Chrono Break - Official Response

Official Response

Fan inquiry over a new title was subsequently large enough to warrant an entry in Square Enix's FAQ page, in which the company noted that no new game was in development, though this did not mean the series was dead. In 2006, the entry was revised to include sequel inquiries for any series. A similar trademark was registered in 2001 by Square Enix in Japan as Chrono Brake (Japanese: クロノ・ブレイク?), which is still registered. After the release of Chrono Cross, a number of key staff from the title left Square to form a new development studio, Monolith Soft, which was initially owned by Namco and is currently a first-party developer working under Nintendo. Other staff who had worked on the title remained at Square and proceeded to work on Final Fantasy XI, an MMORPG. During an interview at E³ 2003, this development team stated that they would love to develop a new Chrono game, but their commitment to Final Fantasy XI would keep them busy for a long time. Hironobu Sakaguchi - one of Chrono Trigger′s creators - pitched the idea of an MMORPG to Square while working on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. As Richard Honeywood explained,

Final Fantasy XI is pretty much it for a while. We still have a lot of possible expansion packs we could do, and plenty of support to give. As far as Chrono is concerned, that's huge; but we can't do two or three things at the same time, and it's tough to do FFXI and another Chrono game at the same time or too close together. We'd love to do one though, but yeah, not yet. (2003-05-14)

Takashi Tokita, who directed Chrono Trigger, mentioned a "Chrono Trigger 2" in a 2003 interview which has not been translated to English. Trigger developer Yuji Horii expressed no interest in returning to the Chrono franchise in 2005. In February 2007, Square Enix producer Hiromichi Tanaka took part in several interviews while promoting games in Europe. Tanaka reiterated that no new game was in development, but that a return was certainly not out of the question.

...it's very difficult to be able to reunite the original team, to be able to make a sequel to the Chrono series...because if we don't try to reunite these people but take other people instead, we will find ourselves at that point with a game which will feel different, since there would be different persons in charge, and we would possibly lose the Chrono spirit. —Hiromichi Tanaka

In January 2008, composer Yasunori Mitsuda remarked that "there are a lot of politics involved" in creating a new game, and stressed that Masato Kato should participate in development should a new entry in the series materialize.