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FFP's video explores Tabata's history at Square Enix and how he was treated unfairly.
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I will be appreciated if someone actually find out what happen to him lol . That is only one thing I want to know about
To take it back to the video and ignore my opinion on Tabata's output - this just isn't true. Even with XV, Tabata was offered that job by Wada, who considered scrapping it. Tabata presumably gave him his pitch (three games are now one, you keep the invasion stuff by way of a film, the character backstories through an anime, some other tie-in mobiletitles, etc), said he could make the remaining game in roughly three years, and that was that.
You can't gloss over how huge going from mobile games spun into handheld games (Type-0, his project before XV) to a mainline Final Fantasy is. 'Poor, trod-upon Tabata' didn't have the higher ups scream at him to fix Nomura's mess - he was offered a humongous promotion and the opportunity to prove himself :/ Whatever else happened recently, SE had a huge amount of faith in him and gave him his shot.
janitor_ito.jpg
I think Kitase mentioned Ito was working on some pitch behind the scenes around the release of FFXII HD? Having trouble finding the quote, but I definitely read it and have mentioned it here before.
EDIT: This is the closest I could find:
So as of May 2017, he was working on something secret.
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He's still with SE. His latest role was being the supervisor for the FFXII remaster. I bet he's working on FF16.
Let me tell you what happened to him. It doesn't take a genius to understand that Ito just chooses to remain with SE. Why he did that? I have absolutely no idea when he wasn't even getting any significant projects. He should have pushed too, asked for his games, and if he wasn't being utilized, simply jumped ship. But why was he remaining at SE? I don't know. I personally believe by now that people are getting delusional thinking that Ito can still create a great game. It has been years and that person hasn't made anything important all this time, and his mobile efforts were mediocre, so it would be best if people stop bringing him into every thread.
Forget Ito and move on from him, when even he is not interested in making FF games anymore. He will turn into another Sakaguchi who was once hailed as a legend who could do no wrong and then made games like Los Odyssey, Last Story, and Terra Battle. Good, average to shit games but nothing memorable or comparable to his 'legendary' status.
It's cute that you think that the situation between FFXIV and FFXV is comparable in any way. It is NOT.
One was a game that was released to one of the worst reviews (sub 40 on Metacritic) and the other was a fantasy cooked by fanboys and brought to reality which didn't turn out as what they imagined. It was ultimately as difficult as XIV because of the struggles of a new game engine, the challenge of adopting a mess which was never released into something that resembled a game, and the challenge of trying to fulfill fan's expectations. XIV had nowhere to go but up and it was easy to appeal to the fans. It also opened to average reviews at launch and it has taken years and years of patches/updates and expansions to push it into the place it is right now.
But more importantly, both Yoshida and Tabata did a great job and let's just leave it at that. Trying to constantly spin one of them in being the better person is not the way to present your argument.
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That quote actually from 2011 when people ask Kitase
He doesnt have any bussiness division so I am not sure if he can make any project .
This is only thing curious me . I dont care if he make new game or not jsut alway wonder what is he doing all these years to live ? The cost for living in japan is really high and he didnt do anything . Atleast, Sakaguchi has his own company to supply him and work on mobile game .
Moreover , He dont even work on any mobile game aside from Guardian Cross + Deadman Cross and he is just credit as Concept
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oh no. Then that was Deadman's Cross :(
EDIT: Wait, no, it's definitely from 2017: https://www.finaland.com/?rub=site&page=news&id=6078
Pretty much it is just same answer like many before that he work on something
He even been given own studio how can he been treated unfairly?
also,i can't understand the obsesion of trying to blame nomura for everything..even if he really bad at managing project, still not a reason to blame him every single time...even toriyama didnt get this kind of 'treatment'
also,i can't understand the obsesion of trying to blame nomura for everything..even if he really bad at managing project, still not a reason to blame him every single time...even toriyama didnt get this kind of 'treatment'
janitor_ito.jpg
I think Kitase mentioned Ito was working on some pitch behind the scenes around the release of FFXII HD? Having trouble finding the quote, but I definitely read it and have mentioned it here before.
EDIT: This is the closest I could find:
So as of May 2017, he was working on something secret.
