Well with a few months gone by from E3 I was wondering if any news came from it (or other sources) that we might get a new entry in the series?
Minstrel Song was really popular in Japan so I’d assume so. The big question is whether WE, in America, will get it.
I hope I eat my words here, but I think it might be a little while before we see another one; not due to the series’ notoriety, but because Akitoshi Kawazu was busy working as Executive Producer when Yasumi Matsuno (Original Exec. Producer and Director of FF12) fell ill. I think we’ll probably wind up seeing two titles per platform from now on.
I’m confident that there will be a future SaGa game, but it’s hard to say when that will be. As Square Enix works on multiple series and may not be ready to budget a new SaGa yet. Plus there is a thing to be said about timing when to release the next game. Still as I told people on another forum. If/When SaGa jumps to the next generation it should go to the Wii. First because well the PS3 is expensive as heck so that’s a personal motivation. Second the main hype for the PS3 is the games are shiny. SaGa is not about being shiny so it would not work well for such a target audience. It would make much more sense for the Wii instead. Where the focus is more on the controller and being fun than shiny. Not to say I don’t want a PS3, but I’d hold out for a long time due to price.
The SaGa series, just like the Dragon Warrior series, is making the transition to being ‘shiny’ with every new release. That really has no bearing on the gameplay, anyways. Besides that, the Wii seems to be more for developing games with certain creative ideas in mind - ideas which I doubt the SaGa games have any need for. Besides that, needlessly changing the target platform of a big series with no reason would be a really bad idea, too; a part of buying consoles is knowing what killer apps they have - You KNOW you’re gonna buy a PS3 if you wanna play games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, etc. You know you’re gonna buy a Gamecube to play games like Mario, Resident Evil, etc. and so on. Changing things like that abruptly never bodes well.
I can see your point about changing platforms being a bad idea. Although it’s not like they never switched before. I guess it boils down to a judgment call and I honestly can’t say if the benefits outweight the risks if SaGa were to make a second jump. Ie from Nintendo to Sony being the first jump and going back to Nintendo as the second jump. Either way even if a new SaGa does come out for the PS3 or Wii, I doubt it will be one of those first year titles. More likely a second or third year title, but that’s just a wild guess on my part.
Nooooo! Don’t die, Matsuno! You still haven’t finished the Ogre Battle series yet! And don’t drag Kawazu into your Final Fantasy crap, either!
Arg, if FF13 (which was gonna have Matsuno doing it) ends up in the hands of Kawazu, I hope they either let him put his own touch on it, or kill the project right there. I don’t think I could stand having Final Fantasy further degrade into the 7/8/10 path. It’s like they’re simultaneously trying to make Final -Fantasy- into Final Sci-fi, and Final Pop Music Culture.
o_O
At this rate, even if Matsuno gets back on track, he’ll be tied down as the Final Fantasy successor, and never actually get back to doing the kinds of games that he actually knows how to do well.
Kawazu had been working on Last Remnant up till recently, so he’s probably just as pumped as any fan for a 20th anniversary SaGa game. He probably has more “leeway” this time around since TLR was around the biggest-profile project he’d been given from the start, and while it is another niche game, it seems to be paying off pretty well in sales/popularity.
It’s chock full of SaGa name references to the point where just about every ‘remnant’ shares a name with an old-school SaGa weapon/armor, and you can make the “Sword of Seven” as one of your highest-grade item crafts. This has interesting implications given that the game is already far more popular in the NA market than your typical SaGa game. If/when a new SaGa rolls around, you just know someone is going to say “Valeria Heart? Tao-tie? Bilqis? Dude, these are all Remnant names”.
Kawazu said not too long ago he’d really like to make Romancing SaGa 4: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/12/29/kawazu_romancing_saga_4/