There’s a worrisome rumor about how far Square Enix’s new direction is going.
Yesterday, we reported on Square Enix’s three-year plan to ‘reboot’ the company. While most of the details could be considered good news for fans, some of them are somewhat concerning.
We knew that they just cancelled Kingdom Hearts Missing Link as part of that strategy, but Square Enix reassured the public that they were focusing on their most popular and profitable games. But this new rumor casts some doubt on how much that is true.
VG 24/7 editor Alex Donaldson shared these comments about Square Enix’s direction on ResetERA:
FF7R series will be the template I imagine. They have worked into a pipeline and set of systems that works.
I’d said they’re not got anything major-major release wise this year. Mostly remasters and ports and stuff. But this is gonna be the way, a series of quiet years until this reset is done.
They cancelled some pretty major stuff tbh – I know about some unannounced ones that died as part of all this that’d shock people, but this is what doing a reset is about; making some brutal decisions to get on track.
They’ve got games to release this fiscal, obviously – but they’re just smaller-scale. FF9, I have said I wouldn’t expect for a while longer yet.
FFT however likely falls into the ‘smaller scale ports/remasters/etc’ sort of category that they’re clearing their way through atm, like DQ1-3.
We already expected Square Enix to focus on ports and remasters of their older games for the coming years. It does make fans hopeful about specific titles getting proper remasters, such as their past glories, like Chrono Trigger, some moderately well-known games, like The Bouncer, and even some deep cuts, such as Moon Diver.
But it sounds like there were some bigger games we expected to get, that Square Enix cancelled, or at least deferred for some time in the future. Based on recent events, one can immediately guess one such game would be Final Fantasy 17. We can easily imagine Square deciding to focus on rebuilding their business and focusing on the next Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts games for now.
We don’t expect Square Enix to owe up to what these games are, but maybe this refocusing could be for the best. Even younger fans may know about the legendarily messy development stories behind Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3, and more people will remember the box office disaster that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within than they are willing to admit.
This sounds like a necessary evil, so that Square Enix can make real changes to the company culture that they allowed to sustain itself for decades. Hopefully this leaner and more efficient Square Enix can bring us not only more games in less time, but better games that aren’t dragged down by extended development.
