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.

Square-Enix, if it wasn't obvious already, is not heavily supporting any console. Their allegiance is with handhelds now and I feel in the future, more and more games and franchises will be lost on consoles to the handhelds. Dragon Quest has already changed allegiances. I think it's only a matter of time, maybe 5-6 years at the most and we'll be seeing the main FF series change to a handheld exclusive. Just look at the DS and PSP support:

See the difference? I wouldn't be surprised if the main series of both Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy were both on handhelds within 5 years. Square is abandoning consoles very slowly but surely. Even if you look towards reviews, their handheld offerings have reivewed better also. A handheld oriented Square is a rejuvenated one. The console Square is lazy as all hell and uninspired.

I think the reason there is such a lack of Console games on Square Enix's part is because they are spending a lot of their money and time on one game, FFXIII. The DS/PSP ones are quicker and cheaper to make with SE's other teams (if they have small, separate teams). Obviously console games take much more time, but with FFXIII, they are taking several years, past the standard 18 monthe-2 years.

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

FF is exactly what is bringing down SE at the moment.Due to their insecurities they have gone into a play safe mode when it comes to their titles.Look at the sheer number of FF ports, remakes and spinoffs being made in such a period of time.The problem is that most of SE fans aren't truly SE fans, but FF fans.

SE have released quite a number of other well made rpgs but due to SE's attitude of playing safe, they push the FF games into the focus of the audience instead of games such as TWEWY and the like.

Unless they can reinvent the series much like Nintendo did with NSMB,Galaxy and MKDS/Wii I can see FF starting to shrink slowly as the decade goes on.

SE should have a dedicated team on the side trying to create a new/existing(preferably new, since it would be fresh) franchise with the intent of it being greater than FF and attract newer players as well as the old FF fans.Once they have absorbed the old market they can then focus on making FF with smaller budgets and try to reinvent it now that less pressure is being put on the expectation of the game,or simply scrap the series altogether if FF doesn't transition too well into this 3rd generation of gaming that the DS/Wii has spawned.

I think the teams have been made already. Their first battlefront is the DS to explore possibilities on Wii.

Also, look at the Crystal Cronicles Franchise, The DS and WiiWare approach are the first signs that they want to make it a franchise on its own... They just need to take out the FF from it because they are very different. They gave a lot more support to the dev team

And with the port of Chrono Trigger out of the blue, many can speculate that they plan to revive it, for it had potential to be as good or even better than FF