Even if that was true, it doesn't really matter. They could have VERY easily used the gorgeous sprites from XIII a second time for XIV if they were really struggling that hard financially. They put all of the elbow grease into making this giant roster in their new sprite style, but only used it for one game. If you asked me, those sprites still had a lot of money left in them. I'm excited that they went 3D, but it may have either been too early especially seeing the quality of some of the models. Might have been worth using the sprites from XIV again and spending a little more time on R&D before they jumped into it.
I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about regarding the drop in quality. The new Blazblue game for example has some of the most beautiful sprites and animations they've ever created. Persona 4 Arena's sprites were not up to the same quality standard of Blazblue, but when you're a side project led by a different company that's bound to happen.
It might be less costly in the long run, but considering the workload that XIII was and how high quality the sprites there produced were, you'd figure that they'd try to get more mileage out of them. Completely redoing a game from scratch with 3D graphics and a roster of over 50 characters isn't cheap either. As they'll probably learn, rehashing all of the same animation and models for every new game won't get them very far either. I don't actually think it's significantly cheaper in the long run, especially if the team is the same from XIII and previous titles. I mean, it definitely CAN be if they're reusing assets between games, but most big name fighting games don't do that. At least not extremely obviously. Someone can come in and correct me if I'm wrong.
