As a former Square employee, it's quite obvious that Sakaguchi purposely emphasizes the FF callbacks in the Mistwalker games. It's an attempt at recapturing the old glory and also winking at the audience in a "Hey 'member this?" fashion. Meanwhile the people at SE are free to try new things in FF and to let the past die because they already have the brand power for themselves. That's why some people feel Mistwalker games are more faithful to FF than the modern FFs are.
You can see that with Masato Kato too. Ever since he left Square his stories have been nothing but callbacks to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross in a rather sad attempt at staying relevant. It culminated recently in Another Eden where a Frog lookalike literally named Cyrus has an attack called Nirvana Slash (which was the Japanese name of the Nirvana Strike attack used by Cyrus in Chrono Trigger).
