Square-Enix is doomed. Here's why.

[mrstickball]

Mr Khan said:

mrstickball said:

Mr Khan said:

The issue is will they be making iPhone games that are anywhere near as good as their console offerings? That's the main issue. SE has proven to be a worthwhile player when they stick to their guns, but if they just go following trends (like so many of the birdmen in this industry) they'll be reduced to irrelevance quicker than quick.

Given that their likely most profitable game in the past ~5 years was on the DS, I'd say they don't have to make it as good as their console offerings.

The advantage of smartphones is that Square can build up and dominate a brand. If that happens, then they can sell their back catalog of games until the cows come home - something few companies outside of Nintendo have the ability to do. It would likely improve their forecasts when they have ancient games like Secret of Mana selling a few hundred copies every month - and multiply that by dozens or hundreds of IPs.

True, if they put their best talent on it. Hell given their notoriety they could just skip to the second part and make it a Virtual Console/PSN-esque dumping ground for SNES/PS1/NES classics.

The problem is that Wada seems to think hiring outsiders is the way to go on that, and not to expand internally. It just doesn't look like they're going in the right direction here (though either way they likely will wise up and do some easy dumping)

Oh, I don't disagree. The only thing right that Square has done recently is buy Edios which seems to be having a string of good games (Batman: Arkham Asylum being one of them with Deus Ex: Human Revolution coming as another).

They've kind of crapped out when it comes to internal priorities: Their focus seems to be on anything and everything but their significant IPs that could help their bottom line. You have many Final Fantasies coming out (but none are major sans vsXIII and that comes out God-knows-when), no mention of KH3 which is likely to sell 5 million copies plus, Dragon Quest for Wii which is likely going to be a historically poor seller given the install bases out there (why they didn't go with another DS/3ds iteration is beyond me, although I guess one can understand it if they greenlit it ~3 years ago).

All the while, Square has so many unbelievable IPs ripe for Virtual Console and HD remakes. Instead, we get Crystal Defenders.

• Why not release the Terranigma series on VC/iOS?
• Why not release the classic Dragon Quest games on VC/iOS?
• Can't they revisit some of their old Squaresoft/Enix IPs to port like Live-a-Live, Bahaumut Lagoon, or the many other games that never came to NA?
• Where is Square's Android presence? ROMs have grossed millions of dollars likely due to Square-Enix IPs, why not cash in on them?
• What about Yosumin on phones? Or the Final Fantasy IV collection? Final Fantasy III DS is a hit and has sold about 75,000 copies in two months, what about more ports of the other Final Fantasies? 
• Why not publish a new 2D epic RPG for smartphones? You have ~300 million users dying for a real JRPG. Its ripe for a multi-million seller (Infinity Blade is the 3rd highest-grossing game of all time and it'd pale in comparison to a serious 30hr JRPG effort by Square)
• More DS/PSP/3DS/NGP games are likely do be big bucks - not console games (as proven by their sheer lack of success late).

And so on. Those are just a few lost-cost high-turnaround ideas. Really, Edios should stick to console while Square works on a lot of handheld/phone efforts, with the occassional massive IP like KH3, DQ10, FFXV and so on.