Development Team Downsizing and Justification Makes no Sense

[Alhanelem]

There is an institutional problem at Square Enix.

The same mindset that lead to the letter from the XI producer last month, is already to be seen in the XIV studios. Which is why almost all the people working on XIV have been working on XVI and whatever follows that. Do you know how bad a sign it is for a large and successful team to suddenly start work on a AAA single player game instead of put all their attention into some new EXP or engine update?

The future for XIV is going along the same path XI took, they are no longer happy updating that 10 year old game. They want to work on new things. Working on a 10 year old engine is bad for their careers.

SE isn't run like other companies, where a success story is latched upon. They constantly want to re-invent the wheel, even if doing so makes no financial sense.

If you were working in game devleopment, you would understand that you need to keep your skills sharp to stay relevant. You would also understand that even in the MMO world, interests change over time. Nothing lasts forever, and you really need to come to grips with that fact. FFXI has already lasted longer than nearly every other MMO on the market. SE is in many ways run like any other media company. Normal companies work to stay relevant because needs and wants of their customer base are always changing.

To you it might make total sense to keep throwing money at something forever and ever and ever, but there is diminishing returns on continued investment. Even WoW isn't completely immune to this. SE is a publicly traded business and such businessess need to please investors. Investors want to see a company constantly innovating and making new things to drive sales and thus increase company value and therefore the return on their investments. So that's what SE does.