Quote Originally Posted by Aulayna View Post
I only really skim-read this, but I wanted to touch on the point of Square putting up barriers of contact. Honestly I think this is completely untrue. I think SQEX are being more transparent than ever, dare I say it, I think they actually learned their lesson.

I know that 90% of you don't care about Final Fantasy XIV, but the developers of XIV regularly have live stream events where they show off what they're working on for the game and field Q&A from the forums (not just the Japanese forums either) which has actually resulted in a couple of the developers becoming minor celebrities. They also did the FFXIV Fan Festivals last year where they were very down to earth and liasing with everyone.

The company has clearly taken note of this approach considering that we're seeing a lot more face time with Tabata in regards to both Type-0 HD and FFXV.

Plus the fact that Bravely Default has finally shown them, what we've all been yelling for years, that there is a market for a traditional JRPGs still and that they are returning their focus back to console development.

They probably will still make a load of mobile titles, this is largely because the mobile market is absolutely huge in their home territory and also costs very little to outsource localisation for other regions. While it isn't a practice I may like, it's something that keeps their bank tinkers rolling which is only a good thing after the unexpected success of FFXIV's re-release (which itself was a smurfing humongous gamble to take and most other companies would've just left XIV dead in the water) pretty much single handedly returned the company back into a comfortable financial situation. That means more money that can be funneled into bigger title development, which is also something they themselves have admitted that they need to speed up on.

Though there was also that Tabata (maybe it was Sakaguchi) interview a while back, that pretty much said that FFXV is going to make or break them - that they know the pressure is on to deliver with that title and if it tanks they may consider withdrawing from the big-budget console market all together and focus on making smaller, more tightly-knitted games.

So while yes, in the past they have been relatively mute - I think there has been a very clear and visible paradigm shift in the past 12 months toward community management and transparency by SQEX.
Wow, I was going to say somethings but Aulayna beat me to most of the points I wanted to make.

SE has become far more transparent in the last few years and honestly the very idea of a company having direct dialogue with its fanbase is a relatively new concept brought on by mass communication so I don't feel SE is especially worse about this than other companies.

As for Tabata's questioning of the consoles future, this is also simply a matter of business practices as well. The newer FFs, barring the MMO entries, while phenomenal for the genre have been not quite the numbers like say CoD or Madden which is what SE seems to be shooting for. We also have no idea what kind of money is going into these games and considering we're all too well familiar with the companies delays and poor development practices; it is very likely that games like XII and XIII barely made back the money that went into making them, whereas the low cost development of mobile makes it a both a safe and intelligent business decision. If SE can make all their bank on mobile, MMOs, and their side business in manga, music, and anime then I don't see why they should feel the need to cater to us oldbies who still want a AAA console RPG on our overpriced gaming machine and entertainment systems that will likely make no one happy because fans are unpleasable.

I mentioned in the "What if the FF series ended" thread that I feel that Squenix's "Cinematic RPG" design has become an evolutionary dead end and while some fans may still clamor for it, the world wants something more and until SE can figure out what that is, they shouldn't embarrass themselves by making console titles that take forever to produce and alienate the fanbase they are trying to recapture. Kitase's comment about catering exclusively to the teen demographic I feel both represents standard practices (most media business cater to the youth culture) but also the fact SE may have wised up to the idea that their older fans are whiny, self-entitled assholes who will never be happy with anything you give them and despite what they say, really don't know what they want. Why waste money on such a demographic if it's too risky? Despite some fans believing that a VII remake would make the company the richest in the world, the reality is that the fanbase will be split from those whining about the changes made to their nostalgia and how it's "ruined forever" while the other half would probably whine about how the game hasn't aged as well and SE should have been more ambitious with changing the game up to fit in line with modern standards instead of being cheap and just giving the game a new graphic engine and leaving it untouched. I mean it's a PR nightmare and the recent port to PS4 kind of shows that even just releasing the game to a new generation gets them hate.

I'm sorry when I say that I don't think SE is wrong to say "smurf the old fans" as a business practice. The days of Square being an artistic powerhouse died in the PS1 era and they are now a business first and foremost. The fact they still occasionally throw older fans a bone is a nice gesture that most companies wouldn't bother with.