News: Front Mission creator to leave Square Enix
Posted on : 04-03-2011 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Hardware: Nintendo DS, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Super Famicom, Wonderswan
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It’s been reported that veteran director/producer Toshiro Tsuchida will be leaving Square Enix. Tsuchida is effectively the founding father for the Front Mission series. There have been rumours that Tsuchida was quite ill during the development of Final Fantasy XIII, so this departure may be in part due to that. In any case, we dutifully doff our cap to a man that has helped shaped mecha gaming to what it is today and wish him well. Thanks to Chazumaru for the heads up.
Front Mission’s future isn’t looking so good…
Sadly FM5 will be the last in the series, I mean true series, but atleast they went out on a high, I just dont see a FM6 on ps3 etc, the only hope the series has, is to move to the handheld market imo.
Lets all try to forget that Evolved happened.
It’s sad to see his departure from Square Enix, but given what the company has become and that Front Mission long overstayed its welcome, it was only a matter of time. According to a twitter feed of one of the former Front Mission developers, Mr. Tsuchida’s been tidying up things at the company and ensuring that writer Yasuo Otagaki (Moonlight Mile’s creator and also one of the Front Mission writers) can one day complete Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style. It’s still got a ways to go before it actually ends, but no doubt it’ll end within the next 2-4 years.
With that said, best of luck in Mr. Tsuchida’s future endeavors and here’s hoping he revives G-Craft again! Most of his team has already left Square Enix and it’d be nice to see some action-shooter style games from them again!
Well. guest this is the last one…”GOOD one”. maybe.?
man, if they keep making FF series that came out after FF10. who wouldn’t be FREAKING ILL.
off topic a bit.
But,
I know this is only my opinion, and its meaning less to others.
Seriously though, the moment I pick up and start playing those new FF games, its the same moment i put it away to rot. Took less than an hour.
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Just have to ask if he worked on Evolved.
No, Mr. Tsuchida wasn’t involved with FM Evolved. Well, at least not what the final product turned out to be. From the interviews in the Japanese FM Evolved guide, the project was radically different at the start. Being developed in-house by his team, PDD6, and was originally Gun Hazard 2. This wasn’t a bad idea because of their prior history of action/shooters (Assault Suits Valken, Gleylancer) as well as their work on the Front Mission spin-offs (Alternative, Gun Hazard, Online).
SE management had this idea changed for unknown reasons, and removed PDD6 off developing the game. The lone FM developer who wasn’t removed was producer Shinji Hashimoto. Obviously, Mr. Tsuchida and co. weren’t too pleased about the decision.
What could the SE management have been thinking to do that? That seems crazy, to take out the people who’ve been working on the series, and put it into the hands of a western developer.
Sounds about right for a company that has been stupid for a number of years now, so we could have got another Gun Hazard on ps3, instead we got devolved, my opinion of SE just took a massive nose dive, and it was already low, its not even the same company to me anymore, I feel the same way about Capcom and SNK, its just name sake, the people that made those companies are gone.
That’s what happens when you have an incompetent CEO, Yoichi Wada, in charge. I heard rumors he chose Double Helix out of the “they can do it better” mantra. This would be fine if the FM developers had no action/shooter experience…but that’s not true. FM and Arc the Lad aside, they’re predominantly action/shooter developers. It’s not much of a stretch to say they’re SE’s most versatile developers because of what they’ve accomplished over the decades. But with a guy like Wada around, none of that really matters…
They wanted a game that would do well with the western action crowd and didn’t think Tsuchida and his team could do it so they handed of development to Double Helix with the flawed logic that only Americans could make a game that was appealing to Americans who in turn outsourced the art work to another studio.Its funny and sad t the same time
Huh? sounds like nothing more than typical speculations? I mean does PDD6 exist to this day ?
Last time i heard SQEX managed to do several restructures back in 2006~2008, stuff like PDD4/PDD5
don’t exist anymore, they have new structure. Honestly, i bet the whole PDD6 is fanboy nonsense.
Final fantasy XIII is very interesting,ohyeah!