The first point, ok, but it's a fair comment. I don't see SE giving the 16 team anywhere near the same money after this. The law is going to be laid down by the business division. 

The second part is true as well and hasn't been mentioned in this thread much at all. Nvidia's GPUs often outperform their AMD counterparts with fairly sizable margins, the chip inside the Switch may well be punching in at around what a 1 TFLOP AMD GPU would. 

1 TFLOP is enough to handle most any next-gen game at 720p IMO, and certainly any Japanese game. Square-Enix and Konami were really the last Japanese studios pushing really high end graphical games with the FF and MGS series, and now with FF underperforming and Kojima gone from Konami, likely that whole era is over. 

It might be what the Japanese game dev community needs anyway. Less emphasis on graphics, more emphasis on fun and getting back to basics.

Better graphics don't make a game less fun, they enhance the experience. Everything you are saying in this thread seems like a Nintendo fan's dream more than anything that's factually true. Currently Nintendo doesn't even have a viable platform for FFXV and the Switch is likely far less powerful than PS4 and XB1 as hardware is more than just the floating calculatins that can be done by the GPU. Home consoles and PC's have alot of other advantages in hardware too that you aren't thinking.

Also a FFXV seems to be selling well worldwide and its the overall sales of a game that matter not sales in one country. That's why its being sold globally and not just in Japan. Japan will just be less relevant for the series.

Graphics are nice, but they're just one piece of the puzzle that's getting way over emphasized. 

This looks very nice to me, how much better do you need in terms of graphics? And is it worth doubling/tripling the cost of your development and adding a year in development time to get there? 

Where's the end game here? That game graphics are supposed to increase in complexity every 6 years by 10 fold and developers are just supposed to magically make their games look several times better while still charging the same cost? Imagine if the cost of making a hamburger increased 2-3x every 6 years but you couldn't charge more for the burger, I don't think McDonalds, Burger King, etc. would be happy. 

For Japanese studios in particular, I think enough is enough. More realistic graphics are not even helping Japanese games, because all they do is make it evident how weird some Japanese ideas are, a lot of Western gamers for example won't touch Final Fantasy XV with a 10-foot pole because the main character looks like a emo-boy band star. That stuff was easier to ignore in the past when the graphical complexity wasn't there (like Cloud or Tidus). 

I like graphics, and I like good graphics, but I think if you can run Unreal Engine 4 ... that's pretty damn good, if Switch can run graphics like that, then it's time to focus on other things like the acutal vision for the gameplay. Even Metal Gear Solid V, which is probably the most ambitious Japanese game ever made next to FFXV can be made playable on a 0.25 TFLOP 512MB XBox 360 with an ancient architecture.

That's amusing, don't you think? Considering Nintendo doesn't make graphics intensive games, yet charge full price nearly the entire gen for many of their games...

From a business POV it makes sense. If you think about it as a business owner, would you accept several times the rising cost for the same price?

Where does this logically go? Many studios are going bankrupt, we have horror stories from Amy Henning (of Uncharted fame) saying that developers are practically being worked to death and basically missing out on their kid's growing up:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-10-06-were-definitely-at-the-point-where-somethings-gotta-give

Hollywood CG movies cost $100-$200 million a pop, if we keep pushing towards that level of graphical complexity, you're going to end up with an industry that has like 15 games a year made that all need to sell 10 million copies to break even.

No Japanese studio especially can keep this up. Once you get past PS3/360 level hardware IMO you reach a point where you can make a "nice" looking game, and the only big difference then becomes how "nicer" you want, but above PS3/360 visuals if you have a decent art department can realize basically any type of game scenario with worlds that are massive and still look decent. 

I've read this whole thread and while I agree with your sentiment as a whole (I don't see any compelling reason FF XV shouldn't be on Switch), you seem to be living in this alternate reality where you cherry-pick facts to fit your argument which is surprising because you're normally a solid poster.

