"enjoy it," certainly. But "understand it," I highly doubt it.

But yeah, the lack of KH3 news was probably for the best. It would've drowned out anything related to 2.8. Besides, the longer we wait for a trailer, the bigger contrast we'll see in progress from the last trailer to the newest.

Heheh, makes one wonder what the "keywords" they use for the others are.
Building on the above, just for the BBS crew I'd assume that the keywords could be:
Terra is related to earth and darkness, skilled with phyiscal attacks, and is powerful and direct.
Ventus is related to wind and light, skilled with speed, and is agile and unpredictable.



Well duh, another reason is certainly that she is the only "other Keyblade Wielder" of the others who is still capable of acting at the moment and has still a story to explore.
Terra is right now split in several different parts no one knows the whereabouts of while Ventus is still a coma-patient as the very last scene of DDD revealed.

Nevertheless the prospect that they focus a little more on her on purpose is something that is certainly needed for the character. Terra and Ven would of course need such a treatment as well, but the way the scenario is build certainly prevents that in the current time period 0.2 covers.



Hits the nail on the head, and yet still one has to somehow wonder why people really expect a sort of understanding when practically looking at the final episode of a season of a series.

---

On a side note, I somehow love just how Yasue completely dances around specfically the part of one question relating to the Final Fantasy aspect, speaking only about the Disney and "Sora's" aka KH original aspects.
There is also an error on the part of the interviewer as the summons never came directly from Final Fantasy, they were always Disney-related from the start.

The thing about KH III being the only Multiplatform title is also somewhat funny in how it is addressed in the interview. Don't know if one can read out of this that the Xbox One getting it was really just a decision by the upper Square management section because Microsoft waved with coffers full of money while the actual developers do not care that much about that version, but it is certainly giving that vibe somewhat.

It's also telling that they completely ignored X Back Cover in the whole thing.

"xbox players will be able to enjoy III without playing the rest of the series"

translation - "we only developed for xbone because we jumped the gun and thought it'd get sales so now we're stuck developing III for this console but at least not the rest of the franchise"

Yasue ; ~;

GamesBeat: What would you say makes up the Kingdom Hearts fanbase? Is it Square Enix fans, or Disney fans, or this unique combination of the two? Yasue: We have great fans. They’re very passionate, very warm, very supportive. They’re very special. For me, I think they’re the reason why we’re doing this, more than anything. Compared to other games — it’s hard to compare. But I feel they’re warmer, nicer on the whole. That’s my honest opinion. They seem a lot nicer than some others. GamesBeat: They’ve got a bit of Disney in them. Yasue: I guess! They’re wonderful. Today I talked to a lot of people, and they’ve been very supportive.

Today being E3 week, and I imagine it was the day he did the Twitter thing [strike]that did not happen nope never haha goodbye[/strike] and the 2.8 talk on SE Presents.

(Please never let him look at FB or Twitter posts ever. ;~; )

I got a bit sad at the part when he said that the fans are very supportive. It's like he doesn't know what the other fans are like.....and that's probably for the best.

The reason they chose to focus on Aqua for 0.2 was her story after the events of Birth by Sleep had never been told before.

Liar! The reason is boobs!

I wonder how they elaborated on Roxas' fighting style in KH2.
"A lot like Sora, but a bit slower, and don't forget to let him jump even WORSE THAN SORA DID IN KH1 WUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Anyways, thanks for the news, haha...
The problem is that now fans are expecting a big explosion regarding KH3 when the next news come, and not just 30 seconds of gameplay we've already seen. I wonder if they'll keep up with that.

It's been really hard to shrug off the idea that it's just another Fragmentary Passage. Aqua runs around, destroys Heartless, and then fights a boss that probably has literally no explanation.

And yet the continuing evidence is the contrary, that it will have some actual relevance to the story. *lol*

Still difficult to shake off the feeling for some reason.

That being said, I'd love a straight up remake of Fragmentary Passage in next-gen graphics. End of the World too. Hell, all the Realm of Darkness related places, I'm sure they'd look gorgeous!

Well, Secret Episode was always more of a demo and proof of concept than a story. 0.2 was going to be the prologue of KH3. That alone should reassure you that it isn't just a straightforward expansion on Secret Episode.

