Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, says that they are neutral when it comes to the platforms they publish games on. They managed to raise eyebrows at E3 with their announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would come to the Xbox 360, but gone are the days of Square Enix picking a “home console.”
“We always consider the territory and hardware for titles, and I just want to make sure that we’re neutral about dealing with companies,” said Wada to GamesIndustry.biz.
“In North America Microsoft is doing very well with its hardware, and for that reason it’s a very important partner for us,” he said. “In Japan we know that the Xbox 360 isn’t really that strong yet, but for me I feel very calm about dealing with any company, and we’re not partnering exclusively with any particular company.”
Wada says that they’re dealing out the RPG love to everyone, and their console choices have more to do with age and taste. Their goal is to reach the biggest audience possible, which makes total sense for their business.
“We’re now in the age of the multi-platform, but depending on age and territory, users have different tastes. Therefore it’s very difficult to just deal with one company or one hardware platform – in order to offer our product to the vast majority of gamers we need to deal with multiple companies and platforms.”
I think the case is actually that they’re less “neutral” and more fans of having money. I guess it’s been a few years since they turned it around. Remember when they were really hurting for cash? After that crap movie was released and failed and the Hawaii studio closed down, I think they realized that they couldn’t have the snobby one console, no sequel attitude and stay afloat.
Do you think this new multi-console, sequel happy Square Enix is better? Are the games just as good as they used to be?
