Squares predominant problem is the same one that is vexing most Japanese developers. Many of them are fixated on the notion that they can, and should do everything in house. Even if it is entirely counter intuitive, and even more than that counter productive. This company developed a game engine in house for Final Fantasy XIII, and for the life of me I have no clue whatsoever as to why. Other then they didn't want to have to layoff staff. There was nothing at all that the game engine they made. That couldn't be done cheaper, and for that matter faster with any of a number of third party engines they could have just purchased off the shelf.
This is after all the primary reason Western developers are eating their Eastern counterparts alive, and though many in the Japanese industry have acknowledged that this is their biggest problem. It is like an addiction they cannot seem to kick. I don't know maybe it is a Nationalistic pathology, but what I do know is that Square keeps churning out games that run on their own proprietary engine, and the real irony of that is its is entirely superfluous.
Their games aren't so mechanically complex that they need a engine to do something that other engines cannot. This isn't like a Bethesda situation. Where the games engines needs to maintain real time tracking of hundred or thousands of variables in the environment. Outside of the cut scenes their games aren't graphical glory holes. That all said if they are going to insist on doing things in such a antiquated way. Then they should at least be making the case that they are doing it out of the ideal that they are serving the desires of their customers.
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