from now on, the amount a game costs should be directly equal to the number of enjoyable hours you get out of it. Unfortunately, this would put games like Brawl at about $4000 but there you go.

ZinkO: The Game (the kind you just lost)

OK, so, a $50 Final Fantasy game has 15-year-old protagonists, and a $15 Final Fantasy game has 7-year-olds.

I hope they never release one for $5. I hate babies.

Lobster

At least you are getting a full fledged game instead of paying 8 dollars for a game that you could buy in a 5 dollar grab bag at a pawn shop.

MrSatan

Uh... Since when is fifteen dollars a lot of money? It's an FF game, meaning it's going to probably give you a little more meat than your average VC game (let's avoid any cracks about Dirge of Cerberus and other atrocities like it under the license). Granted, there are some far more amazing deals (Phantasy Star 2: $10), but for original content, it looks good.
People seem to be going overboard with the whole "online transactions" hullaballoo going around. Yes, EA charged (charges) for cheats on XBL, which was the moment that tipped the scale. Yes, GH2 tracks were $2.50 each. However, this has still made a lot of people seem to think that everything purchased online on a console should be cheaper.
If there's a game out there that I can pay fifteen dollars for and get a good amount of fun out of for more than ten hours, I think it's been worth my money. If I can be satisfied with five very fun hours of single-player and about the same amount of very "meh" multiplayer for sixty dollars (Gears of War is the example I'm specifically thinking of), I think I can settle for a pretty fun game that lasts longer than ten hours for fifteen.
Now seriously think about this for a moment: if you heard about this game that wasn't WiiWare, but more of a supplementary side story that's being produced for a release in stores and you saw the box on the shelf with a big ol' sticker on it that said "$15", would you still think it was that bad of a deal?

PS: As for online pricing, I blame casual gamers on the PC for starting the trend. They're the ones who payed $20 for Bejeweled Deluxe for so many years.

Mujah

Well, for someone who thinks current VC prices should be half of what they are (at most), $15 seems expensive to me. Then again, it depends on how deep the game is.

Also, I haven't bought a new game since... Metroid Prime 3? I don't get to buy new games very often because they are relatively expensive.

I'm very careful with where my gaming dollars go. I'd like to try out a lot more VC games, but I could buy a few VC games I've already played a million times over, or I could buy a new game I've never played. Tough choice.

Deozaan

I think it's a fair price. $15 for a brand new game is way better than paying $10 for some flash remake that hits XBLA.

Forkball

It's Final Fantasy, what did you expect, an hour-long minigame?

Jac21

With most new games on PSN and Live Arcade costing less than this it does seem pretty steep. If it was more like the CC game on gamecube I would gladly pay $15 for it but since I can't even try it first (gee thanks guys) I do have to say this is a lot of dough to just jump into blindly. I usually try just about every game I buy out before I purchase. Sorry SquareEnix/Nintendo, I am not going to take that kind of chance. Just for the record though, the game was said to cost 1500 wii points in Japan so were people really surprised by this? I had assumed this was the price point for about a month now.

daizyujin

15 bucks isn't that much. If it's the length of a medium sized GBA RPG, then you're basically paying half the price for better graphics.

Omatic

Don't act like you wouldn't have bought it for $60 if it came in a box.

Gonzodamus

I read an interview with the director of the game he said that the size of the game is just under 40MB.

Servant_of_Jashin

You people don't have $15 dollars? How the hell can you afford all of your other games? The N64 games are $10 dollars and they were made years ago. Who did you think was going to pay for the development costs of a new game? YOU ARE.

Arsenal

$10 would be alright i think. i dont plan on getting this at all though, so skin off my back =) DL games should be $10 and under unless its a full game (you know like its in sale in stores, is bigger than a few hundred MBs) like Warhawk.

pandafresh

@JeffPaine: Yes, but will we have any hard drive space left?

Benjo

I've known this since yesterday. The prices seem to vary, though as games like Defenmd Your Castle are like $5.

KM91

i rather have it on my DS at leased i can play it while im on the loo, not everyone hasa flat-screen tv, foot massage and a wii mounted in their toilet closet.

:/

Onizuka-GTO

@JeffPaine: If it's a crappy game with a Final Fantasy skin then I'd buy neither and spend my money on something worthwhile.

Zeouterlimits

$15 is ok by me. I am just going to wait till I hear feedback from the gamer community though. If it is a good game with solid depth $15 isn't all that bad.

Figcoinc

15 bucks for a castle management game, sounds good to me. Cost me 40 bucks back in the days of crappy D&D titles.

Falconfire

@LuppyLuptonium: heh.. you said current gen. Thats cute.