I love Yasue, but that statement is the most corporal shill I have ever heard. If that was the case for Square Enix, if that really was the case, Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover and 0.2 are pointless. It's a bit of a double standard to tell Sony fans this...

[video=youtube;pAWlmVkHUSM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAWlmVkHUSM[/video]

And then tell Xbox fans, "Hey, it's not really necessary for you to have these previous games were currently working on!"

Not to be crass, but...duh.

They don't really care about the XB1. That was likely a joint decision made by Disney and executives at SE when Matsuda became president because of the unknown landscape of next gen sales. The projection was that XB1 would top the market again, so SE wanted in on that but was given a surprise when PS4 ended up being the leading console. They couldn't back out on the promise to offer FFXV and KH3 as multiplatform, but they have clearly corrected course because almost all of their upcoming games from Japan are PS4 or PS4/PSV titles.

As it stands, it is highly unlikely that SE plans to ever offer XB1 users any way of catching up with the series because the profit margin probably doesn't exceed the costs of porting the games. Maybe once KH3 is finished they can look into that if KH3 sales are significant enough on XB1, but for now the goal is to:

1. Sell the remaster and 2.8 on PS4 which means overselling their importance
2. Reassure XB1 fans that they don't need those games by underselling their importance

They are targeting two different markets here, so obviously they will take two different approaches to it. It's corporate shrill, yes, but what else are they supposed to do? SE put them in this position in the first place.

When trying to create unique gameplay for each of them, Yasue explains the easy concept they've applied, where they focus on certain keywords that can define the character in both story and gameplay. Aqua, who is protagonist of 0.2, is related to water , skilled with magic , and is strong and elegant . They incorporate these keywords into her movement and abilities, creating a character that uses powerful magic in a flashy manner.

Those keywords are precisely the things that come to mind when I watch Aqua move around and fight. They incorporated them really well!

You know, speaking from personal experience, it's possible to really enjoy a KH game even if you have no idea what's going on story-wise.

The remixes didn't release on any Microsoft console either (let alone the original releases) so I'm really not that surprised.

I'm not saying that he's outright wrong in saying that (as I jumped into the series with Dream Drop Distance), It's just a stupid double standard from Square Enix's part. And I don't say the word "stupid" lightly with a guy like Tai Yasue. That kind of response angers both Xbox owners that wanted 1.5 and 2.5 playable and the ones who just want to play Kingdom Hearts III.

...Sqaue Enix's partial justification to the ignorance of Xbox for Kingdom Hearts may be due to the fact that Xbox One is selling even worse than the Sega Dreamcast in Japan. Even if that hypothesis were to be the case, it's still stupid given the install base of Xbox one in the west.



I respect that outlook from a monetary perspective, but from a Kingdom Hearts fandom perspective, I just feel as though that Square Enix should have outright pulled the plug on the Xbox One production when they seen that the system wasn't performing as well as they expected it to in Japan. Making it a PS4 exclusive saves costs of porting Kingdom Hearts III, because unlike 1.5 and 2.5, it's using HD assets through the form of Unreal Engine 4 from the ground up.

I'm not an Xbox owner but even I feel as though this is a lack of acknowledgement of consumers that bought the Xbox One for Kingdom Hearts III. My initial point still stands.

Except their hesitancy over porting the games has everything to do with the Western market. Japanese games just don't do well on the XB1 when they are made and released on Xbox consoles. They will get units sold on the XB1 for KH3 because of it having a bit more mass market appeal due to the Disney stuff; not enough to be hugely successful but significant enough that they will make money off of it.

And again, they likely could not back out of the XB1 version. It was likely locked in through an iron clad contract once they announced it. And even so, they don't lose too much just porting KH3. UE4 is compatible with XB1 and PS4 so the porting process shouldn't be expensive or time-eating at all. They might have to take a bit more time to optimize it on XB1, but it isn't work that would change the release frame or overall budget for KH3.

Porting the rest, though? It's a waste. And it is a shame for those fans on XB1, not to mention it sucks for players who won't get to experience KH from the start of they are new to the franchise, but this should have been expected.

Maybe this is another part of Nomura stating they announced KH3 too early. Back then, well, the future wasn't all THAT clear. If they had announced it just last year or this year, I think XBOX would be out of the question or not even considered.

