Square Enix to avoid large-scale internal development after FFXIII-2

[Shamdeo]

It is well documented that the development of Final Fantasy XIII was fraught with difficulty, and that Square Enix wished to get its franchise back on track. While the game sold very well, it came at a much higher cost than the company would have liked.

"The development time was quite long," admitted Motomu Toriyama, director of FFXIII and FXIII-2, at GDC Taipei. "Within our company, developing on PlayStation for Final Fantasy XIII we required a huge amount of graphical data. ... At the peak, there were over 200 people working on it.” The breakdown there was 180 artists, 30 programmers, and 36 game designers.

"With a large-scale development team, we didn't use our time well," he said. "How do you communicate to everyone in the department what the drive of the game is?" The company had previously been using the story as the basis for development, but as it changed, it was tough to keep that many people abreast of the changes. "We decided we needed to create more practical milestones, not story-based ones."

"Because it's a large-scale project, we had to keep it secret, but this led to user testing happening way too late in the process," he said. "We heard a lot of feedback about things we needed to fix, and we decided we would do that with FFXIII-2. ... We decided that we would have a milestone every month, and realized we needed to applied more Western technology and production techniques. We learned this not only from GDC, but also from Eidos [now owned by Square Enix]."

"We are also thinking that we will not do large-scale internal development any longer." he said. "We have a lot of great creators in Square Enix, but for larger-scale development we will be doing more distributed and outsourced development to reach our targets on time."

Moving to this monthly milestone-type development, "In the beginning of a month we decide the achievements for that month,” he said. “We decide the core of what we need to do, and plan for that."

Development went well for XIII-2, but he still feels it could be better. "We feel like we need to add more buffer time for player testing in the future," he added. "We improved for FFXIII-2, but it's still not enough time to add everything we learn back into the game."

Toriyama also touched on the success of the Asian launch, meaning all parts of Asia that are not Japan. The Chinese and Korean versions were made with the assistance of Sony, helping them achieve a worldwide launch for FFXIII-2.

He further revealed that Final Fantasy XIII sold 350,000 units in Asia, making it the number one third-party game on PlayStation 3, while FFXIII-2 sold 200,000. "This may not seem like a lot," he said, "But compared to other games in Asia, this game even beat our numbers for other markets like Germany and France."

Won't affect the Kingdom Hearts team. What's your point?
Well, there's not really a "Kingdom Hearts team" per se, other than the core staff that may even shuffle with each new game. Square Enix's development is split between different production departments. The one that handles mainline Kingdom Hearts games is Production Department 1 -- the side games are managed by PD1 and developed by either the Osaka (PD5) office or with the help of a third party contractor (h.a.n.d). In the case of FFXIII-2, tri-Ace and Marvelous AQL answered the call.

Final Fantasy Versus XIII is being developed by PD1, and happens to have staff that have worked on Kingdom Hearts before. Most of them have worked on Final Fantasy games previous to Kingdom Hearts titles. (Half of the Final Fantasy X development crew in PD1 went to Kingdom Hearts I, while the other went to Final Fantasy X-2 since it required less staff.)

In short, there's no dedicated Kingdom Hearts team other than a few core creators like Nomura-san and a few other designers and producers.

So what does this even mean for Kingdom Hearts?
Kingdom Hearts III will likely be on a console again, by Nomura's own implications. A large scale project that will be headed by PD1.

In the past PD1 has been notorious for lengthy development times on Final Fantasy XIII and Versus XIII, largely due to the problems with their next-gen engine (White Engine, now Crystal Tools) not performing up to speed, and mismanagement of staff.

What this potentially means is that you'll have a staff of core deisgners creating everything that they need -- the blueprints for the game if you will -- and outsourcing work to other companies to do the gruntwork (creating the assets). Companies that are better managed and more efficient than Square Enix PD1 can currently attempt.

So in the case of Kingdom Hearts III, it's entirely possible that development will proceed in this fashion. It's possible that the time between announcement and hitting the store shelf could be considerably less long.

Food for thought.

[UltimaJackpot]

Okay, on one hand, I'm actually kind of pleased to see them restructuring things on the development side of things, as Versus is a testament to what happens when large scale projects get horrifically mismanaged. If it means less of a ridiculous wait between the announcement and the release of a title, I'm cool with that, even if it means outsourcing to other companies for most of the grunt labor.

On the other hand however, I'm a tad worried about what this means for the quality of future Square Enix titles. XIII-2 and KH3D seem to be the first big titles to be developed with the partial outsourcing (in regards to XIII-2), smaller scale, shorter development cycle strategy in mind (I couldn't help but notice that a good potion of staff in the 3D Ultimania interviews noted how short the development cycle was compared to past titles), and while both games are far from being bad, both games lacked the level of overall polish that previous games had. 3D's Japanese release in particular had a ton of crazy glitches, and a frame rate that's all over the place.

Ideally, they'd be able to maintain their usual level of polish while keeping development times at a reasonable length. We'll see where this goes, I guess.

[Gexus]

This really sounds interesting. I've been a bit worried about what UltimaJackpot mentions, that XIII-2 and KH3D have both been developed with shorter time and it really shows, since they just don't have as much polish as XIII for example.

