The founder and former leader of Eidos Montreal, Stephane D’Astousgave an interview in which he defines the management of bad Square Enix of his Western studies.
The manager harshly criticized the Japanese firm’s direction in managing Western studios and suggested that the recent sale of Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics may have been motivated by interest in being bought by Sony.
D’Astous explained that “it was a foreseeable end”, speaking of that decline in the West and of Eidos Montreal in particular. “I left because things were missing from the front office. Before Square Enix, Eidos had a great tradition with its development teams, but they didn’t really know how to sell their games. And it was clear enough“.
The founder of Eidos Montreal left the company in 2014, two years before Darrell Gallagher, head of Crystal Dynamics, did the same. And two more years later, IO Interactive, which was owned by Square Enix, bought his freedom after negotiating with the Japanese firm.
D’Astous, recalling the legacy of Eidos Montreal, also explained that “it was clear that we had large IPs that were left on the shelf. There was talk of Legacy of Kain, but it wasn’t as powerful as Deus Ex or Thief. With Thief we did the best we could and we had problems“, has continued. “Not always everything turns out well. We came close, but there were some finishing touches missing“.
A year before leaving the company, D’Astous recalls a rather tense period in which Square Enix said it was disappointed by the financial performance of the company, when it was asked for sixty-five million dollars in profits despite having no games to publish.
“We were shocked“, explains. “The pressure was starting to build, from my employees to me, from me to my superiors. I think that when people are in a crisis situation there you really see how they behave and what their values are. And I didn’t like what I saw“.
D’Astous believes Square Enix “wasn’t as busy as we hoped” with its Western studios and also says he has heard rumors of Sony’s interest in buying the company, even if only from the Japanese side.
“There are rumors, of course, that with all these mergers and acquisitions Sony is really interested in acquiring Square Enix. I’ve heard rumors that Sony has claimed to be really interested in Square Enix Tokyo, but not the rest. So I think Matsuda-san sold the rest at a bargain price“.
“From my point of view it was still a slow motion train crash“, he concludes.”It was to be expected that the train was not going in the right direction. And perhaps that justifies the $ 300 million sale. But it really isn’t much. It makes no sense“.
Source: Eurogamer
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