Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada Resigns

RPG used to take 100 hours to complete and cost 60$; that's 0.60$/hr

We are now paying 10x more for entertainment, and the entertainment factor has not scaled anywhere near 10x. I think that's the general argument.

6$/hr for entertainment is a lot.

Thats an exageration... 40ish hours, maybe 50 if you read slow.

Perhaps taking the most linear path forward for the core story.
But when you seek out all viable dialog, mini games, side quests, easter eggs, etc. An old fashioned JRPG can easily consume about 100 hours.

Not to say that the latter is the path to making a content rich game, but it's nice to have options and deviate from the path a bit. Especially when it opens up branches of different gameplay options.

I spent like 300+ hours playing FFX though. Well worth the money to me and I have like 3 copies of it (also getting the HD version).

If just story 20-30 hours.

Edit: there are a few giant games out there, but it is definitely not the norm. Anything longer than 40ish and you are looking at it being player related not that the game is just that big.

It wasn't risky, it was unbelievably stupid and a teachable moment regarding when a company decides to make an obscenely bad business decisions. To throw away your brand because "*** it, we wanna do something new" while doing nothing new at all isn't risk is cutting your arms off for the hell of it.

FFXI was a hit in the pre-WoW days of MMOs and while it didn't explode like WoW did into a series defining entry there are numerous things it did better than WoW and occupied a niche to this day that hasn't been filled in the market. Do they not have people who can put this together on staff?

Putting aside everything wrong with FFXIVs development cycle and the division of blame that falls anywhere from Tanaka, top management, outsourcing or market forces the decision to completely ignore everything learned from the first MMO production was the most grievous decision the company could ever hope to make. Blizzard made a similar mistake with Diablo 3 and as you see they're still trying to clean up that shitstew.

Final Fantasy is a brand and there are certain things that transcend FFXI like the job system. Whoever decided that no no we shouldn't call a Monk a Monk or a Thief a Thief when the series has reused that name scheme across numerous entries must have put his/her brain on ice for the day. It didn't help that the names put forth were obscure to say the least.

Hey guys, I'm going to play Final Fantasy and pick up a Thaumaturge character.... eh whats a Thaumaturge again? *** if I know, I'm a 14 year old American consumer with the vocabulary of a Tapir. I like Cloud though!

XIV 1.0 further decided that all of the gripes learned from fans giving you advice for free (in FFXI) wasn't needed when a few guys in an office could solve all those problems having logged into the original game for a handful of hours in comparison. How dare those fans attempt to correct our greatness. We know everything, they know nothing for their are foolish mortals walking amongst giants.

SEs arrogance and self-absorbed nature is what brought them low. They don't advertise, their NA/EU faces are obscure to say the least (get a FF/DQ nerd with some people skills to go outside to be the face of the not-JP Square-Enix already - bonus points if the person knows Japanese) and the company has been caught in a rut of "fans aren't important" for years now while throwing away what made them great in the first place.

Sqare enix goes bankrupt, as for the nerd customers