Thursday, February 3, 2011

Square Enix Is Struggling, And I'm Not Shocked


I was recently checking out another video game site, and they posted a piece discussing the financial woes of Square Enix. The heads of that publisher, who has created such remarkable games as Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and Chrono Trigger. Not sure if you noticed a pattern there, but Square Enix is best known for RPGs now, which is sad considering how diverse both companies were before they merged. For example, the first Square game many of us played was Rad Racer. For some reason, the only thing US gamers saw from Square on the SNES were RPGs, but on the PS1, we saw games of varying genres from shoot em ups to fighting games, even a few Strategy games were sprinkled in. For some reason, Square became stagnant somewhere and started churning out the same thing over and over instead of creating innovative product. The same can be said of Enix. Enix seemed to struggle with the idea of making anything other than a Dragon Warrior game, as they were the only thing released in the US by them for the NES. This continued a bit during the 16 bit era, where Enix sprinkled a few non RPG titles in here and there, but for the most part, Enix kept churning out RPGs. Upon their 2003 merger, it seems that Square Enix is content with making the same type of game over and over. This is such a tragedy considering how good their non RPG catalog has been through the years. My remedy to their problem is a simple one, they need to branch out. Gamers have grown tired of playing the same same game over and over, especially with prices going up and rental outlets dwindling down to nothing. Find inspiration in what you did in the past, much like other publishers have dome with great success I might add. Konami, Sega, Capcom, EA, and Nintendo have all had success have all had success recently withe the revival or re imagining of classic IPs, why hasn't Square Enix taken this cue? I'll simply say this and be done, There was a reason Square was winning during the PS1's life cycle, and in order for them to win again, they need to figure out what that was. If they don't, gamers won't have to complain about Final Fantasy, because it won't be around anymore.

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