Scuba Steve

@vaterunser:
you have to remember, this is not going to be some cheap puzzle game, or some shovelware that was not worth a full blown retail release. This is a game that, based on videos i've seeen and based on the pedigree of the developer, could take somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20 hours to complete. $15 sounds worth it for that amount of content.

Sabastian_Chadwick_McGirt

honestly not surprised. but from what i've seen it's gonna be worth it. Squeenix seems to be putting a lot of effort into this one.

Sabastian_Chadwick_McGirt

@DaveKap: troll.
just kidding. i like it when someone can give a reasoned and insightful analysis of something in simply a comment. i hope you'll understand that most people will reserve judgement until they can see for themselves.

that news about squeenix's development process IS a shocker, i honestly am surprised by that news. i'm currently involved in agile development and i cannot see non-agile possibly working (especially on 'this gen' titles).

mind you, squeenix do end up making great games - they just do it very inneficiently. makes you wonder though, what if they did get their act together and do it properly? imagine what might have been.

comedy

it cost 15 bucks for a cup of coffee and sammich, i don't wanna here none of that sissy faced whining, ya her?

homeskillet81

@jago.kot: We can only hope man. We can only hope.

Rebelphoenix83

@DaveKap:
Wow, thanks for saving me from buying this game.
So this game is just what I was afraid of...All those screens look awfully static, just like a Playmobil world...
Too bad thousands of naive fanboys will still buy this game and rave about it despite of its awfulness, because it's "so much cheaper than a retail game".
$15 for a downloadable game is pretty much as expensive as it gets...and face it, this game's a freaking minigame they could as well have included in the next FFCC game for free...
I'll spare my money on this one, there will be nicer WiiWare games from indie developers for less money, and until then there are still plenty of XBLA and PSN titles waiting to be played...FULL games for less money, like Rez HD...

vaterunser

@Kazzahdrane: They're not :(

markusdragon

@Rebelphoenix83: Very true...you have a point BUT most likely the chances are that it will be much deeper then a simple puzzle game (the visual have already proven that.)

jago.kot

@LeChuck:

One word: Multiplayer

Of course, that's only for those that have it, and where the core of the game actually us (FPSes, tactical games like Advance Wars perhaps, except there's really none for consoles...)

Other reasons would be, say if the game is Action/Adventure, and is a genre loved by people who want something involving guts and blood to happen every time they pressed a button, naturally the length of the game itself would be short for a gamer tailored to people with short attention spans.

Byakko

@jago.kot: I'd hold on to your horses before you go ranting about a "full blown RPG" we need to see how full this thing really is. I'd wait until you see some kind of review for this thing. I'm a tad bit suspicious.

Rebelphoenix83

and who says game companies are greedy. personally, i hope there's some form of on-line component included in the game that nintendo can charge me to use. 5 dolla per hour and suchlike.

:) good times

cambridge

@fanatism: It's called "compression" ;-)

jago.kot

A picky cheapshot by Kotaku against Nintendo...gee, like we couldn't see THAT coming.

Honestly...$15 isn't a big deal when you think about what you're getting. I love XBLA games as much as the next guy but when there are PUZZLE games on there (and I'm not talking about Puzzle Quest) that go for 800 MS Points ($10 USD)...$15 for a FULL BLOWN 3D RPG is a damn good deal.

jago.kot

it's going to be around 40mb of size I've read, so I guess they had to do a lot of sacrifices.

fanatism

I don't get why so many people who gladly spend $60 on games they finish in a weekend then complain about something being a few dollars more than they expected.

Also, this isn't news. A trailer that came out a while ago showed that is was 1500 points.

LeChuck

If this were a proper FF game, length and all, then it'd be somewhat worth it.

But as a "Sim City-esque" (Well, that's what I gathered), no dice.

Ryumeka

@DaveKap: I was going to write about from all the video I've watched how I might spend that money if they had actually spent time giving the characters proper facial animations and body motions instead of the dead pieces of plastic they currently are but screw it. I look forward to all the horrible reviews of this game. Why can't Square-Enix give us a serious good game. Their SNES glory days are destined to never return. :(

AcerBandit

If crappy old nes roms are already 5 bucks, what did you honestly expect they would charge for this stuff?

Thrillhaus

OH NOES, FIFTEEN DOLLARZ FOR A SQUARE-ENIX GAME! GOD FORBID!

...I'd hit it.

Fitz Rhapsody

@darkthanatos: Okay, I'm going to have to counter-point you here because I also attended that very same GDC session and from what I gathered, the game does not look like anything remotely close to "robust" and, in the end, seemed like a city-management mini-game that was losing it's actual main game.

