I don't think the Western focus was the reason for lower quality games. It's more likely they spread resources way too thin. They have too many games in development.

I think they even have 3 facebook games at the moment, or more.

If Microsoft owned SE exclusively, they'd only be able to make games on XBOX360.  No more quick ports on the DS.  No more iphone games made in 3 months.  No more quickly made Wii games like Chocobo Racing or Dragon Quest Swords.  They'd pretty much be forced to make 'HD' games exclusively, thereby increasing production time.  No matter how much funding they got from MS.

And again, since the majority of their fanbase is in Japan, a country that hates the 360 even when major JRPGs are on it (Tales, Blue Dragon, etc.), it would be the same as killing SE.

Wow where to begin here.

1.) Yeah Square needs to focus on other franchies that generate profit, but Final Fantasy is a cash cow, it always has and always will be. Since when did FF not produce a profit with the exception of FFXIV which is their fault.

2.) Uhh Square-Enix didn't spend shit for money on advertising for hardly ANY of those games except for FFXIII. That's why some games have low sales because they do not market. They expect people to buy it because it says Square-Enix on it.

3.) Final Fantasy XIII did not underperform.

4.) I do agree that if Microsoft SE they would die off. If anyone were to buy them out it should be Sony or Nintendo.

1) The point is Final Fantasy has become less of a cash cow than it was before.  Back on the PSX/GBA days, they could release just a straight port of one of their past games and sell over 2 million copies.  Now they are struggling just to sell high budget remakes of their products like the DS remakes.  Hell, the Dragon Quest remakes did better than the FF ones, with a significantly lower cost to make.

2) SE marketed FFIV DS pretty heavily, even in America.  Way more than any of their non-FF products.  FFXIV has a lot of hype and advertising, at least in Japan.  Its just a clear case of a game failing upon release.  And admittedly, a lot of their marketing did go into FFXIII.  No report has been release, but people have estimated it between 300-500 Million in advertising, spread over 5 years.  For a game that sold less than FFVII, VIII and X.  And it didn't do that much better than FFXII.

3) It did underperform what they wanted it to sell.  And this is coming from the execs at SE, who expected it to sell better than FFVII.  SE has also admitted FFXIII cost the most to make out of any game they've ever made.  Any way you look at it, they didn't make the money they wanted between multi millions in advertising and an over-inflated development.  This is just an estimate, but they could have easily spent near 1 billion between marketing and making FFXIII.  They probably made their money back (game has sold 6 million copies), but not by much.  Especially since just 3 months after release, the game was going for $20.

4) I don't think Sony will bother buying them.  I think last I heard, they owned like 25% of their shares.  If Nintendo bought them, it might help, but I think it would be a mistake.  For lack of a better way to say it, one of the major focus for Final Fantasy is on graphics and Nintendo probably won't be the top dog in graphics, even next gen.  SE probably wouldn't consider selling to Nintendo for that reason just like they won't sell to another company because of how well they're doing on the DS/Wii with Dragon Quest.  Exclusivity would only hurt them at this point.

actually i think microsoft would allow them to do ports to the ds , similar fashion as microsoft allows rare to do it  for the ds like viva pinata and diddy kong racing ds

Perhaps.  But I still doubt you'd be seeing the dozens of titles a year you do now.  More than likely, they'd be forced, like Rare, to focus on 1-2 'main' titles that would be 360 exclusive.  And while I do think they need to pull back and focus on fewer, more focused products, if it was on 360 it wouldn't sell to their main market (Japan and JRPG fans).  I own a PS3 and a Wii, but I'm not going to buy a XBOX360 just to play Final Fantasy.  I would for Dragon Quest, Chrono or Mana, but not FF.

Don't forget they own Eidos. They have a decent library of games still comming. Things are looking up. A lot of Western publishers are doing much worse financially.

when you look at it tho the buy out would benefit microsoft due to the fact kingdom hearts , dragon quest , final fantasy 100 lol jk and they would own eidos , io interactive ,etc   and still own 25 percent of rocksteady due to selling it to time warner ..... would help microsoft out in their first parties

Square Enix does own Dragon Quest they only publish the games.

Microsoft shouldn't buy SE they don't need to buy them out they'll get out of the red like grown ups. They need to stop living in the past and step up their games. Turn based gameplay, no towns to visit, too much videos and no control on character development isn't the way to go anymore. That was true previous gens but now gamers have changed and they demand different settings.

If Microsoft wanted to solidify their foothold in Japan they would've bought Mistwalker. They also should've consider giving a studio to Itagaki. Now they let em go so maybe they don't really care about Japan or it's wayy too expansive to get a foot in that country.