What happen if it's game over? Just restart the game~!!

Well, that's what Square Enix is doing now. Restart everything~
After Square Enix had gone through hell last year, now they rebuilding their Brands.
They had to come to this decision because their profits plunge 90%!! It's a total disaster~! And they think it's all Final Fantasy XIV's fault. (Hey,what about FF13?)

The fourth quarter financial estimate (2010):
Sales
Before: ￥160,000,000,000 ($1.9billion)
After: ￥130,000,000,000($1.5billion)

Net Profit
Before: ￥12,000,000,000($143million)
After: ￥1,000,000,000($12million)

And "thanks" to their estimation, Square Enix's stock prices dropped another 10%

Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada says something at a press conference:

"We have to reconstruct all our brands again, and make them into something perfect. I regret the fact that we let them all get so sloppy."

And now in 2011, Square Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2, a sequel to FF13, as being due for PS3 and Xbox 360. But the director is Toriyama Motomu, the one said that towns were too much work in FF13. That's bothering me~ (too)
But in early last year, when they have decided the next Final Fantasy game(Final Fantsy XIII-2), the director(Toriyama Motomu) gives some explanations and promises to the fans.
- About making details of the environment:

“In the previous Final Fantasy games on non-high definition consoles, we were able to kind of take everyone’s ideas and include them in the games.

I call it a bento box system, where you have all of the different little things in there. So we had minigames or towns where you were able to talk to all of the townspeople. But with the HD console you’re not really able to do that because it takes so long to develop.”

(So, FF13 is a bento that you work so much on the rice and ignore all the side dish. Rich yet so plain~)

- The contrast is Bioware and others(based on my resource) manage what Square Enix can't make it even with some highest budget in the industry:

“If you think about how long it’s already taken to develop this game, to have included all of those other aspects, it would have been too long.

So what we did instead was define what was truly important to the game, and include those aspects and really emphasize those items we wanted to include.

We had to consider the amount of time it took to create the game engine, which we built from scratch, as well, and so with that additional time included we had to decide what we could and couldn’t do.”

(Well make sense to me, but still not quite acceptable. Emphasize on all towns, all townspeople that can be talked to, graphics, characters and mini-games. But neglect the essence of the game, maps structures, characters' level, weapons which lead to players motivation. This is something that nice to see but bland to eat for FF hardcore.)

- If it might not been better to pursue towns rather than cut them completely, Toriyama is dismissive:

“You can wait longer for the game where we can improve those elements!”

(Ok fine~! We'll wait.)

-  He also admits he personally made the design decision to strip out the traditional RPG elements:

 “Personally, the Final Fantasy games that I have worked on have been very story-driven, so in terms of the development I wanted to, of course, use my personal strengths which where those.”

(...)

- He does however seem chastened enough to promise their re-inclusion in the future title(FF13-2):

“The next title that we will create will have those elements, and the improvements to those elements that you were mentioning.”

Well, I guess this is their final chance to make things right. Better make it right or else....
So, based on what he said, it depends of the players out there to whether anticipating the release of Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Talking about taking too much time developing the game, well that's true, if they want everything perfect in the game, that would be too long for players to wait. Since everything starts from a scratch, from nothing to a complete game.
But now, since they have some basic and "base" from previous game, I hope they can add more elements and improve more in the game, to make it an epic game~!!

From the moment he talked about "the next Final Fantasy" until the release of Final Fantasy XIII-2 would be 2 years, a year is passed another year left.
A game that takes 2-year-time to complete:
Would it be too short? Would it be too long?
Well, just wait and see how's the result.

Without wasting time, here's the trailer(English) of the game:

And here's the Official Website. With Japanese trailer.

Announcing FF13-2, they are also showing some Final Fantasy versus XIII footage.

Trailer 1

Trailer 2 Mirrored

Latest Trailer


I like Final Fantasy versus 13, the system is similar to Final Fantasy 7: Dirge of Ceberus. I prefer to control the character freely than giving command.

Let's hope Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be a good game.