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Microsoft Entertainment Games

Final Fantasy Creator Sakaguchi Joins Microsoft 116

Posted by Zonk from the ms-games-studios-levels-up dept.
Anonymous Coward writes " Microsoft today announced that Hironobu Sakaguchi, video game legend and president of Mistwalker game studio, has joined with Microsoft(R) Game Studios to develop role-playing game (RPG) video games exclusively for the next- generation Xbox(R) video game platform. Sakaguchi is best known as the creator of the "Final Fantasy" franchise, which has sold more than 60 million units worldwide, and was executive vice president in charge of game development at Square Enix Co. Ltd. until February 2001."
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Final Fantasy Creator Sakaguchi Joins Microsoft More

Final Fantasy Creator Sakaguchi Joins Microsoft

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  • MS Buying up (Score:5, Funny)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @07:43PM (#11772100) Journal
    Maybe MS should buy 3drealms, then Duke Nukem Forever might get released.
    Yeah, offtopic, but no one else seems interested.
    • 3d realms is hiring! Check out gamasutra.com I applied. I figured my track record of spending half a decade on a video game and never finishing it would make me perfect material.

  • aargh! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @07:51PM (#11772147) Homepage
    Wait a minute here. What is this I'm feeling? A love of the Final Fantasy series.... and yet, a pure disdain for Microsoft....

    Head exploding in 5, 4, 3.....

    (segmentation fault)

    • What is this I'm feeling? A love of the Final Fantasy series.... and yet, a pure disdain for Microsoft....
      A familiar sensation for all the fans of Marathon back when Bungie made games for the Mac.
    • Since "Final" Fantasy has 20 or so iterations of the franchise, and everyone loves Microsoft here, here's to hoping they release the only iteration ever of "Prodigous" Fantasy soon...

  • Before this gets blown out of proportion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zenintrude ( 462825 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @07:54PM (#11772173)
    1. He'd already left Square

    2. Square still owns Final Fantasy

    3. Yes, Microsoft is still evil.

    • Yes, but he's a big name in the Japanese industry, and was the creative force behind FF.

      A Western equivalent might be Will Wright or Sid Meier. It's still big news if one of those guys says they're working on two exclusive titles for a next-gen console. The fact that it might not be The Sims or Civilisation (because those IPs are owned by a company they used to work for) doesn't really dimish the impact.

      I think given Xbox's lack of success in Japan, I can't really think of a better statement from Microsof
      • See, that's the comparison based on the pull he USED to have. A better Wetern equivalent to his current stature is Peter Molyneux, someone who had a good long moment of glory, and has started tumbling down the mountain with his recent works.

        As far as a better statement that they intend to get stuff right in the Japanese market, they should probably announce that they're going to make the NeX-Box smaller than the XBox.
    • http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0173840/

      Sakaguchi staked his reputation on The Spirits Within, driving it through the company and going as far as writing and directing it himself. And it tanked, big time, nearly taking Square with it. Just tanking might not have been enough to sink Sakaguchi if the movie was great, but it was really terrible. The writing was bad, the editing left much to be desired, and the story was ripped from the dull parts of a videogame. Collect 12 plants to open the doorway? Who wro

  • May ensure the Japanese Market (Score:5, Interesting)

    by suyashs ( 645036 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @07:55PM (#11772186)
    This may help MS greatly in the Japanese market, where they have lagged behind both Nintendo and Sony. With a RPG industry veteran, they could make headway into the Japanese RPG market (extremely profitable). Good move on MS's part, a sign of brewing trouble for Sony, and an ever greater threat to Nintendo. In the battle for next-gen marketshare, it may all come down to exclusive deals and ease of developement. Nintendo does well in both areas, while Sony notably lacks in the second, MS has done well in the first (Halo etc.) and has done excellently in the second but never before had many genres in which their exclusive deals were of high quality and were seriously lacking in Japanese backing for the current Xbox.

  • So, wait a minute. With this news, what happens to Mistwalker's announced DS title [ign.com]? The press release is about as clear as to what's going on (beyond the creation of some titles for Xbox) as mud.

  • This brings up the question: what would an RPG dream team look like? Or rather, what aspects of each RPG would you splice and dice together to make the best overall experience?
    • My idea is: You start with Tekkenalike for gameplay. Add weapons. Add a huge world. Add MMORPG. Allow land control and warefare, RTS style(closest to explain is natural selection). So you want to control land to up your power and weapon/armor, but you need to defend it from others.

