In recent years, it hasn’t been easy being a fan of Square Enix‚ work. From franchise reboots that don’t quite live up to the company’s and fan’s expectations to the mixed optinions about Square’s flagship franchise, there is a lot going on. A recent interview held by the Japanese business magazine Nikkei Trendy indicates that this may change, however.
In answer to the question of whether Square Enix has any plans for globally focused smartphone titles, company president Yosuke Matsuda answered, among other things: „However, regardless of whether they’re for smartphone or console, there’s a difficult element to developing global titles, so we’ll be making them without focusing too much on the ‘global’ aspect.“
He then goes on to talk about how they tried to make games appealing to both Japanese and Western audiences but in the end failed to achieve either. In contrast to that, the recently released Bravely Default has reportedly sold well enough to make Square take notice, despite being aimed purely at Japanese audiences. „Due to having split [the development mindset] according to regions around the world, we weren’t able to see this clearly up until now, but fans of JRPGs are really spread around the world.“, Matsuda continues. According to him, Square will work on what they call „heavy JRPGs“ which are meant to appeal to those fans they rediscovered with the international debut of Bravely Default. Time will tell what kind of fruit this realization will bear.