i wonder if companies like this went on kickstarter with one of their major/old franchise to get the next one made how much money they would get upfront,probably quite a bit of cash wouldn't you say

I certainly wouldn't say that a reasonably long development cycle is "dishonest", nor "unprofitable". Nintendo for example often pushes release dates back, especially when it comes to Zelda, to make sure the games are as polished as possible. And they usually still sell millions. Same with Final Fantasy. Though, to be sure, they spent way too much money making FFXIII, for an end product that was, honestly, all flash and very little real substance.

They might want to rethink THAT part of the strategy from here on out.

it's is quite funny that most of their contemporary output can be produced on Nintendo 64 and fit on almost any cartridge from N64 times.

So the answer is to make iphone / broswer games? Okay then.

At least they are admitting they have a problem. Now we have to see what they do to solve it. One more e3 like last year would show me they still don't get it.

FF VII confirmed?

They're giving up on making games that appeal to a global audience? What does this mean?

Final Fantasy Japan exclusive while Tomb Raider Western exclusive?

Ya, what I took away from this is that they will finish up whatever titles they have in development for consoles and push them out the door, ASAP. Then they will be moving to smaller projects that can be released on smart phones, IPad's, and web-browser as their main focus. But they will still have a team that will crank out a console game every few years, but it will never be the quality that we expect of them (seeing as it takes them 5-7 years to produce this gen, next gen will be impossible for them especially with their new mission statement that reads "We now do smartphone games").

So sad too. Because if they would just focus on a single game or two at a time, set a budget and a deadline (with reasonable delays for quality if any) of no more than 3 years dev time per game TOPS, and stick to it....they would be fine. They would schedule their team and production around that budget and timeline, and it would be what can be produced in that time. As it's been, they take as long as they want, to make it as good as it can be, while also starting new projects on a whim/taking team members from one project and shuffling them to another. That is a recipe for disaster, and it's not how you DELIVER a AAA muti-million dollar quality console game. What you get is the disappointment that was FFXIII and the undelivered final product that is Versus XIII.

My thoughts exactly, what I'm getting from this article, they're going to use a double-edge sword that can give them more risk than reward if they can't pull it off...

"Of course, we will continue to invest in flagship titles that showcase our technological prowess, pursuing high‐end game quality, and which can earn profits on a global basis. Regarding a number of these types of titles, we will share information with everyone at this year's E3.

That said, we can not reasonably finance this direction for every single title, and we have to think about our entire product portfolio."