I am still amazed at the level of attention Level 5 gets.

Had Square not thrown them a bone with DQ8, they'd probably still be floundering around no where near anyone's radar.

I have them on my radar since Dark Cloud.

Had they not developed DQ VIII it would do far worse...

You are freely invited to partake in the alternative activity: suggests which, out of the games that actually have writing, was worse than FFX.

The NES games don't count; they only had Proto-Plots to begin with.

I never thought about it like that, but it's true. No hardcore RPG fan only plays Final Fantasy, even my Gf played FF7, and the only game other than that is Katamari.

There is just so much wrong with this article I wouldn't know where to begin. What is it you fellas say when something is bad to the point of inducing migranes? Oh right. Fail.

Edit: Here's my elaboration since a very lovely member of our society wants to hear it. 

1. The examples given for comparison (Kojima, Team ICO, Polyphony) are all coincidentally teams working exclusively with the PS3. They are all parts of a larger whole too, which the article writer never acknowledges when comparing them to the 3000+ members of Square-Enix.

2. The comparison of WKC to FF VII is laughable. It totally misreads why FF VII was so important for the Playstation and just chalks it up to being the first big RPG of the console.

3. Level-5 hasn't been around for 10 years unless someone seriously believes they started making Dark Cloud in 1998.

4. The sales number analysis with current FF games are way off, because that tapering off effect happened during the PSOne era also, only to show rejuvenation once the series started back up on new hardware. Did the writer seriously miss the decline in sales from FF VII to FF VIII, the decline from FF VIII to FF IX, and then the jump from FF IX to FF X?

5. If we want to talk further into bias, let's all note the writer putting his personal thoughts about FF XII into the article and having them represent all gamers' feelings on the game.

6. He says Sony will try to acquire Level-5 after this game is released. Why not put Nintendo on the table for the same since Layton is their most successful original IP yet?

In a nutshell, the guy just sounds like a huge PS3 fan failing horribly not to sound completely biased in his attempts to justify WKC over FF XIII and the PS3 over everything else.

Haha, I really hate that phrase... "Fail." Easily one of the most annoying things the internet has popularized recently... I seriously hope I don't get used to it from its overuse.

@ starcraft

you are so sad man, i bet after seen the xbox flop last gen you are enjoing seen is at second place at least.

Wasn't it second place last gen too?

When I sit down around other gamers who don't visit gaming websites in their free time, I actually hear a lot of them say they consider FFIX to be a low point in the series with X being much better.   I would strongly disagree with that, but after hearing it so many times in "the real world" I feel like I'm in the minority.  FFX may have been a disappointment for me but a lot of people were quite fond of it as well and it shows in its sales and fan following.  I don't think the hardware refresh is entirely responsible for FFX's success but the trend helps it at least. 

At the same time, the author is definitely showing a high degree of bias in this area and several others of the article.  FFXII may not have been well received but there is sales data showing that so whether its stale hardware or just the game itself, there's some validity in that opinion... somewhere.  It's a bit like doing the math all wrong but getting lucky enough to pull out the right answer anyway.

Well it could be looked at in different ways. In Japan, where FF XII was released without the impending next generation looming overhead, the total sales of the game only dipped 500 thousand below FFX. Not exactly a huge loss. In America and Others it directly competed with two console launches and a series of new games to play on them and dropped 2.5 million between both regions. When FF XIII is released, it will benefit from being launched on current generation hardware and a large install base in everywhere but Japan, which may take a hit in lifetime sales.

Also to note, FF IX was swallowed alive itself by the fact that FF X media had been readily available well before the FF IX launch which took anticipation away from the game, plus the Playstation 2 was already released by the time the game came out. In addition, it was only affected again in Others and US regions as FF IX sold comparitively well to FFX in Japan.

So let's look at this:

1. Both FF IX and FF XII were released in their worst selling regions either right before or after next generation hardware was introduced that would play known future entries in the series.

2. Both FF IX and FF XII were released after media hype had begun on the next entries in the series(FFX and FFXIII). Would you expect GTAIV to sell well if 6-12 months beforehand Rockstar introduces the sequel with trailers and hoopla? It was a cannibalizing situation for both games, and the sales are evident that tactics like these do not work outside of Japan.