I always get the feeling that they were talking about the balancing in past tense, back when he did the International version. In the interviews they always spoke about new features that were only new because the International Version wasn't released to the west. I sincerely think that maybe Ito simply wants to work low key jobs and wait for retirement.
I do often wonder why Square Enix's upper management still trust Nomura with directing big budget games. Aside from that, the rest of this video was mostly somebody trying to pass off pure speculation as insight.
To take it back to the video and ignore my opinion on Tabata's output - this just isn't true. Even with XV, Tabata was offered that job by Wada, who considered scrapping it. Tabata presumably gave him his pitch (three games are now one, you keep the invasion stuff by way of a film, the character backstories through an anime, some other tie-in mobiletitles, etc), said he could make the remaining game in roughly three years, and that was that.
You can't gloss over how huge going from mobile games spun into handheld games (Type-0, his project before XV) to a mainline Final Fantasy is. 'Poor, trod-upon Tabata' didn't have the higher ups scream at him to fix Nomura's mess - he was offered a humongous promotion and the opportunity to prove himself :/ Whatever else happened recently, SE had a huge amount of faith in him and gave him his shot.
janitor_ito.jpg
I think Kitase mentioned Ito was working on some pitch behind the scenes around the release of FFXII HD? Having trouble finding the quote, but I definitely read it and have mentioned it here before.
EDIT: This is the closest I could find:
So as of May 2017, he was working on something secret.
The 2013 one was me, before Tabata was announced to be helping on FF15. In one day I ran an FF gauntlet, interviewing Yoshida (13), Kitase & Toriyama (LR), Nomura (KH3/FF15) - and then finally FF big-boss Shinji Hashimoto (the meme guy.) Anyway, a few questions I asked back then - two months after FF15 and KH3 were announced - end up relevant. One, because now I think this answer was referring to Tabata:
https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/3...-with-final-fantasy-producer-shinji-hashimoto
And on Ito:
I want to also say that while Tabata undoubtedly got dealt a rough hand, almost all of the speculation in this video is absolute bollocks. FFP is passionate about the games (to the point where he is perhaps too much, since it clouds ability to take a step back) but when it comes to the ins and outs doesn't know what he's talking about at all, imo. I don't want to call him out, but I just think he has no real idea about how SE works internally based on the content of this video. So I wouldn't take it as gospel.
Yeah, really. Cutting him loose is arguably the latest in a string of good moves by them lately.
As I wrote in a story on VG247.com and as Eurogamer also reported, on the day his leaving was announced sources suggested to us that Square Enix made every overture and offer (within reason) to keep him, actually, but with the shift in focus for Luminous Productions he didn't want to stick around and decided to strike out on his own. Like, this narrative of "he's shit, they got rid of him because he sucks" might be convenient for your biases, fine, but it, er, isn't true, as far as all account by people I and others have spoken to inside or connected to Square Enix goes. It was a "creative differences" split. Square didn't want to take Luminous in the direction he did. It's that simple, really.
Aha, I remember reading the response to that question years ago and getting my hopes up!
He wanted to leave, end of story. As for Nomura the hate people trow at him ... its stupid, no one knows what is going on inside the studio so its just stupid speculation and hate.
"why do you people blame nomura for everything??????"
"nomura had no fault in anything though, it was square all along"
"no one knows what happens in the studio don't blame nomura!!!"
"but tabata is a hack that ruined everything he touched i just know"
like clockwork
you folks can admit both nomura and tabata did good but had their equal & deserved share of blame in failed square projects you know. it's not "one is a genius the other a jobber"
"nomura had no fault in anything though, it was square all along"
"no one knows what happens in the studio don't blame nomura!!!"
"but tabata is a hack that ruined everything he touched i just know"
like clockwork
you folks can admit both nomura and tabata did good but had their equal & deserved share of blame in failed square projects you know. it's not "one is a genius the other a jobber"
I never stated factually that they cut him for one reason or another, but I mean, yeah, I think his portfolio is pretty poor to say the least and the very last thing I wanted from him post-XV was another AAA project, new IP or not. And Luminous - from its very origin all the way back to just being the lighting tech for Crystal Tools or whatever - has been a massive waste of time and money.
