curl-6 said:
Yeah staying platform exclusive in a time where not even Sony first party games still are feels like an anachronistic move. The irony is, Square's actually pretty good with bringing their smaller stuff to a wider audience; they've arguably given the Switch better support than any other big publisher with stuff like Octopath Traveller 1/2, Triangle Strategy, Harvestella, Dragon Quest 11, Diofield Chronicle, Nier Automata, etc, but when it comes to their heavy hitters they're still doing exclusivity deals like it's 2004. Speaking of anachronisms, I wonder if like this whole FF7 thing would've faired better if it had happened 10-15 years ago on PS3/360 or PS4/XBO; FF7 nostalgia doesn't seem as strong now as it was back then, now that most gamers under 30 never played it and many that did have moved on or aged out. |
I think Square missed a really good opportunity to get an original Final Fantasy on Switch. It didn’t necessarily have to be a graphical marvel, but something close to XIII’s graphics would’ve been fine. Think of Final Fantasy’s answer to MHRise. It could’ve been turn based or action turn based like Xenoblade Chronicles. Switch has a user base of over 100 million and has an impressive catalogue of first and third party JRPGs, both old and new.
But alas, if Square still finds being exclusive to Sony with their current FF content would be more beneficial than expanding their audience/platforms, more power to them. At this time, it does not seem like the franchise is finding growth. It’s not dying, but it’s not finding that momentum that it once had from VI-XII. Zelda, considered a long time contemporary to FF, managed to expend its audience even as an exclusive to Nintendo’s platforms. As great as the recent games have been, FF just hasn’t been able to have that breakthrough sales performance this Gen.
