Yoichi Wada was once the CEO of Square Enix; in fact, it was only last year that he retired. He spoke at a recent presentation which was covered by 4Gamer. In it, he talked about the current Square Enix business model, including the reason they’ve been making so many mobile and social games, and so many ports.
When he first got into his position as head of the company, it was not performing particularly well. After going through several ideas, they decided that releasing games that the staff themselves were comfortable with would be better for the company.
This was the reason they started to develop more sequels and produce more remakes; they were IPs which everyone knew, and which everyone knew would sell.
There are a few more reasons we haven’t seen a new IP from Square Enix in a while. There have been delays in developing games for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. In additon, Final Fantasy XIV has had a lot of senior staff members working on it, meaning that they haven’t been able to lend their expertise to fresh ideas. Because these senior staff members were unable to work on these new projects, their development was severly delayed.
This is where the social and mobile games come in. Square Enix needs money to stay afloat, so they took the easy route of making pay-to-play mobile games and ports of classics to keep themselves alive.
This plan was formulated by Wada himself, and is supposedly the plan they are still using even as they continue to develop next-gen games.
So… There you have it, folks. This certainly explains a lot. What do you all make of it? Sound off in the comments below so we can all talk about it.
Source, via Siliconera
