's to come). The fact that quite frankly an utterly malignant FFXV version of (essentially) Farmville, that is basically just a bunch of timegates that attempt to co-erse you into spending money at every turn, made THAT much money (especially given the rather negative rap it has in the western market) really makes me think we're not going to see many more triple-AAA quality blockbuster games from Square Enix after the next few years have passed - IF this is where they feel the money is.
This isn't just me being a Luddite toward mobile gaming either... games like Final Fantasy Record Keeper, Kingdom Hearts Union X etc. are all solid mobile titles with actual gameplay that aren't just trying to treat you like a blank cheque. A New Empire is like a malignant tumor with no depth that just wants to suck money out of you. Honestly, I'd go as far as to say that Final Fantasy All The Bravest (remember that joker?) was less malignant in terms of monetisation than A New Empire is...
That's even ignoring that saying A New Empire is "loosely based on" FFXV would be the understatement of the year. It has next to nothing to do with FFXV aside from featuring the names and art of some characters, and the whole thing was marketed with "generic scantly clad lady saying trout along the lines of come save her kingdom*." For all the effort SE invested in building the Universe of FFXV, this game is an absolutely travesty of creative licensing...
The naive person in me would like to think that this money would get invested toward the development of new titles or the titles that are ticking along - but given that Yoshi P is always talking about resource struggles when it comes to FFXIV development (the game whose re-release in 2013 singlehandedly returned the company to the black), I highly doubt that - it shows they're no longer reinvesting the money into existing stuff.
Plus when it came to the mainline series, they aimed too high with Fabula Nova Crystallis, they aimed too high with the FFXV Universe, I imagine they're reluctant to aim that high again. I'd be all for them scaling back and focusing on singular narratively contained experiences again, but as someone working in the industry, I really can't see that happening and really feel like we'll be seeing a lot more F2P trash from them with a gem few and far between.
But sadly this seems to be the way a lot of major publishers are going right now.
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