So i mean... sure? Their motivation is less relevant to me. That the split happened is good as far as I'm concerned.
Is this real or fake?
Square give him a lot of chances to direct games and he made the same mistakes/flaws every single time.
Square give him a lot of chances to direct games and he made the same mistakes/flaws every single time.
Stop what? LOL his games were trash and apparently the split was amicable, so he still isn't this victim in a Greek tragedy the way some people are so desperate to paint him.
I dont think his games are trash but I don't have a lot of confidence in his games. He's not a person I'm going to miss.
It's okay to have creative ideas and expansions when it's someone else's money. Now that he's out on his own let's see how creative he wants to be.
It's okay to have creative ideas and expansions when it's someone else's money. Now that he's out on his own let's see how creative he wants to be.
Not all of FFXV's problems are the result of rushed production or baggage from Versus XIII days. Story related stuff probably suffered the most (taking much of the premise & ideas from the multigame "Versus Epic" and somewhat forcing & changing it into a single-game narrative) but a lot of gameplay related stuff feels cumbersome, kind of weird & not satisfying to play much in the same way that other games directed by Tabata do and in ways that aren't usually an issue with games Nomura is involved with (note: this is not to say all of Nomura's ideas/contributions to gameplay in his games are impeccable, but I feel the base gameplay is generally pretty solid, even if all else fails).
It's not because of rushed production or Nomura that dying is practically impossible in FFXV. I don't think it's baggage from Nomura days that attacking in FFXV feels a bit sluggish and is a bit of a "hold X for awesome" type of deal, or that jumping feels so gimped. Nomura's games aren't Bayonetta or Devil May Cry levels of deep/satisfying to play, but I think they can be far closer to that than anything Tabata has ever done.
Tabata's games have some good gameplay ideas/concepts but I feel they falter in the basics or have some weird quirks that don't make for an enjoyable gameplay experience. FFXV has the ingredients for a reeeeally good combat system but it just doesn't utilize them to their highest degree.https://www.resetera.com/forums/video-games.7/
The only one who is agreeing to the views of the video is the OP.
The video is factually wrong and baseless. It is from a guy who has a known history of doing such things in the past, so yeh, no one should be taking it seriously.
All of this doesn't hide the fact that you have a hate for Tabata for some reason like he did something personally to you. All he did was making games that you didn't like, but you are the one taking it personally. An immature attitude like this won't take you anywhere in life. Take the advice of others and learn to ignore his work. Move on. It's that simple.
I might be remembering wrong but in the latest quarter report, was it SE as a whole or just Luminous Studios that bled $33m ?
I feel that the current situation with Tabata is very weird to say the least, especially considering the cancellation of the FFXV DLC (since, I imagine, the first Season Pass and bundles sold well), his somewhat quick and public departure and the losses reported that day.
While I don't think he left SE sour, I do believe that it point to overall management issues within SE that might be more serious than the usual
Ehh. While I think it's always nice and very interesting to create content that sheds some light into the teamwork nature of game development and how certain people fulfilled their roles in a videogame's production, I'm not quite comfortable with the angle of this video at all. At the end of the day, it's no different that some of the stuff I had to read on this forum everytime this topic has been brought up, but condensing it in a single video and taking dubious speculation and theories as a form of entertainment it's not something I can approve.
If he wanted to appreciate Tabata's work, he should have just made a video about his career and congratulate him/the team on the work they did on XV; and leave it at that. Maybe stuff like this is a leftover of the "leak" culture that grew attached to XV in which it was normal to accompany a piece of information with gossip about the game's production.
If he wanted to appreciate Tabata's work, he should have just made a video about his career and congratulate him/the team on the work they did on XV; and leave it at that. Maybe stuff like this is a leftover of the "leak" culture that grew attached to XV in which it was normal to accompany a piece of information with gossip about the game's production.
You're making a good few bold assertions there, particularly for someone who posts in every XV thread like a mindless sycophant defending Lord Tabata's honor. How is the view from that glass house?
This is all you had to take from my post? Ok. Time to use the ignore button. Don't need to waste my time with you anymore.
