Why did Square Enix stick with Sony?

[.jayderyu]

I will never understand the blindness shown by fans. It just amazes me.

"Final Fantasy always goes to the graphical system"
Sega > NES
Genesis > SNES
N64 > PS1
360/GC > PS2

It's not just this comment either. there are tons of them.

Dragon Quest X should be on HD. Yet DQ9 is selling extremely well on apparently a casual machine.

It's simple. Square screwed themselves up. Big time. That's why this gen has been awful for them. Yes FF13 will do well, but that's more a "finally" and it's a single game. Right near the beginning Jarrod pointed out the real reason why theres trouble. Square like many assumed Sony PS3 would be the market lead. Much like many assumed that N64 was going to take that generation. However things are different when they jumped ship back then. PS1 was released first before finding out that N64 was horrible to develop for and wasn't going to sell well. SE invested everything in Sony and didn't feel there would be a problem.

This however has shot them in leg. RPG are very long term development, I don't think anyone would argue that. When the hands were played Sony didn't have a good hand. Square was left in a BAD position. They ended up investing in financially the wrong machine. They quickly took actions to alleviate that problem by having remakes for the DS come out. It's not that they were worried that FF13 wouldn't make money. Is was more a matter of maintaining financial stability and operations until the game could provide that burst sale. After continued time that the PS3 wasn't showing the traction they clearly decided to experiment with the 360.

The 360 problem. It's a fine a machine that works well. The problem. Japan is the important JRPG and 360 doesn't have much a foot hold there. Solution grow the western 360 gaming market. The problem with that is that most JRPG fans rightly thought that the PS3 like the PS2 would be the JRPG king. So even in the west most of the JRPG fans went PS3.(this is really interesting that it shows how much HD Westerns really want Japanese games. Having the smallest market share and all). So SE now sees that it's core loyal fans are on the PS3 and how much of there sales are from the non core fans. Since a majority of the non core fans are on 360 and the Wii.

So now Square is highly invested in the PS3 and only it's core fans. While they chisel away and creating a new market else where. They don't have choice. The costs of JRPG is really high and to dependent on the burst sales of only it's core fans would spell doom. Square is avoiding the Wii because of the already highly invested resources of Square IP into Sony. At least the resources are easier to bring over the 360 because were it lacks in one area it makes up in another.

As for Enix. Enix is pretty much Enix. Patient and smart. Yes DQ Swords wasn't some massive world hit, but heck the original DQ Swords wasn't either. They probably weren't expecting it to be. Though watching Enix carefully you notice that DQ9 has done really well. When DQ10 comes out it will do very well.

Yes I am aware that Square Enix is One company, but if you look at their IP directions you can clearly see two different behaviors. Square is impulsive while Enix is more taking a business savvy approach.

Next Gen SE will be working as a singular company at least from it's appearance and will be very strongly a fully multi platform company. They just can't afford not to be.