Quote Originally Posted by JJ Strife View Post
I'd love it to be true, but I don't see how it can be really. Looking at the various teams within Square Enix, I don't see how they could have a AAA-level team working on this. They're all busy on other things.

The only possibilities are the guys who did FFXV, or the guys who've been working on FFXIV. In the case of the first lot, they only really finished FFXV last March because of all the DLC. And in the case of the second lot, I thought they were still working on more FFXIV expansions.

I don't think they have any more huge AAA teams. Their other 2 are working on FF7 Remake and Dragon Quest 12.

One possibility of course is that it's a Switch exclusive, and is therefore using a lower budget and smaller team? I'd love that really. If they did something more akin to the PS1 Final Fantasy games. A bit like Bravely Default but better.
The XV crew were changed to a new production crew working on a new AAA title before Tabata resigned, they would only need a skeleton crew for DLC, not the whole team. XIV also just finished their newest expansion, so they would only need a small part to keep updating the title, not to mention XI's own team seems to have been downsized over time, so they have extra people for both crews. There is also the Ivalice team that has largely been doing stuff for XIV on the side and working on various projects. If worse comes to worse, they still have the SaGa team and the new Mana team as well to rope in talent. Not to mention they don't need all of the people from these groups, they could easily just hand select people and form a completely new team just for the title. So I wouldn't really say SE is hurting on development teams.

Yoshida, Ito, and even Kawazu and Tokita could all be lassoed into directing, though I imagine XVI will have a fresh face to direct. I'm getting the impression that some of the old guard are thinking of retiring or are opting to stay on smaller projects they have more creative control over, so they'll likely be pushing new people to take over.