I've been a big fan of Square after games like Final Fantasy 7 through 10 and Kingdom Hearts.
However, as of late they have done things that make them look like idiots. They had the "please be excited" announcement. The Rise of the Tomb Raider fiasco made me pretty annoyed. Then yesterday's Final Fantasy VII (non-remake) troll literally make them look like idiots. It is unbalievable to me that somebody greenlit that announcement as part of the PSX keynote.
So I Googled to see if other people think Square Enix are massive idiots, and found this article from last year that I didn't see before.
Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda recently said that the company must unify game development and sales. He says that they have been foolish not to do this earlier as the only reason companies should make video games is for money.
Before becoming president, Matsuda was the chief financial officer of Square Enix and therefore believes he is qualified enough to make these kinds of statements. Furthermore, he says that companies that continue to make games without including some combination of DLC, microtransactions, in-game ads, season passes, or online paywall will not survive in 2014.
“The truth is, video games that sell well aren’t necessarily good games and that is fine by me,” admitted Matsuda, “Our reputation as a games maker does not matter as long as we have money. Some companies pursue making games that will be loved by everyone and that is quite possibly the worst route any company could take right now. Money is being lost to mobile games like Angry Birds every single second and we need to capture some of that money in order to save this company.”
“We can’t just let developers make games without consulting the sales team anymore,” continued Matsuda, “For example, take Kingdom Hearts III. This is a game where making worlds into DLC expansions is easy money and it does so without taking away anything from the main game except for that world. In fact, nearly every single one of our mobile games are completely designed by the sales team. I wish I could just fire our regular developers altogether.”
Matsuda admits that he does not play video games as a gamer and instead plays them through the eyes of a businessman, searching for ways to make money off every little thing.
“The fun I find in video games is trying to come up with ways to make money off them,” said Matsuda, “It may seem unorthodox, but I truly am happy when I think of things like adding Kentucky Fried Chicken product placement into Final Fantasy games. It is something I know we can do in Final Fantasy XV without having players think that it is completely out of place. And if that doesn’t work, we can always just make the game online and charge people a monthly fee. It eventually worked for Final Fantasy XIV.”
“I know I said that we have the DNA of providing high-quality content in us, but do we really have to use it?” asked Matsuda, “We need to start evolving so we can charge our DNA from high-quality to high-profitability. This is what every company will eventually start doing so we might as well get a head start.”
Former Square Enix president Yoichi Wada commented about his successor’s comments saying, “I thought we were already doing this.”
I am really sad to see this. The Japanese game industry has suffered a massive decline in sales and relevance. I for one thought they would see the record setting sales of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as a new golden age for developers, a boom like the PS2 era. The mentality, and the self destructive acts of Square Enix, make me less optimistic about the Japanese game industry.