As a counter argument what is Stig from GoW 3 doing? He's been gone for 10 years almost. Sure we knew thanks to leaks he did work on a game like destiny for Sony and it got canned but I imagine these sort of projects are more secret in Japan. Ito could simply have been pitching ideas or prototyping but none of the ideas worked out.
Sony Bend spent two to three years just pitching ideas to Sony before starting to work on Days Gone for example.
He reached the top and had to stop and thats what was bothering him. So he left...like most would do.
The idea of the traditional japanese salary man being trapped in their box forever is dead, especially in this industry where bright sparks shining bright when set loose from big pubs. Kojima, Igarashi, Mikami, Suda, Kamiya, Ueda..and even Inafune to a point. Who wants to be handcuffed to a company any more? Except...Nomura...
The idea of the traditional japanese salary man being trapped in their box forever is dead, especially in this industry where bright sparks shining bright when set loose from big pubs. Kojima, Igarashi, Mikami, Suda, Kamiya, Ueda..and even Inafune to a point. Who wants to be handcuffed to a company any more? Except...Nomura...
You're forgetting that while he was working on ARR, Yoshi's team had to overhaul the 1.0 mess into something acceptable enough to keep it going until 2.0 release. That version of the game had it's fans and they had expectations about what 2.0 would be, or rather, what they would like it to be. I was on the alpha of 2.0, I was on the official forums..
Anyway,
Outside of the stupid argument of "people wanted X and they got Y so they don't like it for that reason" which is false, outside of any of your own impressions of where XIV had it easier than XV, which is quite irrelevant to the fact that quite amount of people disliked XV for it's own merits and not because they replaced Luna for Stella.
And people who likes XIV is not because it just appeals to fans, is because we feel is a good game and it was since 2.0, patches and expansions, weren't trying to fill up holes and changing the whole structure of certain parts of the game, they were building over what ARR accomplished, please don't compare XIV evolution as an MMO which was XV 2 years of work over the main game.
That could also be the case of course. When they decided to reboot XIV, they cancelled many unannounced projects, one of which might have been an Ito project.
Stig is directing the Respawn Star Wars game. And he was making the Sony game from the writer of Battlestar Galactica before that.
Oh, this guy. Yeah I remember avoiding him like the plague back when he had a massive hissy fit about how the "SJWs" supposedly ruined Luna's character by somehow forcing Tabata to cut out all instances of her getting physically abused as a child.
Based on the posts I'm seeing here, I am glad to see the man has not strayed from his usual self of just being a waffling YouTuber version of a series of forum posts with no more insight into the internal affairs of the company than I, but you won't catch me making baseless speculation videos.
Based on the posts I'm seeing here, I am glad to see the man has not strayed from his usual self of just being a waffling YouTuber version of a series of forum posts with no more insight into the internal affairs of the company than I, but you won't catch me making baseless speculation videos.
Because they know what actually went down with FFXV and why Nomura was moved off from FFXV? As much as some like to speculate it's all on Nomura being the most inept person on this Earth and incapable of taking the project to completion, that's not necessarily the real or full reason. Maybe Nomura wasn't super open to the idea of scaling back the Versus Epic that he had been planning for nearly a decade at that point and it was either cancel the whole thing or force him off and let Tabata take over with a scaled down version of Nomura's vision (Versus XIII was probably the most fleshed out upcoming big budget FF concept at that point, if there even was a FFXVI under consideration at that time, anything else would probably have meant a prolonged gap between mainline FFs even further).
Maybe it's because higher-ups didn't want Nomura to spend 3-4 more years on FFXV after already having worked on it in some capacity for 7 years and wanted him to shift focus on other games? I'd wager a guess it's probably not a coincident that Nomura being moved off from FFXV and FFVII Remake entering (pre-)production with Nomura at the helm of the project happened around the same time.
This is a stupid argument. Did it not cross your mind that maybe he doesn't want to direct a game ? You can't judge the skill and craft just because he hasn't made a game in a long time.
Yoshida wasn't a director before and he turned FF14 around complete with a restructuring of the team. And Guardian Cross was made in 2012, that's pre-history when it comes to the mobile game landscape at this point.
