I won't disagree, the tone was slightly desperate. However, winning back a western audience of "everyday gamers" is something the Final Fantasy series (and Japanese developers in general) desperately need to do.
JRPGs as a genre have been drifting further and further into niche territory, to the point that I even feel alienated by many of them for their tropy-ness... and I'm an open minded guy. I actively go looking for unusual games! So if people like me are starting to feel pushed away by a lot of these games, you can imagine that they're not even a blip on the radar of most regular gamers.
So yeah, regardless of the sales goals, this is something that I think is pretty important and I'm not going to fault them for pursuing it. It seems like this whole thing could work. They have a hell of an ad campaign and the story seems more-or-less... culturally universal (hope that makes sense). It's a tale of friends, adventure, fantasy, reclaiming a homeland. If the game is good, I don't see it being anything that needs a disclaimer, like many JRPGs do.