Square Enix possibly teasing new Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles game

[Spee]

Friday morning Square Enix put up a new website teasing an as yet unannounced title for release during Summer 2012 (for Japan, at least). The website URL, and subsequent messages on Twitter, all include the text "cc2012."  After evaluating that, the animations of crystals spinning, handheld quality art, and mentions of Titan, Odin and Diablos, it's safe to say we're looking at an upcoming Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles announcement.

The last iteration in the series, the Wii's The Crystal Bearers, was released in 2009. Considering the gap since the last release in the franchise, it's hard to tell what to expect from a new Crystal Chronicles game. Cooperative play is a staple in Crystal Chronicles, but beyond that? Handheld? Console? Handheld/console connectivity? Action, RPG or simulation a la My Life as a King? What if they take the franchise into mobile territory?

A teaser trailer for the title, which you can find below, shows a few concepts that could either be handheld, mobile or Wii quality character art. There's also flashes of what appear to be hand drawn background art, and a monster (or summon). It may be presumptuous to say, but I'm thinking we may be looking at a classic 2D RPG similar to either Tactics or Final Fantasy pre-7... or of course a mobile game like Chaos Rings.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZsCNuRcpVc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZsCNuRcpVc</a>

[Shadow Gilgamesh]

I for one would hope for a true sequal to the original CC in terms of gameplay, I hated the revamped system of the second and third games, and while I enjoyed Life as a Darklord I didn't like Crystal bearers so i would really rather have it be a normal CC over a spinoff(of a spinoff, spinoffception )

I would really like to see it be a console over handheld or mobile, because if it's handheld that means 3DS and I've never liked playing games on a mobile

[wee187]

We'll see how this one turns out, if it happens. I've never been a huge fan of the Crystal Chronicles games, but I will definitely be opening to trying any new one out.

[Da_Cloud]

Would love to see an new entry I'm just hoping they've don't have the same crappy controls of Crystal Bearers. The game itself is really great, but getting over the controls will take some time, some really long time

[Chaos]

Isn't this the game which caused them to almost go bankrupt?

[Sixty]

how many times did they almost went bankrupt? as long as its almost every time, its fine by me

[DragonSLAYER45]

Isn't this the game which caused them to almost go bankrupt?

Nope, I believe Final Fantasy: Spirit's Within was. Although I don't think it was enough to make them go bankrupt all over again, they did lose a substantial amount of money due to it being considered a box office flop, mainly due to it's extremely high budget.

Or maybe I'm missing something here. I don't recall ever reading how FF: Crystal Chronicles may have made Squaresoft go bankrupt.

[Ally]

My experiences with Crystal Chronicles have been somewhat mixed as well. Loved the first and Ring of Fates, found My Life as a King to be good, and the recent ones: My Life as a Darklord and Crystal Bearers to be meh, although somewhat decent but could have been a lot better. Overall, I'm not going to be all too excited if this is a new CC installment, but I'll see how this one looks before making judgment.

The artwork looks suspiciously made by Yoshida, even if it says it is made by this Naora person. Jokingly, this could be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Tactics A3.

[Da_Cloud]

As far as I know Squaresoft only reached a critical bankrupt point 3 times in there development time.
They used there last budget to create the first Final Fantasy game (It became a hit earning them enough to continue)
They used up almost all of there resources to create Final Fantasy VII (If it had flopped square would have been in big trouble, but we all know how much of a hit it became).
And the last time was with The Spiritis Whitin. Square never really got into serious problems though as Final Fantasy X launched 2 months after the flopped movie. This wasn't an equal trade, but they got enough cash to continue.


Duo to the exclusive contract with sony Square wasn't allowed to go to another consol. So when square wanted to make Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube they had to work around that contract. So Akitoshi Kawazu "officially" left Squaresoft together with a bunch of developers and created The Game Designers Studio. Akitoshi Kawazu held 51% of the shares and Squaresoft 49%, when Squaresoft became Square-Enix The Game Designers Studio got merged back in.

[kokushishin]

Digicube went bankrupt around that time; that may be what you're thinking of.

Game Designer's Studio was more or less merged with Taito to make, well, the current version of Taito.

[DragonSLAYER45]

It's been confirmed. It is a browser game called Crystal Conquest which will launch this summer in Japan, and will be free to play.

[wee187]

Gah, I was hoping that this would be something more than that. Oh well.

[Sixty]

i like browser games, i only get bored easily with most of them.