Don’t even get me started on Rockstar. Their output this gen has been truly abysmal, they make Square’s AAA output look great by comparison. 7 year gen and all we got from R* is a GTA 5 port and RDR2, even though they have 2,000+ devs across 8 studios. GTA Online's success is mostly to blame there though, the fact that it rakes in money lead them to put a lot of their devs to work on new GTA online content, with the rest working on RDR2. Sadly I don’t look for Rockstar’s output next gen to improve. The main focus for them will be on getting GTA 6 out and then supporting it’s online mode heavily, while continuing to neglect their other IP’s like Bully, Midnight Club, LA Noire, and Max Payne. As a big fan of Bully and LA Noire, it saddens me greatly.

I agree that we should get at least 1 AAA per JP team from Square next gen, possibly even 3 from Nomura’s division (FF7R part 2 & 3 and KH4). Rather or not the other 4 divisions and Luminous Productions can pull off more than 1 AAA this gen remains to be seen. I hope the other teams can pull off more than 1, especially divisions 2 & 3 and Luminous, because I love Nier and FF (not a big DQ or Mana fan personally).

Alot of those are localization teams though. They also did a lot of contract work on RDR2, I think that 1600 actual Rockstar devs worked on the game at one point in time or another, but  I don’t think they ever said how many devs were on the main team that worked on the game for all 6 years of development. 

I personally think that Rockstar made a mistake making RDR2 the first true AAAA game. The scale is just too big, 6 years and 1600 devs, plus contract devs as well. It all feels unnecessarily large to me. RDR1 was made by 800 devs over 4 years by comparison, and is a better game in my personal opinion. I would much rather see R* go back to making AAA games rather than stay AAAA next gen. Say 800 devs and 4 years on future games in the two biggest IP, GTA and Red Dead. 300-500 devs and 3 years on the smaller IP like LA Noire, Bully, Midnight Club, and Max Payne. That would be ideal imo. But sadly it won’t happen.

You are right that yearly stuff like EA sports and Forza being on the list is a bit unfair. The rest I listed are not copy-paste though, not even CoD, contrary to what some believe about the series (every CoD game but 1 this gen has had an original campaign, mostly original maps, and mostly original guns, very little in CoD has gotten copy-pasted this gen, most of the games have taken place in different time periods which prevented copy-pasting).

As for team sizes, a comparison to other development teams is pretty much impossible because Square doesn’t release any information about the make-up of their development divisions. The only team size out of all the Square JP teams that we know is Luminous Productions, which had 130 devs as of September 2019. We can however compare Square’s overall employee count of 4,600 as of 2019 to other publishers, and it is true that Square is smaller than the 3 big western publishers as well as Take-Two/2K (EA and Activision-Blizzard have about twice the employees Square has while Ubisoft has a whopping 16,000, and Take-Two is just slightly bigger than Square at 5,200 employees), but they are the biggest JP publisher, and also seem to have more devs than Zenimax (Bethesda Parent company which released like 10 AAA games this gen) and Warner Bros. Interactive.

Perhaps, but your argument that 1 AAA game per IP per gen is about the same as other developers is equally as bad, I think I showed that much. Fact is that the vast majority of AAA games are made in 3 or 4 years, and yet in the 8th console generation, which ran from Holiday 2013 to Fall 2020, 7 years, only 1 of Square’s JP development teams has managed to release 2 AAA games, Nomura’s team which released KH3 and FF7 Remake part 1. Square’s other JP development teams only released 1 AAA game or no AAA games during this 7 year gen. That is slower than average for AAA development.

You are right that Square’s JP teams have released a good many smaller AA and A games  this past gen, but it doesn’t change the fact that they haven’t released many AAA games. The other publishers have also released a lot of smaller games after all, while still managing to release more AAA games than Square did. Even ignoring western devs, Capcom pulled off more AAA games than Square this gen, while also releasing at least as many AA and A games as Square released, despite having less developers than Square.

I acknowledged that Square has enough development teams and developers to pull off a lot more AAA games next gen, and job listings suggest that they are going to try to increase AAA development next gen. But I am not going to count my chickens before they hatch. Nobody will be more happy than me to see Square release a lot more AAA games next gen, I truly hope they do, but I’m not going to expect it because that may lead to disappointment.

Just because that was is the CEO's strategy doesn't mean that I have to like it. I simply don't like very many of Square's smaller IP's. Nier is good and I am glad that it has it's own internal team now, Yoko Taro should be able to do great things next gen while expanding the scale and budget of Nier. Bravely Default 1 was kind of cool, but the announcement of Bravely Default 2 disappointed me, I don't like that they barely improved the graphics over the 3DS, even though Switch is way more powerful than 3DS. I don't like Octopath at all, the art style totally ruins it for me. Never been a big Mana fan, the new Trials of Mana remake looks ok, but I would much rather Square had given Chrono Trigger that type of remake treatment.

I would much rather see Square focusing more heavily on large AA or AAA development than they have been. Next gen I want FF16, more FF7 Remake Parts, and more FF remakes, especially 6 and 8 (either AA Trials of Mana type or AAA FF7 type). I want more Kingdom Hearts, I want an interquel between KH3 and KH4 and KH4 next gen. I want a AA (Trials of Mana type) or AAA (FF7 type) remake of Chrono Trigger. And of course I want more Nier next-gen. To see Agni's Philosophy turned into an actual game by Luminous would be great as well. 

As I already said, the only Square team that managed more than 1 AAA in 7 years was Nomura's team. That is not similar to other AAA studios. Most AAA studios have released at least 2 AAA's in the 7 year generation, the only one I can think of off the top of my head who didn't is Rocksteady (only Batman Arkham Knight this gen). Every other AAA studio I can think of has released at least 2 AAA games this gen.

I already acknowledged that Square's western teams have much faster AAA output than their JP teams in an edit to one of my earlier posts. However, I'm also disappointed in the direction that Square has taken their western studios in over the course of this gen. They shut down United Front Games after the Sleeping Dogs MMO didn't work out, instead of greenlight Sleeping Dogs 2 with a somewhat lower budget, even though Sleeping Dogs sold pretty well lifetime (at least 5m including the XB1/PS4 ports). They have now pulled Eidos and Crystal off of Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to work on the rather meh looking Avengers game, and I think they have Eidos working on a 2nd Marvel game as well, so it will be ages before we get the final game in the Adam Jensen trilogy, if we get it at all. 

I think given all of that, that I'm well within my rights to have muted expectations for Square's AAA lineup next gen on a subjective level. Like I already said, I'll be happy to have Square prove me wrong next-gen, but I'm not going to have high expectations for Square's AAA output next-gen because I don't want to set myself up for disappointment.