Ya know, I actually don’t think that’s gonna be the case. I think the development team kinda tipped their hand when Kitase said he considered the end of OG FF7 to be a bad ending.

Oh, I know exactly what they represent. The team was as subtle as a hammer to the head with that meta commentary.

I figured that three or four parts would be the sweet spot. Any more than that, and you’d know the Kingdom Heartsing of FF7 was on the way.

That’s kinda where I’m at too.

I’m not at all sure why it took them until the announcement of the second game to finally say how many games it was going to be, but thank God they finally did.

My favorite team remains one of Eula/Diona/Raiden Shogun/Yae Miko.  It would make a METAslave cringe a little, but they all complement each other well and in a pinch can hit some really big damage numbers if I decide to go all out.

I have found that gamers really don’t like the predatory gambling mechanisms of their childhood (rightfully) noted as being merely the precursor to the gatcha games of today for whatever reason, and will go to great lengths to try and make distinctions (that are really distinctions without a difference).

Oh, don’t get me twisted; there’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach.  But it's less that Sony has seen the light about exclusives and more they see an opportunity to use those exclusives to make more money well after the well would have went dry.

You’re right, but I can promise you Sony doesn’t see it that way.  They want the exclusive to try and entice people to buy a PS-whatever, and THEN they'll port to PC once that market is tapped dry.

Easy to SAY, less easy to DO.

For what it’s worth, even for small development teams, bug fixes and anti-piracy measures are done by completely different people; and bug fixes are a MUCH more delicate affair than putting in something to mess with pirates.

I suspect it’s a combination of pirates moving to paid sales, and a TON of free publicity from people who wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

There’s a reason why these games are being ported WELL after their console release.  They’re less realizing that exclusives aren't good for customers and more realizing they can bleed more money after the tail would have normally dropped off.

This is very good to see... but now they will need some solidarity from their peers.

So many companies trying to fill Smash's shoes without even trying to understand why Smash works.

I could see the use of a tool like this as you’re in the very early development stages, and you’re kinda trying identify potential blind spots you might have in those initial design phases, becoming increasingly less relevant as you nail down the specifics in story and design.

They represent nothing (quite literally, in fact; they represent nothing tangible), and contribute nothing to the future.

Dude, all I said was that most stories tend to get impenetrable given enough time.  You’re the one that’s been trying to make an argument about this.  I don’t know why.

Eh, we’re seeing more and more video game series trying to maintain a continuity nowadays, and expecting players to know what’s going on before diving in.

I was speaking about sports initially, the topic has rather shifted since then. Whether there is a better way or not to fund professional athletics doesn’t change that ad revenue is a significant chunk of the revenues for those industries. Removing that revenue would result in a drop in quality of the product... at…