Final Fantasy creator says CG made Final Fantasy VII a success in the west

The world of Final Fantasy VII may be very extremely adored round the world. For Nintendo followers, though Final Fantasy 7 Remake shouldn’t be accessible on the Nintendo Switch, the authentic recreation did see a Switch launch n 2019. This could be adopted by the launch of Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion late final 12 months.

The authentic was very profitable when it launched on the PlayStation in 1997, however Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi talked about in a Monaco Anime Game International Conferences 2023 panel that additionally had Castlevania: Symphony of the Night creator Koji Igarashi, stated that the recreation’s success in the west was primarily due to the recreation having CG.

Sakaguchi defined that “at the time, people in the West saw pixel art and three-heads-high characters as something for children. It was frustrating that our games were struggling there, as we wanted to find a way to expand our business. That finally happened when we were able to incorporate CG for Final Fantasy 7”.

The points with Japanese video games seeing success in western areas, sadly, didn’t finish simply because Final Fantasy VII was a success. Nowadays, that is not a downside. However, by the time the PlayStation 3 had launched, Japanese video games have been nonetheless not seeing a lot success in western areas. The solely exception was Nintendo.

Sakaguchi talked about that “I think that one of the main reasons for that is the fact that consoles like the NES and PlayStation were very specific hardware. This made it easier for Japanese developers to master the hardware, as we could ask Nintendo or Sony directly in Japanese. This is why – I realize it might be impolite to say this – Japanese games were of a higher quality at the time. As a result, Japanese games were regarded as more fun, but when hardware became easier to develop for, things quickly changed”.

Igarashi joined in the dialogue, saying that “Japanese developers had been developing skills specifically for console games, but in North America and Europe, there was a long history of PC culture. By the time there was no longer a big difference between developing for console and for PC, Japanese developers could no longer rely on their specialty as console developers, and had to master PC development”.

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