70% of Final Fantasy XV's Team Is Still Focused on the Game

Seems kind of odd to keep money in a toilet, maybe it's a Japanese custom. But hey, they make millions and some pretty good games on all platforms, who are we to say they're not making good use of it, right?

Wouldn't this be a good thing? Yeah, there may be more DLC and all, but it also can mean if there are still problems to be ironed out, they still have a good number of guys on hand to deal with it.

I guess because everybody wants the Remake though, that's gonna be put off for a while.

So 10 years of on-off development wasn't enough - it needs a few years after it's released, too. It's nice that the dev team is so keen on improving it but I still don't quite get it. It's not like updates are going to shift another 5 million copies over the next couple of years.

@get2sammyb Well crap.

Really, the only negative I can see is VII Remake and Kingdom Hearts taking longer unless their teams are completely separate. Maybe I'm not seeing something you guys are.

@get2sammyb I've barely started the game, so I'll just wait till 2018 to finish it then!

I just want the free cutscenes that explain the game better

It's probably because partly they want to somewhat adhere to the whole 'we'll only remake VII when we feel we've made something better' promise that was made when Wada was still there. And I'm sure it's partly an experiment to see if that works. They've spent so much money, time and effort on this because, if they get the balance right to a point they've appeased fans and can draw in the mainstream crowd and media (who in my mind were the ones who really ruined the series, for giving them a missteer by whining about why it wasn't like the popular games they liked) then they'll know how to make a reasonable blueprint to work on for future games in the series.

I like that they're doing this. I dint think that they think it's gonna shift a lot of copies but I think they want fans to carry on enjoying this game that they've spent so long on.

I feel like a lot of these updates should have been done before releasing the game. I'm not going to go back and re-play it after all : / And it will negatively affect preorders of the next title if people expect them to 'fix' it later.
200 people focused on FFXV still for a year... I wonder how big these DLC stories are going to be. Could have done without the Chocobo Festival really : p

I'm guessing there'll be more events like the chocobo festival.

Anyway, I won't be hopping back on FFXV. Not interested in having to play through linear hallways a second time because they somehow can't tell a cohesive story in 2017. The DLC also stinks of being cut from the main story.

Nioh, Horizon, and Persona5 are what I'll be playing. FFXV is just a jumbled memory at this point.

I suppose the financial perspective to this could be that effort spent burnishing their flagship title - even that seems like too small a term - is effort spent burnishing the reputation of the company as a whole, and that'll pay off in future goodwill. It's really a very pro-consumer perspective, if my guess is on the mark.

@get2sammyb
It has seemed to me that for a long time Square Enix survives inspite of it's own best efforts to sink the ship.

Great news. I would like to hear more about the avatar system that was to be implemented.

@kyleforrester87
It's because it could easily be seen like a wasted effort, or flogging a horse.

Nobody is moaning developers are supporting a game, they are moaning they are wasting resources treating FFXV like Destiny, or Overwatch, which are fundamentally very different games.

There is a difference between DLC or episodic support like Half Life 2, and pointless reskins of an annoying area that remove the best thing in the game (the cameraderie between characters).

I'm not even moaning, I got my money's worth with the game in the state it was released, but it's a shame when art or story is compromised to fit a DLC "model" that won't be used by or please a good percentage of players, nor bring the company any more revenue.

I love this game and I think this is crazy, not that I know how many people are required to make the dlc which I'm looking forward to and if this is what they're doing than ok. If it's for things like the carnival then they are just wasting their time, I won't be coming back to play things like this. I will however be back for the dlc episodes and maybe new game plus at 60fps 😃, other than that just get these people on FFVII and make that as great as possible

They probably working on a PC port for FFXV.

This is a really weird perspective from the Author. Regardless of whether its being charged or not, support from the developer can only be a good thing. I completely cannot understand the negativity or the author's desire to decide for SquareEnix. What's the point? Let's just bash a developer just for supporting their games?

Also, not everyone bought FFXV. Potential customers who haven't bought the game may still buy it at a later time and get a better experience out of it. And that's a good thing. Not everyone buys games on Day 1. Also there ARE people who will play the game again if enough content has been added.

I remember a time, when people replayed a game over and over. Now is just, play and forget. I understand there are always more games coming out, but not everybody buy a game on daily basis. A developer improving on the re-playability of the game is welcomed.
Don't forget, people shout out loud because SE made Hitman episodic, and now, the same people say it was a great strategy for the game.

While this is good news, for me this only shows how unfinished the game was upon release.

Can we just go back to turn based again? No? Okay.... goes back into his hole

@get2sammyb God no, please don't make a series out of the game. I hated that XIII was stretched out in 3 games...I love XV but I'll be fine with some expansions and so on. Then let's change scenery altogether

I would guess PC port and VR probably, plus other events and DLC. They aren't necessarily keeping all those devs on till 2018 unless I read it differently.

