Despite his confidence that Final Fantasy XIII will be well-received by fans, Wada said "whether we are going to continue to internally create this type of game remains to be seen." He further qualified that he believes the FFXIII development team "should next move on to create and generate some 'next generation' forms of play," instead of focusing only on their established audience.

Sure, "next generation forms of play" is a nebulous allusion, and it's true that Final Fantasy games have experimented with different types of gameplay in the past while still staying true to the established JRPG conventions. That said, Square Enix potentially letting go of the JRPG formula it not only pioneered, but used to build a massive worldwide fan-base, seems like a risky move that is sure to alienate some long-term fans.

Final Fantasy XIII has already been released in Japan, and comes out March in North America and Europe on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.