FFXIII devs confused by Wada comment

By Tom Bramwell Published 9 February, 2010

Offer their thoughts on series future.

Motomu Toriyama and Yoshinori Kitase have admitted they aren't sure what Square Enix president Yoichi Wada meant when he said Final Fantasy XIII might be the last game of its kind from the veteran RPG publisher.

"Whether we are going to continue to internally create this type of game remains to be seen," Wada told Edge recently, "because I actually feel that the team that was involved with Final Fantasy XIII should next move on to create and generate some 'next generation' forms of play."

"We don't know exactly what he meant by that," producer Kitase and director Toriyama told the European PlayStation blog through a translator.

"We don't really know what he meant by this style of game. If you consider that during Final Fantasy XIII's development, at peak time the team consisted of over 300 people. It was a huge team, plus it took a several long years to get the game finished.

"So, if Mr Wada meant that we would never make another Final Fantasy title with the similar number of people, taking as long as FFXIII did, we would agree."

The development duo said that in future they want to be "much more efficient".

"Having worked on XIII, we feel that we have got much better at making good games for high definition consoles. In the future our teams will be smaller and more effectively run. We suspect that is what Mr Wada meant by his statement."

Final Fantasy XIII - due out in Europe for PS3 and Xbox 360 on 9th March - is a vast undertaking, lasting as long as 50-60 hours for the main story according to the developers, although it's also more conservative than its PS2 predecessor judging by our impressions of the Japanese PS3 retail version.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Mooglepies #1 2 years ago

    My enthusiasm has been effectively curbed by the JRPG genre as a whole. Maybe I'll check this out once it reaches a lower price point.

  • Diomedes #2 2 years ago

    Wada is the cancer of Square ....

  • HermitArcader #3 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • Kapo! #4 2 years ago

    I've heard that this is similar to Final Fantasy X. Considering that FFX was the worst of the bunch, in my opinion (ridiculously long cut scenes, minimal player interaction, linear, boring plot), i'll stear clear of this.

  • Steroyd #5 2 years ago

    My enthusiasm on FFXIII has all but died, 6 months ago I never would have thought I'd be getting excited over White knight Chronicles which took way too long to be localised much much more than FFXIII right now.

  • geeza2020 #6 2 years ago

    i hope this game fails spectacularly so Square are forced to stop ruining the series that was once the highlight of the gaming calender for me. Ever since X they've been getting worse and worse. Unless XIII gets incredible reviews across the board, I'll be avoiding this like the plague. Fuck you square, you ruined one of gamings giant franchises.

  • laharl80 #7 2 years ago

    Its easy to be confused by the thoughts of a lunatic.The sooner they get rid of him the better.
    I'd recommend XIII.I thought it was going to suck but it isn't too bad.It has a great battle system.

  • Emmit_Assassin #8 2 years ago

    Just another case of the right hand aint got a clue what the left hand is doing! I get that all the time at work. Communication, people, communication.

  • WinterSnowblind #9 2 years ago

    @Kapo!
    Have to agree, I've been thourougly unimpressed by what we've seen so far, and I really wasn't a fan of X.
    Would much rather see less of a focus on the "deep" and "complex" character driven narratives. The games used to be much simpler, and much more enjoyable.

  • Diomedes #10 2 years ago

    Well ,to clarify my points.

    Wadas work in Square Enix

    1)Business model is all about remiliking franchises...thats short sighted because they need to release new franchises if they want to milk them in the future.People are buying like mad (at least in Japan ,a lot less in western markets) the DQ and FF remakes ,but they wont buy a second or third remake in 5 years.

    2)Not enough investment in tech.THey have had to resort to buying UE2 to be able to develop HD games at all for the last years.Square Enix is the biggest japanese software developer ,they should have great tech but no they didnt foresee this.Sega and Platinum games ,with much less money ,have managed own engines like Canvas for Valkyria Chronicles,the engine of Yakuza 3 or Bayonetta etc.

    3)JRPG must be more western.That was said by Wada.Whaat?JRPG charm is precisely that ,you know ,they are JAPANESE.THe bastardization of the genre wont appease occidental gamers (that are already skewed toward WRPG) and could ruin them their japanese market (and the western market that loves JRPG).

    4)Buying Eidos.So Square better plan to enter the occidental markets is buying a dying company?Ok ,they have released the excellent Batman AA since but that was in development long before Eidos buyout.If Square wanted to make itself know in Europe and Occident they should have created a European branch and not buy a beleaguered publisher.Now this is bad business decisions ,and in the long term it will pay off.

    5)So ,lets bet for a machine in Japan lets we?The X360!! My God Wada ,you couldnt do worse.That stopped the PS3 adoption that was vital for Square Enix if they wanted to do epic RPG just to let MS have 300-400k more machines there.Another ill-fated decision ,from wich they are already backtracking (SO released in Japan this week etc) but that shouldnt have been made in first instance.

    6)Consoles are in its last legs.Said by Wada.Guess thats why the business have been growing since the last 15 years at least.Now what Wada ,you will put your eggs in things as Onlive or Gaikai?Dont make me laugh.Well ,the man that makes this kind of decisions and has such a view on the industry is the one leading Square in the future....no wonder he confuses his own developers.Thats why I say he is a cancer for Square.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #11 2 years ago

    To me it sounds the same as Garrot with Tabular Rasa, McQuaid with Vanguard, Roper with Hellgate and Jacobs with WAR.

    He's completly detached from his own team, his 'vision' and what actally happening are two different things, but never the less his 'vision' MUST come true and probly like the above former legendary devs he'll probly pay for it with his career and reputation

  • kenshiropkt #12 2 years ago

    No one in this world knows what Wada says lol

  • freakzilla #13 2 years ago

    I think what Kitase and pal are aoiding is that, Wada is saying the dev team are not creative enough, he wants to find people who'll offer something more interesting.

  • greenfanguy #14 2 years ago

    Clearly this means that FFXV will be a Wiiware game done in the style of the NES Final Fantasies

  • matsumoto #15 2 years ago

    Maybe they should just stop producing rail play games and concentrate on bringing the series back on track. Personally, the series ends with VI.
    Edited by 1 at 09/02/10 @ 23:34

  • Slipstream #16 2 years ago

    Final Fantasy X is my favorite of the series and I have also seen this game being compared to it often, so the linearity of it doesn't bother me at all, really looking forward to this one.

    As for the article, well, I think Kitase hit the nail on the head, the length of time, and the amount of people involved was alot, so naturally I'd imagine to costs to be through the roof, and considering the critical beat down this game is getting at the moment, Wada was probably wondering if such a vast amoutn of effort really paid off.

  • man.the.king #17 2 years ago

    @Diomedes

    In my opinion, some of Wada's actions have made him seem like Scott Adam's PHB.