Square Enix’s Initiative for New Gaming Franchises Has Gone Awry
Square Enix Japan’s desire to experiment with new video gaming ideas and properties is worth appreciation, and it was something they needed to undertake. For years, the company has fallen back on trusted franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts, and while that’s worked out fine thus far, they’d like for their non-mobile lineup to have more variety than that. Sticking to the tried and true is bound to lose steam eventually, so establishing new ideas is a good way to ensure that the company’s lineup will remain fresh.
Unfortunately, the plan hasn’t been going well for them within the last year thanks to questionable execution of it.
To say The Quiet Man didn’t turn out well would be a serious understatement, a title conceived by a Square Enix Japan creative team with assistance from western developer Human Head Studios. The idea of having a deaf protagonist was a good one, but having the whole game be mostly silent for the initial playthrough was bizarre. (That is, unless you’re watching Let’s Players riff it.) Attaching the idea to a subpar brawler ensured that the game would become an easy nominee for the Worst Game of the Year. Fortunately, this was a low-budget digital-only game, so it didn’t hurt them too much.
Left Alive is a different matter. This Front Mission series spinoff with inspiration from Metal Gear didn’t turn out any better than The Quiet Man quality-wise. The game looked like a throwback to the era of PlayStation 2 mid-tier titles, but ended up being reminiscent of the mediocre experiments several developers tried during the last console generation. This one was a full-priced game released at retail, which explains why its reception and sales stung Square Enix hard enough that they mentioned its disappointment in their financial briefing, reportedly calling the result “very disappointing.”
Their upcoming projects haven’t fared better. Following the departure of Hideo Baba, claimed to be mutually agreed upon, Square Enix confirmed that the title he was working on, Project Prelude Rune, has been cancelled. Studio Istolia, the development studio established by Baba to work on the game, has also been shuttered. The development team members will be shifted to other studios within or affiliated with the company. Meanwhile, the PlatinumGames-developed Babylon’s Fall has yet to be revealed despite being announced at E3 2018 nearly a year ago. It’s evidently still in development, since the official website still exists. Considering the removal of the official website, trailers, and social media accounts were the first sign of Project Prelude Rune’s cancellation, keep an eye on them for this title.
This isn’t to say all their efforts outside their key franchises have failed. NieR: Automata was a great success, with Square Enix confirming that it’s sold over four million copies worldwide. It’s a nice surprise compared to sales of the first game, which likely didn’t reach a quarter of that. Octopath Traveler also turned out well, though it’s mysteriously absent from the company’s financial results. I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear apparently performed okay at best, but developer Tokyo RPG Factory’s titles are low-budget enough that they didn’t feel too bad about them. They’re also giving the studio a third chance through Oninaki, which releases this summer.
If this kind of experimentation on Square Enix’s part sounds familiar, it’s because they tried it before during the last console generation, with similarly inconsistent results. In that time, this resulted in good titles like The World Ends with You, NieR, and The Last Remnant, merely okay games like Infinite Undiscovery and Moon Diver, and pitiful efforts like MindJack. Some titles were also cancelled, like Gun Loco and whatever this project was. They achieved the same results mostly thanks to the quality of the games themselves, but also through market misreading and struggles with HD console development.
But Square Enix shouldn’t give up on this trend entirely, because they’ll need original properties to thrive. Fortunately, they said as much. “We will aggressively invest in new IP on an ongoing basis to enrich our portfolio and enable sustained growth,” they claimed in their financial briefing (see page 30). Hopefully Oninaki does well enough for its budget, and that the aforementioned Babylon’s Fall actually releases. Though Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata abruptly departed at the end of October, the development team at Luminous Productions is still working on the original property he was involved in planning for next-generation consoles.
Game development likely won’t get any easier as development times and budgets increase with more powerful consoles, but I’m hoping Square Enix will get it together regarding new properties. In the meantime, expect sequels for titles that were successful like NieR and Octopath Traveler, in addition to sticking with their ever-reliable franchises. It might be a while before we see the next line of experiments.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
