Square Enix

[The SaiNt]

Dragon Quest tends to be less widely known outside Japan.
I believe Enix also does the Grandia series as well.


*PS* It's rumoured that Square Enix's first project will be Parasite Eve: Rebirth for the PS2 and Gamecube.

[Joey]

Hmmm...but according to the stats, Enix only sold about 2++ bil copies while square sold about 3-4bil copies. By the way I see it, Enix is losing money.

[Anonymous]

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[Aaron]

But, IIRC, games aren't the problem for Square, movies (or rather the one and only movie) are. I don't know how much profit, if any, The Spirits Within made, but it most certainly didn't do nearly as well as Square had hoped.

It's a shame, too... I thought that movie was pretty good.

[KojiroTakenashi]

Would have been better with a better translator (I keep getting the niggling the "Zeus" was originally going to be named "Odin" and the "Phantoms" were an allusion to a translation for summon creatures, "Phantom Beasts") and no time-cuts from the script.

[Rubicant]

The movie WAS good. I always hear people talking smack about the movie. I really don't see what was so bad about it. Sure, there were some ridiculous parts in it (just like what happens in the games), but they really didn't bug me. Lots of movies are alot worse than FFSW, and they get tons less crap from critics and movie fans. Maybe people just didn't like the fact that a decent film that didn't require actors (not including voice actors) can actually exist.

This film was definaltely groundbreaking as far as VERY reallistic 3d renderings go. At times while watching the movie, I completely forgot that the entire thing was rendered. I kept asking myself: "now who is that actor playing her..oh wait...whoops".

[Joey]

FF:TSW would have been a lot more better if at *least* some of the protagonist characters stayed alive and rebulid the world with aki, and then let us see and old aki telling children about the movie. The movie is obviosly inspired by FF7.

Speaking about square's movies, FF Unlimited and the the 2 earlier cartoons trying to cash on FF's name failed terribilly as fans could not relate the anime with the actual game. Another cause to blame was because square did not promote them well.

But considering the revenues generated by the game sales, which should be more that enough to cover the losses, I think that something is up to square's sleeve in this merger. I smell something fishy..... :z

[Sir Canealot]

Final Fantasy Unlimited was okay... it could have been great but... oh well.

Final Fantasy: TSW sucked ass. The graphics were sure nice but, other than that sod that stupid film. No story, no characters. Argh.

[KojiroTakenashi]

FFU was cut in half from it's original intention of having 52 episodes. It was an excellent series and I guess the ties to the FF games were based on too many of the old ones, since noone seemed to get them.

[Cyberman]

Copies of what? Amounts of games sold (Dragon Quest and FF series) are about 1% of those, 30 million and 42 million worldwide.

Not to mention that Square could be selling lot more and still doing worse, if they are also spending more (like developing more titles).

But, IIRC, games aren't the problem for Square, movies (or rather the one and only movie) are. I don't know how much profit, if any, The Spirits Within made, but it most certainly didn't do nearly as well as Square had hoped.

After watching the movie I can understand why it did so poorly.

1: It was dumbed too far down for the die hard Square fans
2: The affects etc were great, however it seemed kind of pointless.
3: I didn't like it, the affects were wonderful, but WRONG DEMOGRAPHIC.  They made a gross error in there marketing target for the movie.  People who would likely be interested in a movie like that, are.. 1 at least have a college degree or are a die hard square fan, 2 aren't as interested in special affects as a good story, 3 aren't as interested in action as a good story.  I think the movie lacked hitting all 3 of these.  Namely the story  wasn't all that well developed and it wasn't targeted at a more intellectual demographic.

Movies I like would be 'Hearts of Atlantis' where there is very little action but lots of plot.  You don't need to spend huge amounts of money to make a good movie, you need a good story though.

Cybie

[Sir Canealot]

FFU was cut in half from it's original intention of having 52 episodes. It was an excellent series and I guess the ties to the FF games were based on too many of the old ones, since noone seemed to get them.

Final Fantasy Unlimited isnt a very good series... I used to think it was brilliant till I panned out and viewed hella other anime. Now I can relise its short commings.
Characters are nothing to write home about.
Its basic "monster of the week" stuff mostly.
Story line is patchy.

Art work and animation is amazeing though. I like a lot of the music to.
As I said it would have been done a lot better...

[KojiroTakenashi]

FFU is done in a style, though, were the characters are introduced first, then thier backgrounds are slowly told through the course of the series. This is why FFU seems patchy, like I said, they cut it in half. A couple of books are being released to continue it, however.