Japanese RPGs, and why they're failing.

STEP 1: Distribute bad games under a good license.

I'm looking particularly at you, Square Enix, though other companies did the exact same thing. Think of yourself as a CEO of a big game company. You sent your developers off and they come back with a game that is absolute ass. I mean, you wouldn't give this to your enemy. The story is stupid, the graphics suck, the engine is mediocre, and your beta testers won't even play this shit. But you just spent a cool million on developing it. Oh, and for the sense of this question, let's say it's almost the end of Q4 (Which would be about October-November) and you have to get this stuff out before Christmas or else you'll be subject to lackluster Q1 (January-April) sales. What do you do?

A. Stop! Go back, fix it, delay the release date and lose sponsors/buyers.
B. Yell at development team, make them make some quick fixes and run it through the market on a slight delay, making it in before Christmas, but still with a mediocre product.
C. Package it up, ship it out, and call it "unique to the genre".

If you answered C, you may be in line to work at Square Enix. Ever since they pumped out Final Fantasy X (Officially known as Nobuo Uematsu's last work, which was beautiful but sad because the man is a genius), they have not only signed with Enix, but have lost some of their "Big Guns"- the guys who made the Final Fantasy games on the Playstation, primarily. They're getting old and retiring. So, as Square-Enix fills with new blood, they have slowly changed their games and overall quality to something inferior to their old history. Don't believe me yet? Let's look at their latest big RPG titles:

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, which suffered a huge attack by fans because it had about as much to do with Final Fantasy's style as I have to do with Lindsay Lohan,
Grandia III, which ends up being made fun of for the stupid mundane story and lack of anything but a OK battle system,
Romancing SaGa, attacked for being so convoluted and stupid that basically no-one bought it,
Radiata Stories, which ended up being cutesy Crystal Chronicles on the PS2,
Musashi: Samurai Legend, a shitty remake to a great game,
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, which made cut scenes movies,
Final Fantasy X-2, which was an embarrassment to anyone who figured out it was just a Victoria's Secret Final Fantasy aiming for the sexual desires of lonely gamers,
and finally Drakenguard, which no-one bought because there wasn't a damn thing special or even remotely fun to it.



The problem is evident. That's 8 games that failed. I don't care if FFX-2 was a big sell, it wasn't a Final Fantasy game so much as it was pure unadulterated fan service. You would think that in EIGHT GAMES, that at least ONE of them would be worth a lot of hype, as Square Enix used to get. But no. Square Enix now seems to survive purely on remakes of their old games (Like Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls or Final Fantasy IV for the GBA) and not real, new games. Maybe if they were cheaper? But no, there's a lot of work into these games, unfortunately meaning that they have to get SOME kind of profit off them. And thus the cycle continues.

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