I can't go into to much details, and people are free to take this with a grain or salt or jump down my throat for it - but as far as I know, a trailer was slated to be shown at E3 prior to the news about the game being moved back to Business division 1.
This has severely shaken what little faith I had mustered for the project.
Usually, moving production back internally would be a given because of what FFVIIR is to SE, and the final run-down of systems and assets would likely have been slated for a in-house team anyways, and as such my original assessment was that this was merely a par for the course, meaning that the game was, ultimately, on track.
However, seeing as the game was a complete no-show at E3, that immediately rang alarm bells to me, which prompted me to run like a moron through some of my private channels. Everything is on super tight lock-down (which is also probably why we've had no reports of journalists asking where the fetch the game is, and what SE responded with) pretty much confirms to me that something has gone wrong at some level with the project.
This does not spell good for several reasons -
1.) Considering SE's marketing practices, most major games in the pipe-line with a close to certain release date get heavily marketed as much as a year in advance, if not more, and the marketing campaigns are almost without exception set to launch during major press events. This means that FFVIIRs release window is way off, since the only other major press events are TGS and PSX, the former for September, and the latter in December, which in either case means that at best, we're probably looking at a winter 2018 release for the first part. Unless all the parts are slated to release within the year (which is highly unlikely given what they've said about the size of the parts), that would put something like a one-buy complete FFVIIR experience out to something like 2020.
2.) FFVIIRs release window being waaay off, is a problem. The "take your time" crowd need to realize that you can't just "take your time" with games at the AAA level, because any such project is a black money-sucking hole for as long as its active I.E the longer you take on a project the more money you're draining from a company without generating a return profit.
This is a problem because it motivates upper management and major shareholders to push for patch-quilt releases based off of market research data on how little they can release while generating sufficient profit to consider the project to be either a success, or good enough of a success to the point that they can walk away without major losses and pretend it never happened.
Consider FFXV - and the incomplete mess that game turned out to be because of its delays.
The more FFVIIR gets delayed, the higher the likelihood of further delays acruing down the line as hardware gets outdated, or new standards of fidelity are reached demanding rework of assets etc. in order to keep the remake up to current standards (this is especially true given where we're at in the current console generation) - and the higher the likelihood of upper management stepping in to rail on production saying, release it with whatever you have and be done with it.
This is especially problematic in light of the remake when you consider this is just part 1. It's not even the entirety of what they plan to make.
What happens to the later parts if the first part sees heavy delays and as a result gets released to mediocre reviews and fan backlash?
It would be reasonable to think that the entire reason for outsourcing the game to several larger external companies, and using the U4 engine was so they could push out the first part as early as possibly to avoid that from happening, but that would only seem true if they had managed to get the part out this year.
It can't possibly work out smoothly with a late 2018 release, given how far out we are in the current console generation.
It's possibly to salvage all of this of course - if SE are playing "4 dimensional chess" with everyone, and actually plan on doing something crazy like having the first part be the entirety of the original game, and the other parts be dedicated to spin-off material (like compilation story-lines - prequels and sequels), and have a huge reveal thing planned for TGS.
But I just don't see it. Given SE's current track-record, it just doesn't seem realistic to put my bets on that.
Seems more likely that, in good old SE fashion, they've fetched up something seriously, and are currently scurrying about like mice on cocain trying to work things out, but at this moment in time, really have no idea what to do - hence the radio silence.
Not liking this one bit. Seriously SE, get your shit together.