Square Enix has released a steady stream of high quality titles over the last year, though not all of them have been commercial successes. Speaking to investors, the company CEO Takashi Kiryu, said that it will slimming down its future offerings in order to ensure that they are all of a very high quality. This news will come as a blow to those who are fans of the more experimental RPGs the company has put out in the past.
Q: Has the way that your development function has spread to cover so many bases made controlling your development efforts more difficult?
A: It has less to do with our development function and more to do with the numerous entries in our lineup. I want to structure our development function so that we are able to ensure higher quality from each title by slimming down our lineup.
Q: Why have you been unable to slim down your lineup until now?
A: As our customers’ needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we have tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than by focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool. Meanwhile, there have been clear winners and losers among the major titles released recently in the gamingmarket, and it has become possible for even indies titles to make their presence felt. The market is increasingly polarized between blockbuster and indies titles, but I feel that we have developed many titles that fell somewhere in the middle. I wantto make clearer distinctions going forward.
Maybe they can give Star Ocean the royal treatment like they do with Final Fantasy 7 and give the Star Ocean series a better budget.
Star Ocean 6 was a huge improvement over Star Ocean 5, but the protagonist from Star Ocean 6 is ugly even for anime standards.
Star Ocean 5 was ridiculously short, something like 20’ish hours. Slim down the lineup of games and focus on heavy hitters something besides Final Fantasy. Focus on certain titles like Star Ocean, Neir, Voice of Cards etc The fanbase would probably rather have better quality then a wide variety.
I actually think square Enix has been putting out super high quality stuff. I have absolutely loved every game I have played from the recently. (Ie. FF XVI, FF 7 Remake, Octopath Traveler 2) but I ain’t complaining. If they want them to be even better than be my guest.
totally agree. These guys have to be amongst the very top for quality developers (especially when it comes to their main series’ titles/Team Asano stuff). Kinda hard for me to imagine the quality getting much better outside of maybe expanding gameplay options since their visual/audio and narrative presentations are basically peak.
Quality of what? The same PC equality bullshit like the last years?
I hardly think that the quality of a PC port removes all merit of their games across all platforms. That being said I am sorry you didn’t have a great experience on your medium of choice.
I don’t think they’re referring to that kind of PC. There’s an “e” right before “quality”.
Don’t “they” me, please.
Why not? RattyMouse is a unisex username.
Because I don’t want it. If you have the need to talk about or refer to me, ask me first before you use this gender nonsense or call me by my name. So stop lumping me into this woke nonsense.
I’d tell you guys a Final Fantasy joke, but you wouldn’t be able to “Barret”
Maybe if they stopped using AI art making mid games, they’d get some customers on their side, matter of fact maybe even some of those Franchises they have locked away might get more attention.
So they will stop making Final Fantasy and finally focus on the good games?
I think that while the release/development line up will be slimmer as long as they rotate i.e. After another Final Fantasy title they release a newer IP or spinoff then it’s fine. I loved triangle strategy, the first bravely default game, and the spinoff of crystal chronicles: Echoes of time. But I’d agree square Enix is spread too thin. Did they need to make as many kingdom hearts dpinoffs/side story games as they have? Definitely not.