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SquareSoft vs. Enix
bizzle_89
Member Posts: 3
Hey people. Just thought you'd like to know a little about Final Fantasy. As you know, Square created Final Fantasy. Square earlier in it's 'life' was not doing too hot. They had created a couple versions of Final Fantasy for Japan trying to compete against Enix and their onslought of Dragon Quest series (actually referred to as Dragon Warrior in the US). Now, believe it or not, Enix decided to have a Japan exclusive sale of their lates Dragon Quest game, while Square decided to go ahead and try the American market. Wrong decision for Enix. America, now not having their Dragon Warrior game to play, decided to go and try this new "Final Fantasy" (actually named because it's creator was using this as a final resort against Enix's monopoly on RPG games), and guess what? We loved it. America loved it so much in fact, then the next Dragon Warrior game that came out to compete with Square's next Final Fantasy game, sucked in sales and still to today, Square Soft has been creating the top selling RPG game of all time- Final Fantasy. And now with their next installment of the series going online, I'm wondering if the rest of the world who don't play online games will go back to Enix looking for a fix to their RPG addiction and id Square is going to make the same mistake that Enix did so many years ago.
If you play Final Fantasy, you'll know that it's all about taking the time to level up your characters and getting the Ultimate form of every attack or magic possible. Playing online would take away from the geniune Final Fantasy experiance. The turn based battle system would be flawed if you were to implament it into an online world...how exactly would it work...I don't think it would and if it doesn't, then Square's gonna have to make a real time battle system, and that's just not Final Fantasy material. All FF games have the turn based battle system with the screen that goes into some weird animation during random battles.
So my question to you is, what do you think about Final Fantasy online and is Square making the same mistake that Enix did?
Comments
The company was doing poor in the 80s. They pulled all their resources together to create Final Fantasy - the title originated from their situation. The success of Final Fantasy in the US and Japan revived their spirits; giving Squaresoft the chance to futher their growth with a new franchise.
On the other side was Enix who had more success in Japan with Dragon Quest then any RPG in the Japanese market, and that has remained the same even today. But DQ wasn't as popular in the states as it was in its native country. Final Fantasy became a world wide success but in its own country it still hasn't bested the Dragon Quest series in the eyes of the Japanese audience.
But both companies would become one due to finacial problems; especially after Squaresoft released Final Fantasy: Spirits Within which was absolutely a let down.
As for Final Fantasy XI, it owns a portion of the MMORPG market along with Everquest II and World of Warcraft - that's enough proof of its success. But recently Square Enix has been heavily influenced by the North American market of videogames. Final Fantasy XII has a new battle system which is obviously influenced by Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic created by Bioware. Also, Japanese gamers aren't heavily interested in the FPS genre. Dirge of Cerberus, Final Fantasy VII is a third person shooter that plays like most traditional FPS(you can even play with a mouse and keyboard). So I guess much of the Final Fantasy fanbase is going to be trying a few new things in the coming months. Heck, the upcoming Before Crisis, Final Fantasy VII and Crisis Core, Final Fantasy VII are action-RPGs instead of the traditional turn based style.
But of course many of these new changes aqcuired when the Godfather of Final Fantasy, left to create his own company Mistwalker which is developing RPGs for the Xbox 360. Not to mention the FF musical composer, Nobuo Uematsu left Square Enix to help Mistwalker. Oh yeah; don't forget that the DBZ creator Akira is at Mistwalker as well. Three brilliant minds working on a few new exclusive Japanese RPGs for the Xbox 360 which could stir up that much needed rivalry in traditional Japanese Role Playing Games. Just recently Square Enix suffered a major lost in revenues(but a lot of developers did; 2005 was a bad year). The two projects they benfitted from was Kingdom Hearts II and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children; both titles which were lead by Nomura in a sense - is he the only brillant mind left at the company? Let's hope not.
Um, No thats not how it went.
Squaresoft beat Enix on own Japanese ground. Seriously, back in that time, the American RPG sales were a JOKE compared with the sales in Japan. Final Fantasy 1 probably sold 10x's as much in japan then in USA.