I think there was a possibility the interviewer was saying that the idea for summons in KH in general came from Final Fantasy, probably? But who can say, really.

But if that was the case, they didn't get across what they were trying to say at all.

But if they really were asking about FF summons in KH, than they're just completely misinformed, as you said.

For a company that forced Crystal Dynamics to delay the PS4 port of Rise of the Tomb Raider by 6 months just so they could announce it as a multiplat title after all that shit went down, I really doubt Microsoft would let Square Enix out of the FFXV / KH3 deals lmao.

Still, doesn't change the fact that it's such a corporal shill by Square Enix. I'm dissapointed by Tai Yasue confirming this. What a low blow by them, treating the Xbox Kingdom Hearts consumers like additional means of convenient profit as opposed to genuine fans. Yeah, I get that Square Enix is business and they have to maximise their profit margins, but at the expense of the ignorance of an entire console base of consumers is as corporally biased as you can get.

They most likely cannot "pull the plug" due to how the contracts are set up and the higher ups at Square most likely want to collect the revenue from the Xbox One version however small it will turn out to be.
Porting KH III alone is much less time- and cost-intensive than porting the other entries of the series as well.

Wut? You really think that there are a reasonably sizeable portion of players who bought a Xbox One just for KH III? Somehow I find that hard to believe as not only is the Xbox One nowhere the leading Console except maybe in the USA (in Europe 70% or more of the market is PS4, in Japan even more and I do not really have any information about Oceania) japanese games have never done very well on Microsoft consoles anyways.

As the PS4 is apparently more and more turning out to be the winning/leading console of this generation they most likely only make the Xbox version because agreements made earlier require them to, not because they want to do that version.



I've honestly expected this from the very moment it became somewhat clear that the PS4 would "win" the console race in most parts of the world.
To me it was obvious that they would always treat the Xbox One version as a sort of "unwanted stepchild" that has to be taken along due to duty requirements and nothing else.

Other Square games released on Microsoft-consoles also most often got only a meager success (if at all) so I can actually see why Square wouldn't want to be overly involved with it.



Good observation, this is likely true as back then there was at first no indication that the PS4 would eventually take the lead.
With the information they have today they would certainly not enter such a contract to begin with and KH III (as well as probably FF XV) would be a PS4 exclusive title.



That is a possibility indeed, but an RPG having summons isn't exactly a Final Fantasy-only thing as other RPGs like i.e. the .hack franchise have summons as well.

EDIT:

That "entire console base" of Xbox Kingdom Hearts consumers you speak of is probably pretty negligible to them and way too small to consider.
Remember: Japanese games do not sell well on the Xbox "console base" at all so they have no actual incentive to actually believe that there is a sizeable base of consumers for it.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't know any die hard Xbox fans who are into Kingdom Hearts or have ever considered playing a Kingdom Hearts game. Maybe this venture with KH3 was just to test the waters and see how many new fans they could attract into the series?

Sure, maybe doing that with already existing titles makes more sense? But when I think about game development (of which, I only know from a distant perspective), it's probably easier to port a newer title on Unreal than older titles that were only meant for PS systems (and some of them Nintendo, but obviously they have more ties with Nintendo than Microsoft). I mean, just look at the problems they had only going from a PS2 to a PS3. Porting the other games might be a headache if they go through the trouble of making them and no one buys them.

But, if KH3 is super successful on the Xbox (which I doubt) and there's a high demand for more KH games on Microsoft consoles, then of course they will eventually port it over. But if it isn't (which I think they are anticipating and that's why they seem to not care or won't even dare to hint at the possibility), they aren't going to waste their time. Maybe if Square was rolling in more dough, they would be more willing to just port them on a whim.

More like KHIII and FFXV were announced before either console launched, so they had no idea how they would perform with their demographics.

But, as has always been the case, the Xbox brand continues to bomb in Japan categorically, and the Xbox userbase is largely uninterested in JRPGs, hence these two games being the only upcoming Square Enix games for the platform.
2.8 being a PS4 exclusive only further affirms that they see little profit in supporting the platform.

That's exactly right.



Xbox One is barely included in their upcoming games list and when it is it's for a multiplatform title.

With the Xbox One, there's certain types of games you expect to be a staple on it. First person shooters, racing games etc. JRPG's are not the first thing that comes to a person's mind. They're probably not even in the top 5 and maybe top 10 of genres that someone would think of.

