Fifteen Classic Game Console Design Mistakes

[Kid Fenris]

I'm referring to the FMV in games like Final Fantasy VII, for example. Square pulled development of the original N64 because FF7 'wouldn't fit on a cart.' The game itself would fit just fine, but the FMV cut scenes would not.

Square also shunned the Nintendo 64 because the system's memory and the price of cartridges made it far more feasible to make CD-based games on the PlayStation. Consider the Square games that don't use FMV extensively: Threads of Fate, Einhander, Ehrgeiz, Bushido Blade, the Tobal games, and so on. If FMV was the only factor in Square rejecting cartridges, the company would have hosted a few games on the Nintendo 64.

They didn't. Politics played some role in this, but Square also thought there was no profit, creative or financial, to be made on the Nintendo 64. Like the majority of developers, they realized that the cartridge format was a moribund money-sink for console games.

FMV doesn't just mean live-action video, it also means CG cutscenes. And if one thing hurt the N64, it was the fact that JRPG developers couldn't do their precious pre-rendered FMV cutscenes on N64, so they all went to PSX instead, and doomed Nintendo in Japan that generation.

And yet most of the early PlayStation RPGs don't use FMV extensively: Suikoden, Arc the Lad, Wild Arms, and Persona all have very limited FMV sequences. Only Final Fantasy VII heavily integrates them. Later games, made well after the PlayStation dominated the market, use FMV more often, but it's still prevalent mostly in Square titles. In fact, Dragon Quest VII, the other big Japanese RPG of the PlayStation era, doesn't have many video sequences.

JRPG developers, like many other developers, went to the PlayStation because it was cheaper, it was easier to develop for, it offered better music/video/voice integration, and it wasn't hopelessly tied to fading, obsolete cartridges.