Square Enix Exec Disappointed By Company’s E3 Showing
Square Enix hasn’t had a particularly good run over these past several years, to put it lightly. Final Fantasy XIV was a major flop and its non-MMO predecessor, Final Fantasy XIII, didn’t perform so hot itself. Square Enix senior executive officer Koji Taguchi is all too aware of this, and even went as far as to trash the company’s showing at this year’s E3.
According to his tweets on the final day of E3, Taguchi is feeling a little humiliated by the decline in quality on the Japanese side of the company. In fact, Taguchi believes that it’s thanks to Square Enix’s recent merger with Eidos that the publisher enjoyed any success out of E3 at all, with Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and Hitman attracting a lot of attention while, in comparison, Final Fantasy XIII-2 went largely ignored.
“Because we merged with Eidos and had games like Tomb Raider, Deus and Hitman, as a company we were able to keep face,” he said on Twitter. “But the decline in Japanese titles was almost humiliating. This has been a week where I worried daily about how we can fix this.”
Taguchi’s comments shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering last month’s news that Square Enix’s earnings last fiscal year (ending March 31, 2011) took a massive ¥12 billion ($148 million/£90.6 million) hit. I’m no business expert, but that doesn’t look pretty.
Thanks, Andriasang.
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Jun 10, 2011
This is surprising. I think FFXIII-2 was a huge hit and will be the rebirth of the 'Japanese' side of the company.
Jun 11, 2011
I totally agree with the CEO. The only one I've been looking to is Dues Ex. The delivery of pretty graphics is there, but the actual Quality of the games lack the rest of the titles all but the FF13 and 14, can't bring them down as a whole. There are many titles held in Japan that is either taking too long to come out for the E3 to save the day.
Jun 11, 2011
FFXIV for PS3 when will it be available and how it will be better would help.
Jun 13, 2011
XIV is truely terrible, I have been playing XI for the past 5 years and you would think after running an MMO for 9 years SE would learn a thing or two. I really tryed hard to like XIV got rank 50 etc and still it's the most boring pointless experience. Yer it looks amazing but that novelty soon wares off!
I think Final Fantasy XII was a step in the right direction, maybe a few tweaks for regular battles so they were more of a challange and a tad more story focus but other than it really had it all! I have played/loved every FF up to XII and still play XI online almost daily but recently I am really doubting if SE can come back from this rut they seem to be in. Looking at XIII-2 it's the most lazy copy/paste job trying to rake in some extra cash…where is FFXIII Versus? Didn't they show it at E3 like 5 years ago… No news of a XV in the works and I pray they have a good hard think before they do make it!
/rant over!