VIIR will be a success for Square-Enix. I find it laughable to believe otherwise, cause despite all the warning signs (episodic content, more action rpg based combat, adding/changing the plot) it's still the most hotly anticipated game coming out of the studio with KH3 close behind with it's own series of terrible baggage in tow. So I don't think VIIR is going to be a disappointment for the company. The fans? Probably, but I'm sure it will be like the Compilation all over where fans will like it, but still say it fails to live up to the original. Of anything, I'm worried its success will allow SE to pick up more bad habits.

I also don't think SE lost as much with vXIII as people think it did. I've read fan comments that lead me to believe that some people think vXIII was 60-70% completed before that "evil Tabata came in and threw away Nomura's vision" but frankly all the news sources and interviews I've read has led me to believe the game never left pre-production, and was likely closer to only having 10-20% even ready by the time Tabata took over. Even the gameplay trailers shown are obviously heavily scripted concept videos (like the infamous one for XIII's combat in the original trailer) and was nowhere near polished. Yes, we're aware they changed some major elements and dropped some assets used for these proof of concept trailers but you would be hard pressed to find a big budget game that doesn't have wasted and unused assets for it and it hardly hurt them either.

It was middling for fans, but that's been a common issue for the franchise since FFVIII, and as long as the game gets good scores and sells copies, SE has no reason to believe a game is a failure. Not helped by which that SE is more concerned with making new fans than keeping old ones, so XIII and XV pissing off us oldbies is the least of their concerns.