Square Enix has voiced the inevitable and that is that the Japanese video game market is no longer the companies priority as it is is no longer sufficient enough to recoup the company’s development investments and generate a profit. The Japanese video game market has changed massively over the years with the majority of gamers playing games on their smartphones and Switch and as such iOS and Android devices have now become the most popular device for playing video games in Japan. Square Enix now says that it will prioritise the overseas markets. Sony also previously hinted that they are focussed on western markets with their PlayStation 5 console. The company shut down its acclaimed Japan Studio.
“Achieving major growth in the game industry is difficult now for companies that compete primarily in the Japanese market, given its graying demographics. As such, it is critical for our business that we produce hit titles that speak to the global market, which offers greater scale in terms of both customers and sales volumes. In other words, the Japanese market is no longer sufficient for achieving a level of earnings that enables us to recoup our development investment and generate a profit, and we therefore need to approach our development efforts based on the assumption that we have to succeed in the global market.”
Yosuke Matsuda, Square Enix President and Representative Director
Im mind blown by Star Ocean The Divine Force. Already 11 hours in and my favorite party members are Theo Klemrath and Elena. A huge improvement over Star Ocean 5.
Meanwhile Nintendo with Splatoon 3 achieved the quickest selling game ever in Japan. The Japanese market is certainly on a downturn but it’s far from dead – but Sony and Square Enix have been focusing 90% on Western markets for years hence Nintendo basically have Japan cornered at this stage. You’d think these companies might care about having some presence in their backyard.
Honestly, I don’t understand Square’s strategy here anymore.
They just sold off all their Western studios right before announcing that they know they need to focus more on a global approach to development? What sort of lapse in logical judgement is that??
If their games are already selling well outside of Japan – which, with the exception of Kingdom Hearts, I’m not sure if they really are or not – then are they going to start changing the tone of their games to try and appeal to a more global/Western audience? If they do, I feel like that’d just mean losing a lot of what makes Square games feel like Square.
I have no idea what this could mean for their development overall, but I’m more than a bit concerned about it. Can’t really make a call now, obviously, but I’d hate to see the company start trying to cater so much to a specific outside audience that they lose track of what made their games unique in the first place.
I don’t like the sound of this. Trying to cater worldwide by way of western audiences is not a good thing anymore. If Sony is anything to go by… ugh.
Basically “we want the US money”, that’s pretty much it, i never understand why they say “global market” when we all know which country they want profit from, and it certainly not latin american, Europe or Africa, which means less interesting games.
I think culturally China and US are the biggest gaming markets. China probably has a much larger gaming market than US since US is divided between sports and other entertainment whereas China and Japan and other Asian countries by extension don’t share the luxuries of other hobbies as US do.
The Chinese government destroyed their own gaming market and the current economy over there is practically dead, that’s why Japan is focusing more on the west than anywhere else.
Imo Square ballooned themselves into a situation where profit was A higher priority than quality, also they already had a western mentality for game development given all the monetization nonsense in all their games and the constant need to only wanting their games to be live service.
I’m over Square and to be honest I’m surprised that company is still in business at this point given how their upper management ran that company into the ground
Not surprised by this because Square was already more focused on western cultural focused garbage given how terrible majority of their modern day in game stories are.
Well, I hope this means we will get a localized Dragon Quest 10 Offline.
Just get bought by Sony already
Sony just go in for the acquisition now is as good time as any