Square Enix Wants To Release Fewer Games To Ensure Higher Quality

Amidst the increasing game development life cycles, Square Enix has been quite persistent in having a huge lineup of games in recent years. However, it wants to take a step back and focus more on quality. As spotted by Genki on Twitter, the company president, Takashi Kiryu, spoke in a financial briefing during a Q&A session from November last year and addressed the new strategies.

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,” said the company president.

Square Enix has pushed decent-quality games, but they have not been as successful as the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series. As a result, the dev wants to trim its lineup to focus on the “quality over quantity” approach. A part of that milestone can be reached by diversifying the lineup altogether. Catering to a few franchises or genres at a time could hinder the publisher’s growth in other junctures, after all.

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.”

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The company has focused on specific major IPs, while the other projects fall in between blockbuster and indie titles. These mid-budget games do not achieve the desired levels of success even if they find their niche communities; titles like Harvestella and Valkyrie Elysium come to mind.

The market is increasingly polarized between blockbuster and indie titles, but I feel that we have developed many titles that fell somewhere in the middle. I want to make clearer distinctions going forward.”

All in all, we may see the publisher reduce its yearly releases in the near future with a more diversified lineup consisting of projects that are either on a small or large scale.