I am not sure why people are bashing Square Enix. I think they did fairly awesome and are one of the best publishers this generation; there's about 10,000 iOS/Android/Facebook developers and publishers that are easily much worse. I bought (way) more Square Enix games this gen than any other company, and this is the first time that has been the case since the SNES/Gameboy/Genesis era. While some people are criticizing them for remakes, the remakes are fairly heavy, including many new features, gameplay improvements, and new scripts; and personally I think it is awesome that they revised these games for a new generation, taking along what they learned along the way - not to mention, many of these games never saw western releases before, and now we're getting heavily updated and improved versions of them. This generation Square Enix brought:
* Dragon Quest 9 - which ended up being my most played game of all time, I probably played this one more than my next 5 longest playthroughs of games combined.
* The World Ends With You - one of the most unique and refreshing games I played this generation, no other game used the DS better.
* The Zenithia trilogy remake ended up being my favourite games of the generation, and Dragon quest 5's remake is my favourite RPG of all time.
* Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and The Lion War - ended up being surprisingly great games, one a remake with a much improved script.
* Final Fantasy IV DS was again, an excellently executed remake, it was more or less playing a great version of a classic game; and playing it all over again for the first time. Fixing all of the flaws of the original, and improving on it with a much improved and enriched script.
* Final Fantasy 4 AY - is the game I wanted to play as a kid, better late than never at all; It was a longer story than the original FF4, and the characters were improved significantly (particularly Palom and Porom); and the new characters were very interesting and likable.
* The Final Fantasy 7 spinoffs on PSP
* Crystal Chronicles series (I really liked Rings of Fate and feel that Crystal Bearers is one of the most underrated games of the generation)
* Dissidia
* Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together is a fantastic re-imagining as well.
* Chrono Trigger had some good and not so great stuff included, but it was nice to see it appear on a handheld, finally.
* Square Enix also finally released Final Fantasy 3j in the west, and an updated version of the game; this was one of my favourite RPGs on the NES (probably next to DQ4 only) and was very happy to play through with my monk team =)
* Kingdom Hearts games (I haven't got around to these ones yet).
And no, it is not some Eidos game I am looking forward to from them; Square Enix took over Eidos to expand their market to the type of gamers who are into games like Kane and Lynch, and Tomb Raider - I am interested in Dragon Quest X more than any other game.
Final Fantasy 13 turned out to be disappointing due to missing features that were present in most other FF games; but the game itself is still perhaps the best looking game on PS3, and easily the best RPG on PS3 or Xbox 360; although, home console RPGs weren't very good this gen unless you are into PC-style RPGs - which are a bit of a different genre; the great RPGs were mostly on handheld.
Not to mention, Square Enix has purchased some older companies who had collapsed, and has breathed life back into them; Eidos being the major one.
Of the major publishers, the biggest loser this generation was easily THQ. I can see them being bought out soon. THQ has been constantly shrinking as a company, losing ground.
Biggest fall from last gen was Sony; Sony went from first to third, and sales of the PS3 are nearly 100 million down from last generation's PS2.
Biggest improvement from last gen was Nintendo. Nintendo more than quadrupled sales of their home console over last generation, and doubled handheld system sales over last generation. They also managed to be WAY in first for software sold on their two consoles with software numbering over 1.35 billion this gen.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
