Final Fantasy 7: Success in the West is partly due to GCI, for Hironobu Sakaguchi

Self Final Fantasy 7 in 1997 it achieved a huge success in the West, much higher than the previous chapters, it is partly due to the use of scenes in GCIsecond Hironobu Sakaguchithe dad of the series.

In an interview with IGN, Sakaguchi said that at the time, Square Enix was finding it difficult to expand its business outside Japan, in part due to the fact that pixel art games in the West, such as Final Fantasy sixth, they were seen as titles aimed at children. The problem was solved with Final Fantasy 7, which in addition to 3D graphics had spectacular GCI sequences (at least for the time) that managed to captivate even an older audience.

“At the time, people in the West saw pixel art as something for kids,” Sakaguchi said. “It was frustrating that our games were having a hard time establishing themselves in these countries as we wanted to find a way to expand our business. We finally succeeded when we were able to incorporate GC for Final Fantasy 7.”

Sakaguchi explained the reasons why in his opinion the games produced in Japan have started to notice difficulties in the PS3 eradespite the success achieved in the previous two generations of consoles.

“I think one of the main reasons is 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 for support directly in Japanese.”

“This is why – I realize I might sound rude to say this – Japanese games were of higher quality at the time. As a result, they were considered more enjoyable, but as hardware became easier to develop, games things have changed rapidly”.

The interview was also attended by Koji Igarashi, the creator of Castlevania, who on this specific point added: “Japanese developers have mastered specific skills for console games, but in North America and Europe there was a greater connection with the ‘PC ecosystem,” Igarashi said. “When it got to the point that there was no longer a big difference between console and PC development, Japanese developers could no longer rely on their specialties in console development and had to master PC development.”