@get2sammyb I think we kind of have the same opinion but just different time schedules in mind: I hope this is the team that gets to do XVI improving on their experience with XV. Now they can afford to spend some time refining XV since there is 7R on the way and it would obliterate any XV-2 in terms of attention.

Ill be playing this again even without updates to be honest so i think its great news

Seems like theyre working on a PC port

I think Square thinks FFXV is FF Online.

@kyleforrester87
Well, they are treating it like Destiny or a MMORPG, the chocobo carnival was very much akin to the Destiny Halloween event.

Not really snorting at it either, it just doesn't make sense when you have a protracted bloated development that was aiming for perfection, that was edited down into a very good game stitched together with several awesome, yet disjointed components.

Not a shareholder at all, but I am a fan and a developer so from my perspective, Square Enix seem to make some really bizarre decisions and compound bad mistakes for no real gain to the players or themselves.
Would anyone have missed the chocobo mog mega carnival? No.
Will anyone buy the game for the VR mission? No.
If people hated Chapter 13, but still felt compelled to finish the game, then it had it's desired effect (I liked it, myself). Unless they can see people actively stop playing the game BECAUSE of it, why spend resources rewriting it?

I'll give the multiplayer and story DLC a go, and I really liked a lot of the things they did with the game, it's just putting the resource into, say FFXV-II makes more business and game sense than some of the support they are doing.

I feel like, as a fan, all this tinkering with a cobbled together sum of excellent parts is preventing someone putting them together really well in a new adventure.

Unless, of course, they do what Konami did in the same situation with MGS V and bang out "FF XV - Survive", then I'll take the Chococbo Carnival and be thankful.

If you actually go and read the article Sammy linked, it was also stated that the entire cost of development was recouped from day one sales. So maybe an extra year's worth of development isn't costing them as much as one would think. Also, as others have posted above, possible groundwork for a PC port.

@RedMageLanakyn
I actually did read the article Sammy linked, I didn't read the links at the bottom of the article.
Some of the changes like the off road car and changing chapter 13 still feel a bit "Why?", irrespective of whether SE are compounding debt or pouring away profit.

Never said the New Game+ , PC port work or DLC was bad, fair play to them on that.

@RPE83 Yeah, some of the things they say they're working on seem odd, but it also seems like the team has a vision they're trying to complete, and they've been given the greenlight by SE to see it through.

Square Enix has quietly been gaining ground the past few years on all fronts, and they don't look to be slowing down. Honestly I feel like they are the most diverse game company we have right now, offering everything from RPGs to stealth to explosive action to strategy and everything in between. I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they're doing.

What's it with push square and their eager for ffxv "why are they doing this, why are they doing that"

They're supporting the game and maybe have bigger dlc planned? Would you guys just have devs drop games as soon as they're gold? There's is a very odd attitude towards this game. First the FREE choboco carnval now this....

I think they're just working on the Switch and PS5 ports.

It is really really getting hard to want to buy a game day 1 anymore and this year long patching isn't helping. I know they keep saying "DLC", and I paid $25 for it so it better be coming and it somehow better seem worth $25, but a lot of it seems like updating and patching that should have been done before launch.

Between the $40 The Witcher 3 Complete and all the after game stuff they did for Fallout 4, really seems like waiting is the way to go. And even when they don't do this The Last Guardian dropped $20 in about 2 months. From now on I can wait 2 months after waiting 10 years for games.

@rjejr It's the eternal struggle between really, really wanting to experience a new game when it first comes out, or having the willpower and patience to wait it out 6 months to spend less money and get a more complete package. It's getting easier as I get older to wait it out, tear through some of the backlog, and actually feel good about it.

@RedMageLanakyn "the willpower and patience"

When you get really old it just becomes more about the ability to stay awake long enough to play. i still play videogames everyday, but there's a difference between playing 4, 5 or 6 hours when I was younger and 1 or 2 hours now, takes a long time to get thru that backlog. No point in adding to the backlog unless I can get a $60 game for $5 for $10. $15 games I just wait for PS+.

@NinjaWaddleDee hey you can play FFX remaster on PS4, Tidus and the crew

@rjejr completely agree especially with good digital psn sales

@smythelove "good digital psn sales"

It certainly works better w/ Sony gaming than Ntinedo, where games are full price for 3 years. I'll likely be paying full price for a few Switch games come Christmas, there's really no point waiting there. Though that system and games will be gifts for my kids, I'll just play whatever they want, I won't make my kids wait for Christmas gifts.

@rjejr Yeah, I only get about 3 hours a day to play, so I guess I don't really have to worry about trying to stay awake long enough yet!

@rjejr Yeah NES needs to cut prices. One of the reasons they can't compete in today's console wars

Don't have an issue with this. It shows that they're committed to the game even after apparently breaking even during the first day of launch. With Season Passes being so pricey nowadays, I would rather developers have their A team working on them then the B team regardless if the final product turns out good or not.