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Square Enix have been releasing a steady stream of smartphone games in Japan, and a number of these have gone on to do fairly well for the company, including Dragon Quest Monsters: Super Light, Final Fantasy: Record Keeper and their 3D battling RPG, Schoolgirl Strikers, which you can learn more about here.
Schoolgirl Strikers in particular is an interesting game. Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda revealed at a recent financial results briefing that the game has been a “huge success” and contributed significantly to their earnings. He then said the game was actually developed by an internal Square Enix team, instead of being outsourced to another company.
“This internal development team is comprised mainly of seasoned developers from the PS2 and PS3 era,” Matsuda said. “Having this team succeed in F2P development was a big milestone for the Company.”
He continued, “Some people say that developing F2P titles would be a major challenge for console developers, however this success has stimulated our internal development teams and veteran developers, and I believe this was a considerable achievement.”
If you’re interested in seeing a breakdown of how Square Enix are managing their development pipeline across different kinds of games, I would recommend reading this report.
