Honestly, I'm still saying that SE is simply going to turn into Atari sometime soon. They'll become a big publisher and eventually just kill themselves out. They'll eventually exhaust Final Fantasy VII and realize the FFXIII universe isn't going to make them the money they want and they're just going to run out of money. They're just die out eventually.
It's sad because so many people have such fond memory of Square and Enix games. They totally forgot what made their games so memorable and their games just lost any kind of soul they once had. It's all about the 15 minutes of boring cut scenes, non-sensical story, and boring gameplay.
I think three things very well point to my theory-- FFXIII, FFXIV, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
For FFXIII, it's obvious they don't know how to make a current game. Pretty cut scenes are cool but when you have a boring game with a stupid story it doesn't matter much. We have fond memories of past SE games because of their strong gameplay, engaging stories, and/or fantastic characters, not the overly produced cut scenes. FFXIII is just the product of a company that is highly resistant to change in a world that is forcing them to change.
For FFXIV, it's obvious that SE is going to do what they want to do and fuck everyone else. There's something to be proud of there but you should only take that theme so far. With FFXIV they rightly decided to seperate themselves from WoW but they went a little far. It's like they saw everything WoW did and tried to go as far away from that as possible. The problem though is WoW is successful because it does a lot of things right. FFXIV tried to do the opposite of what WoW did and it was awful, which brings us to the next point. The fans told them constantly during the alpha and beta that the game didn't work in any way at all and SE trudged on. This shows that SE doesn't give a crap what their fans have to say, it's Final Fantasy and people will buy it.
Finally, there's Deus Ex. That game looks incredible. I don't have much bad to say about it. The problem is that SE is the publisher there, they didn't really make the game. Being the publisher they definitely have input but they aren't the ones making the game. The game will more than likely be successful and more than likely be good which makes me think they will continue to move closer to the publishing side because that makes them money.
To me, it's as clear as day. Games like FFXIII aren't providing the franchise that they can continue to exploit. MMO's are a hard market to get into and FFXIV isn't going to do anything at all. What's going to work are things like Deus Ex, the things that other really good developers are doing. SE is going to eventually realize they're going to make more money being a publisher. Final Fantasy will story be around but it isn't going to be SE that makes it, they'll simply be publishing it.
