World Of Warcraft For Xbox Is Still Discussed Internally At Blizzard

It would be sad if Square-Enix, of all companies, the one that seems to absolutely despise Xbox, managed to get their 10 year old MMO on Xbox, and Blizzard that's now owned by Xbox wouldn't get their 20 year old MMO on the platform. You'd have to assume it's happening, but, I wonder 20 years later if it's just a little too late to try to establish a console player base for this.

It would definitely be a multiplat release though. Nobody's going to leave PS5 MMO money on the table. and ESO is naturally already multiplat.

I can’t see this not happening- just needs a bit of twisting of the arm … is there an audience to warrant it? Absolutely!

They ought to re-use some of the assets from WoW to create single-player games for the purposes of fleshing out the series' history and lore, introducing players to classes they wouldn't normally play, and introducing new people to the series which could ultimately bring in more players to the online game.

@101Force TL;DR Warcraft 4 when? You know you're an old gamer at this point when you still think of WoW as the weird new spinoff entry........

@Tasuki Yeah, and WoW is the game that spawned all those mice with like 20 buttons on them because 105 keys on a keyboard just isn't enough. Trying to translate that game design to a controller can't be easy.

Should be StarCraft wtf

Does WoW still require a monthly subscription fee? I could never fathom buying a game and then needing to pay a monthly fee just to play it. It’s one of the things that’s always put me off giving it a go.

@NEStalgia : I was thinking more along the lines of single-player RPGs with similar mechanics to WoW... but I'd definitely be up for a new entry in the RTS series!

If only Microsoft could do something about getting WoW on Xbox. If only...

I like MMOs a lot and put a ton of time into ESO & FFXIV on both Xbox & Playstation.

When I had a gaming pc I tried to get into WoW a few times but it just never clicked for me & I never found too much fun in it.

I guess it would be cool for those folks who used to play or still do. More so if they can do cross play like FFXIV has so progress carries across all the available platforms

Still I am not sure I would give it more than a month out of curiosity.

@NEStalgia it already has native controller support on pc so they have that covered already. You used to have to use a mod to use a controller but the dev team added it in a few years back

Can it be done? I think they should just make a new mmo for the consoles in the same universe.

Wouldn't mind getting the warcraft games that were like command n conquer on console hopefully they do at some point since CNC is dead 😥

The whole mouse/keyboard only argument is completely dead now. I would bet the whole discussion is more about timing and the future of Xbox more than the viability of it all. You can run WoW on a toaster these days.

Also, whomever said it, i agree, it should be Starcraft and WC3 asap. That's some low hanging fruit for the best RTS console on the market.

@NEStalgia i talk about WOW on Xbox on here all the time lately it seems. I think it’s a major get for the console. Sure it would come to PS5 or PS6 a year later. But for a year MS could really push that WOW is on console and cross play across all the Xbox connected devices. Maybe i am just being nostalgic and the game has for the better part grown to what it is. But it feels like a selling point or at the very least just good PR for Xbox to have such big known titles on its platform. I mean you spent $69 billion to get all these IP’s and claimed without this deal you (Xbox) can’t complete with Nintendo and Sony. Well i say use them and let the players decide what sticks and what don’t. At least you gave everything you have to the player base. Again i might just be in my feelings about a game i think reshaped PC gaming and the MMO space like no other. Blizzard was my favorite developer for a long long time. Still is actually, if they get moving back in the post Bobby Blizzard world. One thing is for sure, if Sony owned WOW they would find a way to have it on PS. Not that thats a reason to do it, but that is who you are competing against and why they are so successful in many ways. I remember Diablo 1 being on PS1. I wish you lived closer to me so you could throw a rock off my head for trading that in.

@HonestHick IDK what state WoW is in these days. I mean, I remember when it was the Fortnite of its day and every publisher almost went bankrupt trying to copy it. It absolutely redefined the industry, and in a lot of bad ways in the same way modern Fortnite/GTAO does, too. But you don't really hear much about it these days. It seems to have retreated to its own bubble. ESO, XIV, and Warhammer seem to be the much bigger MMOs not named SW these days. OTOH they did pull Metzen out of retirement a few years ago just to do WoW stuff, so it must be doing some numbers still. Does touting WoW make XB look "old" when it already has the much trendier ESO in its umbrella?

