[SISTERS » FARRON] serah & lightning

At the GDC held at the Taipei International Conference Center in Taiwan, Motomu Toriyama of Square Enix held a presentation on the development between Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Toriyama, who held the position of director for both games, took the podium and revealed the inner working of development on Final Fantasy XIII to a crowded room. The Final Fantasy series has long been regarded as a visually high-spec series and Final Fantasy XIII was no different, employing at its peak 180 people to work as artists. Unfortunately, in order to attempt to tap the hardware’s full potential, new development software must be created for every game. Indeed development on XIII began before the groundwork had been completing leading to difficulties later on. Toriyama himself admitted that while publicity and promotion for XIII had been a success, he had some regrets on the side of managing the design and development.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 for PS3 moved over half a million copies after shipping in Japan last week -- around one-third of the sales the original Final Fantasy XIII saw just two years ago. These relatively low sales could reflect diminished consumer interest in Square Enix's flagship franchise, or more specifically for its Final Fantasy XIII line of titles, which includes upcoming PS3 action RPG Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

Square Enix also admitted several months ago that the Final Fantasy brand was "greatly damaged" by the troubled launch of PC MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV in September 2010 (a PS3 version is due to release in late 2012/early 2013). Final Fantasy XIII, which sold 1.5 million PS3 copies in its Japanese launch week two years ago, suffered much criticism from gamers who found fault with its linear gameplay approach -- something the company sought to address with this sequel. [SOURCE]