Yeah its pretty bad that ubisoft games have 3 layers of drm - steam, ubi launcher, denuvo.

It seams like EA is learning and releasing some steam games without the ea launcher, i hope Ubi is next too.

Lol thanks for clarifying

Where do you see this chart?

A win for preservation. I really wish ubisoft and capcom would start doing this for their older games too.

I understand your sentiment…

I havent played 16 either but i also see almost no appeal. Its clearly an action rpg at heart and that isnt what Final Fantasy was originally about.

The depth of story people expect in the modern era is as high as it was when ff7 ot ff10 released, the only issue is that expectations for production value have gone through the roof.

If anything is holding square enix back from creating the next ff masterpiece, its their commitment to high quality visuals with extremely diverse gameplay, and unfortunately that is what they have groomed their fans to expect. This is why the ff7 remake is being done over 3 games, to get that much story into the visual and gameplay depth people expect, it would probably dilute the experience to cram it into 1 5-year production. That and they make money off 3 games instead of 1 lol

What would salvage ff17 in the eyes of a classic ff fan would be to cut down production value and variations of gameplay. SE just needs to boil in good turn based combat, then focus on creating a beautifully unique setting with deep, engaging lore. That is what was so powerful about ff7 and ff10 imo. A couple minigame distractions would be good, but the amount of effort that went into the minigames in ff7 rebirth is just ridiculous.

It would be nice to see a spinoff series that focused on this at least… We can dream.