LOL, I did not even know Diablo was on PS1. I was 100% PC at that time, PS1 is the only PS I never had the actual console of (but I have a library of games, played them on a PC emulator at the time, but the games are all legit discs.)

I would really like this to be made a reality, so here's hoping! 🤞🏻

@NEStalgia yeah that is a point for sure. It could just be old news at this point. But i think it does good for Xbox to cover all its bases with the ABK deal over time. I have no doubt WOW on Xbox would easily make its development time money back and more. PS1 had everything so it seemed. But yeah they had Diablo. Then we didn’t see Diablo on console for a long while. Man don’t even get me started on what Fortnite has done to the industry. Makes me sick as i am a shooting genre fan. Well was.. seeing as the shooters now make you build a house and wait for the grass to grow before shooting at someone. Battle royal is so boring to me I’d rather paint my fence or run the weed eater in shorts with no eye protection than play those games. I’d do a back flip if Quake or Unreal tournament style arena shooters made a comeback. Heck i would probably buy a PC for that. Cause i would want all the FPS i could get. I used to play Quake 3 on my buddy’s PC when i was younger. We shall see what happens with Blizzard but i do think they will be better without Bobby and the gang making them have money grab mechanics in their games vs just fun. MS get’s a bad wrap a lot, but they really do let their teams go to work. Outside of Redfall i think that it going to be mostly a good thing for us. Tho i will be here eating crow if they don’t.

They should be thinking about using the warcraft ip for something other than wow. Bring back the rts or go for an rpg take on it.

@HonestHick Red Fall was never going to be good and MS couldn't do much other than send it out to die. What they did wrong was pretend it was a big game because they had nothing else. It was a pre Microsoft project from the near bankruptcy days of Bethesda chasing any dollar they could find and giving an open world GaaS project to an immersive sim team to chase cash. It's how they ended up with fo76 which was also a disaster until they basically made it f2p and pumped money into it to salvage their IP at a loss.

Though redfall suffers from being overly ambitious and over promising on a level that would make Peter molyneaux blush.

WoW... Well, whatever they do, if the next Xbox is a PC inside, it'll run natively anyway . See, that PC console thing sounds better all the time!

@NEStalgia i played and beat Redfall once. I thought i seen a good game there being hit with massive amounts of non polish and direction. So i waited for 3 updates to come along and loaded up for another try to see if what i thought was there really there. It wasn’t. Sure it played better and ironed out a lot of what was in the way. But i just no longer seen the point in pushing forward and stopped. Yes everything you mentioned as a business decision is true and it’s why Bethesda is now team Xbox. Arkane will go back to doing what they enjoy and do best and we will get better games in the future for it. Yeah the PC thing is slowly unfolding in front of us. We seen it just this week with the trophies and menu skin from PS for PC. This is all the start and i think by 2028 we will see the vision of it much clearer. I do think it’s for the better.

@Tasuki I'm sure those references to 3dfx Voodoo are still perfectly valid...

@HonestHick Yeah, I think the wheels started falling off the bus for development costs mid last Gen, and they hoped x86 would make the porting easier, but it didn't because the rest of the console still gets in the way. But they kept chugging along waiting for that big market boom to fix it all. Instead they got rising interest rates in an industry that runs on borrowing and dropping consumer spending. "One" platform is kind of the last hope for them although if they keep targeting 4090s and then 5090s and then 6090s that's still not going to happen. Someday these companies have to wake up and realize Nintendo had a point at just capping gfx somewhere and running forever that way.

Speaking of ff and mmos reminds me of the original xiv launch that failed. Supposedly the team was so focused on gfx they had flower pots that had the same poly count and number of shaders as the player character. That's the whole industry in a nutshell.

