Square Enix executive Koji Taguchi tweeted on friday a rather disturbing admission: Eidos saved Square quite a bit of face this year. It was a smart move to merge with Eidos, as their Tomb Raider, Hitman, an Deus Ex games took the show by storm, whereas Final Fantasy XIII-2 was relatively ignored, and Final Fantasy XIV's launch was anything but successful. The full quote is after the break.
"Because we merged with Eidos and had games like Tomb Raider, Deus [Ex], and Hitman, as a company we were able to keep face. But the decline in Japanese titles was almost humiliating. This has been a week where I worried daily about how we can fix this."
For a Japanese executive to make such a public admission of failure over Twitter of all things is practically unheard of, but it's an act of genuine concern for his company and industry in general to do such a thing. Japanese games have been facing a sharp decline in the West, and no longer have the almost mythical status that they once did. Square in particular has been bearing the brunt of this general lack of interest in Japanese games over the last few years, and their move to acquire Eidos and their IPs was probably one of the smartest financial decisions they could have made, all things considered.