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As we recently reported Square Enix plan to focus more on releasing games for smartphones in the future. In a financial results briefing, Soon-to-be Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda says that these will consist not only of the kinds of games you normally see on smartphones, but also the kinds of games you would expect to see on home consoles and handhelds.
Matsuda feels that Square Enix make two kinds of games:
- Console-oriented products, where the focus is on single-player, carefully played titles
- Smartphone, tablet and PC games whose focus is on multiplayer and event-driven style social games
Moving forward, in addition to their console business, Square Enix will be making the kinds of games that they used to make for consoles on smartphones and tablets as well.
“On the basis of the progress of recent devices, moving forward we are thinking to push into publishing games on smart phones and tablets, which we had hitherto only published on game consoles, in particular our strong‐point of single‐player, story‐driven games, etc,” Matsuda says.
He adds: “I have already given these instructions to our development teams, and we are moving ahead with this effort. Until now we have published games on these devices such as remakes of our old titles or turning our old franchises into social games, but going forward, in addition to these efforts, we will create new game titles of similar type.”
The challenge, Matsuda says, will be figuring out the earnings model from such an initiative, which is something he hopes Square Enix will be able to address by moving to a more flexible business model involving various revenue models like pay-per download, free-to-play, paid DLC and even hybrids of these.
