Perhaps the stupidest part of it is because they're trying to appease a vocal minority that complains about the recent games, but are so dead-set in viewing FFVII as the greatest game ever that there simply isn't any possibility that they will ever not complain about new games for not being FFVII.
only two questions do I have for this statement.
1. If those who dislike FF13+ are truly such a minority among a plethora of people then why is it that in every discussion that crops up here that even remotely touches that particular miniseries it descends eventually into
@lilyWhite vs. everyone else? I guess this site is just a meeting ground of "people telling blatant lies" and "who stupidly feel the need to compare everything to 7". Calling everyone else names is not a productive means of getting your point across, even if it does help you feel better at the moment.
2. If the problem is a vocal minority that sees everything as trash compared to 7 no matter what, whose opinion can be safely ignored because they are merely "being stupid" then why is it that 9, 10 and 12 had significantly less vitriol and all this talk about final fantasy being a dying franchise didn't really crop up until 13 and beyond? Maybe people other than yourself actually think things through and their opinions just happen to be different than yours, maybe their reasons for disliking 13 are actually on par with and equal to your reasons for loving it, and you need to get over yourself and stop generalizing them all as idiot fanboys pining for a game that they likely haven't played in over ten years now.
Your arguments appear to me the statements of a petulant child who for whatever reason cannot cope with the fact that other people have opinions that differ from their own. It's not worth the headache to take discussions over a video game so seriously as you seem to. People can disagree with you without being stupid, the fact that I and others have issues with a game you love is not worth making offensive generalizations over so that those people will become hostile towards you just so you can dismiss them out of hand for that hostility (maybe that's not your intent, but you keep feeding that very design in every single discussion I've ever seen you take part in). If you truly cannot deal with people disagreeing with you without generalizing them so then please take your own advice and " be wise enough to
never take part in discussions of it online." because the way you argue with people does nothing to further the discussion, it only serves to make "stupid people" angry at you, which makes you post an angry, depressive status update talking about "stupid people and blatant liars" again and then disappearing from the forums for a week or so.
As for me, Final Fantasy was dead at 12. The game had a lot of potential but it was all over the place. I actually liked the combat system but there was just to much that was shoehorned in and didn't really have a place that was enough to give me pause from buying 13 upon release. I did buy it the year after release however, as my dissatisfaction with the direction that the games seemed to be going weren't strong enough for me to pass up the chance to buy the game for 7 dollars anyway. Which, I think should be addressed when we talk about "success by number of copies", one of my biggest holdouts after 13 was released was just how fast it's price dropped in stores. I had originally planned to purchase it when it got down to 30 bucks, but it dropped to 30 at used game stores faster than most games managed to shave ten off of the price to go to 50, which gave me enough pause to wait even longer until I finally picked it up for ten dollars tax and all. By comparison Final Fantasy 7 stayed at 30 bucks (the brand new price of the time) nearly until they stopped stocking ps1 games in stores at all, and never dropped lower than 20 that I can recall. There is more to being "the most successful __ ever" than mere number of copies sold, and if Square Enix is itself beginning to regard it's signature franchise as somehow "flawed or past it's peak" the argument that it's latest entries were somehow the most successful seems almost laughable. Back in the days of 7 Square knew they had a quality product and wouldn't relent in that, wheres today square-enix games are among the fastest to experience sudden and steep price drops, likely why Tomb Raider could sell so many copies and still be declared a financial failure by Square Enx itself, and why they question FF's place in the world even while statistically they sell more copies of it than any previous game.
I consider myself done with final fantasy, but that doesn't mean I'll never buy another one when it falls so far that I can pick it up as pocket change. Who among us can say with any certainty they won't be doing the exact same; and does the fact that we are willing to purchase these deeply discounted games really mean that we approve of them? I don't think the 'vocal minority' is the biggest thing on square's mind right now, more than likely they're more concerned with the fact that their games have no market staying power, and that the numbers stop working for them once they start looking at them from the standpoint of actual revenue rather than from how many disks they sold for ten dollars apiece 2-4 years after release. I'm satisfied if they end so, however, everything passes with time. There's always a fresh new face around the corner (CD Projekt Red, cough, From) with to little money and everything to prove that'll step up and build their own franchises out of games that do have staying power and that millions of people will actually pay full price for to fill the void, until they get to big and start pandering and flounder themselves. It's just the cycle that these things go, Square Enix is not the first game company to hold my loyalty and then squander it and they'll not likely be the last. That's the best part of a free market society, there is always an alternative and the only thing that stops you from moving on once a company lets you down one to many times is your own stubborn nostalgia.