Production on FFXV Halts, as Director Hajime Tabata Resigns from Square Enix

[Rahu X]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-15-dlc-canceled-director-hajime-taba/1100-6463112/

In an unexpected announcement today, Square Enix announced the cancellation of three of the four planned Final Fantasy XV episode expansion packs and also confirmed that game director Hajime Tabata has left the company. Tabata's last day at Square Enix was October 31.

The canceled Final Fantasy DLC episodes include Aranea, Lunafreye, and Noctis. The fourth one, Ardyn, remains in development, and is scheduled to launch in March 2019.

The expansion packs were being developed by Luminous, the new Square Enix internal studio. However, that team will now focus on making a new AAA game, though it hasn't been announced yet. In an earnings report, Square Enix announced a major change to Luminous that resulted in an "extraordinary loss" amounting to $33 million. Until now, it wasn't know what that loss was related to, but now it looks like it's connected to the DLC cancellation.

Habata's official resignation notice.

Hello, this is Tabata.

It’s almost going to be two whole years since the release of Final Fantasy XV. I honestly believe the reason we were able to get this far is because of all you loyal fans. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Today, I have a personal announcement to make to all of you. I, Hajime Tabata, will be resigning from Luminous Productions and the Square Enix Group as of October 31, 2018.

I was able to gain so much experience with my time at Square Enix. Every title I was able to be a part of means a lot to me. However, Final Fantasy XV stood out from that group as it was a special project for me which I went all-in on.

Therefore, I decided to take this opportunity to officially announce my departure from Final Fantasy XV to all the fans who have supported the title across the globe.

In regards to my next endeavors and near future, I have a project that I truly wish to solidify as my next challenge after Final Fantasy XV. For that reason, I have decided to leave my current position and start my own business in order to achieve my goal.

As production of “Episode Ardyn” continues and Luminous Productions works on new projects, I felt that it was time for me to hand over the torch to the next generation group of talented and trustworthy colleagues and believe that they will create something amazing.

From this day on, I will cheer on and support Square Enix and Luminous Productions together with all of you fans.

I would like to thank everyone who continue to support Final Fantasy XV and those who have also supported myself personally.

[RaikohZX]

Came out of nowhere, and on their two-year anniversary stream to boot. But honestly, this isn't that surprising. Despite selling pretty well due to being a Final Fantasy game, not only was there no player retention, but word of mouth and the overall criticisms it got took XV down to its knees in no time flat. The patches and updates being mostly feedback-driven via a general poll in the game's main menu rather than anything reasonable only solidified that the massive problems of an unfinished, rushed, and bonedry open world JRPG would never truly be resolved. Indeed, besides restoring controllable party members (which broke the game over their knee), they basically didn't fix anything and just added a proverbial heap of random shit on top, only bothering to "fix" the final dungeon of the game without actually finishing the late game content that everyone loathed for being so mishandled to begin with.

Quite frankly, the proof of failure was already there once the game was sold on Steam and a solid discount on it was up not even a month later.

[Køleskab]

I'm sorry, but Sqare Enix' Japanese in-house development has been a result-free money-sink ever since the fucking merger. Even worse, they've been off-loading all of their own inability to produce results on former Eidos studios, letting them take the fall for their incessant failures. Honestly, most Japanese development houses disgust me these days for varying reasons. Either they get stuck in development hell and refuse to re-evaluate and find a better approach out of retarded cultural notions of pride, or they'll engage in insane, cult-like double-speak like Sony on Cross-platform play. I just can't fucking stand the sheer uselessness of it.

The fuck is the point of living in a culture that fanatically worships keeping face and prides itself on a warped sense of honor if you don't even remotely succeed in keeping the facade of said values in the first place?

I can't even begin to express how unsurprised i'll be when we don't see their next FF release before 2024 and i won't be surprised for a moment when they start blaming the former Eidos development houses for underselling. The hypocrisy of practicing development hell like a virtue while also having the gall to expect European studios to keep them alive is pissing me off to no end! They can fuck right off!

[CyclonatorZ]

Final Fantasy 7 remake is never actually coming out.