To be fair, his role in developing Dissidia 2 was minimal, mostly character designs and some producing input. Same with FFXIII and the Compilation of VII (except AC of course). I think Versus XIII is a pet project of his, which was not meant to be more important than his flagship series Kingdom Hearts, so I'm not surprised its been on the back burner while we've seen 3 spin-offs, a remake and now two more KH side stories in the works (BBS2 and KH3D). Its fans who have propelled it into something grander, when in reality its a pretty experimental game with some of the technology its utilizing. Hell, it will be the first FF Action RPG since FF Adventure on the Gameboy.

Of anything, the game is shaping up to be like FFXII, which was also mired down by a super long production schedule but when you finally saw how freaking ambitious the title was, it made sense. The difference here being that Nomura didn't have a nervous breakdown (probably cause he's been focusing on multiple projects) and SE has learned with both XII and XIII, that its sometimes better not to rush an ambitious high profile project. I only wish Square knew this back when Xenogears and Vagrant Story were in development.