| ZODIARKrebirth said: i remember the time where square enix was still called Squaresoft, before they teamed up with enix. in this time the pruduced one jrpg hit after other...remember games like crono trigger, secret of mana, final fantasy, vagrant story, xenogears, crono cross, dragon quest, threads of fate, parasite eve, radiata stories, valkyrie profile, grandia, kingdom hearts, star ocean...as jrpg lover it wasn't even necessary to wait for a review (it's my opinion), and you knew already you would buy a game what you will enjoy, because it's from SQAURE ENIX, but then with the the generation of ps3/xbox this changed...something has gone wrong, but why? |
Before they teamed up with Enix (after Square got in financial difficulties after investing way too much budget into the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), they didn't have games like Dragon Quest, Grandia and Valkyrie Profile, as these games came from Enix.
But well, seeing this list they once had still a lot of RPG-IPs. So what happened in the PS3/X360-era? The problem is increased production value. A 2D-sprite-based and turn-based RPG is relatively fast and cheap to produce. So even a few 10K sales are enough to turn a profit. Big real-time 3D-worlds are very expensive, productions take years and that with hundreds of people instead of ten. So you need WAAAAAYYY bigger sales to turn a profit. So they concentrated more and more on the big IPs. Besides the fact, that if you bind hundreds of people for years for one game, you haven't the resources to push out multiple IPs.
So it is basically the combination of 3D with HD (because SD in 3D is more expensive than 2D, but still a lot cheaper than HD). 2D on the other hand is even today pretty cheap. Look at the small company Kemco, which can with barely more than 100 employees push out around 10 games each year - turn-based 2D RPGs.
