The world of Final Fantasy VII is very much adored all over the world. For Nintendo fans, while Final Fantasy 7 Remake is not available on the Nintendo Switch, the original game did see a Switch release in 2019. This will be followed by the Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion release late last year.
The original was very successful when it was released on the PlayStation in 1997, but Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi mentioned at the Monaco Anime Game International Conferences 2023 panel, which included Castlevania: Symphony of the Night creator Koji Igarashi, that the success games to the west is primarily due to the game having CG.
Sakaguchi explained that “at the time, people in the West saw pixel art and three-headed characters as something for children. It was frustrating that our games were struggling there, because we wanted to find a way to expand our business. This finally happened when we were able to incorporate CG for Final Fantasy 7”.
Unfortunately, the problems with Japanese games finding success in Western regions didn’t end just because Final Fantasy VII was a success. Nowadays, this is no longer a problem. However, at the time the PlayStation 3 was released, Japanese games still did not have much success in Western regions. The only exception was Nintendo.
Sakaguchi mentioned that “I think one of the main reasons for this 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. Because of this – I realize it might be rude to say – Japanese games were of higher quality at the time. As a result, Japanese games were considered more fun, but when the hardware became easier to develop, things quickly changed.”
Igarashi joined the discussion, saying that “Japanese developers developed skills specifically for console games, but there’s a long history of PC culture in North America and Europe. By the time there was no longer much difference between console and PC development, Japanese developers could no longer rely on their specialty as console developers, and had to master PC development”.
