Let me ask the real question here. If Square had made Final Fantasy XIII on the DS instead of PS3, would it match sales? If it could then ask yourself the difference in profit it could make. Me personally, I think if FF XIII were developed for the DS, it would outsell the PS3 version by a healthy margin and would have been highly profitable. Much more profitable than the PS3 FF XIII will be. Square is aware of this and have shifted a lot of resources over to the little handheld that could.

The first bold is something that SE fans don't understand.

Disruption is already occuring.People are already saying that Tales>FF and LumArc>Tactics.Look at how many Tales games are being released on the different consoles.Look at the one for DS with FF-like CGI and people can't understand why they did this instead of the usual cellshading.Another Tales and Arc Rise Fantasia is also coming to Wii.

What will Square compete with on the Wii?
Crystal Chronicles or the FF13 spinoff that will inevitably be announced?

Pathetic.

FFXIII and FFvXIII are PS3 exclusive but there are still 3 spinioff titles that have not been named or havent had a console set for it. One most likely will be on the 360, DS, and Wii.

qft, the last 2 posts.

I dunno.  Graphics is about all Final Fantasy has left as far as quality goes.

Are you retarded?

Crystal Tools was never supposed to multiplatform as they later claimed.Some study of SE during Nov07 to Jan08 shows pretty good evidence that Wada wanted to shift FF13 to Wii despite the enormous costs already put in.

Crystal Tools had 2 purposes for being on Wii.

1)Port over FF13.There is evidence to show that this was the main motivation to the port.But it seems that that fell through since most likely Iwata didn't moneyhat them like they wanted.They weren't too sure if rpgs would do well and wanted money as insurance.

2)Push Wii gaphics and have it to start putting out well made rpgs to compete with the other well made rpgs that are being announced for the system.the_bloodwalker's post sums up that part nicely.

That's simply not true. I will not argue that Final Fantasy is at it's best, because it's not, but each game has been polished and has tried new ideas in gameplay, for better or for worse. Not to mention that there is no one FF team. Square can utilize any number of it's designers to head the next Final Fantasy, so each one can speak for itself. Who's to say if Final Fantasy XIV finds it's way onto the DS that The World Ends With You team won't be the one to handle it? This also applies to any console FF lands on, but I wanted to tie it into my position.

If you truly think FF would only sell because of improving graphics, you're sorely mistaken. The brand sells, and the main series sells just because it's THE Final Fantasy. I have no doubts in my mind that Final Fantasy XIV could sell oodles on the DS. I would predict no less than 7 million copies. Gamers want their RPGs on the DS. They've been selling well there and Final Fantasy is still a very healthy brand name in gaming.

Problem is, the Final Fantay team hasn't told a good story since the SNES days. (Unless 9 had a good story, haven't played it.) They've tried new ideas in gameplay, which... have mostly been minor, and generally for the worse as well.

The brand sells as well, however a large part of the brand identity relies on the cutting edge visuals. With it's more realistic art style a backwords step in graphics would be much more noticable then the cartoonish Dragon Quest series.

What was it that put FF7 on the map? Huge marketing hype and cutscenes that had some pretty amazing graphics at the time. Since then the focus has been on cinematic gaming in the final fantasy series.

At one point Final Fantasy games were known to be the pinnacle of RPGs in terms of story and gameplay...

Now it's known mostly for it's graphics, and it's hype as "the" RPG franchise. (Or that's how it's seen in the west anyway.)  That's all it has left really to keep it on top of the mountain.

Take away the better graphics... and all that's left is the hype vs other RPGs... and pure hype can't sustain by itself in my opinion.  It would start to fall and lose casual RPG fan marketshare to some other franchise.

Exactly. SE got the Licence of Unreal III engine to develop multiplatform games, not the Cristal Tools. That was made to fully use the PS3, their platform of choice.

You're right about the disruption, SE got cought off guard will  the Wii's success. They understood that they had to move. They thought with Chocobo's Dungeon and their original Cristyal Bearers it would be enough, but now they have to shift resources and reorganize internally. 

While the FFXIII port came to my mind, it made think of a remake of FFVII more possible on Wii because of the franchise's fame and will be a lot easier to strike back hard with a known title. On the other hand, it would look like that they are using theur previois games as defense for not developing an original title.

This is why Crystal Bearers will be made as close to a final Fantasy game as possible in terms of quality. But besides Chocobo's Dungeon, they need a full RPG flagship. the chances are

1. FFXIII, which I find it hard. Sony needs this game more than any other.
2. FFVII remake, but will have to be less like the Adven Childern models and more like the CG cutscenes from the PS1 game. Besides it may give an image that they are unable to make original games successful on Wii.
3. Kingdom Hearts 3, but if the rumors about the NA version of the PS2 games that weren't localized, this is ruled out. Besides Sony would not let it go as well that easily.
4. Revive with Full Strenght other franchises: Chrono, Mana, Musasshi, Saga.

I find it hard to come up with an original IP for the need to stop a disruption