Final Fantasy XIII's Development Duo Believe The Title May Breathe Life Back Into The Japanese Industry.

They said as much during an interview with the Playstation Blog.
[quote]
“We don’t know exactly what he meant by that. We don’t really know what he meant by this style of game,” the duo said.

“If you consider that during Final Fantasy XIII’s development, at peak time the team consisted of over 300 people. It was a huge team, plus it took a several long years to get the game finished. So, if Mr. Wada meant that we would never make another Final Fantasy title with the similar number of people, taking as long as FFXIII did, we would agree.”</blockquote>

The duo suspect Wada may have been referring to the size of FFXIII's development team.
[quote]
“Obviously in the future we want to be much more efficient,” they explained. “Having worked on XIII, we feel that we have got much better at making good games for high definition consoles. In the future our teams will be smaller and more effectively run.

“We suspect that is what Mr. Wada meant by his statement.”</blockquote>

Moving onto the Japanese industry in general, the pair cited their hopes at resurrecting the video games business in Japan with FFXIII.
[quote]
"Some people have been saying that the Japanese game industry is dead, and all that… I dunno. I will say that Final Fantasy XIII is one really epic title for high definition consoles. With this game, we are going to resurrect the whole thing."</blockquote>

The game's due on Playstation 3 a month today here in Europe and America. Get your preorders on, yo.