Is Final Fantasy important anymore?

[Commando]

Well I think that the pattern of less releases in this past decade rather than previous has to do with their choice to make XI (god damned terrible, terrible game) an MMO, which would explain the lapse before finishing XII. Also the spent time on the Abomination of X-2.

Is it as big of deal as before?....

Well I would honestly say no given the market demographic has changed not to mention the numbers are much larger. Essentially Final Fantasy has its holding in RPgamer crowd mostly. IN SNES FF4-6 was increaszingly the shit. By the end of the generation the game appealed to lets say 33% of gamers for the sake of argument. Most gamers reguarded Final Fantasy as great and though I can't personally speak for everybody, I would say a large number of gamers would agree that Final Fantasy VI is among the best games ever made.
My point is this From FFVII to the present Millions more people have joined the market, From the growing Maddenites to the Tony Hawkers, Other Cazers, Noobs and the newest group of Wiibies, that same 33% is probably more portioned to be 15% what's say, so no I think it would not be as big of deal now, because there are a whole lot more people on th e market who have never heard of Final Fantasy and would look at you blankely if you said the term JRPG to them.

Does that make any sense?

Also, from a fan standpoint. I'm honestly not sure. I would imagine that from IX on, even VIII on actually, they have lost small amounts of fanbase each game. For me X started it and XI killed it. I think you have something with the long cutscenes but Xenogears/Saga were fairly successful and I would imagine with the smae fanbase. I think the main thing is, FFs interest not growing, but yeah some people didn't like Eight because it was a new system of magic. I actually liked it and flamed the nay-sayers. IX people didn't like for reasons not really ever explained to me. I personally wondered if there was still 8 hate around. I still liked it. X still had a good amount of support, but carried the hate of the previous two. I and few others gripped about it's movieness, but it seemed to me at the time Our complaints were deafened by the Majority. X-2 I think was a mixed impression overall, it garnered a lot of hate from peoples I knew at the time who were still fans.
THEN CAME FFXI.... I believe in its first year it brought some fans back, then kicked them in the balls. Hard!
I won't even get into how much I hate this game and how crappy it was, for the sake of the discussion I think this cause a rift in the mindsets of NA players and Japanese/Asian players. I don't think Asia disliked it so much, but I knoe NA players such as myself thought that the game on the whole was very misguided. This was the first game I experienced that had DRM, when I found out that my discs were no longer usable because I hadn't logged in, in 90 days, I thought. MY God, thats worse than Bill Gates! What assholes! Thats how they treat their customers? Man fuck them! Square-Enix has lost me forever since that and I do not believe I am alone. Rest assured they get the EA treatment from me, so If I get XIII it will be a used copy so they don't get credit for the sale. I'm not sure how XII did, never paid attention to it, and neither did any of my friends (All of us FF1, 4, 6, 7 and 8 owners and other games too). Yes I knoe my friends don't accoun for everyone blah blah blah, but I think that more/less the trend may have been telling of what may be going on with the series. I think it will still be a big thing in Japan, and it'll probably still sell a million here, it has it's fan base, but I don't think it has the fans it once did, and I doubt SE will be able to redeem it.