Square Enix to take new approach after FFXIII-2

After its recent experiences with Final Fantasy XIII and FFXIII-2, Square Enix says it will avoid large-scale internal development from now on.

"With a large-scale development team, we didn't use our time well," director Motomu Toriyama said at GDC Taipei, adding that the development time "was quite long."

According to Toriyama, Square Enix has learned a lot from making the two games, including how to refine their approach: "We decided we needed to create more practical milestones, not story-based ones. … We decided that we would have a milestone every month, and realized we needed to applied more Western technology and production techniques."

Toriyama added that they will "not do large-scale internal development any longer. We have a lot of great creators in Square Enix, but for larger-scale development we will be doing more distributed and outsourced development to reach our targets on time."

The director also feels that they need to allot more time for play-testing in the future.

He said that Final Fantasy XIII sold 350,000 units in Asia, making it the top third-party game on PS3. FFXIII-2 sold 200,000 copies — enough to surpass their numbers for other markets, like Germany and France.

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[Gamasutra]