The idea of producing fewer games to launch across multiple platforms seems to be a trend at this point, as confirmed by Square Enix.
The crisis in the videogame industry has been evident for years and is not sparing anyone, with effects that may be more evident in large publishers but which are felt even more harshly in smaller companies, sometimes forced to disappear without making too much noise. Among the solutions designed to try to optimize expenses and maximize profits, the idea of focus on a smaller number of projects, which can count on larger budgets and which possibly reach the greatest number of users possible. An explicit declaration of intent, in this sense, arrived in the last few hours from Square Enix, which has clearly defined its guidelines, within an important internal reorganization of the work.
The issue had already emerged quite clearly with the arrival of the new CEO, Takashi Kiryu, who had made no secret of his desire to abandon some old habits and overcome the frequent use of exclusives as well as carrying out many projects at the same time. Square Enix’s new course should therefore focus on fewer, bigger and possibly multiplatform games, with a possible abandonment of the exclusives which have so far been a fundamental element of the publisher’s production. As a result, several project cancellations were made within the publisher, which contributed to a profit decline in financial results, but this was also likely contributed to by the below-expected sales of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, another element which may have pushed the CEO to change the strategy to open up to multiplatform.
Positive elements but others decidedly negative
The overcoming exclusivity as a systematic solution for organizing projects, it is perhaps the element that appears most positive, because it actually aims to remove a characteristic that is now considered anachronistic and potentially harmful to publishers’ finances, therefore there are fewer controversial aspects in such a solution. The concentration of efforts on fewer, larger-scale projects is more questionable, although it is also shared by other manufacturers at the moment. Capcom is another label that has clearly declared that it wants to focus more on series of greater importance and guaranteed success, but Sega has also mentioned the possibility of organizing itself to increase the pace of releases for the most popular series, up to even arrive at a possible annualization of some of these.
Although it is understandable to want to take refuge in great stocks that are sure to return in times of crisis, it is difficult not to see it as a sort of step backwards compared to what was experienced previously. In particular, Square Enix has achieved some of its best results through smaller projects, such as the Octopath Traveler series. Not only that, this trend could also be seen as the basis of decidedly questionable choices such as the closure of Tango GameWorks by Microsoft, given that the main argument always seems to be the desire to cut expenses and concentrate on what most certainly brings greater profits . Ultimately, the trend shows positive elements and others much less: the overcoming of exclusives is certainly in favor of users, while the restriction of interest only to large-caliber productions definitely seems like a step backwards.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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