@NEStalgia Nintendo builds 5GB games that largely set’s a standard in fun and entertainment that 100GB games are not doing on a large bases for Xbox and PS. Nintendo understands its budget, its audience and what they want their games to achieve better than anyone in the industry by a long shot. Sony has turned to much to marvel games and movie like games that sometimes aren’t as fun to play as they are to look at for my taste. Xbox and i know some on here won’t like me saying this had NO GAMES. The ones they did were not fun, polished, well thought out and largely successful for any right reasons. To me it left the industry over the last few years in an odd spot for me. Red Dead 2 showed me gaming is the best form of media in the world. To this day i have it as the best single player big budget game EVER. Since then i have had little to say from Xbox or PS that has been worth it for all the money and time they are investing in it. I tell you all the time i don’t like windows all that much and it’s why i don’t build a PC and thats true. However if i did build a PC there is just so few games today that i would want to play on it. I have spent less money since 2020 on gaming then i ever had. There’s just so few games that i think are made well and push the industry to a place that Red Dead 2 did back in 2018. Games coming out broken, only to be decent in 2 years after launch. Nintendo don’t have the problem. So for all the dev costs they are enduring, what is the players getting from it outside of raised cost? Bad games, broken games and games that are selling in game content cause they are to broke to have them as a unlock. I’m on the soap box tonight with ya, sorry it’s been a tough week for me. But i hope PC development eases some of the struggles and i hope we start seeing better games. I own less games and i like even less games between both the PS5 and Series X in almost 4 years combined than i bought and enjoy in 1.5 years of Xbox 360. Before some one calls it age, i just want to say i have 700 hours in Diablo 4. I still play plenty of hours. I’m fortunate to have the time. But dev’s need to start making compelling titles again and not broken games that have no direction for me to take notice. Nintendo does that Better than anyone and doesn’t even have the power of my iPhone 15 Pro not alone a 4090.

@HonestHick “ Blizzard but i do think they will be better without Bobby and the gang making them have money grab mechanics in their games vs just fun”

idk man , it looks grim imo. as someone who loved overwatch , that game hasn’t gotten any better beyond retracting on locking new heroes behind the battlepass since the MS acquisition. they even have a $70 skin in the game 😂😂

@nomither6 again most of that games foundation has been laid by Bobby’s vision. In the future maybe Overwatch goes back to $70 dollars and leaves the free to play micro transactions format. Time will tell. But we can’t really say anything good or bad about blizzard games yet as there hasn’t been new made games to see the direction under MS. I am hopeful they get back to making some of the best games in the industry but if they stick to expensive skins and free to play, lock walls etc etc then there is no excuse and they deserve the backlash.

@NEStalgia In terms of raw numbers its still the reigning champion by a considerable margin and in recent years they have expanded the franchise quite a lot with the release of Classic WoW. Then they started adding seasonal content for OG Vanilla WoW like Season of Mastery and Season of Discovery which has proven popular, along with Classic Hardcore which again had a good following. They had a few down years with Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands but the most recent expansion Dragonflight has been pretty much entirely positive and then they brought Metzen back and announced a trilogy of expansions which are being well received.

As a long time player (about 18 years) the main issue they have with transferring to console is the pace at which wow is played is just not suitable for a controller. The standard GCD is 1.5s for your abilities with haste dropping it lower and most classes have multiple abilites they are always using so trying to get that on a pad would be horrible. Then when you add in the vast reliance on macros and addons to tweak the UI I think you would get a pretty poor experience. If they had to release something I think the most realistic content would be the original vanilla content as it was much more simplistic overall.

To me it would be like playing POE on consoles, it would kind of work but be vastly inferior to a mouse / keyboard setup.

@HonestHick It's a little bit of a different view if you're a fan of Japanese games. The past few years have been an absolute glut of unrelenting great releases on the Japanese side of the games scale.

But then, that's just it isn't it? Successful gaming has ALWAYS been Japanese. The West started it, Atari was king. And then the West blew it by doing the exact same things they are doing today. It took Japan to reboot the industry, and 8, 16, 32 bit consoles were basically all Japan plus ea sports... And it was fine. Ever since late ps/ogxb, we've learned hard to the West. And we're headed back to ET land.

The past few years have really made that stark. Western game fans have nothing to play. Japanese game fans cant finish one game before 2 more release.

