Square Enix Sacrificing Originals for Spin-Offs, Ports and Remakes

Boy, Square Enix sure likes makin' them Final Fantasy games. But, creating totally original ones is so hard! With fans snapping up whatever has the Good Housing Final Fantasy Seal of Approval, no wonder Square Enix keeps churning out remakes, spin-offs and ports. Easy money! After seeing yet another "Are FF spin-offs bad?" thread on a form, reader Sandy made the above table that compares main series FF games to spin-offs, remakes and ports. Data is based off Japanese releases and was gleened from the Wikipedia. On the chart, black represents the main series, green for remake/ports and red is for spin-offs. Sandy continues:

Compilations were counted as one remake/port, unless there are significant extra features in each game (such as Dawn of Souls), in which case it is counted as the number of games included in remake/port. The Kingdom Hearts series was included in spin-off, as let's face it - if you weren't a kid, you bought it for the FF cameos. Though other non-FF games with cameos such as Ergheiz and that Mario basketball game were left out, as those cameos weren't a prominent (Hmm... maybe I should have included Ergheiz). FFXI expansion packs were counted as spin-offs. Chocobo games were counted as spin-offs. Movies, Anime, Manga and Books weren't counted, only games.

As you can see, the spin-off and remake/port departments certainly skyrocket toward recent years. Spin-offs peak at five at 2007 and 2008/TBA (which isn't really a surprise). Remakes and Ports peak at five at 1999 and 2004. Main series titles peak at... one.

Squeenix can churn out as many remakes and spinoffs as they like. As long as they have their best team working on the main games, with as much time and money as they need, then I'm happy.

Square/Enix is the best example of what happens to a developer when they become too comfortable and lazy. They lack any adequate competition or motivation to innovate or aggressively pursue their product's appeal. As a result their main series games have become ever increasingly stagnant and symmetrical. Certainly there is no arguing the sales figures but those are waining as is the popularity of Square in the eyes of many consumers.

While spin-offs are doing well and maintaining a consistant and innovative flavor in the Final Fantasy vein of gaming we've come to know and love, some like the atrocious FF7 side games about ruin the FF7 nostalgia for those originally fell in love with it as what it originally was, not what it has become.

And of course, Square has grown to favor the lower development cost of remakes over new games ever more and have even commented on how they'd rather make remakes than new titles.

Another lazy trend appearing in Square is their "is playing the field", splattering their remakes and spin-offs randomly across the platforms to drive up demand and competition for their product's exclusivity via competition between the consoles and increasing incentives and bonuses for developing for a console. While this is partly par for the course of any developer, Square is intentionally sacrificing the continuity and stability of their product solely to drive up its value.

This has also resulted in cheap cash out schemes like puting games exclusively on Cell phone which basically requires you to sit there with the charger plugged in to play it and paying to play. And in doing so Integral parts of the FF series are being hocked on a sub-standard gaming format simply for the sake of a quick buck.

I have no problem with remakes or spin-offs. I do however have a problem with how Square is handling Final Fantasy as a whole.

Well they are making The Last Remnant, which is a new IP...

Well, I'm not that big on Final Fantasy (anymore), but I do enjoy Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts a lot. I'm also interested in the DS game they are working on "It's a Wonderful World" with the KH team.

What about killing their own franchises like Parasite Eve and Chrono Trigger? They really screwed up on these games sequels and just ignored them after that.
Not to mention that a lot of their new games suck hard. The Bouncer and Drakengard are not even worth renting. The Bouncer is so bad that when I was doing some research for it on Google I got a lot of links to a gay movie called "The Bouncer".
Sorry for the stupid comment, but that game really sucks.

They need to start taking some real chances instead of always playing it safe, they've made no huge changes since FF7.

They took a big chance with FF8 and it sucked in terms of characters, story and world but was still a fun game to play and my favorite FF in mechanics and sidequests. Unfortunately this sent them running back to the traditional style with FF9 (still a decent game) only to fail and then just continued onward ignoring the failure of FF8's visual appeal to make every game afterwards done in the same visual style of FF8. Essentially every game since FF8 (excluding FF9) has been the Emo/Goth: "I buy my clothes from Hot Topic / makes 13 year old girl's squeel" drama whoring formula. FFX was a great game, and its visual similarity to FF8's art style could have been ignored given their starkly different worlds and stories if only it hadn't been the beginning of this wretched trend in FF visual style.

Basically the visual styles of FF go like this:

FF1-6 = Fantasy (Masamune Shirow)

FF7 = Punk

FF8 = Emo/Goth

FF9 = Retro Fantasy

FF10-12 = Emo/Goth

Didn't they announce a Parasite Eve 3 just recently? 

In terms of Final Fantasy, I really hated 8's mechanic, especially the drawing magic part, 9 is the last one I played, and I liked some of the new features, I haven't play 10 and 12, and no interest in 11 (I am really sick and tired of mindless grinding).

You should check out XII, grinding isn't as necessary or difficult as it was before. I didn't like X, but whatever.

If you mean games like:

See All 7 Images

Described as an action RPG, this game becomes the fourth entry in the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" project which includes Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII for mobile, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children for DVD and Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus for PS2.

FFVII: Crisis Core allows you to play Zack, Cloud's counter-part from FFVII and this game's hero. Of course Aerith, Cloud, and Sephiroth make appearences as well. Battle in real-time and come face-to-face with such legendary summons as Ifrit and Bahamut.

 

Then bring em on, I don't mind at all.