What Toriyama says is kinda exciting, but I'd really love to know more. This might be revolutionary for Square-Enix. However, aren't their developers going to be, well, developing any games at all then if they're just going to be outsourcing everything? Or is he implying that they'll just be outsourcing some games?

[ffx_fanatic1405]

Well... it'll take less long. Does that mean it'll won't be well done? I really hope not..

[WaveK89]

I suppose we shall see what comes of this. I have faith in them.

[Hillboy]

As long as the quality is top notch I won't complain

[Eraser Rain]

What this potentially means is that you'll have a staff of core deisgners creating everything that they need -- the blueprints for the game if you will -- and outsourcing work to other companies to do the gruntwork (creating the assets). Companies that are better managed and more efficient than Square Enix PD1 can currently attempt.

So, basically handing the dirtier work to shadier people. Not that I don't trust them, but I'd imagine the number of technicalities involved in illegal distribution of Square content to be rather...unpleasant.

[Nostalgia]

As long as the core developers still have creative control, I think this can be a great thing for KH III.

[cloudzack117]

I take it they arent doing this with Vs XIII? i feel like if they outsourced it mid development it could turn out wrong, kind of what happened in the later stages of duke nukem forevers development when it bounced between 3dr, cryptyc, and gearbox. srry for bringing up dnf but thats the closest thing i could think of in terms of switching devs mid development

[Eraser Rain]

I take it they arent doing this with Vs XIII? i feel like if they outsourced it mid development it could turn out wrong, kind of what happened in the later stages of duke nukem forevers development when it bounced between 3dr, cryptyc, and gearbox. srry for bringing up dnf but thats the closest thing i could think of in terms of switching devs mid development

IIRC, DNR's difficulties were more funding-oriented. While I consider myself ignorant of the details, I don't think KH will ever have that problem, at least not between Square and Disney.

[prjio307]

What's all this nonsense about 3D not being polished? This is the first I am hearing of this... Reports I have heard from people prior to this have all been very positive in regards to the graphics and frame rate. The frame rate is supposedly much better than Birth By Sleep, thankfully. The character models also are some of the best, most detailed models we've seen so far in the series. Not to mention every cut scene in the game is fully voice acted. You'd have to be some kind of crazy to seriously call 3D a technically disappointing title. Especially when compared with previous games.

I recently went back and replayed KH 1 and 2 and it really surprised me how poor Sora's character model is in terms of detail and sharpness when compared to the 3D demo. Even in a lot of the cut scenes, Sora's face and clothes are blurry and awkward. Character model polish in this series has come a seriously long way, guys. Anyone who thinks differently might be suffering from nostalgia. I've only heard of 1 major glitch in the Japanese 3D release and that's that one drop glitch where something funky happens if you drop while on a staircase. Apparently its been fixed for the international versions though.

[Hillboy]

What's all this nonsense about 3D not being polished? This is the first I am hearing of this... Reports I have heard from people prior to this have all been very positive in regards to the graphics and frame rate. The frame rate is supposedly much better than Birth By Sleep, thankfully. The character models also are some of the best, most detailed models we've seen so far in the series. Not to mention every cut scene in the game is fully voice acted. You'd have to be some kind of crazy to seriously call 3D a technically disappointing title. Especially when compared with previous games.

I recently went back and replayed KH 1 and 2 and it really surprised me how poor Sora's character model is in terms of detail and sharpness when compared to the 3D demo. Even in a lot of the cut scenes, Sora's face and clothes are blurry and awkward. Character model polish in this series has come a seriously long way, guys. Anyone who thinks differently might be suffering from nostalgia. I've only heard of 1 major glitch in the Japanese 3D release and that's that one drop glitch where something funky happens if you drop while on a staircase. Apparently its been fixed for the international versions though.

No ones complaining about KH3D not being polished....

[billyzanesucks]

No ones complaining about KH3D not being polished....

On the other hand however, I'm a tad worried about what this means for the quality of future Square Enix titles. XIII-2 and KH3D seem to be the first big titles to be developed with the partial outsourcing (in regards to XIII-2), smaller scale, shorter development cycle strategy in mind (I couldn't help but notice that a good potion of staff in the 3D Ultimania interviews noted how short the development cycle was compared to past titles), and while both games are far from being bad, both games lacked the level of overall polish that previous games had. 3D's Japanese release in particular had a ton of crazy glitches, and a frame rate that's all over the place.

Ideally, they'd be able to maintain their usual level of polish while keeping development times at a reasonable length. We'll see where this goes, I guess.

. .

[Gexus]

I think the reason behind 3D's character models looking the best so far is because they are reusing assets from previous games and improving them. Saying the game isn't as polished as previous games might also be referring to story, characters, worlds, length etc. which I personally have yet to experience for myself so I wouldn't know.

[Eraser Rain]

I recently went back and replayed KH 1 and 2 and it really surprised me how poor Sora's character model is in terms of detail and sharpness when compared to the 3D demo. Even in a lot of the cut scenes, Sora's face and clothes are blurry and awkward. Character model polish in this series has come a seriously long way, guys. Anyone who thinks differently might be suffering from nostalgia. I've only heard of 1 major glitch in the Japanese 3D release and that's that one drop glitch where something funky happens if you drop while on a staircase. Apparently its been fixed for the international versions though.

The gap between KH 1 and 2's release dates and DDD's is pretty big, so it shouldn't be surprising at all to see an improvement.