Sadly though even Japan is on the broken games, higher prices kick. I don't know how Nintendo keeps ahead of it but mostly I think it's down to still building games for 2005. It just works (Todd)

@Ilyn Yeah someone above said it already has controller support but xiv is hard enough on controller and it was designed with controller from the start. WoW and it's infamous many buttoned mice sounds insurmountable. Though idk how much of that is all about PVP and may not matter for pve raids as much

@NEStalgia i always loved Japanese games. I miss so many of them that are no longer being made. Castlevania I’m talking about you. They have like you said most of the best games from a kid growing up. The West came back with some bangers of course and now for me and my play style it’s getting closer to 50/50. Japan has more dormant titles not being made that would push it back in their favor. Konami not being a thing is hurting me, cause i liked a good amount of their titles in my younger years. Nintendo is something i tell myself i will outgrow and just not care about. But outside of the handheld Xbox being rumored, the Switch 2 is my most excited hardware. I do prefer western RPGS, so that should tell you why i prefer FF16. Which is such a great game. I am for sure getting it on Series X when it hits. I hope by then we have the new controller to retain some of the gimmicks from PS5.

@HonestHick Konami was like half the nen/snes must pay library. Idk how they fell so far from grace

Il through phases with Nintendo where I either love them or they bore me, and you know I'm a give Zelda fan but I can just not get into totk. The Minecraft thing is genius for puzzles but it's so not meant for a controller. That game seriously needs a mouse. Or VR. I barely played it.

Oh please no ds5 gimmick controls! I'll keep my battery life and avoid arthritis thank you very much! occasionally cool but the track pad should die in a ditch. Only time I ever found it useful was FFXIV, and now I'm playing it on xb with better mapping and no mouse cursor. And those triggers. Like xvi using the triggers to resist you opening doors. Wtf door has ever felt like that IRL? 😂 It works well for the vr controllers though I'll give it that.

16,I wouldn't really call an RPG at all. Not J and not W. XV is actually a lot more "Skyrim" then XVI imo with a real open world. Xvi It's a linear hack and slash action game more in the style of gow, naughty dog movie games, a hint of a Platinum Games kind of action game format. Horizon ZD is much more RPG, and even that's not actually an RPG.

I love it as a Platinum/Kamiya game in the ff universe. But it's more like astral chain, which is also awesome than it is like any RPG from any hemisphere.

Still don't know why they didn't just make a separate action series separate from the RPGs but I do feel like xiv is a big quiet reason why. Why make single player ff RPGs that compete with the $13 per month subscription one? Big expansion in July. Bet it sells great. Even on Xbox 😂

@NEStalgia yeah i agree i am the same way with Nintendo. One min i am like man they are so good and the next few months or even longer i am bored with their games or hardware. However they are still a most own for me.

Konami is just a sad case. Castlevania alone was something that i got excited for. SOTN is one of my favorite PS1 games ever.

So you want to talk controllers with me my brother from another mother. HAHA i couldn’t agree with you more that the touchpad should die. It’s a waste of space on the controller and i have been saying this since PS4. I hear the reply but it’s still useful as a big button. Ok and it is but look at the Dual sense they share and option buttons are so small and hard to reach cause of the hog size of the touchpad. Also i agree whats with the doors needing to use the triggers like that? The thumbsticks still make my thumbs slide off from time to time and it hurts my hands after 45 mins to an hour of play. Xbox controller is king and Switch Pro isn’t to far behind and once MS does it’s update with VCA and Haptics, maybe gyro and new battery solution, quieter buttons and thumbsticks it is all over for Dual sense for me.

Yeah even i agree FF16 action should be a spin off and i would be fine with that and the true FF fan’s could get their fix. I suppose they are getting their fix on Rebirth. All 3 million that bought it anyhow.

@HonestHick Gyros....htf did Microsoft skip gyros? They're the shooter company. Halo would have been a very different game if they'd finally just put gyros in. Still frustrates me.

Lol yeah, rebirth is really sad with how it's failing. I still think they blew the release with 13 years and a middle entry. I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't care until the final entry is out and sees this as a pre-order for 2028. But sadly square will see rebirth failed, 16 seceded (sort of, it didn't sell amazing on ps only either) and declare RPGs are dead and only action remains. Never realizing their shoddy release schedule broke it.

Still don't know why they didn't just have 2 series. So what if the spin off action series became the bigger one, that's what happened to smt. Persona is the spin off but it's much bigger. But they kept the core series what it is and keep innovating that separately.