I don't feel bad for those people who purchased an Xbox One and Kingdom Hearts 3 and are upset that they're not getting 2.8. They bought the Xbox One because they prefer certain types of games that are more common on that system. They're also getting the game that nearly all of the general fandom wants. If they wanted to play more JRPG's and cartoony games then they would know from it's history that a Playstation would have been the system they should get (Or a Nintendo system but their home consoles are kind of a mess right now so lets not get into that).

I hope this made some sense. Anyone who's ever read a post from me knows that I ramble trying to find a point to get across but rarely ever do lol

Nah, I get it and I think everyone else should too. The staple in our house has always been a PS1, a PS2 (which is where I stopped), a PS3 (which is technically my brother's), and now a PS4 (still my brother's cause I'm crossing my fingers for a bundle). We still have the original Xbox and sometimes boot it up to play Dynasty Warriors (no idea which one, not home to look).

We've never really considered getting another Xbox after that because all the games my brother and I liked were either exclusive to the PS, a PC game, or were ported to multiple consoles including the PS. My brother plays some shooters now and then, but it's still on the PS so??? Why would we need an Xbox for our kind of games?

I feel like I'm definitely in Kingdom Hearts targeted audience, as are many others I know who are all almost exclusive PS (and Nintendo) gamers.

Like, I get that in a perfect world, Kingdom Hearts should be cross platforms on all platforms, but people who generally only own an Xbox are not typically in the targeted audience of Kingdom Hearts type games (JRPGs).

Right ^ and, as it's been said before, if KH3 ends up selling super well on the Xbox and there's a demand, I'm sure Square will consider porting the rest of the series, especially since 1.5 and 2.5 coming to the ps4 is inevitable.

Why are you defending a corporate entity over consumers? I never said that Square Enix's decision was wrong on a corporate level, in fact, it's business smart on a corporate level, but on a fandom level, from developers to fans, it's sheer negligence on Xbox Kingdom Hearts fans. Say all you want about how small that category is: there's still a Kingdom Hearts fanbase regardless. Telling them that "Oh, you can enjoy Kingdom Hearts III singularly!" whilst telling the Sony fans that "these Remixes help provide the complete Kingdom Hearts III" is a terrible double standard and makes Square Enix look like a cold cash cow.

And again, I love Tai Yasue as a person and as a co-director. Doesn't change the fact that this response of his in this interview display's a complete sense of ignorance and inferiority for the Xbox consumers. His response was a clear double standard no matter how you try to factually justify it.

And before the "console wars" began, Xbox 360 was far more popular than the PS3 at the time for western consumers, and because of this, some people naturally though that getting an Xbox One would be the wise decision. You have to understand that some western consumers were PS2 Kingdom Hearts fans ---> Xbox 360 either because the PS3 was too expensive at the time or they simply wanted a change. Some of those very consumers could have been satisfied enough with Xbox 360 to move to the Xbox One. This isn't me trying to be entitled (as I don't own an Xbox One). I'm just dissapointed in the fact that Square Enix are doing nothing to cater to Kingdom Hearts fans on Xbox One beyond Kingdom Hearts III just because of "poor sales".

An XBox Kingdom Hearts fanbase? But wouldn't they have missed out on basically all of the games if they had an XBox "instead" of a Playstation 2 and an XBox 360 "instead" of a Playstation 3? I mean, just personally, I know only few people who own both consoles on either generation.
So while KH3 is on XBox One now, that doesn't change the fact that no other KH game has ever been on an XBox, so players who actually care about the series so much they don't want to miss out on 0.2 and Back Cover, I have to admit I don't understand what made them buy an XBox in the first place. Maybe other games that are more important to them than KH?
Since KH hasn't been on a microsoft console before KH III was announced, why would one expect that "small" titles would release on that console?

And it's still not a lie if he says players will be able to enjoy KH3 on it's own. They even mentioned more than once that they'll try to make the story of the game comprehensible even for those who haven't played KH before. I don't recall him saying "you won't miss out on anything regarding the story if you miss out on [title besides KH3].

Nobody is defending a corporation. People are merely trying to explain to you why SE decided this and why there is likely no huge fanbase to even be worried about.

