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Cornering The Market - Final Fantasy 2.17.2008 11:10pm
Final Fantasy has certainly cornered the Final Fantasy market. Let me break that down. Final Fantasy is the big boy in Japanese RPGs (Dragon Quest is a close second but it's not in the title so I choose not to talk about it). Even now 20+ years after the release the name still holds major weight.
It holds so much weight that even if you worked on those early games you can sell your new, Non-Final-Fantasy game. At least that seems to be the trend. Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has walked away from the Final Fantasy to pursue other interests. Namely Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360 exclusives which Microsoft paid handsomely for).
On all the posters and cardboard cutouts for Lost Odyssey that fact is brandished proudly. I mean there are Square fans; people who actually bought Project Sylpheed because their name was on the box. With the name being that popular Sakaguchi would be near crazy to leave his connection to the Final Fantasy franchise off the PR propaganda.
My favorite part of the Lost Odyssey / Final Fantasy cross branding is the queasy feeling SquareEnix gets every time someone looks at a cardboard cutout. Knowing that not only will they see no money from their baby, but also that their platform of choice might also not be the platform of choice for a third of the globe. The more time that goes by, the more Xbox's are sold, the more PS2 owners are making the switch to the Microsoft camp. The Japanese RPG market is always a place where American companies have struggled... for geographical reasons mostly.
When MS couldn't lock down shared rights to Final Fantasy the next best thing was to lock down exclusivity to the creator. By brandishing Lost Odyssey propaganda with the one thing they can't have Microsoft has solidified Final Fantasy as the pinnacle of the genre. The be all end all. The final word. And it is.
Even people who don't like turn based RPG's as a genre play Final Fantasy. When people want to venture into the genre the direction they are pointed in that of Final Fantasy. That is the turn-based-RPG starting point. From there you can spread your wings and fly into DragonQuests, or Manna... places.
Go wherever you want really just remembered where it all started. At a little place called Final Fantasyville. It is, after all, the defining game in the genre.