A Youtuber spreading blatant falsehoods for attention? Someone better put a stop to this before it spreads.
It's a massive undertaking (we are possibly talking about a trilogy of mainline, PS4 level FF games) and their idea of outsourcing it to a 3rd party in the way they initially planned to (which was not necessarily Nomura's idea/choice) seems to have backfired. I imagine having most of the key creative staff at SQEX offices and the meat of the development team otherwise in a completely different, distant location was not the best way to handle the development of a project like FFVII Remake. Probably better to have a main team of 200-300 people at SQEX who are responsible for the core experience and then outsource more mundane tasks/asset & content creation to 3rd parties.
Since ditching the outsourcing planes, they've had to build up an internal team that could handle such massive undertaking, which is not something that happens overnight. So that probably caused a significant delay.
As to the current state of the game, I dunno. All we can go with is their word and they have been saying for a while that the development of the remake is currently going smoothly. It's a big project and they seemed to have gone through some level of reboot when ditching CC2, so I'd say we are still within a window when it's not too alarming yet that FFVII Remake isn't being shown publicly. Especially when Kingdom Hearts III is so close to release and they are focusing on its promotion. If we go through 2019 and don't see FFVII Remake at E3 2019 or TGS 2019 at latest, then maybe panic, but at this point, considering what the project has gone through and how big of an undertaking it is, I feel 2018 isn't yet in the realm of "it's a complete disaster" just because they aren't promoting it yet.
I consider Kitase a better director than Ito, and he is a producer now. So you tell me where is Ito and why wasn't he made a producer after what he did with FF?
I also didn't mean to show any disrespect to Ito. He has done great work for the series, but he is simply gone for so long, and age plays a huge factor too. It just seems a little too hard to see him returning back to an FF and when people mention it again, I simply want SE to clarify his role and current position so that all the musing stops.
What I think is that people tend to forget the mess that was XII with Matsuno leaving in the middle of development. Ito was the one who was put in place, and coincidentally, it was also his last major project. For some reason, it is ironic that despite releasing the game, he kept reiterating that he could have improved it and released Zodiac Age and then later some QoL changes that were incorporated in the Remaster. He could have simply burned out after dealing with the strain of FFXII and hence has no desire to handle such a project again.
Honestly I think nothing bad happened, besides having to move the development in house instead.
It's only been 3 years since it was announced and games take 4 to 5 years these days. The only problem was that they announced it too early.
The 33m write down was due to throwing out work that was being done on existing projects that now have been cancelled. This includes 15 DLC, but also stuff Luminous was making first attempts on. Tabata had grand designs for Luminous including outside games, but SE decided it didn't want to go down that path. Shutting down those productions resulted in the extraordinary loss they posted, since the cash already invested in those things will be lost.
At the end of the day, SE didn't believe the stuff they cancelled had the potential to give them a reliable and decent return in investment. It sounds like Tabata did, so he'll try to secure funding from elsewhere and do it alone. He probably will, too - while he made his share of mistakes bringing FF15 home proves he could be a valuable, bankable investment for some other company or investor. On the SE side, I'm sure the new Luminous will produce something interesting too.
I've always believed Sakaguchi knew what he was doing when he nurtured Ito and Kitase and put them on FF together. Ito is a better video game designer. He's one of the best Japan has to offer period in the RPG space, imo. His resume speaks for itself, not just in direction, but in ideas he originated, systems, design. Kitase is, by his own admission, somebody who wanted to work on films but ended up in the game industry. He is a good storyteller (at least when divorced from. Toriyama's stories).
When they work together it's golden as a result, as each offsets the other's weaknesses. This is FF6. But also when the were drafted to help bring Chrono Trigger the story is the same: Ito focused on systems tweaks, Kitase worked to tighten the story.
Ito wasn't made a producer because it wasn't what he wanted to do, I'd wager. He's a designer first, hands on, and enjoys being in the trenches. And if I had to guess, he's been moving between various concept projects and assisting as an advisor on a range of SEJ titles (he's had a shit load of special thanks credits) for the last decade.
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I was just wondering who is going to head Luminous now. Do we have an idea of the person in charge of it, and does he have the potential to make such a project?