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After five years of development time, Final Fantasy XIII released as what even Square Enix calls a “disappointment”. The developer has since pledged to work on shortening the development cycle for upcoming games.

While speaking with Yoshinori Kitase at gamescom, he explained that the development team for Final Fantasy XIII took over five years because of the leap in technology. Thankfully, the team plans on being quicker with their next title in development.

“Final Fantasy XIII, for example, was the first ever numbered Final Fantasy for Xbox 360 and PS3, so we really wanted to make it absolutely perfect and it took a long time to make it perfect. But maybe next time around we need a much shorter time.”

He was then asked to elaborate on his statement about “much shorter time”, to which he replied:

“Yes, yes, hopefully.”

While “hopefully” isn’t exactly a commitment, the good thing is that Square Enix now has the Crystal Tools engine complete, which should spell a much shorter development cycle. While Final Fantasy XIV is nearly upon us, the PS3 exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII was recently given a dry 2012 release date. Although the development of Final Fantasy XV is yet to be announced, we can only hope that it doesn’t take half a decade to complete.

Playstation Blog

Hopefully it will be of a higher quality too