Square Enix’s chosen test case for the new philosophy it was looking to adopt was The Sandbox, a Roblox-esque mobile game by developer Pixowl that had started life all the way back in 2012 as a fairly normal title. This time the new fad being touted as the mighty solution that would secure Square’s future prosperity wasn’t Kickstarter, but blockchain-based gaming. You see, while Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal were working on Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy respectively, Square Enix was beginning to get involved in a controversial sector that it now seemingly believes can give it the kind of lucrative revenue structure Matsuda eluded to all those years prior. Following these setbacks, the next big move the publisher made with regards to its non-Japanese studios came in 2017, via the signing of a deal with Marvel that would see both Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics develop games based on The Avengers. However, its global expansion efforts continued to hit problems, with new mobile studios in India and Latin America both being shuttered not too long after their openings, with issues including disagreements between the new studios and Square Enix’s Japanese management being cited among the reasons that these investments, once viewed as long-term, barely got off the ground.
The next few years for Square Enix were more stable, with the publisher avoiding any direct repeats of 2013’s disaster. Failed Mobile Expansion and the Marvel Deal These comments didn’t really lead to anything at the time, but they certainly are interesting in hindsight. So, Matsuda argued, game development should strive to financially mirror Kickstarter, by giving players more say in a game’s evolution in exchange for money, allowing games to make profits both before and after release. The problem for games like Sleeping Dogs, described Matsuda during Square’s 2013 financial briefing, is that games of its ilk generally only have one real chance to make money, this being upon release. The man tapped to take Wada’s place as president was Yosuke Matsuda, whose proposed solution to the financial woes plaguing Square’s releases might offer the first historical hint towards the eventual changes in the publisher’s financial priorities symbolised by the Embracer deal. Wada was forced to resign due to the resulting 13 billion yen loss and the publisher committed to spending around ten billion yen on major reforms to stop the same from happening again. The arrival of 2013 saw all three of those games fail to hit the lofty sales figures that Square had predicted for them.
#DEUS EX HUMAN REVOLUTION ACCEPTABLE LOSSES PLUS#
Despite this, global domination was still the aim as of 2012, with Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada banking on a new IP in Sleeping Dogs, plus rebooted versions of Tomb Raider and Hitman to drive the company onwards and upwards. Square’s global golden age, boosted by the historical brand value of newly acquired IPs like Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Deus Ex, seemed to be just getting started.Īs it turned out, the next few years wouldn’t be particularly smooth sailing, with the publisher only bouncing back from a disappointing financial loss in 2011 via the unexpectedly huge success of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. No longer would the publisher be relying solely on its traditional staples of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts, having seemingly swooped in to acquire Eidos at the moment the latter’s stock price hit rock bottom. With several decently successful studios as subsidiaries, including Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal, and IO Interactive, Eidos Interactive had been identified by Square as a prime candidate to help the Japanese publisher expand onto the global stage.įollowing a July 2009 merger, Eidos became part of Square Enix Europe, essentially making concrete the geographical vision the publisher had laid out in a corporate strategy presentation upon committing to make the deal.
Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ is dominating the UK charts and Square Enix is doing some gambling of its own, forking out roughly £84.3 million to acquire Eidos Interactive.
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