What's really sad about it is that the origin of FF was Sakaguchi pleading with square to let him make an RPG and management, even in the 80s!! Kept saying no, action games would sell better. Finally they let him make it and it was a big success. Now over 25 years later were back to square management killing RPGs in favor of action sells better.

Square. Square never changes.

@NEStalgia I main a warrior and its probably one of the easiest classes, but even that is 12 buttons in your normal rotation. Then may another 5 situational abilities, plus binds for healing, trinkets etc. Its technically doable on a controllor but would be a pita.

Bringing it to more platforms would be good but I just don't see it working out long term unless they drastically changed the game for console only.

@Ilyn Yeah, I don't play WoW, but what you describe sounds much like FFXIV and the system they have definitely works with 8 commands per hotbar (rt+abxy,dpad rlud) and 8 hot bars (rb + same) but switching between hot bars with rb+b then cast healing with rt+y, then shift back to hotbar1 with rb+y, then back to rotation with r+whatever, while functional is failure prone chaos in battle (CHAOS!). I tend to just stick to what fits on hotbar1 and use anything else sparingly, especially things with long cool downs. But they at least designed it with that in mind. Wow didn't even fit on 105 keys plus a mouse originally!

@NEStalgia There is a setting you should enable that will add another 16 abilities and switching to them is easy. It is in Hotbar settings then Custom then Expanded Hold Controls. Basically, you choose which cross hotbar left and right you want to map then you access it by holding left trigger then right trigger and it will switch to that hotbar and then also hold right trigger then left trigger will switch to the other one. When you let go it will switch back to your normal hotbar, it is a game changer. There is even an additional setting they added where you can choose another set of hotbars to access when doing the same thing but double tapping the trigger.

@Conflix I think I remember seeing something like that and even enabled it and need
Messed with it and then totally forgot it existed. I'm a summoner on my main character so I have the annoying pet menu on rb quick switch and couldn't get that to go away. I'm going to try that when I play next!

@NEStalgia not sure how i let that typo pass. Haha

I think if the next FF is action the true FF are going to lose their minds on Square. FF16 barely sold and while i am sure it will make money on PC and Xbox. It won’t move the series into Square thinking to only make action games. But Square will be Square.

@HonestHick Oh I didn't think there's any hope of a turn based ff ever again. I suspect even dragon quest will be action. But at least make it an actual action RPG as rebirth did (is not like either game is selling great. Apparently "PlayStation gamers don't buy games" 😆 and not a glorified Platinum hack and slash on rails action game with optional mini bosses called "quests". I love 16 for what it is but half hour plus long perfect dodge sessions followed by.... More half hour long perfect dodge sessions gets old fast. And for all the"grounded" story they put together with a dreary depressing world where everybody dies constantly (aka they put a game of thrones skin on it then missed the zeitgeist) they have those ridiculous marvel supervillains. Ugh. I love it as a new IP. I hate it as a "mainline" ff...

The key difference between an action game and action RPG battle system is that an action game is mostly based on the player improving their skill, "gitting gud". Action RPG is still about the character progressing, not really the player, Even if inputs are real time, the math, not the timing really determines the win.. Totally different genres. Though mmos blur that line. It's math. It's even command based. But it's actually action like in timing the rotation to max the math 16 has stats but they're window dressing, you can't really over level for a given encounter, there's a fixed amount of content.

But square does this to themselves. They commented about succeeding getting new players but they may not make the next game like this direction.. So, what, the tick off RPG fans by deciding the series is Torgal May Cry and then they tick off the action fans by making the next game an anime waifu Sim because it works for Genshin?

I didn't get square. Neither does anyone else which is why they're stuck with low sales. Get at least the MMO gets a big new expansion in July!

@NEStalgia and i think that is my only complaint on FF16. The boss fights are long fights that require dodging like crazy. The battle wears me out. But after the boss fight and i can walk around the world and quest and kill a few monsters, i really like it again. Wow you really think they are going to stay action based? I mean i suppose there’s a chance. But i was thinking they would return to turn based and see if that is still where the sales are at. Funny how the biggest talked about wish on Push was for Sony to buy Square and now i rarely see that being thrown around.

