Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix Should Have Held Their Own Showcase
The last month has been stuffed full of video game announcements from several companies, to kick off the summer not-E3 season. Companies and developers are making announcements on their own time instead of within the span of five days, thanks to the absence of an E3 2022 held by the ESA. It hasn’t been the solitary event the vocal gaming audience subset wanted, but at least it’s been better organized than the haphazard not-E3 season of 2020. Everyone knows how to handle this a little better now.
Honestly, it’s been a fine month, with good announcements from the larger and smaller events. One company in particular, in fact, had the chance to put on a good showcase and blew it: Square Enix.
Square Enix has announced and dated a staggering amount of software in the last month, more than any publisher outside hardware manufacturers. It’s a hell of a list for what’s been a busy season, one that started with the company announcing Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered through a SaGa stream, an updated version of the original PlayStation 2 game that will come with several new features. This release could have been part of a larger show had Square Enix been willing to plan one, though the SaGa show was still necessary for updates for the Romancing SaGa Re;universe mobile game.
So could all of the other announcements, in fact. The announcements of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth would have still happened on the separate announcement stream thanks to how large a brand Final Fantasy is — and Final Fantasy VII itself in particular. But more details could have been saved for a larger stream. The same somewhat goes for Final Fantasy XVI, the new trailer for which, the first since the September 2020 reveal, was necessary to happen on Sony’s State of Play thanks to how important it will be for the PlayStation 5’s lineup. Again, the further details from producer Naoki Yoshida provided to the press shortly after the trailer could have been saved for a stream. They would have been coerced into showing more gameplay for at least two of these games, but no one outside Square Enix themselves would have had a problem with that.
The same can be said of the games shown on the recent Nintendo Direct Mini. Harvestella was the big one announced, which resembles Marvelous’ Rune Factory with a bigger budget, an action RPG with life simulation content. They’re bound to show more gameplay in the very near future considering the November 4th release date. Dragon Quest Treasures was also fully revealed on the presentation, and the same applies to this as it did for Harvestella considering Treasures’ December 9th release date. There wouldn’t have been much of a need to show NieR: Automata The End of YoRha for Switch again considering it’s just an updated port, though a short preview would have sufficed.
All the other recent announcements absolutely should have been there, instead of on their own streams. One was held for Star Ocean: The Divine Force, the sixth game in the Star Ocean series due for release on October 27th. The DioField Chronicles one happened while about four people noticed, one dated for September 22nd. The game didn’t even receive the pleasure of a post on Square Enix’s blog — absolute top tier marketing. The new Valkyrie Elysium trailer could have been there too, dated for September 29th on PS5 and PS4, and for November 11th on Steam. The developers at Luminous Productions could have also discussed Forspoken, delayed just today for the second time to January 24th, 2023. Lastly, they also could have announced Tactics Ogre Reborn there, now a badly-kept secret after its existence was revealed too early through the PlayStation Store.
This would have been more than enough for a company stream, which raises further questions as to why they didn’t hold one when other publishers that had less to show did. The only reason I can think of is due to the poor presentation of last year’s E3 stream despite including a number of solid titles. If that was the case, the answer shouldn’t have been to give up this year. They instead should have observed the criticism and ensured that the presentation was improved for a new one.
Square Enix could still put on a show, but they missed their best opportunity to highlight dates for the staggering number of games releasing this fall, despite Forspoken’s delay. There’s a chance they could hold a good one during Tokyo Game Show in September, but June was still the opportune time to do so. Perhaps someone will happen upon this feature and keep it in mind for next June, though whether they can do so during a potential E3 return remains to be seen.
About The Author
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
