Oh no, it's the MMO's fault, they said at a Tokyo press conference today.  That's right, they are blaming one game for the damaged reputation of the franchise.  The trouble is, it appears that they haven't figured out what we all knew from the beginning:  Square Enix MADE THE GAME THEY ARE BLAMING.  It's not as if the MMO magically appeared on their desks, flitted in by the Boring MMO Fairy.  What did they expect when they ignored what all the testers said and pushed out a game that learned no lessons from neither its predecessor nor all other MMOs on the market?  

I can't stop shaking my head at this.  I understand it was a substandard product, but they also recently put out the great pile of mediocre that is FFXIII and immediately started planning a sequel.  It seems to me that the reputation of the Final Fantasy franchise hasn't been hurt by FFXIV, it's been confirmed.

[source Andriasang via Gamasutra]