      I tried coding it, but I quit because I realized it'd take me 15 years to code... But I should start back up because the key factor to it working is that the lag in the game needs to be less than it currently is. You see we

      • Re:Dream Team? (OT) (Score:3, Informative)

        by drxray ( 839725 )
        "we can't play Street Fighter 2 or Tekken online because the latency is too much"

        I refer you to

        Dead or Alive Ultimate, [ign.com] playable over Xbox Live.

        Street Fighter 2 for Matching Service. [ign.com] This used modems dialled into Capcom servers.

        There are others. I should also point out that allowing levelling up in a beat-em-up is a bad idea, their gameplay mechanics are intended to be balanced and the winner is the skilled (sometimes lucky) player.
      • Dude! Holy smack-a-ding-dong-dandy, CrazyJim1! I had a snowboard made out of Tekkenalike - that stuff is indestructible. I see your game has hand-to-hand style fighting but with weapons, and RPG and RTS gameplay, but is there any room for FPS or MMOFPRPGS gameplay? Maybe that's what "warefare" is? Or did you mean "warez fair?" Like a place where I can by pirated games and leet mods from carnies? That'd be awesome, too!
      • First off, Tekken is vastly inferior to a certain weapons-based fighter series also made by Namco. I'll let you reflect on what that might be on your own.

        Second of all you can't just throw a bunch of shit together and just hope that it all sticks together. There are innumerable problems that you'll encounter if you try to put everything into your game. Here's a few of them:
        • Everything has to work. If any component of the gameplay is lacking, it will bring everything else down with it.
        • Even if the gamepla

    • Re:Dream Team? (OT) (Score:5, Informative)

      by BalbanesBeoulve ( 847219 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:16AM (#11774484)
      RPG dream team? it already happened back with Chrono Trigger [snm-hgkz.ch].

      Akira Toriyama doing the characters, Yuji Horii of Dragon Quest doing the story, and Nobuo uematsu doing the music.
      • Uematsu contributed only a couple themes to Chrono Trigger (I think the Tyranno Lair was one of them). The overwhelming majority were done by Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Cross, Xenogears).
    • John Romeo on level design, Derek Smart for lead programmer and George Broussard as Producer. Get 3DO to publish it and I think we have a winner!

      Sorry.

  • What took so long? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @08:06PM (#11772294) Journal
    This is the kind of move that should have been made in the ramp-up to the release of the first Xbox, not the second one.

    Still, at least it demonstrates one constant about MS: It learns.

  • my guess would be Santa Clause
  • Is that this may seem like a large coup, however just like their aquisition of Rare it may not pay off. It still remains to be seen if Rare will make a large impact on Microsoft's console(s), and this is under the same circumstances of an entity that has created great games in the past, but does not have the rights to many of those games so all bets are off. And just like Rare, it sounds impressive on paper right now, however we're talking about 2-4 years down the road, and then it's still only a maybe.
  • An Xbox RPG that isn't Star Wars or Hack and Slash. Not that I dislike KOTOR, hell I love it, but there is a certain draw to the PS2 for its vast RPG library. Hopefully the games released will actually be good :).
  • I can't wait to see the result of this. The Xbox just keeps getting better and better. Xbox Live kicks ass. Can't wait to add some more great RPG titles.
  • Considering the wild back-and-forth direction that the Final Fantasy series has taken after the completely insane success of FF VII (PS1), from 'back to the roots' in FFIX, to the confusing X2, to the online experiments, I think there may have been too much attempted intervention by the upper management at Square. I think Sakaguchi definitely needs more room, and less fan outcry when he tries something new with a brand that they think can't be touched, and I think that is probably why he started the new dev

  • Mistwalker (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Elranzer ( 851411 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:12PM (#11773152) Homepage
    A lot of people here don't seem to understand that Sakaguchi left Square a while ago to form his own development company, Mistwalker. As Mistwalker is just a developer (not a publisher) all this means is that some Mistwalker-developed games are going to be published under Micrsoft Game Studios. This doesn't mean M$ is Mistwalker's only publisher.

    This doesn't mean at all that a Final Fantasy game will appear on (another) Microsoft system (not counting Windows PC). More likely though is the Final Fantasy series jumping to Nintendo's Revolution if the PlayStation3's Cell processor Assembly code proves more trouble than its worth (Square already knows PowerPC Assembly well, which is what Gamecube games are coded in, and PPC ASM is not the same as Cell ASM).