This section slightly ranty but worthwhile...
Here's what the game is. You are a king and you build a city. You send characters to go out of the city and then come back with "wonderful stories of their exploits and adventures!" that amount to reading a bunch of text. Look, if I wanted to read text, I would play a Phoenix Wright game (which I do, but that belongs on the DS anyway) and not be playing something touted as a "Final Fantasy" game that amounts to nothing story-wise (young kid becomes king through some fate and then ends up accomplishing more than his peers thought... whoopidy doo), nothing game-play wise (unless you liked the "Sim Town" remake known as "Sim City Societies"), and nothing worth 1500 of anyone's Wii points.

I don't care if they had to keep some kind of memory budget, that's no excuse for making a game that is boring and then expecting more money than it's worth. I was actually going to pick this up if it ended up being 500-1000 Wii points and I'm not just saying that to make a point. I actually believe it's worth that little and I refuse to buy it for more.

Okay, enough of the rant...
Here's a little more insight on the panel. The guy showed us some gameplay video and said, "Here's what it looks like at the start of the game." and he walks the king around an empty city with a couple people around and the walls surrounding it all. He explains a little bit about productivity and then skips ahead in the video. "This is what the game looks like in the end," he says, which elicits a very extreme eyebrow raise on my face. Basically, the town is full of people (cookie cutter models that all look the same) walking around (mostly through eachother) and a bunch of cookie cutter buildings lining each block with random reports coming in about the people who were out doing adventuring without you.

Rant...
Great... thanks dude. It's good to know that I spend the entire game wandering around the same area forever and that the end-game I was looking forward to was just exposed to me... only to be just as boring as the beginning of the game.

Not a rant...
But when he wasn't explaining the game, he was explaining the development process that goes on at Square Enix. Basically, before a game's mechanics are even made, before a story is written, before anything happens to actually develop what you and I call "a game" Square Enix makes art. They actually try to create all art assets before any game is actually made. I don't know why, but I feel like I was the only one at the GDC session who out-loud gasped upon hearing this fact. However, this process wasn't needed for the WiiWare Final Fantasy game! Why?

Oh, it turns out that almost all art in Final Fantasy on WiiWare is lifted directly from Crystal Chronicles. The only real new art is the map that shows where your adventurers went off to... to adventure... without you... because you're the king... and you miss out on all the fun... because you're stuck in the city... the entire game.

Two final points...
1: It seems a lot of you here at Kotaku actually worry about FFXIII taking forever to come out. The reason for this is because Square Enix has the worst development process I've ever heard of for a video game company. They are not agile at all and, in fact, this WiiWare project is probably the most agile project they've ever worked on... and even that didn't come out right. The guy who made it even admitted that they could not reach their original time goals, original budgeting goals, and in the end admitted that the final game didn't end up being what they wanted! They talked about all the stuff they had to cut out and really... he seemed unenthusiastic about the finished product which turned me off even more to the idea of playing it. If he can't get excited about his own game, why should I?
2: I am a genuine Square Enix fan. I've loved them since they were just Squaresoft and Enix. I have no reason to hate on this game in an undignified manner and, hopefully, my writing proves that I've spent time thinking about this in an intelligent manner. So don't dismiss what I'm saying here as an elaborate troll. This game does not look fun and 1500 WiiPoints is downright deceitful for the amount of enjoyment you will get out of it.

Wow... I just wrote a frickin' essay. Sorry guys!

DaveKap

Yeah, I'm far more worried about how much space this will take up than I am about the price. I guess I'd better spring for an SD card one of these days.

durango

Since here in the UK we pay what equates to $30 for 1500 points, I'm very tempted to buy a couple of points cards when I'm in NYC in April...

Anyone know if Wii Points codes are global?

Kazzahdrane

@ila: Pretty much exactly.

Torgen thinks AAA means “Costs $60”

Hm...I wonder how "big" a game can be considering the max. size of 40 MB for a WiiWare title.

schmix

If Matt and Bozon like it, I will buy it. Wii-k in review FTW!

ren666

The price is reasonable. It's 300 points more than an import b64 via virtual console. Unless, of course, the game is only about two hours.

Do Kesubei

I agree with anyone who said this price is reasonable.

If you go to a two hour movie and buy a small popcorn and small soda, you'll spend more than $15. The big difference is you can only watch that movie once and you have to do that in one sitting.

Shit, after spending $70 on UTIII and getting ten hours of gameplay out of it (because I found it to be sooooo boring), I'll spend $15 on any game and smile.

cringer8

You seem to forget that Square Enix are also the ones charging $40 for DS games...

