Is Final Fantasy a Dying Series?

Busta

Busta

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Are there less people that play, discuss, and care about Final Fantasy games today than there were 10 years ago?

I don't mean is the quality of Final Fantasy games going down hill or going to crap with this question. That may be a reason why you think it's dying, but my main question is, do you think the series is dying in terms of popularity? Are there less people that play/like Final Fantasy today than there was say 10 years ago or so?

I say yes. My biggest reason is due to the fact the main series games are only released once every...4-5 years now. It took from late 2006 (360/PS3 launched but it still came out on PS2), until Spring of 2010 between FFXII and FFXIII. Now it is rumored that FFXV has been in at least some production for the last 4 years by a separate team. However, I bet we will not hear any concrete specs on this upcoming game at least until the end of 2013. Release date? Who knows when.

Games used to be released every 2 years at most. The games were made simple, yet intriguing enough to be legends in the series. It seemed like they pushed out FFVII through FFX in a matter of 3-4 years. That's an average of a game almost just over a year apart. Granted that was SquareSoft back then, but I feel the longer the wait for the next game, the worse the Square company sinks into "No Man's Land" with it's fans and potential future fans of the series.

Depressing. :(
 
I think it is dying in terms of popularity. You've pretty much said what I would have said, though I'll add that perhaps this perspective will change in the coming months once Lightning Returns and A Realm Reborn are released. If Versus news comes out there will be a resurgence of discussion. Even more so if XV is announced.
 
Yes and No

Most of the older fans and the newer fans that don't like FF 13 are packing their bags and leaving and or just waiting for something better to change.

The newer fans and the naive older fans, however are buying any junk that Square-Enix pops out.
 
Zack_ Fair said:
Yes and No

Most of the older fans and the newer fans that don't like FF 13 are packing their bags and leaving and or just waiting for something better to change.

The newer fans and the naive older fans, however are buying any junk that Square-Enix pops out.
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They're naive because they enjoy XIII and its spin-offs? XIII might not be up to standards in many peoples eyes, but a lot of people liked and enjoyed the game. They took a risk with XIII and went for something new; sometimes it doesn't pay off.



Otherwise, the other titles they've released really haven't been bad. I can honestly say that I got more than a hundred hours of gameplay from Dissidia, and enjoyed it.

It isn't all junk: SE is held to a higher standard of production than many other developers.
 
Ehh, I don't know. To be quite honest, I'm just getting sick of all this Lightning crap. :hmmm:

I guess my curiosity would be peaked once more should they shed some more light on Versus, or announce FFXV or something, but... I dunno. The whole XIII thing is leaving me rather sceptical about any future releases, however, so at the moment I don't really have half as much a reason to be all excited for the next FF game.
 
The games are taking a long time to make and they have seen very drastic traditional core value changes in it's most recent releases, the series has lost a lot of consistency.

A lot of us are getting older and just moving on, as well.

But yes, I do feel like Final Fantasy is a dying series. So many Final Fantasy communities have collapsed. I'm surprised that Eyes on Final Fantasy is even still around, don't even know if The Lifestream is still going, which I think was a spinoff of ACF's Community which went poop when SY got mad or something, I don't even remember what happened.
 
L said:
A lot of us are getting older and just moving on, as well.
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That's true. I know one reason I've been so absent from here lately is just that as I get older, my desire to play the game or talk about it is less and less as other things take importance in my life.

Now I'm not about to say "I hate spin-offs", but I think that the series would have been more successful had the number of Spin-offs and compilations was drastically lower. So many side projects are being worked on that it does cause Square to break off into teams to work on 4 or 5 projects at once that some gamers will dive into, instead of focusing a great deal of their skills and talents on a masterpiece game that everyone will play.
 
I've only been a fan of FF for a little over a year now, and I honestly feel like the hype and coolness that once covered it, is slowly dying. On me and it seems on some other fans. I know they still have plenty of fans and all, but it seems like FF is getting less and less important. Almost as if Square forgot about the series.

As of now, fans are waiting for a delivery, that may or may not come in the next year or so. I hope Square can manage to recapture the magic of Final Fantasy.
 
Really it isn't as much as the final fantasy series as the video game buisness all together... once you add it all up, minus maybe some FPS games, How often do you really hear about a game being advertise? even now, Activision is talking about the next CoD game. The video game series is changing and FF with the JRPG games are "old school" and are a few and dying breed in the western world....
 
Mete-bot said:
They're naive because they enjoy XIII and its spin-offs? XIII might not be up to standards in many peoples eyes, but a lot of people liked and enjoyed the game. They took a risk with XIII and went for something new; sometimes it doesn't pay off.
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...... That's not what I meant....

