When Final Fantasy XIII was first announced it was stated that it had an enormous team of over 200 employees working on the game at one point. Square Enix has come out and said that it believes this contributed heavily to the difficulties the game had.
According to the game’s director, Motomu Toriyama, because of that experience, outsourcing may be in the future of the beloved franchise.
Motomu said in an interview with Gamasutra:
“With a large-scale development team, we didn’t use our time well. How do you communicate to everyone in the department what the drive of the game is?”
Final Fantasy XIII has sold well to date (4.83 million units) but came under heavy critical fire because of a plethora of issues. While developing the sequel, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Toriyama said he took all of the criticisms to heart but still found the enormous internal development team and necessary secrecy difficult to manage while making it.
All of these factors have since pushed Square towards a more “Western” style of development when it comes to the Final Fantasy series… this may mean using different teams to do different jobs. This is especially plausible because Square Enix owns a large number of development studios across the world. I for one think it would be very interesting to see what a studio such as Crystal Dynamics or IO Interactive could do with the Final Fantasy franchise.
This is just speculation for now. But it is going to be interesting to see what this new strategy brings for upcoming Final Fantasy games.
What are your thoughts on the subject? Let us know in the comments below
Source: Gamasutra
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5 Comments
Uhh… I think this article needs some renaming.
1. Final Fantasy XIV was released roughly two years ago.
2. The URL says Final Fantasy IX, which was released twelve years ago.
I think you guys mean “Final Fantasy XV” or “Future Final Fantasy Games”. Yeah.
Agree, the powers that be changed the title that I originally sent to them.
As for the URL, I’ll let them know… Thanks for the feedback :)
Square-Enix is reworking the entirety of Final Fantasy XIV after the miserable product they released two year ago. This article is accurate, aside from the URL, that is. LOL
The article is not accurate LOLers. The XIV 2.0 development team is set, and is lead by Naoki Yoshida. Seeing as the game is being re-released in 6 months, I’m pretty sure they’re not outsourcing it this late in development. Smartass.
you’re so right, Will. I’m glad someone knows what’s going on.