There are certainly Kingdom Hearts fans out there with only a XB1 but SE has no obligation to cater to them when they don't know how many of them exist and currently everything any company knows about the XB1 user base is that they don't seek out JRPGs on XB1.

Kingdom Hearts games never once released on Xbox consoles in the past, so how would they have built a fan base on those systems to even have a huge mass of them wanting the HD collections on XB1?

And guess what? SE is a cold cash cow. They follow the money, and maybe sometimes follow the wishes of fans if there is a huge enough demand. Keyword being "huge".

I still don't get why you expected any different.

And again, I love Tai Yasue as a person and as a co-director. Doesn't change the fact that this response of his in this interview display's a complete sense of ignorance and inferiority for the Xbox consumers. His response was a clear double standard no matter how you try to factually justify it.

And nobody has denied that, but you are still ignoring the truth of both statements. It's not an either-or situation. Things do sometimes fall in the gray no matter how distasteful it is to you.

And before the "console wars" began

The "console wars" have always existed, man lol

Xbox 360 was far more popular than the PS3 at the time for western consumers, and because of this, some people naturally though that getting an Xbox One would be the wise decision.

Not really. By the end of the PS3/360 generation, the market was pretty much split even. Anybody who did their research on the XB1 before it launched would have known exactly why the XB1 was not the ideal choice and we saw many 360 users jump ship to PS4 or just become multiplatform owners, thus why we see the current PS4 lead

You have to understand that some western consumers were PS2 Kingdom Hearts fans ---> Xbox 360 either because the PS3 was too expensive at the time or they simply wanted a change. Some of those very consumers could have been satisfied enough with Xbox 360 to move to the Xbox One. This isn't me trying to be entitled (as I don't own an Xbox One). I'm just dissapointed in the fact that Square Enix are doing nothing to cater to Kingdom Hearts fans on Xbox One beyond Kingdom Hearts III just because of "poor sales".

But again, no KH games have released on the 360, so why would these fans think that these games would suddenly be ported over? Looking at the history of the series and what consoles it has been on in the past should have been enough to inform consumers about what console they should have thought about purchasing going into this generation.

And yet poor sales are a pretty logical reason to. Why would you spend money to potentially lose it?

That’s true. I don’t own an XBox, but SE were the ones who decided they wanted to make KH3 for that system. It seems a bit like a middle finger to not make an effort after the fact when the ReMIXes would be pretty convenient. I'm not sure why they have any reason to expect "poor sales" anyway if KH has sold pretty well on every other system it's been extended to (and those are many).

Kingdom Hearts has never been on Xbox, has never hinted at being on Xbox, and has never been teased for Xbox until KH3. There is no large base of KH Xbox fans because KH has never been on an Xbox system. Who will they be disappointing? What expectations have they ever built to Xbox fans when they've never tried to cater to them in the first place?

If Xbox fans want all the KH games on the Xbox, they better blow PS sales out of the water. Believe me, the corporate entity SE will gladly sell more of their products IF they think it's gonna sell (which has me questioning why there aren't more FIGURES. I JUST WANT AN AQUA FIGURE).

Before they waste money porting everything over, isn't it better to test the waters? I don't make bets, but I'm willing to bet here that most of the people who are gonna buy KH3 are going to get it on a Playstation (just like almost every JRPG). Any KH fan who thought, "Hey, KH has never been on an Xbox before, but I'm gonna buy and Xbox and demand it be put on the Xbox!" is uh... not the most logical person out there. Even if Xbox360 and Playstation 3 were even, I bet the sales of JRPGs weren't.

I can understand if a KH fan might wish for all of the KH games to somehow be ported to Nintendo home consoles somehow. There's been what, 3 games on them? Xbox? ... It's really out there.

Because JRPGs always sell like dogshit on Xbox.

The only Xbox-exclusive JRPGs that I know of are Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, both of which are niche as hell.

Then we have the sales of Type-0 HD
No actual numbers were released, but apparently the Xbox One market only took about 22% of the game's total sales.
This is less surprising, but in Japan is sold some 92K on PS4 and only about 1,000 on Xbone.

Now, compare this to PlayStation, which has RPG basically written into its DNA, and Nintendo handhelds, which are also bolstered RPG platforms.
It's just simply demographics.