What I meant was how they're spamming the FF XIII games, cellphone games and more. FF XIII-2 didn't even have a proper fucking ending. Now we have Lightning Returns ? What's next ? Final Fantasy XIII - 3 But it's actually 4 ? FF XIII 8.9 BUY THIS GAME ! FF XIII Serah's wedding ?!

And yet...

Most FF XIII fans " Oh.... FF XIII-2 didn't have a proper ending, but we'll have FF XIII-3 to make up for it " !!!

Are.... you.... kidding me... ? :ffs:


Mete-bot said:
Otherwise, the other titles they've released really haven't been bad. I can honestly say that I got more than a hundred hours of gameplay from Dissidia, and enjoyed it.
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Good for you mate. I personally hated Dissidia for what they did to Terra.
 
Most people I've talked to haven't played a Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy X. I was playing Final Fantasy XIII a few weeks ago and my cousin was surprised that the series was still going on.

I think the first reason to point out that the games are JRPG. Not a very popular genre in the west anymore. Not that JRPGs were popular but now that there are a wide variety of games, JRPGs are getting left behind for various reasons. There are a lot of casual people playing games now that only play games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto etc so games like Final Fantasy are getting left behind. I also think Square Enix might be doing some of the damage themselves by trying to do so many sequels to the main installments. Of course I'm not saying everyone but I think there are a few people may have lost interest having not enjoyed the latest games in the main franchise and they haven't cared much for sequels. There was quite a long gap between Final Fantasy XII and XIII and I don't think FFXIII was widely well received from reviewers. What has happened to Final Fantasy Versus XIII? I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to change that into XV. I'm not getting my hopes up for this game because rarely does a game that has been in development for so long impresses.

This latest Final Fantasy game (All the Bravest) won't do well for Square Enix's reputation for being such a cheap attempt to try and cash in on the Final Fantasy name. Some people like me are hoping for a return to glory but even my hopes aren't that high since I don't think I have truly enjoyed a Final Fantasy game since Square and Enix merged (apart from Final Fantasy III and IV DS remakes.) Rarely has a franchise managed to regain popularity after being in decline without reinventing the franchise which could sacrifice older fans for new.
 
Yes and no.

Yes. I think SE is really straying away from the vision that Sakaguchi created. Nowadays, it seems that "being cool" is their new vision. They are eyeing on sales, not masterpiece. I understand that developing games cost a lot of budget these days. But that is not an excuse for an overdue production (ehem.....*cough* versus). They rather spend their time on a disappointing sequel than something they haven't tried yet. I think they are blinded by the results. It's like their playing a basketball and they think too much. Sometimes, thinking too much can throw you out of your game. It happened to me so it might also happened to them.


And no it's not the gap of games that made FF decline. The gap between VI and VII are almost the same as XII and XIII. It's the quality and content. XII had a great gameplay but at the cost of characters. They are not explored deeply. It's the opposite in XIII. Deep in story, lack in content. Another factor is the competition against other genres (FPS and HnS). RPG these days are not that popular anymore with only few exceptions and majority of them are western titles.
 
Zack_ Fair said:
...... That's not what I meant....

What I meant was how they're spamming the FF XIII games, cellphone games and more. FF XIII-2 didn't even have a proper fucking ending. Now we have Lightning Returns ? What's next ? Final Fantasy XIII - 3 But it's actually 4 ? FF XIII 8.9 BUY THIS GAME ! FF XIII Serah's wedding ?!

And yet...

Most FF XIII fans " Oh.... FF XIII-2 didn't have a proper ending, but we'll have FF XIII-3 to make up for it " !!!

Are.... you.... kidding me... ? :ffs:




Good for you mate. I personally hated Dissidia for what they did to Terra.
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Well, you didn't make that very clear in your first statement.

I agree with the amount of XIII games being ridiculous- but if people like the content, they aren't being naive for buying it- no matter how shit or terrible it may be in your eyes(or mine, since I'm not a fan of the XIII series).


As for the Terra thing... I never said I liked the story of Dissidia, I just liked the system. ^^
 
in terms of quality i think yes. it is dying. it's just becoming a series of generic rpgs with shitty gimmicks.

partially because people got old and moved on i suppose. younger people who started out with 13 perhaps probably wouldn't enjoy 7,8 or 9 maybe because they've seen better graphics in pacman 3d or something. for the same reason that older people will appreciate 7,8 and 9 (and even earlier finaru fantajis) more than they appreciate the silly gimmicks of the most recent games.
 
Dying? Not really.

Are they deviating from their traditional RPG style and veering towards a more action orientated make up? Yes yes..they are.
Haha.. going by some posts in here, it seems SE has grown a habit on killing off likeable characters.
 
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