Wada: Globalization has failed due to “Japanese direction”
Square Enix President and CEO Yoihci Wada has said that Japanese publishers have failed to globalize because their games were “always based on Japanese direction.”
“That is a challenge of globalization, which is a different problem from revenue models. We have to appeal to customers with different preferences. Sega did not succeed. Konami did not succeed. Namco Bandai did not succeed,” Wada told VentureBeat during an interview at E3. “Western publishers have not succeeded in selling in Japan. Nobody has succeeded at globalization. But it hasn’t succeeded because it was always based on Japanese direction. It was Japanese people who commissioned the Western developers to make games.
“We acquired Eidos. By doing this, we have incorporated them in our group. They have become part of our family. It was not like we acquired slaves. In fact, the former CEO of Eidos is the European head of Square Enix. Eidos as a studio is treated as completely equal as the studio in Japan. What I wanted to do is create an environment where completely different ethnic groups can coexist in the same company. That is why we have made Eidos into a fully owned subsidiary.”
According to Wada, development done in a certain country should be handled by that race in order to pertain to the game’s cultural style.
“It is important that what’s in America should be handled by Americans. The same goes in Europe and in Japan. These people who are deeply rooted in their own cultures can engage in their own dialogues. The mistakes I have seen so far are when Japanese people try to do everything the Japanese way, using Japanese workers in different areas of the world.”
At this year’s E3, Square Enix brought a lineup developed by studios around the world including: Final Fantasy XIV (Japan), Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded (Japan), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Canada), Kane & Lynch 2 (Denmark), and many more.