@HonestHick Yeah, those boss fights...I know that sort of thing is oh so trendy with Soulsborne being the big thing with the hardcore, but spamming dodge gets annoying fast. It even gets annoying in the older Yakuza games and that's more brawler than DMC/Soulsborne for a battle system (and is an actual proper RPG still...) IDK how "spam dodges" became the most "accessible" way to play games. Square's been in a rut where they keep trying to clone other popular things. 13 was semi-turn-based but the design was trying to copy corridor shooters of the era. 14, lets be honest, copied WoW. 15 Copied MonHun + open world everything of the time. 15 tries to get clever and copies Soulsborne, Game of Thrones, but uses a simplified DMC battle system from the guy that does the DMC battle system.

Nah, never again real turn based for FF, that much is certain. There hasn't been a proper turn based since Sakaguchi left after 12. He did the active-time-battle for 12. 11 and 14 are both MMO with 11 being Everquest-like and 14 being WoW like, 13 is technically turn-based, or rather, menu-based, but you're on a very short timer. People criticized it as "spam auto attack", it's actually turn based enough and I'd love a return to that system, actually, it was actiony-while still menu based.

But the last turn based or semi-turn based was Lightning Returns on PS360. PS4 and PS5 have XV that's action based (but is a proper open world RPG, if a bit broken in story and drawn out in monhun side quests), and Remake & Rebirth that are action based, but a little more of a nod to the old turn system at least conceptually.

But Square is fully committed to the idea that "turn based" is "obsolete". Otherwise known as "hello, fellow children, we're making the games that you think are popular today, also what is this Pokemon and Persona thing you keep talking about?" Of course Square thought turn based was obsolete back in the 80's until they were making money off it.

My prediction: Based on their trend of copying what's popular, but always behind the curve, my thinking is that the next FF will be clearly GTA inspired, following 6, or somehow try to be Fortnite inspired.

FF has a sales problem and the problem at this point is the FF name. Despite it being their key IP, they've watered it down by trying to constantly change it to be a different thing for a different market. If Mario at one point became an edgy series with a gun-slinging Bronx mob theme to "grow with its audience", Mario would have had the same fate.

Imagine if Rockstar ever made RDR3....but it was a squad-based mission driven tactical shooter set in the wild west. That's basically what Square keeps doing to fans...

LOL, yeah "Sony should buy Square" was the meme, nobody quite understood why they'd buy a company whose games barely sold but everyone was in on it. Now that's been replaced by "Sony's going to buy Arrowhead". Although, maybe Square really was a better idea than Jim's idea of "Maybe Sony should buy Bungie" Neither was a good idea, but one clearly was worse than the other lol.

@NEStalgia well if they are action based from here on out. I will buy a few more of them. But yeah the hour long boss fights needs to be toned down some. They are exhausting to fight. I can see the copy cat nature you explained. Lot’s of studios try that trendy game and more times than not it just back fires on them and they lose money and have to retreat back to what it’s fan were buying and playing. Sony couldn’t buy a dozen new cars right now not to mention a billon dollar studio. I don’t know why people think Sony has money like that. They ain’t broke but they can’t buy multi billion dollar companies. Plus the other sectors of Sony would have to throw in money and they likely can’t or won’t. Sony does well enough without buying Square.

@HonestHick Yeah, I can barely tolerate those long boss fights an any game, but if I lose and have to redo it? I go back to 8 year old "throw the controller at the screen" mode very very quickly. It's less bad than Souls because it at least starts you IN the battle and not having to redo the whole path to it, and also has checkpoints so you restart part-way into the battle, and get kind of a boon by restoring your health so it's a bit of an "easy cheat" if you don't get it first try. But still horrendously obnoxious, and really doing the same thing with different windup animations for the entire game (and so many games like it) gets so old, so fast. There's a market that craves only that gameplay, but I'm not it.

They'll definitely be action based, but my hope is they're action based combat systems in an actual RPG and not a linear action adventure semi-movie game. I like 16. I wouldn't mind another game or two like it as a subseries. I, like you, like it more than modern GoW, but I definitely don't want it replacing actual FF RPGs.