SpishackCola

It's 15 bucks, if that's too much money for you, get a better job. Jesus. Some of you spend more then 15 a week on fast food and Mt.Dew or on watered down drinks at a club trying to bed girls or suck up to bartenders.

Foxstar Sixtail

So what is this anyway? Final Fantasy sim city or some other corny thing?

ila

I actually went to the GDC session about the development of this game. Turns out a rather young (but experienced) programmer at SquareEnix drafted up a few proposals for WiiWare titles when Nintendo made their big announcement about WiiWare and this is the one that his Boss OK'd for development. Originally he estimated 6 months and 12 people to make the game, but it ended up being a little bit bigger of a project than that (12+ months and 20+ people). Funny thing is, that for the AAA titles that Square normally makes, they have well over 200+ people working on it (and god only knows how long *cough*FFXIII*cough*).

Despite the small team, what was shown at the session seemed rather robust. As Yetanotheruninspiredscreename said earlier, they removed all the battle elements from the game, and instead it is very much of a City/Kingdom management game in which you are trying to destroy the creature threats in the countryside and also develop the town to keep your Heroes and Citizens happy.

If anything, I was expecting them to charge more than $15 for a game like this. Granted it is a downloadable game so there is less distribution costs, but $15 is far cheaper than any DS game you can find in retail stores and probably has just as much content, if not more.

I don't remember from the session what the game size is going to be though, and if I remember correctly, someone asked the guy what the maximum size allowed by Nintendo was and he had to give the standard "Nintendo hasn't finalized that yet" legal mumbo-jumbo.

Overall, it was a great session and the game does look good. Oh crap, I sound like a shill for Square now though... oh well, I just love the idea of easy to make online distributed games for the Wii.

darkthanatos

This game is set to be ~40MB, just FYI.

$10 for N64 is okay. Yes, we know you can find some games for a few bucks at the local swapmeet. It's still not the case for everyone though, plus, you never know what you'll find, and sometimes it may cost more to find a given game somewhere.

$15 isn't a bad price for this title. As long as there's some replayability, it'll be perfect.

1080Peter

Graphics look surprisingly good. How does this work with the ridiculously small harddrive filled with dozens of VC games that is already nearly filled? Couple N64 games will fill the SD card as it is. That looks like it's going to way in the 100MB+ range easily.

KirbyMorph

Thats about what I figured it would cost. Looking forward to it.

Tubatic

@LuppyLuptonium: You're assuming that $10 is a good price for a digital copy of an N64 game. Personally I don't think it is a good price. I'm sure they'll do just fine w/this though. The devoted FF fans will pay whatever Squenix charges.

Spartan1308

We are spoiled on prices I think that is a good price. Really live arcade has done that to us people seem to forget that most of the pop cap type games were 20 bucks on the PC and not really a bad price when you consider the ammount of gameplay they offer. There are awesome independent games like Aquaria on the PC that is 30 bucks and is a fair price at that.

Konchu

I'm more concerned about how that thing's going to fit on my Wii.

Roto13

@Alcochetano: Seconded.

dowingba

The 1500 points price was on the website since they announced the game many months ago.

FishyJoe

Lets forget about the price for a moment.

What kind of space will a 3D game with relatively high-res textures and enough content to justify its namesake take up?
Will I have to delete most of my VC titles to make room?

I've made shot work of the measly 512MB available a long while ago and I hate having to delete stuff and the copy back whenever I feel like playing it again.

If nothing else Nintendo should sort out this problem soon or come WiiWare I won't be wasting a single point on these titles.

Alcochetano

I'm planning to get this game. $15 is cheaper than I expected. It looks like an A... maybe a B title, in any case.

Aimless

Yeah, are you guys being sarcastic? This seems very reasonable for a Final Fantasy. I mean, granted it's not going to be a full-fledged FF, and seeing as they don't have to produce discs they could have offered it for a lot less, but I don't see anything wrong with the pricing - and I'm the stingy type who only buys maybe around 5 games a year. Granted, I only own a Wii and therefore am not comparing it to the pricing of other console's online content, but still from my point of view it seems fair.

phnord

Now I'm not big on those U.S. prices these days, but don't quite a few games on Xbox Live Arcade cost that much?
Same for quite a few MSN, Popcap, and Yahoo games.

Patapon was $20 USD last time I checked, is that a lot of money to? As compared to something like Crush being $30 USD?

As long as it's a full or decent sized title worth 15 hours at least, it sounds like a good deal to me.

Kenofthedead

It's only $3 more than Sin and Punishment.

