I'm splitting this out from a previous thread, again, 'cos I didn't want to derail something off-track, but...
This is a different discussion, I guess, but I do think there's a problem which is that the market has shifted and that casual audience is either so young they're mostly based in Minecraft, or on phones, or both - or they're old enough that they're more interested in Call of Duty and things with blood, ratings be damned.
That's a big difference, an enormous shift in the Western market in particular - when I was 13, Final Fantasy was one of the coolest games you could ask to own. Now 13-year-olds are playing Minecraft or COD, typically. The COD audience also has a surprising amount of cross-over with Bethesda's games, while things like Witcher and DA still sell very healthily to a mostly adult-only audience.
I don't think on paper targeting that audience is a bad idea, but I also think that to be honest the market has changed in such a way where you can't be a broad 'little bit of everything' any more in the way FF7 was back in the day. (And that's the key template SE is trying to emulate). The Witcher stands as stark proof you can make an adult-targeted game in a heavy way (at least in the West) and have gross success with it - TW3 will when all's said and done sell twice as much as FF15, while TW2 sold like a third of what FF13 did. Part of that's down to what they did, it's an incredible game, but it's also down to the shift in the market, I think. The video game market is getting older; today's kids are still playing, of course, but they're playing in different ways - but more important is that older people aren't stopping. I'm 27, right - I've worked in video games in some weird way or another since I was 11, full time since the day I left university. Now I'm attached to games more deeply because of work, but all my friends that are my age - they have wives and kids and stuff but are still, crucially, playing.
I think one of the things there is -- those types of people are broadly more likely to buy these adult leaning games, and I'd love to see an FF truly push into that and have a bash at it. Atlus is perfectly happy with M-rated Persona because it's mega niche; FF is not. You have less to lose when you're in the niche. This is why Versus, a spin-off, was okay to target M/PEGI 18 areas but 15 had to pull back to a T/PEGI 16. That's just part of the way they read the market, but I'd be properly up for them trying something new.
In particular, with DQ growing in the West, if I were them I would position them at polar ends; DQ the E10+ lovely RPG for everyone, a game for Pokemon and Yokai Watch players to 'graduate' to. And I'd position FF as an M-rated RPG that offers a different cultural tone to The Witcher, Fallout, Mass Effect etc but is similarly positioned. This isn't to say FF would ever be as grim and as bloody as The Witcher, but I do also think... FF15's story in particular has a lot of scope for more darkness that it elects not to follow. I actually think it'd be a drastically more interesting game if they had.
In a sense, one of the comparisons I'd make for FF is to, say, Harry Potter. What's interesting about that series - I mainly refer to the books, though this also applies to the films - is that it grew with its audience in an interesting way. The original few Potter books are a tremendously difficult, simplistic read for adults - but they're kids' books. But the series transitioned and grew with its fanbase (which I was a voracious fan of). It transitioned from a kids' series to a YA series and is now embracing in much of its fanbase being adults with things like the play. There is no doubt that later Potter is less kid-friendly than new Potter, and that's interesting.
FF has done the opposite; it's maintained a consistent tone throughout its whole series, but I think that's where some of its older audience has gone. FF13 treads a lot of the same ground FF7 and FF10 did, for instance, but the difference is and the reason why a lot of the audience was less embracing of those themes is because they grew up, I think. But the problem also was with the shifting market and so on, new people weren't joining the fray. This is the same sort of dilemma posed by any long-running media empire... Star Wars, Doctor Who, James Bond, whatever.
Basically what I'm saying is this: FF has tried with one path and it was moderately successful, but I'd love to see them try the other path.