I'm not a Dragon Quest person so I can't comment on that, but it seems that only Nomura's team can produce great things (Birth By Sleep).
I will admit that I've liked some of Square's secondary division's works though... Taito's Infinity Gene and Eidos' Just Cause 2 + Guardian of Light were all great.
Well I've been a Dragon Warrior fan since the 80's, and let me tell you that even though I love the franchise, Im not faithful to those who turn their back on me regardless of what franchise they own. BTW, Enix are the ones that made Dragon Warrior, Squaresoft and Enix converged to become Square Enix. The only good game Squeenix has ever made was FFX, besides that every game they have made has sucked since they became one. I do not know this company who claims they are Square Enix. They are an impostor. The devs and publishers that Ive been fans of dont even work for the studios anymore, besides Nomura. And they dont give him enough creative freedom to do anything to benefit them anyways, so in my opinion. Squeenix is a shit publisher, and the devs that make games for them are only a bunch of adolescent kids that have been trying to fill in some big shoes, and it never gonna happen. Its not in their dna.
Wasn't made by Square Enix. It was the last major FF game that Squaresoft made.
You can place the blame of Square Enix on Sakaguchi. He's the one that thought that making a Final Fantasy movie with absolutely no relation to the game in any way other than superficially (eg, name only) was a good idea. That right there is an example of NOT listening to your fans when you should. Spirits Within tanked, so Sakaguchi had to merge Squaresoft with Enix in order to stay afloat. Then when he did, he hated how Enix was managing Square staff so he decided to leave that company to create Mistwalker, and a lot of the Old Guard (READ: All the talent) left with him. Nobuo Uematsu became Freelance. And we're left with what SE is today. Predominately Enix staff, with an inept CEO, and an increasingly bad catalog of games trying to appeal to the western audience, when the western audience already loved games like FFX.
SE listened to the vocal minority who cried out against franchise staples like ATB, substance over flash, and compelling characters. They instead adopted the "Crow" method of development whereby they make a game all about flash, leaving a lot of key elements out. The result is that their games lose their Japanese roots and appeal, and also fail to impress the Western audience anyway.
Everyone can abolish SE now. Even non-RPG companies could likely create a better one than SE. The only way SE can hope to get out of the mess they created for themselves is to return to their roots. Use what worked and simply improve on it. As the old saying goes... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. AND DON'T LISTEN TO THE RPG WHINERS WHO PLAY ONE RPG AND COMPLAIN ABOUT TURN-BASED COMBAT!!
Well if you want to get technical, Square-Enix didn't even make FFX, they were still Squaresoft then. Three of the first things published post-merger were FFTA, FFX-2, and FFXI.
Should've sent off a warning bell for the future, I suppose.
Oh my bad, I thought it was Squeenix who published FFX. No wonder FFX-2 was so freakin horrible. I hadn't a clue. So there ya have it folks, Squeenix has never made a good game, or even a decent one at that.
@CimmerianDrake
I know exactly what your talking about. I consider almost everyone on n4g, and even gaming media giants like IGN and Gamespot the vocal minority. The only people who thought rpg's needed revamping are those who never played or liked rpg's to begin with. RPG's need turn based system, if its not turn based then its an action rpg. Thats why I consider games like God of War action rpg's. Games like Mario Galaxy is a straight action game, games like Uncharted Action shooter, Games like tales and Star Ocean are action rpgs. Games like FF and dragon warrior need to stay turn based rpg's.
The biggest threat to Square Enix is itself, they really need to get back to basics and do what made them the giants in the RPG business and not simply imitating western game designs to appeal to a mass audience...
Hold on a sec. It's true that Sakaguchi was responsible for a huge loss of money with the movie "The Spirits Within", but it wasn't him who decided to merge with Enix. First of all, the higher charge he ever occupied within the company was vice-president, and most importantly, he lost that position soon after the epic fail of its movie. That decision to merge with Enix was taken by the higher ranks of Squaresoft in accord with their shareholders, it has nothing to do with Sakaguchi.
Anyway, now Sakaguchi is no more a Square Enix member. The same is true for Matsuno, Uematsu, Nojima and many others, that occasionally work for them as freelancer, but are no more inside the company. The only "survivors" of the old Squaresoft are Nomura (who primarily works on the Kingdom Hearts series, and contributes to FF and other games only as character designer) and Kitase, who was great back in the days (man, he directed Chrono Trigger, FF VI and FF VII, the best J-RPGs of all time) but now seems to have completely lost his mind, maybe due to Alzheimer or too many cocaine parties.
People like Toriyama and Watanabe, who now rule the FF series and many other important projects, popped out of nowhere. I can also imagine how the programmers, artists and coders that works in SE these days must be young folks in their early 20s. All the experience and the mastery are gone, we now have a new generation of developers, less skilled and way less passionate about their work.
