Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
The first is that your game will lose coherence and direction, and suffer because of it. FFXV is a car driving simulator, an open world game, a fishing game, a Cup Noodle ad, etcetera. It's not an RPG, or an action game, but some unfocused amalgamation.
And outside of the old school crew, it got rave reviews and critics and was pretty much loved by all new players to the FF series. So... maybe an unfocused amalgamation is exactly what the "new generation" want.

The second problem is that it will leave the company constantly chasing trends. Look at Boss Key Productions. They start making a game like Lawbreakers, to try to chase the Overwatch money. When they can't break into that niche, they abandon it and switch to Radical Heights, attempting to copy PLAYERUNKNOWNS BATTLEGROUNDS and Fortnite. Each time they try to go aim for a new audience, they'll bring less experience, and less innovation, and they'll wind up a pale shell that is laughable in the face of a market that will already be saturated (or, given how long it takes Square to actually MAKE games, already passed by completely).
The difference between SE and BKP is that BKP is copying and SE is innovating. You can say what you like about FFXV, but it's still a new, fresh game. Also, SE have always done this. This is not new. Every Final Fantasy has always been different. The only difference between the NES/SNES and these days is that modern computing allows for more variation in what you can do, what you can put in. SE doing things different in each game and trying to appeal to new gamers is nothing new at all.

Square should just focus on making good games, not on appealing to any "current market trend" or "target demographic", because they'll wind up diluting their skills, entering oversaturated markets, and losing focus on their designs. And sure, FFXV sold more than Persona 5. But Persona 5 was lower budget, built by a smaller team, still has plenty of DLC that is continuing to make ATLUS money, and has developed the sort of rabid fanbase who will throw money at anything with the Persona name on it that Square used to have for Final Fantasy. That era has passed for Square, and it won't come back until they rebuild a franchise with some consistency and history to it.
That's why we have Persona as a series and Final Fantasy as a series. You can have both. There is value in both. Both have merit. You don't have to be like Persona to be successful any more than you have to be like Fortnite to be successful. Square still has that fanbase, by the way. I'm probably one of those people. I don't care about remasters like FFX HD or whatever but if a new main series game is coming out you better believe I'll buy it. But yeah, Persona can keep doing what it wants to do, and so can Final Fantasy. I really dig Final Fantasy - have watched a bunch of Persona on Twitch but so far it just hasn't grabbed me. Not sure why, but oh well. Like I said, something for everyone - both have merit for different people and thankfully you can indeed have both. If there is still a massive market waiting for an old school style JRPG I'm sure someone will tap it, and SE still does them on occasion (such as Bravely Default which was mentioned in this thread by others).