Square Enix CEO sets out future strategy

Yosuke Matsuda, the new president of Square Enix, presents a roadmap with which he wants to make the company profitable again. The most important step is that he wants to reduce the development time, in order to reduce the investment per game.

Matsuda sets out his plans in a comprehensive pdf which can be found on the publisher’s website. In it, the new director concludes that Square Enix has in the past relied too much on the market for ‘packaged products’, ie games that are sold as a tangible product through a store. Matsuda also sees this as the main cause of the loss of $ 134 million that predecessor Yoichi Wada had to report in March. The loss was reason for Wada to step down and leave the reorganization to Matsuda.

Matsuda outlines three ‘initiatives’ in his step-by-step plan with which he wants to make the company healthy again. The main conclusion is that he wants to reduce the development time of games. In this way he wants to limit the costs of developing games. As a result, Matsuda also wants to make games that are more focused on a specific region. He acknowledges that until now Square Enix has been trying to make games that appeal to global audiences. The investment was calculated on that and the expectations were based on that. However, the recent losses make it clear that it is difficult to make a game that catches on worldwide. In doing so, Matsuda referred to games such as Sleeping Dogs, Hitman: Absolution and Tomb Raider, which were released in the publisher’s previous fiscal year. All three received critical acclaim and sold millions of copies. However, that wasn’t enough to recoup Square Enix’s investment.

Furthermore, Matsuda wants to try to involve players in the development of games at an early stage. He cites the success of Kickstarter and Valve’s Greenlight and Early Access as ways to get early feedback from players.

In addition, the new director wants to make more games for mobile platforms, although he acknowledges that it is difficult to earn money with this. Until now, Square Enix has mainly marketed remakes of old titles from its own portfolio for mobile, but Matsuda now also wants to develop new titles for mobile platforms. Finally, Matsuda makes it clear that the plan has just been drawn up and that it is still too early to identify products resulting from the new strategy. He emphasizes that Square Enix still wants to make ‘flagship’ games, for which a large budget is available. The publisher will show a number of them at E3, the game fair that takes place in Los Angeles at the beginning of June. However, he won’t let go of what those are.