I just want Square Enix to go back on Nintendo platforms and stop worrying about graphic. Main reason FFXIII wasn't that great to me. Lack of freedom.

I don't really see why... people would expect this to sell like 13 did. Particularly because 13 was recieved not well in japan, or here. So there's much less hype for this than FFX-2.

The only other Sequels... to FF games, were FFX-2 which sold 5.5 to 8 million, Crisis core which sold like 3 million to 10 million (haven't looked at numbers in a while. And dirge 1 million to 10 million. FFIV after years, I don't remember.

Granted, this is probably the best received direct sequel. And it's probably a bit lower sales than SE was expecting.

I hate how Squeenix thinks they need to "westernize" their games. One of the most important things that made final fantasy so great was its blending of Japanese and Western sensibilities.

Plenty of badassery, great action, and a surprising amount of freedom and exploration, much like Western games
But also a lot of the same anime-inspired aesthetics and story

It basically meant that, if you were willing to play an RPG, it had something for everyone. Final Fantasy XIII kinda went in the opposite direction by giving us the worst parts of each style. All the bland, hyper-linearity of more hardcore JRPG's and the preference of Style over substance when it came to gameplay. Not to mention the characters lacked any depth and were basically cliche cardboard cutouts. "the stoic hardass" "The wannabe hero", "The whiny kid who has to grow up", "The sassy black dude", and the other two (Fang and Quirky spice actually had a bit of history, so they're not all bad)

Get what I'm getting at here? Open worlds, more control over the combat, sidequests, shops, so many things. Bring it back!

XIII left a bad taste in many mouths. These numbers don't shock me.

its all up to versus xiii now. i hope nomura wont disappoint.

No, it won't. Final Fantasy XIII did better on PS3 despite all the advertising and bundle for the XBox 360 version.

XIII-2 will do much better on PS3. I will bet on it.

XIII did have side quests.......
Anyway people complain games like COD are copy & paste, yet here you people are encouraging Square Enix to do just that.

I say let them experiment. XIII wasn't as bad as people said it was. XIII-2 seems to be a much better game so I will be picking that up next year.

The game won't come out until it gets a 360 announcement or not at all :D

What side quests?  There was the mark hunting (which I enjoyed, in fact it was the only part of the game I even remotely enjoyed) and a few scattered tasks to do, but nothing like the side quests of yore.   Gone are the lengthy quests to get ultimate weapons, gone is the element of exploration, gone are minigames (no cards, no blitzball, no golden saucer, etc), just one linear story with a few largely inconsequential things on the side. So what side quests do you refer to? 

And...what a logic fail.  Nobody is saying Squeenix should copy paste, but they had a formula that worked, tweaking it, trying it from a different perspective, or altering it is awesome.  Completely abandoning basically everything that made that series special is just dumb.  Keeping the same gameplay elements is important to making the games good, like how mario has always basically just been running and jumping.  Final Fantasy VI and IX have basically the same gameplay elements and are both very similar, but they're unique in their own way.  Call of Duty is different in that, there's only one action: point and click.  you can change up the story and setting, it's still point and click (and even the settings are basically the same with almost no differentiation).  

You're right, it's not as bad as people say, it's worse. 

aw... if FF became irrelevant we would lose 20% of the threads here... :(