Square Enix has a marketing problem, and company president Takashi Kiryu wants to fix it.
In a newly released Q&A attached to a November 2023 financial briefing, Takashi discusses two weak points in the Square Enix business. The first is over-reliance on "certain gameplay styles or genres," with a particular emphasis on Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. "The second point where I see us lacking is in our marketing," Takashi adds.
"Not only is content increasingly being sold digitally, but the range of devices capable of delivering content is also diversifying," he continues. "I want us to establish stronger capabilities that enable us to market efficiently in that environment. Because our portfolio has included strong IPs like the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy franchises, we have tended to focus our resource allocation on content development. Going forward, however, we need to strengthen our publishing function, which manages our marketing. I want to focus on putting the right capabilities in place in that domain, which will also involve some hiring."
Last year alone, Square Enix unceremoniously released multiple games with little to no pre-launch communication. 2023 did see surprise hits like Star Ocean: The Second Story R – which I'd argue got a lot of word-of-mouth help, but I digress – but many victims were also JRPGs. Octopath Traveler 2, still one of the best RPGs of a stacked year, launched with minimal fanfare and has seen lackluster sales. Even more extreme, who remembers Infinity Strash: Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai?
The biggest loser of Square Enix's 2023 lineup may be visual novel Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, which was showered in sterling reviews but starved of almost any marketing presence. And that's just 2023; look to 2022 and you'll find Triangle Strategy, a strategy RPG from Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler devs, famously left out in the cold alongside Valkyrie Elysium and several others.
In addition to marketing support, the quality of Square's release lineup has come under renewed scrutiny. Elsewhere in the Q&A, Takashi reflects on the company's strategy of shooting wide in the hopes of finding a hit, and after less-than-stellar results, reckons that Square should now "concentrate our development resources on carefully selected new titles that we will develop to a high level of quality."
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is currently getting all of Square's love, with the marketing team even jokingly taking credit for a green comet that passed Earth for the first time in 50,000 years.
