S-E should get their act together and focus on a few core games, instead of spreading their resources on multiple projects.
I doubt this is the problem. None of their projects have run into trouble from a lack of resources; it's certainly not a low budget that messed up FFXIII. The problem is a combination of bad ideas, and a poor development flow that causes work to be done in the wrong order, bringing up problems that it's already too late to fix by the time they show up. It's why FFXIII was so linear. The non-traditional battle system was just creative minds not thinking clearly.
I'm getting tired of people acting as though the problem is diversion or overspreading of resources. I've seen it said that Square-Enix focused on graphics instead of gameplay and story, when in reality the employees working on graphics are not responsible or qualified for makign gameplay or story decisions, and having them put less effort into what they did would not have helped other aspects. From a technical perspective, the game (as well as most of their recent games) was quite well done, and the key issues with the game were all things that should have been planned for and solved early on, by the creative leads. Again, I point to the Kingdom Hearts series, which has consistently had both fantastic graphics AND gameplay. There are a few exceptions in the gameplay department, but they are all caused by questionable design choices (panel system in 358/2 days), NOT by misallocation of resources. The programming is fine, and diverting money from the graphics budget to some other department would not have helped in the slightest.
As a general rule, there is NO SUCH THING as a tradeoff between graphics and gameplay, except in cases where the graphics actively interfere with gameplay (such as a HUD that is pretty but difficult to use) or when the programming itself was shoddy and incomplete and needed a higher budget, more time, or more programmers at the expense of a few 3D modelers. A good example of this is Metal Gear Solid 4, which had some good ideas, but was plagued with framerate issues, install times, and mediocre level layouts because the programmers didn't have adequate resources to fix the game in time for its release.
This all ties back to my view of the profit vs quality statement that DLPB made earlier. Many of the company's recent games have certainly been low-quality, no question, but it isn't for lack of effort. They're investing a TON of money in these projects, trying their hardest to make them good, they just genuinely don't understand what the problem is. This is what happens when graphics whores run a game company or are put in charge of a big project. It's not that they are just looking for a quick buck rather than trying to make something good, it's that they ACTUALLY BELIEVE that they have made something good because every
quantifiable aspect IS good: a ton of polygons, high resolution textures, high framerate, plenty of paradigms, and lots of hours of both gameplay AND story. In a world where everything is ruled by numbers, FFXIII would absolutely be a good game.
It can hardly be said that Square-Enix is putting profit over quality. They just have no clue what quality means anymore, or how to achieve it.
