My hope is that 3-5 years from now we can look back at a game like Dragon Age and laugh at how poor it was at portraying sex and romance. Sex in games is a slow transition, that'll happen more as the general public sheds it's belief that video games are just for kids, but romance will be a bigger challenge. How do you make players care about a digital romance?Mass Effect, DA, Heavy Rain, and the Witcher 2 are a few games off the top of my head where sex and romance is done "maturely", but there is still so much more improvement that can be had (such as not making sex a "win factor"). Think about the media storm when a mainstream, mature game allows a player to have a more "hands-on" approach to controlling the pace/atmosphere for sexual encounters while in a relationship. I'm not talking about making things really explicit, but making it interactive (that is what games are isn't it?) To date, most sexual encounters in games seem to be either in the background (strip club) or a cut scene (Heavy Rain let's you hit buttons while the action unfolds, but it's still linear and scripted.). Will the gaming industry or the world outside it, ever be ready for "this" kind of interactive storytelling? or will we continue to have to look to indie games if we want a raw, mature experience.

This only further further adds to my dismay about the decline of the Japanese gaming market. You know they've got to be looking at the success of some of their western market games and wondering what went wrong, and I don't know if I blame them for them. Western markets must be hard. I remember reading an interesting article in Game Informer once where a bunch of game developers (eastern and western) commented on the state of the Japanese game developing industry. I remember one developer simply saying "Your games just suck.". In the same article someone high up in Capcom (one of the few Japanese developers who I still have some respect for) said that Japanese developers needed to shed their pride and embrace the western market to survive. I feel like the biggest issue lies is the Japanese developers inability to understand the demographic it's making games for. When most Japanese games come out I run into at least one of these problems that conflict with ME as a roughly average representation of a young adult male gamer.

1. The game contains at LEAST one very annoying character, one who I would certainly never encounter in real life and would never want to have in my company in a fantasy life.

2. Plots are not deep and mature and are instead pretentious and oft incoherent. Admittedly this issue isn't exclusive to eastern games, but I'd argue it's more prevalent.

3. Themes of sex are so over-glorified that it's almost disgusting, and certainly is a bit offensive to think a developer would (literally) dangle boobs in front of me with no taste or any correlations to the plot simply to lure me into playing their game. Don't get me wrong selling sex appeal is a powerful tool for thought, escapism, or stimulation if done in a sophisticated, subtle, or contextually appropriate manner.

4. The quality on many Japanese games seems "behind".

I could probably name more, but these are some of the obvious ones that popped into my head. I feel that if you look closely the first 3 follow a trend, and that's that I felt like my 13-15 year old self probably would have enjoyed these things much more than my older self. Which mirrors my earlier statement. To which demographic are Japanese developers targeting? Look at Square-Enix's western developers. Hitman? a grittier Tomb Raider? They, at least to more of an extent, know how to appeal to what an "average" western gamer likes.

So as the gaming industry grows older the industry needs to be aware of the changes in demographics (look at the change in woman gamers over the past 10 years). Perhaps Japanese developers have hit a crossroads. Their once young, adoring fanbase has grown and matured into having different tastes. Should they continue to target the young or should they expand their strategy to try to encompass both? Finding that balance to reel in the old with the new while still recreated the magic that lured it's fans a decade or more ago cannot be an easy feat, but it can be done. Just look at Pixar's Toy Story 3, or Disney overall for that matter. So to my once favorite game developer I wish the best of luck!

tl;dr? I blame Square's troubles on the growing difficulty for Japanese developers to understand the demographic it thinks it's developing for. As their fanbase has aged, their ability to encompass the tastes of all it's fans has become a great challenge.

The combat is much like the Arkham games, which isn't really a bad thing, but after seeing the "leapers" I'm a little more cautious about this title. What looked to be a gritty futuristic, action sci-fi title is starting to get a little out there... Nonetheless, it looks like the part of a Triple A title.

Even though this is just an announcement for an announcement, it's still an exciting feeling to know that this is really starting to happen. I couldn't be more excited for the next generation.

@OurSin-360 Entirely different development team, This team, if I recall is responsible Kingdom Hearts, which has a good critical reception track record. And from what little gameplay footage we have it looks to be a much different style than FFXIII

I could foresee them breaking up the big two with someone purchasing Blizzard and Activision breaking up further and having their dev teams and IPs bought our separately.

@Stiler It's simple. The game has the capability of selling a significant amount more copies over both consoles rather than just one. To limit the sales of a game that you know will sell is a loss of value. Buying the franchise to push your next gen console is a risky investment especially considering consumers may not end up being ready to afford the new consoles when they arrive.