Add to all that shit president Wada, with his illogical business plans and his blind, insatiable hunger for money, and you have an idea of why Square Enix sucks so badly.
All the remaining hopes lie within Versus XIII. If not even Nomura can provide a proper Final Fantasy anymore, then the series is done for good, and so am I with Square Enix.
I say only sakaguchi can. I cant believe people blame him for bad games when 1-9 maybe 10-11 were all his doing. Look at what square makes nowadays and look at what sakaguchi makes Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, The Last Story, all very much better than any square game this gen. Sakaguchi was the talent of ff and he left. People complaign about square changing but are too stupid to support the real ff aka mistwalker. If you want old scholl ffx play lost odyssey if you want dragon quest play blue dragon. The spirits within was a bad decision and the man stepped away with respect. It has no correlation to the games.
Well...most of the games that they have released have sucked....so i think anyone can take them down.....they are no longer the 800lb gorilla in the room.
no one will. square will do it themselves. they will shoot themselves in the foot by being cocky, Like how sony shot themselves in the foot in the early days of the ps3 life cycle.
And they are working on Catherine and Persona 5. Atlus has a chance to break out as the premiere JRPG developer in the next year(They are in my opinion). But I still have faith in Nomura giving Square Enix a resurgence in the JPRG market with FFV13 and KH3.
Nippon Ichi - Nope. Their fanbase hasn't expanded; it's still the same as it was 5 years ago. Also, their games are too niche and feel too similar. That's why I didn't buy Disgaea 3. It was the same as D1 & D2.
Namco Bandai - Nope. They don't release their games outside of Japan.
Xseed - Who are they?
EA - Their RPGs don't appeal to the Japanese audience. Square-Enix actually has a western fanbase, well a KH/FF/DQ fanbase anyways.
Square-Enix and Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts/Dragon Quest series are too strong of a brand, and they will sell very well. No one will take them down.
Well, yes, you're right. All these companies can't take on Square Enix mainly because their franchises are pretty niche- small fanbases that cater to people with somewhat weird tastes, while Square Enix has a bigger fanbase and appeal to alot of people instead.
You could call Final Fantasy the Call of Duty of JRPGs- Quality? Don't make me laugh. But these games sell, either way.
And hey, I like XSeed. Ever heard of YS and Half-Minute Hero?
Although they're more of publishers rather than developers...
Edit @Homicide:
They just publish the Ys games now. Or well, so they did with Ys Seven and the remakes for PSP.
Fragile Dreams would be another game I like that they published (Despite the flawed gameplay, it was still pretty cool.)
I love Ys. I didn't know Xseed were in charge of them now. As for Half-Minute, many of my friends told me to check it out, but I never did. Too many games on my backlog.
atlus and the smt series, witch has been growing in popularity and in sells. persona 4 is greatness on a disk.not saying they could dethrone the king (who losing it's kingdom)of jrpgs.but they pose the biggest threat.if se keeps this up i could see atlus taking a huge chunk out of se fan base with a next gen persona.a next gen persona is going to be huge.
"EA - Their RPGs don't appeal to the Japanese audience. Square-Enix actually has a western fanbase, well a KH/FF/DQ fanbase anyways."
I don't think that means much of anything.
Today, no one needs to appeal to the Japanese to succeed. The continued dominance of non-Japanese games internationally, the success of the Xbox *in spite* of its lacklustre showing over there, prove that. You do not need Japan to be as big as SE.
Everyone of these companies deliver great games- it's sad they don't get the recognition they deserve. Although that's just my opinion.
For the companies the Article mentions:
Nippon Ichi Software:
Usually I LOVE their games for the quirky humor, among other stuff. Problem lies when they stick to Sprites and appeal to only the WEABOOS BETWEEN WEABOOS and HARDCORE BETWEEN HARDCORES with their infinite grinding, ridiculous side-bosses, light-hearted writting and, as I said before, cute-style sprite graphics.
Namco Bandai:
They don't localize their games. Hmph.
XSeed: They're mostly publishers. Also, HD games.
EA: Bioware. I don't like them most of the time. They're awful compared to older WRPG developers that (sadly) went under.
I would like to mention...
Atlus: If they develop more RPGs for HD Consoles, then there's a chance their games might be hits (Although they are in the same boat than Nippon Ichi- but with darker games and bullshit difficulties.)
And GUST: As well as NIS and Atlus, they cater to their fanbase. Hardcore weaboos and Niches like their games, but it's something a mainstream guy will not like. Sexual innuendos everywhere, games that, while innovative, don't appeal to much people, things like that.
In other words, I doubt any franchise will reach FF levels- mainly because how gaming is today, and how these titles are considered niche (among other things).
Although man, I sure love my obscure JRPGs. I just find them to be better than Final Fantasy or any other game of the likes out there.
