[14/05] Yoichi Wada Explains What Went Wrong

[Linnaete]

Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada

Spoiler

wants YOU to buy his games!

​

Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada has filled in some of the blanks regarding the 12 billion yen loss his company posted for the previous fiscal year.

Speaking at an investor's briefing on the 13th (via Nikkei), Wada explained that of the 12 billion loss, about 4.5 billion came from such things as Final Fantasy XIV's reworking and the cancelation of multiple titles. Most of the 4.5 billion was related to domestic development, he said.

"Our game development has become weaker than expected," admitted Wada. "Revamping it will take one or two years."

Wada attributed the poor state of development to weak communication. Creative leads did not pass on his opinion to their subordinates. Additionally, there was trouble with division of labor amongst technical staff, who were protective and would fulfill only their own roles.

To reverse Square Enix's fiscal fortunes, Wada hopes to give a major push to social networking games and apps for high powered cell phones. However, he is unsure if developers who've worked on package games can work in these areas, so he's hoping to make use of external developers. However, he's not considering an acquisition.

This past year, internet-related products brought in profits of 1.5 billion yen for Square Enix. The goal is to multiply this during the current fiscal year, said Wada. Square Enix is also looking into possibly creating a billing platform.

One major point from the presentation materials PDF Square Enix released on Friday was mention of a plan to double the company's major brands to around 10 or so. It looks like the PDF was not referring to this year. While development on these new brands is progressing, Wada believes it will take 3 to 5 years.

Source: Andriasang

 

[Martel]

Of course, in two or three years Wada will be explaining why things haven't improved in the slightest, and why things are getting worse. This sounds very much to me like a plea, a "bear with us and keep buying our games and eventually they'll get better!" sort of statement, when in fact they probably have hardly any plans and are trying to shift the blame or give unhappy customers something to focus on.

But, that said, I can explain what went wrong with Square Enix far better than this, using only two words:

Motomu Toriyama.

 

[DarkLordSephiroth66]

The Real Reason SquareEnix is losing out on $

The reason (and probably the only reason) that SquareEnix is losing out on millions of yen is because they let Nobou Uematsu out of their iron grip and found someone else to compose the music for the current generation of Final Fantasy games.


Bring Back Nobou Uematsu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Note to SquareEnix: Your popularity ratings will go up if you do so

 

[Naoto Shirogane]

The reason (and probably the only reason) that SquareEnix is losing out on millions of yen is because they let Nobou Uematsu out of their iron grip and found someone else to compose the music for the current generation of Final Fantasy games.


Bring Back Nobou Uematsu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Note to SquareEnix: Your popularity ratings will go up if you do so

Final fantasy isnt the only thing giving SE Populartity. I doubt things would change much is Nobuo returned.

 

[Shaissa]

Music has never been a problem with Square-Enix, I can't think of any games where the music wasn't amazing.

The problem I think Square really is having is that they want to expand into things other than JRPGS, example of this FFXIII and FFXIV and Kingdom Hearts Re:coded Front Mission Evolved Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy The 3rd Birthday ect.

Now I know Square-Enix has never been just a JRPG company, but there top sellers even back when it was Square Soft and Enix as two seperate companies were Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Now they can make up all the excuses they want for why they are losing money when the truth is, they use to never come out so many planned games at once, or they kept most of the games under tight lips.

I think they need to cut down how many games there going release each year get back to focusing on a couple games at a time, and try to please there fans, trust me if the majority of your fans like the game, you can gain new fans too.