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The games industry and market is something that evolves constantly, leading to the constant and sometimes unexpected changes being made by developers in order to adapt to the new trends. While new-generation consoles such as the PS4 and Xbox One continue to flourish in the west, their growth appears significantly stunted outside of those regions. On the other hand, smart devices outright dominate the international market, resulting in intense competition. And when you consider the latest developments in augmented and virtual reality as well, it becomes painfully clear how much more difficult it is to plan for future endeavors when everything changes as often and drastically.
In a response to this, Square Enix has established their three key IP policies, revealed in the outline of their Results Briefing held on May 12, 2015.
- To strengthen and reboot existing IPs (Example: Tomb Raider 2013)
- To create new IPs.
- To collaborate with partner companies (Example: Dragon Quest Heroes w/ Koei Tecmo)
They firmly believe that by following these three key policies, they will be able to provide new and better content and services for many years to come.
You can read the full excerpt below:
This is Yosuke Matsuda, President.I will explain the future business outlook, as well as our strategies.
In the console market, PS4 seems to be doing especially well, mainly in the West. We believe both PS4 and Xbox One are continuing to grow. We contributed to enhancement of the domestic PS4 market through the launches of “DRAGON QUEST HEROES,” and “FINAL FANTASY TYPE-0 HD,” which encloses the trial version of “FINAL FANTASY XV,” However, we expect the Western markets to remain the key growth areas.The smart device market is also continuing to expand. However, the number of players in the market is also increasing, mainly in the domestic market, making the competition extremely intense.
I believe the general view towards this market is that various devices are becoming connected to the internet, and the business model is getting increasingly diversified.Meanwhile, AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) devices are entering the commercialization phase. We too are monitoring this trend with great interest, and considering various initiatives.It is getting more difficult to form a view on the business outlook, with the rapid changes in market environment and the increasing diversity.
Under these circumstances, our job is to provide exciting and enjoyable content services, which is in line with the pursuit of our core value. This will remain unchanged, regardless of the business environment.In order to do this, it is important to maintain a rich pipeline to respond to the aforementioned changes in market environment, and continuing to provide new services and content.
There are three key IP policies.
First is to strengthen and reboot our existing IPs. We would like to focus on how to utilize the numerous assets of content that we have nurtured so far, and apply them to the latest trend. As for the platform, we would like to use consoles and smart devices in parallel. Just focusing on one platform is not enough. We believe it is significant to serve both platforms, if we are to offer game content and services that appeal to the new generation.
The second policy is to create new IPs. I cannot disclose much at this moment, but we are working on various initiatives, including some experimental projects.
So far, we have created IPs for a wide range of platforms, including consoles, smart devices, PCs and publication. Based on this strength, we will actively work on creating new IPs in FY2016/3.
The third IP policy is to collaborate with partner companies. With so much changes going on in the market, we will suffer a big opportunity loss if we try to do everything all by ourselves. Through collaboration, we will utilize the strengths of other companies which we ourselves lack, and grow the size of the business. A good example is “DRAGON QUEST HEROES,” So far, we had not worked on a full-scale action RPG. However, we were able to create a new style for “DRAGON QUEST” through collaboration with Koei Tecmo Games.
Based on this success, we want to collaborate more with partner companies, both in and out of Japan.
Could it be possible that they may choose to apply these policies to Kingdom Hearts in the future? What kind of reboot, if any, would you like to see happening? Who would you like Square Enix and Disney to collaborate with, and what type of game would you like them to create? Would it be based off of existing properties, or something new entirely? Let us know!