Editan: Also, uh, I'd like to reply to SquareEnixFan down there.
Dude, am I supposed to take your comment seriously with that name?
Namco bandai is easily worse , they produce ok games hat are only great to tales fans (dont attack yet , i'm one of those fans) and appealing to a niche now , and yet they screw that up further with no good localisation plans , and weird exclusivity deals .
Maybe?? Perhaps. I have enjoyed their releases. WKC was a bit bland but if WKC 2 is better I can forgive them. Dont they have a hand in that Studio ghibli game coming to ps3?
This article is kind of funny, mostly because it still assuming that Square-Enix is still the top dog of RPGs. Sadly for them, and the fans, they aren't on top, and haven't been since They released FF10 years ago. Sorry SE, you lost me years ago.
It's very sad indeed. I don't care how many people out there liked FFXI and whose bright mind idea was it to make it part of the series? So what if it has a story, it's still a M-M-O. You guys who call yourselves Final Fantasy fans should be ashamed of yourselves. I simply don't believe it.
You put two niche companies, and you don't include Atlus? XSeed and Nippon Ichi can't even beat Atlus out of the niche market. How are they supposed to beat Square-Enix out of the mainstream?
Atlus has published cartoon/anime licensed games in the past , even a wacky race game .
And they just have a slow year right now . What would you have them localize ? It's not like there is a current new influx of must have niche game without a publisher this year , besides namco's tales (wich they wont release)
They had P3P, Strange Journey, Hexy Force, Shiren for Wii, Demon Souls, Traum Team, 3D Dot Game Heroes,Etrian Odyssey III lately , give them a break till the return of their own stuff like Catherine , and the release of new good niche games
I only believe Level 5 can do it, especially their strong support for Sony. I know the last game was below average, but at least Level 5 learns from the mistakes.
This article is deeply flawed: it mentions small companies like Nippon Ichi and X-Seeds, that are known by only five or six people in the world and whose presidents probably don't even have the money to buy themselves a new car, but fails to acknowledge the existence of Level 5 (whose growth is unstoppable, fueled by million-selling series like Prof. Layton and Inazuma Eleven and strong partnerships with both Sony and Nintendo), Capcom (whose Monster Hunters series sells up to 3-4 millions copies in Japan with every new entry, not to mention their long time experience with the beloved Breath of Fire series) and Atlus (who's gaining a reputation among gamers as the best J-RPG developer of this era and is having more and more success with their Persona series).
If there is a real threat to Square Enix (and believe me, there isn't really), it comes from these three companies, Capcom in particular (as I said, Monster Hunter has become a true juggernaut in Japan, selling way more than FF XIII and little less than the mighty Dragon Quest and Pokémon series).
As others already said, the biggest enemy of Square Enix is... Square Enix itself. They're losing touch with reality and meanwhile losing the support of their fans. If they don't get a hold on themselves really fast and don't start to show some real respect and consideration for their customers, they will dig their grave with their own hands.
The author compeltely forgot about Atlus and the Shin Megami series. Persona is doing wonders for the series, atracting more and more fans with each installment.
Square fell from grace this generation. The front mission series used to be great, now it's just another shooter. Final Fantasy now is only about graphics and Dragon Quest, well, that one is still great.
I know im Likely to get debubbled but I have to say it. I personally trust Nomura with versus. Some of the statements he has made point out how protective he is actually being of this game. Dont expect ATB, at least not in the old sense. But with comments like 'If this game goes to 360 I will chop off my left arm' you know he is at least taking a few of the right steps. And the E3 footage did confirm that the 'gameplay screenshots' we were being teased with were indeed from gameplay, and that it is open world. That alone should spike hopes a bit.
Just remember, this was the guy who invented Cloud Strife. Although most of the other talented devs are gone there is a small ray of hope because this guys alone does have the experience to head in the right direction. He didnt work on 13 or 14 so we can have high hopes for it being unlike them. But also Nomura has been given pretty much free will to do as he wants with versus. Lets hope he does it right. Square-enix have the ability to churn out the very best JRPG's, let just hope they get their market research right from now on
Given they are good, and they have the story telling ability. They need to flesh out the gameplay a lot more though and make it last. The only thing I dislike about bioware is the amount of lengthy conversations and lack of gameplay. If they sort that balance then definately an SE toppler. But I do like the Japanese element in RPG's. Either way I agree
Just about everyone now, Square has been sucking lately.
I need to be impressed by Versus.
Sqaure's pretty much doing themselves in but not making good games.
Though I wouldn't list Namco Bandai among its replacements.
I don't think Square Enix needs any help being brought down.
Well...most of the games that they have released have sucked....so i think anyone can take them down.....they are no longer the 800lb gorilla in the room.
Square's been losing momentum lately. Although I have to admit I am totally loving Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. =P