Taking the time and money to do an Xbox port of 1.5, 2.5 or 2.8 would be completely nonsensical given that the "Xbox Kingdom Hearts fanbase" is practically a myth. A niche beyond niche.

There was the Last Remnant and Tales of Vesperia. TLR was going to be ported to PS3 before it was cancelled (fans in Japan continue to rate it as one of their top wanted games in Famitsu, though) and it was eventually ported to PC. The game sold...okay but it was still niche.

Tales of Vesperia might have been one of the more successful JRPGs on the 360, but it also sold average numbers. ~750k worldwide, with I think 450k of that coming from North America. The PS3 version that eventually launched was significantly more successful in Japan, and I imagine if it had ever been released here in the west it would have definitely overtaken the 360's sales numbers.

It's funny how when businesses try to make decisions that will make them money or prevent them from losing money, people like to go "EVIL CORPORATION!!!" Here's the honest truth. Every single business does it. It's NEVER, for any business, NEVER about "Well, we need to bend over backwards for our fans."

Now I'm not saying that every company will go "Alright, what's the best way we can screw over our fans and take in the most money possible," because I don't really believe that is truly the case as much as it is popular for people (especially gamers) to believe. But you have to understand that money is a factor of life. Whether you like it or not, money determines most of the decisions we make in life. And so if a company doesn't see that a console is going to give them profit, why would they do it? From Square's perspective, due to how unpopular the XBOX ONE is as a console altogether as well as how the Japanese market is not very good on the XBOX ONE, they would be spending more money just to port HD collections than they could ever make back. What would you do in this situation? Would you be willing to spend thousands of dollars for a product you are pretty sure will never sell? You wouldn't. That's not "greedy" or "selfish," that's just being smart with your money. And businesses have to be extremely careful with their money because despite popular opinion, money doesn't just come pouring in endlessly with no consequence. If they are not careful, any company could get hurt.

I could understand your complaint a little bit if Square announced KH3/FFXV on the XBOX ONE and then decided to pull the plug on those versions after years of announcing them... but that's not what happened at all.

I understand there are plenty of reasons to get angry or find fault with a lot of company's decisions, including many of Square Enix's decisions... but I really don't think this is one of them.

Releasing the last game in a series onto a system without any of the previous games to understand it is also nonsensical. It's like they only just now addressed the problem of console spread with the ReMIXes, and now they're doing it again with a new set of consumers.

Not like this has never happened before. Metal Gear Solid GZ + TPP being the more recent example I can think of.

thats not... what? console spread was releasing 8 games on 7 different systems, releasing 1 game on 2 consoles is the opposite and gives more availability to a consumer base previously left out

Except I am totally not doing that?
What I pointed out is merely the reality of what happened and why.

I'm gonna tell you something more then: If the "developers" themselves had their way they would probably not have announced bringing KH III to the Xbox One in the first place. KH was never on Microsoft consoles and KH III now going to it was decided elsewhere, certainly not by the developers of the KH series.
Well duh, Square Enix IS a cash cow, that's what they do. If they can satisfy and cater to fans at the same time they will gladly do it, but they will not place catering to fans above rational business decisions.
Even with things that did have huge fan demand like the FF VII remake they didn't really follow up to until much later and then only on their terms.

It has some vibes of ignorance, sure, however he was merely honest as far as I observed it.

Lol, the "console wars" began way back when there were only Sony, Nintendo and Sega on the market in the 90's.

Last time I checked this isn't true at all as while the Playstation 3 didn't dominate the market like the PS2 did (and the PS4 is apparently on the way to do right now), it did not really lose to the Xbox 360 either.
So far, the whole "Xbox"-line of Microsoft consoles does only really well in the USA.
In the european countries it does more or less average, although by now the PS4 is vastly outperforming the current Xbox while in Japan the coverage of it is absolutely abysmal. I haven't any information about Oceania or India/China, but I doubt that it is doing much better there.
Of course you have the right to be disappointed about this, but it is really nothing surprising and was to be expected considering all other factors in the whole mix.



Why thank you.

Yep, right on spot.

Considering the bad experiences they already made with things like FF XIII or Type-0 for Xbox combined with the fact that most of the Xbox-userbase prefers different game genres it is still an oddity they even do Xbox versions for both KH III and FF XV, hence why I am pretty convinced that this idea was not brought forth by SE themselves but they were approached by other parties like Microsoft itself about it.


