FF10 was announced before FF9 came out  (see Gametrailers FF retrospectives for this factual info)

FF13 was announced before FF12 came out (FF13 announced in 2006.....FF12 came out in 2006 end)

now

FF14 was announced before FF13 comes out

________

Why do they do this?

probably because it's obvious that it'll happen. We all know the FF franchise is going to continue. So they can announce it whenever they care to.

because they get tired of announcing the same game every single year at E3.

So S-E have development teams working on doing multiple FF projects and all three FF games (FFXIII in Europe/NA also on 360 in early 2010, FF Versus XIII worldwide around middle of 2010 and FFXIV worldwide just before Xmas 2010) Three FF games will be released on PS3 in 2010 and expect huge boost with PS3 sales with the launch and first month of each game launching on PS3.

@torillian

but they even show trailers of the "new FF's"

that negatively affected FF9 & FF12's sales

both being only just at 5 million

while FF8,FF10,FF7 are 8 million +

SURELY they saw that trend!

Do not forget about Final Fantasy Agito XIII

@non-gravity

this discussion isn't about spin-offs

To let gamers know that a Final Fantasy is always in the works?

Well you can't exactly attribute their low sales with being announced too early.

Remember, FF9 was a big WTF for those who had only experience FF7 and 8, because it looked like they went from futuristic to medieval. They would not have known it was a throw back to the old school, so I'm guessing reaction wasn't great for that game.

FF12 was met with mixed opinion with the fans. I won't say it split down the middle, but I haven't seen an FF with this much difference in opinion in a while.

Also, both these games released late in the life cycle of two heavily pirated systems.

Does not matter to me, ill buy any Final Fantasy game. FFXIII, FFVXIII, FF:Agito, FFXIV