So back in the EARLY ps3 days Square Enix's change over was solidified and the ethos to the brand changed around the release of Advent Children to -and this is a quote- "exploit our most popular brands" and so began the Fabula Nova Crystalis project. Lead by a crazy person. The creator of FF13 and 'father of lightning' which has its own creepy connotations was a man who thought his rule 63 of Cloud was "the first strong female character and the greatest final fantasy hero" and there are many stories about his north koreanesque studio regime of how "everyone must be in eyesight of Lightning at all times" and this led to a bloated project that took up a LOT of time and money. So much so that after the game came out they had to release two sequels to recoup losses on the number of assetts produced but never used that are still being implemented in SE titles to this day.
The two other arms of the project was Agito XIII which become Type 0 and released on PSP and later PS4 to minor praise with its own niche fanbase and Versus XIII which went dark for 10 years. This would later be the product we now call FFXV.
FFXV came out and was a pretty but ultimately bland open world rpg with shallow gameplay and blank characters. It was met with an initial positive response then kind of got forgotten for the most part due to its linear second half and unfinished, barely explained plot. Since they have tried to do another 7 and rebranded it as "The FFXV Universe" including
-The base Game
-A season pass of to this point extremely underwhelming content to -in their own words- "fix the story"
-strange time gated events that offer nothing bar cosmetics in the long run
-A CGI movie crucial to the plot
-A mobage pyramid scheme scam
-An anime webseries
-A fishing VR dlc
-A clothing line
-A pc Port
-A Switch port
-A shrunk down mobile version
-Tie in in game events for things like Assassins creed and Cup Noodle
-Kings Tale
-Wrath of the Dragon King
-Justice Monsters 5
and more besides. Its been nearly a year and these increasingly strange brand exercises SE claims 'are to bring in a new, wider audience' -because wider market appeal attempts totally havent been the ruin of so many japanese game ips over the last 10 years- and now they have promised 'far more content updates and tie in products in 2018'. Which means nearly 4 years into the current console generation no work is being done on a new Final Fantasy title. Lots of ports, remasters and remakes out and on the way but original content? thats FFXV Universe branding content only. For two years. At least.
This could honestly mean we are not going to see Final Fantasy XVI till the Playstation 5. If you exclude the cross generation mmorpg FFXIV that means for two console generations the series gets 1 new mainline game each console. All in the name of the modern SE ethos of "exploiting our most popular brand". Which i thought they learnt their lesson on after the audience at large did not resonate with all the extreme lightning pushing during the PS3 generation and how games like Bravely default were traditional jrpgs and much more profitable. Because i can only imagine this is going to end up being a monetary loss for SE the longer it goes on. I don't know about you but i don't know anyone who bought FFXV this year, much less was sold on buying it outside its launch window due to all this brand white noise.
But the odd part is you dont see that many people that seem as exhausted by the game as you might expect. Its certainly there at this point but it really makes me wonder how many people just want a 'finished' FFXV -which at this point looks more and more like Lucas with his 'fixing' of the star wars trilogy- and how many if any are really going crazy over all these tie ins with genuine excitement.
Do you still care? are you still playing it? all the time ins and mobages?
Who is the audience for the FFXV universe?