Sad watching FF become "chase the trend." I mean in 16 you see that sudden slow down and "Monster X Slain" ripped right out of Soulsborne, they don't even hide it, they lean into it. I'm shocked they went with "Game over" and not "You died." And soooooooo Game of Thrones in every other way. They really did mess up the FF brand though and IDK how they can get it back. FF stans will defend forever "it's always something different" but once you keep changing a thing to be something different for someone else so many times, the brand doesn't actually represent anything, and if it represents nothing, it doesn't generate interest. Maybe you'd tolerate RDR3 wild west squad tactical shooter. But after you had to endure RDR4 space-cowboy theme with six shooters on a space station in a semi-western space frontier setting with a comic book art direction and melee driven action.....you'd probably stop caring about RDR5. That's where FF is right now. They pick up new audiences to replace the one they lost.

The sad part is they make mostly good games, but they brand them wrong and it ruins the whole thing.

Speaking of "Sony should buy..." Microsoft really should have bought Mistwalker (Sakaguchi's, creator of FF, studio after he left Square who made several Xbox exclusives, but MS just kind of let him wander away and he's been iOS ever since. Xbox would have been home of the "real" spiritual successor of FF. But...Matrick happened.

Definitely try XV if you get the chance. It's an imperfect game, but you'll see what I mean about action RPG vs just "linear action game."

And yeah, Sony, specifically PS just doesn't have any buying power right now. They're not sitting on a mountain of cash like Nintendo and they're not sitting on trillions in assets like MS. They're "ok" but they have problems they need to fix before they can buy anything. Though corporate is looking at Paramount. Imagine how that will tighten the purse. And the necessary synergy with PS that will be forced into the games. Guess that means Star Trek games become a Sony thing though.... To be fair Trek hasn't had any good games in a very very long time.

@NEStalgia yeah i would not be happy to see Red Dead not be Red Dead. Tho I doubt i live long enough to see part 4 and they still won’t have 60fps on console for RDR2 but i digress.

Yeah i do like FF16 but it has its rough spots for me as well. I too would like a little more RPG in it and for sure make the boss fights a little less long or find a way to make it less dodging giant swing attacks and then have me hit it’s feet and ankles and all that just leads up to the next phase which normally tuns into a cutscene battle and push square really fast.

I don’t play soul’s games and even i can see it in FF16 and the upcoming no rest for the wicked from moon studios. The games i want to see today are not happening cause Fortnite and Soul’s games seem to be the trend every one is chasing. I never thought I’d say i like a FF game way more than a God of War game but here we are. In fact the next God of War game i might even wait to read more about it. That’s how unhappy at times i was with that game.

@HonestHick Now imagine that the cowboy in space RDR4 has the loyalist fans defending it saying "now it's more popular with more people!" "It's different every time so this is no different!" and "you just don't like change!", and "It's "real" RDR because R* says it is! Stop gatekeeping just because it's not what YOU want!"

Such is the life of an FF fan..... At least FF fans get the privilege of paying $13/mo to play Real FF Online.....RDR fans got bypassed on that courtesy in favor of GTAV. So you guys get it. RDR2 Online happens to have an LA gangster theme. But it's still guns so it's basically the same. #dealwithit.

I find those cutscene battles a relief because I'm so tired out from the reflex dodging at least it can be over with just some button mashing. My hand is sore by then...

Fortnite, I get, it's a bucket of money, but IDK why everyone is chasing Souls. It's very successful but it's not even close to being a "big cash cow" game. The endless cloning is weird. Maybe it's artistic flattery. Maybe it's just an industry out of ideas. Even the Fromsoft guys were eager to go back to mission based mech stuff at this point. Every other game is a Souls like and internet gamers keep on celebrating it. It's the same game since PS3 polished up.

@NEStalgia yeah for sure i am way tired of the soul’s clone. Yeah i agree i like when the cut scene gives me a break. I am fighting a boss now and it takes 20 mins at least. One tried once and died with him so close to death so i think on the second try i can get him. Yeah i know what you mean about FF. Who knows what they will do next. Hopefully by then i have a lot of games to play and i can wait to see what it plays like from fans and media reviews. At the moment there just ain’t many games out so i took a chance with 16 and really like it.