If you consider yourself to be a Final Fantasy fan at heart, we have some particularly interesting news to share with you now, as Square-Enix has revealed that they intend to release more Final Fantasy games at a faster rate, to keep up with frequent releases such as Battlefield and Call of Duty.
If you played Final Fantasy XIII, you’ll know that the game was in development for near-eternity it seemed and Square-Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase has been the first one to admit that the company took too long to get the game out on the PlayStation 3.
It now seems like the company want to adopt a new approach to their releases, and are keen on taking cues from the likes of Activision, EA and Ubisoft as all three companies churn out new Call of Duty, Battlefield and Assassin’s Creed titles in the space of one or two years. Here is a recent statement from Kitase, taken from an interview with GameReactor:
”When you think of Western AAA titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Assassin’s Creed, they seem to work with a lot shorter turnaround – they make a new game in one to two years. That is something we need to follow up, because that seems to be the best way to keep our fans interested and attracted to the franchise.”
While fans will probably be pleased overall with this new strategy as it means more games to play, it obviously isn’t the primary root of the problem why gamers are losing interest in the franchise in the first place, and a new Final Fantasy game every two years could spell warnings for the quality of game released.
Final Fantasy XIII had an overall development time of five years, six years if you take into account that it wasn’t released in the US until 2010 after development started in 2004. Six years is obviously a great deal of time to make a game and considering that FFXIII was heavily criticized for its linear approach, it served as a hard lesson for Square-Enix – probably a prime factor in why they want to change their strategy now.
If you have played previous titles in the franchise, how would you feel as a fan if they released a new game every two years to match Battlefield and Call of Duty – do you support this idea, or do you have concerns?
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