I really wish Square would stop wasting time and money on frivolous marketing schemes like this and just make better games. They've failed to impress me since about 2000.

That said, FROM 1987-2000 keeps me from turning against them. They just don't seem to be able to top their 90's output.

What this tells me is this enix has given up on making games and is more interested in advertisement and money, hence why I can't stand much of them anymore.

Ff7 and cloud strife sephiroth and anything ff7 related is a cash cow.
FFXIII is a new cash cow now selling Luis vitone.Is this really needed? Just make good games.

It feels kind of nice though, in the sense that my favorite video game series has been pulled out of geekdom all the way to the other end of the spectrum. I feel slightly more cool.

I guess it's another instance of the oft repeated observation that opposite ends of societal or political spectra have a lot in common.

Four, the nature of the industry says that unless you're an indie studio just looking to squeak by and slowly make a name for yourself, it is not about solely "making games." This isn't 1985.

Sure you have to make money to pay for the company and its producers, that is a given but what if your next lp flops because you tried too hard to favor a large audience of all types but didn't really appeal to anyone? Sure there are people who bought FFXIII and probably FFXIII-2 Lightning returns, but even ff favorite series players(FF VII) Really didn't like XIII

I beliieve it's possible to make a good game lost odyssey is a good jrpg without making it a loss of cash, or ff tactics.Tactics has several games spin offs ports and hugely popular.

The general sentiment behind the attitude you are strawmanning here is that there are a lot of us who are wistful and nostalgic about the days when that's EXACTLY what Square was.

There's a certain froo-froo-ness to what they're doing here that kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't care for high fashion at all, I think of it as a form of ugliness so repugnant that it must be changed every 3 months.

The fact that SE even has a toe in that kind of world turns me off, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not going full on toward "this is the end of Final Fantasy" or any ridiculous nonsense like that, I'm just saying that I find it kind of dumb and irritating that any time was spent on this at all.

I can't say that their past output isn't near and dear to my heart, but this all just seems like a bunch of fiddly farting around that has nothing to do with making fun games.

Who or what is this supposed to appeal to, anyway? That's my question. It's definitely an odd pairing by my viewpoint.

Teen and preeteens who have no patience who play call of duty modern warfare.Not even them since they lack attention skills.

I just feel like squeenix no longer cares if i like the game or maybe never did.

lol, my computer breaks for a month and I get to come back to this interesting thread. I wonder if this has anything to do with Squares decision to have the XV cast wear clothes designed by a RL fashion designer that will also be possible for purchase in RL? I bet Louis Vuitton saw this gimmick work and wants to jump on the band wagon. I'm sure these adds showing up in the US are completely on Louis part and Square had no say in it really. This move does make sense though. The XV IS a all male cast. So Louis realized there was still open market for the women final fantasy fans. Thus Lighting in fashion clothes. I feel this move would have made more sense if Louis tried to sell a high end replica of Lightnings outfit. I am curious as to whether Squares ties with fashion design will continue or not. We will just have to wait to see.

Wait, now I'm curious, at what point did the FF games stop obeying the three-female-playable-characters rule?

I'm curious as to how successful this campaign was. Most videogame fans seem to have a negative view on the move (some finding it silly, others just disliking XIII in general).
I haven't seen many responses online from people who are interested in clothing but not familiar with Lightning (granted I haven't really looked for such reactions).

I'm going to be a bit pedantic here and pull out some of the remnants of my Uni education to respond to this. Apologies to all for the pedantry that is bound to come, or at least the boring marketing theory accompanying it. The success of something like this is not something that you can really quantify, because in advertising and marketing it is extremely unlikely that a given campaign is the sole actuator in making a sale. People in the industry often point to a pyramid of awareness, which is loosely based on Abraham Maslow's work; in this case, the pyramid represents a transition from knowing nothing about a product to actively purchasing it. This image, while not a pyramid, is a nice illustration of the concept - the easiest things to do are at the bottom, but the most valuable to the advertiser is at the top.

Humans, being humans, want to feel like they are making the decisions at the top of the pyramid independent of any other factors. That's almost never the case, but each of us falls into the trap of thinking it anyway. Therefore, the goal of a marketer is merely to shift the consumer in the right direction - up towards the top of the pyramid. For most of us here, and probably FF gamers in general, with regards to Louis Vuitton we are at the Awareness level, if even that. I would put myself, personally, a little higher but not much.

The goal of this partnership isn't to get us to Purchase, or even Conviction. It's to get us moving into Awareness, Knowledge, or even Liking. It's to create baby steps on the way up so that as we find ourselves having more disposable income and perhaps a desire to own a luxury fashion brand, we can refer back to this experience and move up further, possibly as far as Conviction. In this case, that looks like "Sure, I don't have money or desire to buy myself or my significant other an expensive handbag or scarf, but maybe I will have that desire at some point, and I'll remember that one of my favorite game series once partnered with them."

To that end, while you can't quantify it, I think you can probably consider the fact that this thread has more than two dozen posts in it to be a small victory for the campaign. I looked, and the original post at Kotaku, where I first saw this over a year ago, has about 160 posts. Sure, a lot of them in both places are pretty negative, but even that can be considered, if not a success, but at least a learning experience for the brand. Being at the Awareness level, even if it's not necessarily positive, is something to work from later.