Quality > quantity

Game length is a god awful metric

That's fine and dandy to say when it's not your money or 5 years you've spent working on a game. 

I understand why devs do it, they feel obligated to hit a certain play time so that their game doesn't get negative reviews or it stacks up to other games in certain genre types. 

Open world games? Forget it, 10-20 hours isn't gonna work. RPG/adventure games? Same issue. Not everyone has a Mario or God Of War IP to tack onto their game, those are the exceptions, not the rule. 

Putting in filler content is an easy way to increase the play time of game without requiring tons of new art assets and even time spent by the lead designers as B/C-staff can just be put on fetch quests and it also doesn't require a ton of time to add (which is just as important as money). To make a fetch quest, that's something a designer can do in like a week possibly, to make like a new dungeon or village with new gameplay content ... you're talking months potentially. 

Spider 2 is highly regarded and was around 20 hours for me.  An extra 10 hours would not have made it any better.  Quality matters.

Quantity is just a silly argument.  Is McDonald's better than a 5 star Michelin restaurant because you get more food?  Is a 6 pack of bud light better than a 4 pack of Guinness?

Gamers need to get over length as a metric of gaming.  

If you're running a business, you'd rather have McDonalds than any 5 star Michelin restaurant, because you'd be a billionaire. 

Gamers need to get over graphics obsession too, but you don't want to hear that side of the coin. 

This meme has been gaining traction the last little while:

I would rather have pride in my work and run a 5 star.  At some point money loses value.  I speak from personal experience.  My career has gone very well but the last promotion didn't mean much...  it wasn't like there is suddenly something I needed I couldn't afford previously.

Greed is the real issue.  Making 200 million is viewed as bad because it wasn't 500 million.  That is an absurd position.

I play indie titles all the time, cocoon in particular was amazing.  Graphics aren't everything.  I will say I'm not paying $70 for indie games.  If developers want to drop fidelity they can drop their pricing as well.  

This discussion is stupid in both sides

Nobody will buy a JRPG with 10 hours campaign, not even in the 80s JRPGs were that small

Padding and filler stuff are cheap to produce, that's why they exist in first place. Removing it will not make cheaper games, only shorter games and Yes people will complain it's a 70 USD game for 10 hours of gameplay

FF remake would never run in an acceptable state on Switch

Releasing low quality ports is a great way to make platform holders don't buy a game. Hogwarts Legacy sold at best 10% of its total on Switch at cost of almost one extra year of downscaling and optimization


FF is dead in Japan because Japanese people stopped liking the IP. For some reason they don't like action games, and photorealistic open worlds are not appealing to them either. With a generation that never played a FF game in their lifes and never touched a Playstation it's hard to grown a new fandom, that's why the fandom kept declining in every release

FF remake will be released on Switch 2 and guess what, it will sell poorly, very poorly. This is not Monster Hunter, it doesn't have a long term relationship with Nintendo, this is not an IP long associated with handhelds either. It's a home console game tied to Playstation brand. If it can't sell well on their fanbase historically is (Playstation) it won't sell well elsewhere. Period.

The Playstation brand declined in Japan because 3rd party games lost popularity, and not the other way around. But of course the lack of portability also contributed to the decline.

The biggest 3rd party Japanese games exploded in popularity globally without the need of Nintendo platforms or Japan. Monster Hunter literally had to temporarily leave Nintendo to grow in popularity. A decision that was frowned upon by so many Nintendo fans.

Final Fantasy didn't actually decline in the west or globally after 8. FFX, XI, XIV and XV are all bigger games than 8, and good chance Rebirth and Remake will outsell 8 too when all is said and done. I will say Final Fantasy stagnated due in part to the decline in Japan, but the core problem was that the series just wasn't as high quality as it was in the old days. It'll take a period of consistent quality and a strong word of mouth to start meaningfully growing again. The platforms aren't the problem.

The Switch is at the end of its life and is underpowered. SE would be wasting a lot of time and resources making a port, it might not be cost-effective, especially when Sony's money-hatting/marketing is in the equation. Would be wiser to port it later for the Switch 2 which will inherent the majority of its predecessor's playerbase.

That's factually false. The PS2 and PS3 titles sold just as well as their PS1 counterparts (6 - 9m in their original platforms) despite declining Japanese sales. 15 is the fastest-selling game in the series despite a 70% drop in Japan and 14 is by far the most popular and profitable FF ever.

Also, I noticed a large part of your posts is allegedly claiming SE has some sort of irrational love for Playstation platforms. Let's get real for a moment, shall we? Their only love is money, the same as every other company. If they weren't being massively subsided by Sony/Epic, to the point of netting them more money than the estimated profits of releasing elsewhere, their games would definitely have landed on other platforms.

Cut scenes and voice acting isn't cheap.  Cutting fluff does save money.  In 7 remake biggs, wedge and Jessie aren't that important and could have had many cut scenes cut.  

And nobody said 10 hours, 10 to 20 hours.  Remake could easily be 20 hours and would have been better for it.  And even 30 hours for a jrpg is fine.  This 50 to 100 hours is nonsense.  

Anybody who thinks longer is better is being silly.  FF16 was heavily criticized for long stretches of boredom.  Quality will always trump quantity.

What takes times to build is a extensive overworkd and character models and animations. Adding filler million and items scattered is a breeze. Without the padding the first game would be 10 hours long at best. Which means Square would need to add almost everything from Rebirth to the first game. Here comes the problem, it took LONG time to get the gameplay smooth and running straight. The first game is largely a showcase for them to get the art, character modeling and gameplay running and then starting building the second and third parts

Putting everything together in a single game would have resulted in a new Cyberpunk, or worse

Regardless, the padding is almost completely optional. You can skip it and speed run the game to finish it in 10 hours if that's what you think it will bring you more joy. The padding is there for people who appreciate the gameplay bits and collecting missions, why should they remove something harmless that many gamers appreciate? It's like saying we also should remove all collectibles, missions and hidden items in any game