Nobuyuki

I love New games this week comes out and people say I'm buying sometimes 3+ games. Yet somehow 15 dollars is expensive.

Ollivander

15 dollars is nothing. NOTHING I tell you. Fuckin' A, there are tons of games that come out for 60 bucks that are totally and completely worthless.

baked ham

$15 bucks seems reasonable.
hell diner dash DS game costs $20.

besides if the game is good who cares about cost?

kadaj_sama

I remember this being in an old trailer, but it was in Japanese. I guess it was possible for it to be cheaper here, but not likely.

Torgen thinks AAA means “Costs $60”

$15 is not too much, considering this game appears to have some meat to it.

A game without meat costing this much would be unacceptable, so we'll just have to wait and see.

phinehas

Huh, actually cheaper than I expected. :)

Neo_Deus

$15 is expensive?

What the hell is wrong with you people?

I know that the Wii is the cheapest console this generation, but I think $5 more than a 10 year old N64 title is well worth it for a brand new current gen game.

LuppyLuptonium

I read it was something like 10 hours in an interview.

That's more than I get from some full price DS games.

DonWii

Given that N64 games are 1000 Wii Points on average, $15 for a brand new downloadable game doesn't seem that bad. This Crystal Chronicles game also keeps looking better every time I see new footage of it.

Lezard

@Funnydale: Digital distribution is the way of the future.

subb

I think I'll wait for Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (Blegh long!) But that full game looked very promising.

BenKenobi88

15 bucks isn't that much. I wouldn't really expect THAT much from it.

Zyzex_Remix

Good enough for me, then ill buy me a cheap nes game with the leftovers :)

DarkLuigi

1500 isn't bad for Square. I was expecting 4000. They usually charge $40.00 + for anything with their company's name on it, let alone an FF title.

Doomstink

20 bucks is already a budget title. Taking into account that most downloadable games cost $10, this is 5 bucks bigger than a downloadable short and fun game. And the completely opposite way we want to go with Wiiware/PSN/XBLA, considering that if we start raising prices, we might as well make the small downloadable games buyable in stores.

Ashurahori

How big is the game? Must be packing something to spend THAT much. I'll wait for the FF Spinoff sequel rather than a Spinoff of a spinoff.

sUKi

$15 for a full game? IF it's a full game it's not that bad.

Gambare

It has five chapters. It's managament. No combat it all happens in computer generated reports. It looks fairly big from a gameplay aspect.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

I wasn't aware that $15 was a lot of money.

The_Foo

For the lag?

Justice7541

15 dollars for a Wiiware game?

In other news, SquareEnix will mail out a free arm and a leg to everyone who purchases this title.

But seriously, 15 bucks is around 5/10 bucks too much for a game that I can't have a hard-copy of.

Funnydale

About what I expected. I'd heard it was going to be more sizable, and therefore more expensive, then the barely money-worthy bubble-popping shit going up next to it.

Moonshadow101

But you'll need $20 to get the amount of points it costs. Love it.

MrMcdoobie

$15 is fine by me. Luckilly, Brawl comes out soon and I'll finally have a reason to connect my Wii to the network.

Anemone

It better be better then sex, whatever that feels like.

[KU]Shindokie: Just Bought A PSP

I think I'd rather just stick with the Disc Games and the VC games.

Rebelphoenix83

Can't afford that.

Maybe I'll rent to own for a year at $3 per month...that's the ticket.

Most Wanted

I think it's a bigger game than most people realize. It looks like a big city-managment style game.
Kinda similar to King's story, although it looks like it's more behind the scenes type stuff in this game, rather than directly interacting with people like in King's Story.

rbelmont000

At least it's an original game and not some old VC game wich costs almost the same price.

Lider

@skullpanda: I think a full title is coming too.

TT

@skullpanda: There was another Crystal Chronicles game for the Wii in development that looked sweet. Don't know what happened to it, though.

As for this, this better be a damn good game. Then again, it looks cute enough and it'll probably ALMOST beat the Pokemon Ranch game. The fans will buy these games up like candy.

Saint Anima: Kotaku's Poetic Massacre

15 dollars that`ll leave 500 points for a nes game hmm

richard733

that seems like a fair price. its better than 5000yen for the Dragon Quest DS reissues. I guess it depends how extensive of a game it is.

TT

Didn't know it was going to be a wiiware tital, though it was a full game. Hmm.

skullpanda

@JeffPaine: Oh, what a great point.
And a low blow too.

scotty

Well hey, would you rather have Final Fantasy for $15 or a shitty billiards game for $15? (yeah the price went down for Bankshot Billiards but still)

JeffPaine