Whilst the 360 development probably didn't help matters, from what I've read (on Gamasutra a while back, I think) FFXIII was in development hell well before the 360 announcement. They had artists churning out assets but didn't have a coherent game in place until they made the demo for the FFVII Advent Children Complete Blu-Ray in Japan. That was about a year before the Japanese release.

I think this quote mostly sums it up:

"Nowadays, Wada proactively tries to play as many Western games as possible — for example, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — and provides comments about these games to Square Enix's staff."

(from this, but shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)

Like with Resident Evil, Final Fantasy turned into a franchise that chased after the western audience, and fans of the series are never going to like that because these series didn't become the juggernauts that they are by pandering to western tastes - at least, in my opinion, they were created for Japan in Japan but had a broad enough appeal that they could reach both markets.  By specifically targetting the west, they removed all that made them special in the first place (and this is coming from a guy who loved XIII-2, too!)

He seemed aggressive with other business models as well, which traditional gamers are never going to be fans of.  MMO's are fine; but not as mainline entries in a series and not as a resource guzzling part of the business that causes multiple other projects to be delayed because of failure.  iOS is a growing market but your average VGChartz user probably isn't going to be all that interested in it.

Then there was the whole multi-platform of FF XIII debacle.  To be honest, my opinions about that aren't as extreme as some other people's, but I think it's evident if you play the game (and no offence, because I know you like it) that it has been pieced together from numerous different ideas; which makes the final game just feel really disjointed.  Story threads build up but lead nowhere; it feels distinctly like a game of two halves (linear corridor game -> monster hunter clone).  It gets rid of a number of traditions of the genre/series without any good reason.  Whether all this stemmed from shifting it across to 360 as well as PS3 - I have no idea.  Probably not, but still.

There's also just been the way he's handled other games.  Like Versus XIII.  Nomura clearly wants to work on this title but it appears his team has consistently been shifted around to other projects because of the failure of FF XIV and some obsession with padding out the "Lightning" arc of games.  Kingdom Hearts has been splintered off from a mainline-console series to lots of sidestories on handhelds, which no-one really asked for.  Stuff like that.

The one good thing that happened to Square Enix this past generation is Eidos; and even that seems to be (from the business side) like a bit of a disappointment, at least in their own eyes.

Just my take on things, anyway.

Oh no doubt, FF13 was going to be a piece of crap either way. Sony fans just like to make a fuss about the 360 port as if the game structure and design wasn't laid out ages before. 

Also that FFVII Advent Children that Nomura directed was hilariously awful. 

All the charm from Squaresoft left with Hironbu Sakaguchi. 

IMO, FF7 worked with Nomura because the graphics were limited so he couldn't go over the top with his ridiculous designs. As the graphics have progressed, Final Fantasy's look has become more of his style, but the games have gone to crap. 

You can call Patrick for all i care... I already pointed out this is not facebook. If you want to make a point then prove me wrong.

The fact is that the 360 port did delay the game.

I will take this as an excuse to point out Square Enix's actual problem this generation.

Their games sold, and as a general observation they sold well and they were critically acclaimed.

Numbers rolled in but for some reason revenue slowed down. Square's problem is not the absence of hipsteriasis in relation to their Final Fantasy decisions.

Square's problem is that they couldn't deal with the fact that HD gaming demanded -increasingly- huge amounts of production costs. And the result of them not being able to adapt in that environment is that whereas their numbers would be deemed as satisfactory by many other developers, Square showed -extraordinary- loses in the last FY. Heavy hitters Tomb Raider, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs did not bring in revenue which raises questions regarding how realistic Square's sales expectations were. At the end of the day they simply couldn't break even.

Some people -very vocally- thought they found a scape goat in the face of a CEO to blame for the creative direction of the latest FF game which steamed from their inability to follow a slightly more complicated than usual story line. Their answer ? A more widely accepted creative direction. Do what the fans really want.... Yeah, that's the thing: a lack of acceptance is not really the problem here; the problem is that big sellers lost money. That's the head line, that's Square's report and the main story of every gaming news article. Square's problem is failing to balance the huge development costs for HD triple A games that this gen calls for and a result having out of touch sales expectations.

There are no easy solutions. Dead Space 3 needed 5 m sales to continue being a viable IP. RE 6 is failing despite reaching 4 m. How many millions do people think Versus is going to sell ? How many millions would KH 3 sell ? Would any of them reach the heights of FF XIII ? Square Enix have actually addressed this issue again and again. Production costs have been a problem with FF XIII development and also the reason stopping a FF VII remake, which would have to be treated as a full production - a subtle hint about costs there-. People obviously rushed into making comments about the dire state of FF without reading the actual announcements Square made. In their charts FF XIII-2 didn't lose money. Hitman and Sleeping Dogs did. What's the difference ? XIII-2 is actually a pretty modest production. What else made money ? "mobile trash" made money. I'm not standing up for iOS shovelware of course, I just want to show that some people are a little out of touch, since this is a purely financial matter and not a matter of taste.

his finest moment

honestly this guy should have left ages go, he was so out of touch