A common conversation in recent years, especially among the old guard, has been how legacy video game franchises are struggling to get younger players to care in the long run. Even some of the developers behind renowned series are starting to worry, and the latest to chime in is Final Fantasy 14‘s Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, who is “sorry to say” that many incoming players to the esteemed RPG series may be immpacted by long development cycles..
“I’m 53 now, and I’ve been playing since Final Fantasy 1 in real time… But for younger generations – people who grew up naturally accustomed to action-based combat and online competitive play – the recent entries in the series may have been harder to engage with,” Yoshi-P said during an interview to promote Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy, the next entry in the spinoff series that’s launching today on iOS and Android.
You might think he’s talking about the differences in combat systems between entries, but no, he’s talking about how many Final Fantasy games older RPG fanatics were able to enjoy in the 1990s and 2000s versus the release cadence gamers are used to these days.
He added: “Part of that is simply because I’m sorry to say… the release intervals for new titles have gotten longer, so some players haven’t really had the chance to connect with the series the way older fans did.” It’s not a surprising comment. It’s been noted that devs are really worried about the current triple-A “bloat” affecting so many aspects of game dev, but even so it’s surprising to hear these words via an official marketing video from Square Enix itself.
Mind you, Square Enix has made good efforts through remasters, remakes, spinoff entries, and whatnot to keep Final Fantasy fans busy in between new mainline releases, but with FF15 and 16 causing division among them and not exactly representing what most of the franchise’s classic titles have become beloved for, these newer titles are perhaps not seen as optimal entry points for newcomers. Couple that with how long we all have to wait nowadays to get new games and it’s easy to see how those curious about JPRGs aren’t connecting with Final Fantasy nearly as much as with Pokémon, for example.
