Square Enix recently had an earnings briefing, and the Final Fantasy publisher revealed some insight into their plans for growth. It seems the company hopes to make strides in Japan as well as North America and Europe. And there also seem to be some plans for a few brand new IPs.
Though the overall profits in North America and Europe were lower than in Japan, the increase ratio was lower in the latter. This indicates that Square Enix hopes to continue to expand in North American and PAL regions as the market is steadily increasing. In addition to physical growth internationally, Square Enix also has plans to increase revenue in the online space. By becoming “network centric,” the company hopes to release more DLC for their games, provide more downloadable titles, and give new life to their MMOs–which we can probably assume includes Final Fantasy XIV.
The biggest news coming from this earnings report has to be the apparent plan for creating brand new IPs. The top franchises from Square Enix are currently Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Hitman. The company’s plans include five “target additions” to their library of franchises.
As it stands, two of these new franchises are to be developed by Square Enix’s Tokyo studios. Eidos Montreal, IO Interactive, and Wimbledon will handle development of three more IPs. Currently, the company has yet to reveal any hard details regarding upcoming series, but gamers can probably expect some new franchises to launch, hopefully in the near future. I would want to see some new action-adventure games developed by Crystal Dynamics, but sadly, that developer was left out of the plans to create new series.
Things are definitely going to get interesting as Square decides on what franchises to launch in the future.