When you say developers support Vita over 3DS, what you mean is niche developers support Vita over 3DS.  Which makes perfect sense, because when you're selling ~ 50k copies of your game it doesn't really matter whether your userbase is 5m or 20m as long as the 50k you need to make your game a success are there.  Throw in the fact that many of them have a long standing relationship with Sony (Falcom/Gust/NIS) and it makes sense for them to go where they are.

Unless you mean the bigger companies like Bandai-Namco and Koei-Tecmo, who make PS4 games and tag Vita ports on as an addition to get some extra sales.  Which is basically what you're asking Square-Enix to do with FF XV, so you should fully understand why they'd do that at present?  And the reason they don't do it for 3DS is because it'd take far, far too much effort to condense their game down to run on that handheld (see: Hyrule Warriors Legends for further proof).

Otherwise, 3DS gets all the notable handheld exclusives from bigger Japanese developers (Capcom; Level-5 and yes, even Square-Enix).

Okay, now you're just making things up.  Revelations is 300k on VGC on 3DS, lol.  This whole thread is about Japan, right?

You say that like Sony doesn't do heavy lifting with so many of the franchises you're complaining about.  They basically helped fund the development of Street Fighter V.  They helped localize the Yakuza games into Chinese (and seemingly English going forward).  Who's to say they aren't doing something to help with FF VII, for example, since as they got a "first on PlayStation" for that one?

(Resident Evil is a weird case, since Capcom seem determined to torpedo their franchise by making it VR-focused, which is absurd but there you go, I doubt Sony had a hand in that one because no amount of money could cover up such a stupid decision).

Honestly, just a matter of time at this point.  We've already seen a number of the ex-bigger-franchises in Japan have mainline entries on mobile - Breath of Fire 6; Rise of Mana; Arc the Lad & Wild ARMs are effectively mobile series going forward.

I mean, I've seen you arguing in this thread that 3DS should've gotten a mainline Final Fantasy game, but that would've meant vastly dragging back the ambition on the game they wanted to make.  No bad thing possibly, but it's something they already did with Dragon Quest (IX is a massive step back in terms of ambition compared to VIII) and sometimes creators just want to be creators and make the best things they can.

I honestly find the approach they're taking with DQ XI is best - PS4 version that's clearly for Horii while the 3DS version is to mop up the extra sales they need.

But if we start talking about making the main series dumbed down for the console with the biggest userbase, then we're talking about going to mobile because that's undoubtedly where the Japanese gamers are these days.  It's not something I want to see either, but it's never going to get any better - as new generations are born they're only going to become more entrenched with mobile as their first experience, which is going to cycle onwards.  While Switch can delay things for a while if it does well, ultimately I don't think it's going to do anything major enough in the market to change the decline.  I mean, the decline is inevitable alone just because there's only going to be 2 players in the market soon rather than the 5 we had in the last gen.

I think they wasted too much time and money on this. Not just with the game itself, but they made the Luminous engine which is already outclassed by easier engines. Who knows if the engine SE made will even work on the underpowered Tegra that is in Switch. FFXV will be considered a costly lesson. If there is a FFXVI it won't take a decade. But it will be will most likely be made using a better engine.

This is 2016, not 2009 when FF XIII was released. Japan is all about mobile and trendy games like Splatoon. Still 700K is pretty good and some of the best figures for console games in Japan this generation.

Digital Foundry beg to differ.


I'll take their words [and my eyes] over yours.

It will likely be made on Unreal Engine 4, just like FF7 Remake apparently is, and it'll probably be made to accomodate the Switch as well as a PS4. 

Sony has failed to revive the market in Japan. Only Nintendo has a chance now, and with weak XBox sales outside the West, they can't rely on MS as the second option. 

Like it or not, Japanese developers have to take Nintendo more seriously, perhaps even to the point of building their games first on Switch. You can always up the resolution/effects for a PS4 easily enough, but you can't afford to lose the potential sales and audience on Switch. 

Switch will outsell the PS4 in Japan very quickly.