Milking something in our current discussion means to release cheaply made sub-par product relying solely on the trademark to earn profit.

Whats going on with the final fantasy serie right now is not that. The game they are releasing are quality game in which they invest time and money. Let alone their bad management with FFXIV, they arent exploiting their customer by releasing cheap or sub-par product with the final fantasy name on it. Final fantasy XIII is longer and look better then most jRPG. As far as we know, the same can be said of type-0, FFXIII-2 and FFvXIII. The fact a minority or majority dislike their type of game, or specifically one game, doesnt make them milking out their customer.

No cuss versus 13 is not out yet.

@conegamer  install base on WIi dont mean crap and you know it. If it did then every multiplat Wii game would do at least as well as the HDs and for the most part they do much worst. Spider-man, Force Unleashed 2, COD they all do much better on the HDs than Wii, the only games ive seen that do better on Wii are your family friendly games, your Toy storys, Legos, SOnic, game nights etc

Well if not miking, then relying, as the name is used on games that could just as easily have different names, even beyond the usual main series being unrelated.

And just making effort isn't good in and of itself, when the effort is often on things that raise the cost more than needed, and/or come at the expense of effort on things that actuall help a game (the graphics of XIII at the expense of content).

I agree with relying, sure. Anyway, its natural for companies to relay on their popular existing franchise to sustain their company. Beside, its not like Square is only developing FF titles.

About the graphic VS content. I dont think its the actual problem. Even with those graphics, there is still a lot of content to be find in FFXIII. By a lot I mean more then the average. Surely less then some other FF titles, I dong argue with that, but thats not the point. The game wasnt unpolished or unfinished, or short by any mean. It was a good 40 hours without doing side quests (my save game is at 70 hours). It simply didnt please all players by not allowing more freedom early on.

In any case, all their future FF title seems to have exploration early on plus lots of content, maybe even more then FFXIII. FFXIII also remain one of the better reviewed jRPG of the past years. All in all, I really fail to see the problem with the final fantasy branding. All developers are bound to make games that will not please all their fans sooner or later. Personally I disliked FFXII a lot... they redeem themselves with FFXIII :P.

Final Fantasy X-2 was nothing like it's prequel. Final Fantasy changes with every iteration, why in the world would this one be different?

I highly doubt I'll hate Final Fantay XIII-2 as I love nearly every single one in the series.

Outside of your completely baseless claims about Type-0 and your claim about that the developers hated the original. It's also extremely stupid for them not to listen to criticism of their games to try and perfect them. I'd be surprised if any developer didn't do the same!

I'm not going to go and argue about subjective things with someone who is damn well determinded to hate it. Your thoughts on earlier game's story pretty much confirms it as XIII is no more 'pre-teen trash' than any other games in the series.

Sure I did, I think the issue here is that people are disagreeing about what 'burnt out' means. If the most recent legimate iteration of a game series has sold 6 million copies (FF14 really doesn't count in this case), how can anyone justify that as 'burnt out'? Thus I have said some may argue as to whether it is stale or not, but sales are a great indication of how a game series is received by the public. No one can reasonably claim the series is burnt out until FF13-2 or FF15 fails to reach even a moderate level of success.

Without something quantitative like sales, one can only subjectively judge if a series is burning out (more on that in a bit too). And don't get me wrong, I do feel that the FF series is burning out, but to be burnt-out means 'to be worn out or exhausted'.That is not the case just yet.

With FF13 having sold 6 millon copies, it is rash and irresponsible to judge that the series is worn out. Again, argue all you want about whether the series has gone stale, or you just don't like the direction the series is headed. These are subjective things, and by nature neither side can right or wrong. But a term such as 'burnt out' is actually quite objective. Applying subjective feelings and thoughts to an objective concept is wrong, at least when there are quantitative observations to support an objective approach.

That all said, the point in the Destructoid article are all quite valid, but they don't point in any objective or meaninful way that FF is burnt out. Burning out maybe, but NOT burnt out. There is a big difference. If the FF series was burnt out, there wouldn't be 3 FF games in development, there would be 0.

Besides, the OP says nothing about sales anyways, did you read the OP?

This is a common element is almost all games and beside that is not topically related to the OP. He is talking about quality and not profitability.

If you read the Jim Sterling article in the OP, you would know that he meant that graphics were the only thing being pushed in the series, and that is a problem.

Possibly, and probably. I know that I no longer care anywhere near as much about Final Fantasy as I did before 13...

Also, Lord is right. Jim's main issue is the lack of gameplay in these games, and if you've either played the game, read his review and/or even read the article, you'd see that this is the case.