    Heck, even Nintendo published some of Square's developed games (Final Fantasy I/NES, Sword of Mana, Crystal Chronicles).

    Interesting to note is that Nobuo Uematasu (the music composer for Final Fantasy's 1 - 10) is now working for Mistwalker. This means some diehard game music buffs are going to have to buy an Xbox Next when it comes out.
    • Heck, even Nintendo published some of Square's developed games (Final Fantasy I/NES, Sword of Mana, Crystal Chronicles).

      Don't forget FF 1 and 2: Dawn of Souls.
    • I'd be surprised if console games had enough of them written in assembly these days to justify switching platforms just because the assembly language is slightly harder to work with.
  • Does this really have to become a Fanboy battle royale? Why can't we just all get along and say, "Hey cool, more video games!"
  • "Microsoft's cutting-edge technologies in the next-generation platform will allow me to bring to life an array of ideas that I have had for many years," Sakaguchi said.
    How much leeway does anyone think Microsoft will give him? If his ideas aren't Final Fantasy-ish enough, they may become vaporware.
    • I think, if anything, MS seems to have a trend to overindulge their japanese signings. Take the Steel Batallion series for example - the mecha games with the *insane* cockpit-sized peripheral (it's as if the developers were deliberately trying to pitch their "dream" game that no sane company would fund when they came up with that one!) - or the limited edition themed hardware releases for the likes of panza dragoon & the DOA series.

      MS _do_ seem to be prepared to invest heavily when it comes to fluffin

    • JRPGs typically do not stray from the cookie cutter mold. I don't see any reason to assume that this one would be any different. MS bought a JRPG maker, they know what they're getting so why would they have to clamp down the restraints?

  • Where RPGs go, so goes my $$$ (Score:4, Interesting)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Friday February 25, 2005 @02:55AM (#11774651) Homepage Journal
    It'll be interesting to see how this turns the tides of next generation consoles. There seems to be a correlation where the system with the largest number of decent RPGs tends to take the lead in the console wars for any given generation of consoles (the SNES seems to be the first real example of this, with it's large library of RPGs it continued to dominate even against the Saturn, and held on for a long while until the Playstation started to get good RPGs, something the N64 never really had, and the PS2 continued the tradition by being THE RPG console).
    I'm not really sure why this correlation exists, perhaps it's because RPGs tend to start comming out after the console wars have pretty much been won, or maybe it's because hardcore gamers tend to go with consols that have lots of RPGs, and they make the recommendations to other buyers.
    Even if it brings one really good RPG to the XBox2 then I'll probably buy it, if the XBox2 gets a lot of good RPGs, then it could win the next console war.
    • Not so much 'hardcore' gamers, but more mature gamers (coincidentally enough the ones with money, as we tend to be older, in stable careers instead of highschool, etc).

      Think about it like this:
      Streetfighter, Mortal Kombat, Doom, Quake, Halflife, UT; all great games in their own right, but all lack a plot that will last you more than a week (I beat the top guy, I beat the game, I collected everything, yay me).
      These games are largely played by a younger crowd, as less strategy is required to get to a leve
      • I actually find just the opposite. When I was young I had less disposable income, I cared about how long a game lasted. I liked a lot of JRPG games back then (back in the NES and SNES days). I didn't care much for most other styles.

        Now that I'm a bit older, I have more disposable income. It doesn't really matter if I can beat a game in 10 hours or 40, as long as it is a good game. Most older gamers have less time and more money, I don't think they look at a game and say "Oh, this looks like a lot of f
        • Not any FF, but particularly FFXI. There is a fair bit more strategy. Some of the larger HNMs (dragons, gods) can take anywhere from 15 minutes to literally hours to kill, swapping people in and out of your alliance (as only 18 people at any given time can perform actions against the claimed mob). XP fights, normal ones at least, require very little skill (there are many really shitty players at level 75), but add in links, longer chains, better MP conservation, etc, and you do have to actually think. Some
  • It was also announced that Romero joined MS...yet nothing changed.
  • LOL I have a PS2 and a XBOX, and a GBSP, and a GBDS and am going to buy a PSP oh AND the PS3 and XBOX2...and upgrade my PCs!

    RPGs for the XBOX have stunk it up except KOTOR...if they get more title and quality then it will be great for everyone...JRPG are releasing at a clip of about 10 a month and XBOX2 wont challenge this at all, but at least after you pop out a good racing game you have some options on the XBOX2 besides racing and spots.

    MS just needs to buy Nintendo and get it over with.

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