I remember Golden Sun! How the first game finished right at the point where other games of its type would have started its major rally? It was a neat idea, and it'll sell well, but I'm... kind of with you on this one.

I don't know how "lame" it is to suggest that there are two "holes" in the Final Fantasy franchise. Never mind the fact that the games truly do have defeatable storylines that are definitely on par with other Final Fantasy games and everything on the sides could just be seen as additional playability? None of the games really had a respectable numbering system anyways. The remarkable difference in the way the games approached things starting with 7 certainly left room for wonder. That said, you probably won't "play it for two weeks and then throw it away" - if it's like the first one, you'll either quite it three days in out of sheer frustration, or you'll stick around for a couple of months if not longer. Personally, I'm excited, because I'm hoping S-E learns from the mistakes they made with XI as well as the feedback they've gotten from their player base. I'm taking the "wait and see" approach.