Shinji Hashimoto: FFXIII worth playing for a decade, Square Enix downloadable games on hold

Shinji Hashimoto of Square Enix gave quite a meaty lump of information to Japanese magazine “Nintendo Dream”. The whole interview focused much on the whole concept of the Final Fantasy franchise. We know that the epic RPGs stand alone with each installment, but how come there are other spin-offs for certain games?

In a nutshell, you can basically subdivide the FF franchise into four different developing groups: a) Fabula Nova Crystallis (FFXIII), b) the Ivalice Alliance (Tactics, FFXII, Revenant Wings), c) Crystal Chronicles (Nintendo-exlusives), and d) FFXI. Each of these major groups develop their own sub-installments. Like how the FFVII team further developed other spin-offs like Crisis Core for the PSP, the Advent Children movie, etc.

But as for specifics on the more current games being developed, Hashimoto had quite a bold (albeit reassuring) statement about how they created FFXIII:

Different from something like VII, which we expanded upon afterwards, with Fabula Nova Crystallis FFXIII, we’ve thought about an expansive world setting from the start. Under the idea of wanting everyone to be sucked into the world for 10 years, we’re preparing a number of categories.

So they have further plans eh? After giving that statement, he even compared FFXIII to other series like Harry Potter, Star Wars, or LOTR. Seems like there’s nothing that’ll stop Final Fantasy from being final. Or is there? On the subject of bringing the early FF games onto services such as Virtual Console, it seems as if that idea is being set aside to the back burner:

We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems.

Physical media huh? In short, they won’t make the previous games available as downloads, but something physical. Like… The UMD. Final Fantasy I & II are being released for the PSP, after all, and not ported onto an online service.

There’s lots of big stuff in the full interview, which IGN had kindly translated for everyone. More talk about chocobos, potions, Dragon Quest, Square Enix parties, and “a Final Fantasy not known by anyone.” Take a look, just right behind the Read link below!

Shinji Hashimoto of Square Enix gave quite a meaty lump of information to Japanese magazine “Nintendo Dream”. The whole interview focused much on the whole concept of the Final Fantasy franchise. We know that the epic RPGs stand alone with each installment, but how come there are other spin-offs for certain games?

In a nutshell, you can basically subdivide the FF franchise into four different developing groups: a) Fabula Nova Crystallis (FFXIII), b) the Ivalice Alliance (Tactics, FFXII, Revenant Wings), c) Crystal Chronicles (Nintendo-exlusives), and d) FFXI. Each of these major groups develop their own sub-installments. Like how the FFVII team further developed other spin-offs like Crisis Core for the PSP, the Advent Children movie, etc.

But as for specifics on the more current games being developed, Hashimoto had quite a bold (albeit reassuring) statement about how they created FFXIII:

Different from something like VII, which we expanded upon afterwards, with Fabula Nova Crystallis FFXIII, we’ve thought about an expansive world setting from the start. Under the idea of wanting everyone to be sucked into the world for 10 years, we’re preparing a number of categories.

So they have further plans eh? After giving that statement, he even compared FFXIII to other series like Harry Potter, Star Wars, or LOTR. Seems like there’s nothing that’ll stop Final Fantasy from being final. Or is there? On the subject of bringing the early FF games onto services such as Virtual Console, it seems as if that idea is being set aside to the back burner:

We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems.

Physical media huh? In short, they won’t make the previous games available as downloads, but something physical. Like… The UMD. Final Fantasy I & II are being released for the PSP, after all, and not ported onto an online service.

There’s lots of big stuff in the full interview, which IGN had kindly translated for everyone. More talk about chocobos, potions, Dragon Quest, Square Enix parties, and “a Final Fantasy not known by anyone.” Take a look, just right behind the Read link below!