Xenogears 2 is a long-planned game that has yet to happen, and a recent interview with Monolith Soft’s President and Founder Sugiura Hirohide revealed a surprising fact: the first Final Fantasy movie nearly killed the Xenogears franchise and put off all chances of a sequel happening.
No, we’re not talking about the rather excellent Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. There was a film before that: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and boy did it bomb badly. As Frontline Gaming Japan reports, the newest issue of Weekly Famitsu has an interview with Sugiura Hirohide. In it, he talks about how Square Enix was strongly focused on the CGI film business. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within racked up an impressive USD$94 million in losses, and that left very little money to produce Xenogears 2.
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Consequently, Sugiura left Square Enix to form Monolith Soft with the hopes of making Xenogears 2. Since then, the company has focused on making games in the Xeno franchise (with the occasional Super Robot or Dragon Ball game), but Xenogears 2 is a dream that has yet to be realized.
Although the first Final Fantasy movie killed any chances of Xenogears 2 being made in its heydey, we got a bunch of great games in the Xenos series since then, most recently including the launch of Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition. Hopefully, the continued success of Monolith Soft will mean that Sugiura Hirohide can one day make his dream come true.
