Will The Last Story and Xenoblade outsell Tales of Grace in Japan?

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

darthdevidem01 said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Its pure speculation at this point. We haven't even seen gameplay footage, let alone marketing or publicity from Nintendo itself.

My take is that, if Sakaguchi couldn't help sell XBOX360 and DS units in Japan, then he may not be as strong of a force as people believe he is. His Wii offering may be just that, his 'Last Story' to prove if he can deliver a game to satisfy the masses beyond just Final Fantasy (or a game similar to it).

As for Xenoblade, its a sequel of a sequel series of a game that was on Playstation. There's really no way to gauge how well it'll be received. Frankly, I feel its gonna be an uphill battle to make that title popular and even after all that work, it may only sell to those who already liked Xenosaga at the end of the PS2. Which wasn't much (Xenosaga Episode III only sold around 180,000 units total). So while the 'name' of Xenoblade is big, its sales may not be. The only way they may get people to buy the game is a big media push and trying to market it as a totally different game.

THis is different (regarding The LAst Story)

Sakaguchi has this game in prototype since FF7

thie project is way bigger than BLue Dragon or Lost Oddesy was

Then hopefully it'll turn out to be something truly unique.  But considering many people really got into his games with Final Fantasy VII and later, and those games had heavy influence from other parties (such as Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase, among others), some people might be in for dissapointment if they're looking for an experience 'like' FFVII or later.  This could end up being just like Lost Oddessy or another of his previous FF games (pre FFVII) in theory. 

Part of what makes a game more unique, at least in my opinion, is the inclusion of multiple people to the project to voice their own concepts and ideas.  Since he's mostly gone off to establish his own company and do his own thing, he's working mostly just on his own ideas.  So we'll have to see if this game turns out to be truly unique or more like the games he's made in the past.

Honestly, I'm hoping this is a completely fresh project that could take JRPGs into a whole new direction.  But we'll just have to see.  Just going by Sakaguchis previous works however, he does seem to stick to common character themes and gameplay formulas so that might happen to this game is all I'm saying.