According to Square Enix, their new console RPG entitled Project Setsuna is called such because of the Japanese word “setsunasa” which roughly means sadness. Maybe it’s because I just came back from seeing Pixar’s Inside Out , but I think that could be an awesome theme to base a JRPG around.
The project will be a big experiment in seeing whether or not Square-Enix can come up with a new long-lasting JRPG franchise.
“It’s important to create new IPs, but creating big IPs is difficult,” said Matsuda when asked about making new IPs in an interview with Famitsu . “Having been looking at the game industry up until now, it’s quite common to see [a video game series] take the form of a trilogy. In that sense, we need to have at least three [titles] before knowing whether it will continue growing or not.”
“It’s a smaller-scaled challenge up until the second title, and if you’ve raised the series enough to expect a big hit on the third title, then that’s when you can increase its scale. Once that third title becomes a success, that’s when I have nothing to worry about.”
So it looks like the Japanese game publishing environment is specifically built on long series. When a franchise doesn’t really begin until the fourth installment, I think your industry has some problems.
Source: Siliconera