From what I've learned in the early stages of development FFVersus 13 had a very small team working on it and didn't really pick up development until years later and then they took people off that team to help with the FF14 relaunch.  I think 1. they announced the game way too early, probaby when they first started development and 2. there should have been a full team there from the start.

After the new director took over, I forgot his name, he said it took 2 years to get 60% of the game done.  This leads me to believe maybe tetsuya nomura was the problem?  On one hand he never had any trouble with the KH games, but on the other this was a much larger project and maybe his vision was too large for his own good.  Anyway it looks like the game is on the right track now and will be out by 2016, maybe late 2015 if they pull a FF14 and halt production on everything else to get it done.

Tabata didn't take over until recently though, he joined the project in 2012 in which Versus/XV has become on SE radar again, after the full production was started in 2011 and then halted in 2012. When XV was re-announced in 2013 it was Nomura who introduced the E3 footage. Tabata was the second man to Nomura. So the project was going well before the director change.

The real question is that way Versus full development hasn't started until late 2011 ? We'll probably never know for sure. But I think SE wanted to finish XIII saga (2009, 2011, 2013) before moving to the next big thing. During that period both XIII and XIV were in development, why would they focus on another big project. This a company problem.

You mean the company that ran themselves into the ground and allowed Enix to purchase them... seems the new company is actually better with their finances =P