And even with that keyword it doesn't really work often, key example being the FF VII remake.
They now make one, but the "huge" demand for it may have been there already a decade beforehand and they are not doing what most FF purists demand and just develop the remake to be a nearly 1 to 1 retelling of the original FF VII just with HD graphics and polished voice acting.





I guess one can make the case of "awakening false hopes" with bringing solely KH III to this console, but even that is rather thin since when looking into it it becomes clear that it is totally just a business decision.
Otherwise the notion that by looking at the history of the series one may deduce where the most attention goes to is completely valid.

Exactly, porting over the ReMixes would even contain an additional risk since not only is the "Xbox fanbase" in regards to KH very small, many of the more casual fans are also pretty disdainful and dismissing towards any KH title that has not a roman numeral in it so taking the time polishing the ReMixes all up for another console only for them then selling just as good as FF Type-0 would be a bad investment.
And any company that wants to be successful "hates bad investments".



Do you have any concrete words on this notion? That SE really wanted to go Xbox with this particular game of the series? Or was it more like Microsoft and Disney lobbying and demanding for it in addition to it having been just the start of the console generation?
As I recall Nomura and the development staff felt that 2013 was still too early to properly announce KH III so there was obviously some pushing done by the new upper management of SE and possibly Disney as well.
The make the effort for bringing KH III to Xbox One because they are required to do so by a contract, not because they really want to establish the KH series as a whole on Microsoft consoles. The prospect of profit simply isn't high enough to warrant it.
They expect "poor sales" because as said above already the Xbox-userbase is known to be majorly interested in other game genres and japanese games regularily do poor on it. Then comes on top of it that outside the USA proper the console hasn't so much of a userbase to begin with at least when compared to the PS4 (70% market share in EU and even more in Japan).

Well, do you have special insight on this situation? All we know is that SE is making KH3 for the XBox One. Bringing out a random theory that evil Disney is forcing SE to do something they don't want to in order to shutdown an argument is ludicrous. Do you have a copy of their contract for us to read that would tell us that Disney can force them to release the game to XBox One? And why even release it to XB1 if RPGs don't do well on that system anyway, if money was the only incentive in the first place?

Guys, this argument can only continue to be reductive.

It has been exhausted to a pretty clear "no side agrees" point, so let's shift discussion back to the conceptual stuff and be a bit less business-oriented.

Sorta related but not really... do you think developing it for the Xbox too is the reason why they switched the engine? Or was it truly because they really felt restricted and wanted something they could customize more?

The way I understand it and from what I read (I'm paraphrasing here):

Crystal Tools or whatever they started with was a PITA to do anything with. Not to mention, they were having trouble getting help/tech support when things went south/didn't go the way they wanted. All the devs on the engine were busy or weren't in the company anymore. So they swapped, and Unreal actually has a office in Japan now, so they were able to get the help they needed to make it dance right. Seems also Square had bought a license to it a few years back, but until now they didn't use it.

Also developing a engine is a expensive thing, the way I understand it. I THINK square doesn't want to do that again for a while.

I can attest that game engines are expensive because I totally played Gamedev tycoon and it took forever and was barely even worth it.

But I guess the engine switch was more related to restrictions rather than trying to accommodate the Xbox, though it could still be a mixture of both.

Nah.

The team from the Luminous Engine was absorbed into the Final Fantasy XV dev team so any issues on XV could be quickly fixed and what not.

With that team now unavailable, any issues KH would have faced in dev would have taken a while to get fixed due to their busy schedule so Square said "diddly it" and changed engine to Unreal Engine 4.

September 2014:

However, we are having a lot of trouble with the image creating part of things due to the engine.

October 2014:

It’s moving steadily along the estimated schedule. As an effect of us changing the game engine to Unreal Engine 4, which we did for several reasons, we had a lot of problems with the image creation, but we have been able to progress without incident with the collaboration of Epic Games.

They've said they've been customising the engine and working closely with Unreal devs so any problems on KH are being solved in a timely manner.

Not to mention Luminous wasn't even a finished engine. I don't think they ever actually got the game to Luminous and all of the assets they had made up until that point were still running on DirectX 11 which isn't even an engine lol.