[Xantar]

Just so you know, REmake sold 500,000 copies. That's not bad all told, but it's not that good either. I never said a Final Fantasy VII remake would sell horribly, but by the standards of Final Fantasy games, which normally sell a million copies in Japan alone, it's not going to do that well. And besides that, I really think that all the Final Fantasy VII spin-offs and licenses are a bad idea. Even if they're in different genres or whatever, it's too much cashing in too fast. Even the biggest Squaresoft freaks I know have decided that the company has lost its creativity. After all, there was a time when Squaresoft didn't need to do this kind of rehashing. You may not hate the idea, you may even be planning to buy all the games, but there's nobody who has been fooled into thinking that this is anything other than a cynical ploy to get some cheap revenue. Honestly, would it be the end of the world for you if there was never a remake?

Where does it end? At the rate things are going, if all three of these new spin-off games sell well (which I'm not certain all of them will), Squaresoft will be encouraged to make even more Final Fantasy VII spin-offs. At some point, even if they're all different genres and have new levels or whatever, people are going to get tired of it.

I also wish that you all would stop telling me about how many people you know who would buy this game as if that actually means anything. I can tell you that half of the people I know who liked Final Fantasy VII don't plan to buy the remake and don't like the idea and it would be true. Hell, I could tell you that I personally know a few hundred people who would line up in stores to purchase a game that was written entrely in Vietnamese. Does that mean making a Vietnamese language game is going to be a good idea? When companies go around making decision like this, they do some market research. They don't go around asking some of their personal friends whether they would buy the new game. So stop thinking that your opinions and the opinions of the people you know means anything about the world at large. I certainly don't. What I do have is the history of remakes which demonstrates that such games are lucky if they can manage a million units sold worldwide.

In the short term, it certainly won't hurt Square-Enix to release a graphically updated version of Final Fantasy VII, but I guarantee that they are quickly reaching the point where people just aren't going to keep buying because they want something new. That's bad for the long term. If Square-Enix wanted to do this properly, it wouldn't kill them to wait three or four years in between each game. Nintendo, among others, has demonstrated that you can keep a franchise going forever that way. As it is now, I will be seriously surprised if Square-Enix even announces a Final Fantasy VII game or spin-off for the PS4. The cash cow just doesn't stretch that far.