A note from Phil Rogers, CEO for Square Enix

Today, Phil Rogers, CEO for Square Enix in America and Europe has posted the following note on the Square Enix Blog.

Hello.

By way of introduction, my name is Phil Rogers and I’m the CEO for Square Enix in the Americas and Europe looking after our studio and publishing businesses. I think it’s clear to everyone that the games industry is rapidly changing – there are now more and more ways to play (and pay for) games. Through these and other advancements, gaming is taking a greater part of people’s time, fitting within a broad entertainment landscape which is offering greater choice, freedom and expression. As this industry evolves and changes, we have to change too. 

There’s been speculation and commentary made this year about Square Enix’s strategy in the Americas and Europe, and I know we’ve not outwardly commented or addressed this, so some folk may be confused about what we’re actually doing – therefore I want to try and explain directly to you here on our Square Enix blog. 

First and foremost, we are a games company and today we devote most of our time and effort into developing new and rich gameplay experiences, worlds and characters. At the same time new business models have risen up, which we periodically will try to explore. I know this can be frustrating for some long-time fans of our games, particularly if it seems that we’re heading in unfamiliar directions without much in the way of explanation. Explaining our approach to these opportunities is something we’re working to improve on. That said, we need to experiment and adapt or it’s likely we won’t always be in a position to keep investing in the ways we need, to build-out our games and offer excellence to you, our gamers. 

I can categorically say that we’re not abandoning core, triple-A console and PC games. We’re working hard at improving how we develop our games and how we release them, and I want to explain that in a little more detail.

We’ve recently re-orientated our studio leadership to focus production expertise at the top, to allow us to ship the best quality games possible, faster and with better cost control. We’ve taken away administrative duties from studio heads, so they get closer to the games, gameplay and gamers with fewer distractions. We’ve made these changes to all of our studios in the Americas and Europe and we believe this will improve not only the quality of our games, but also improve the time between releases.

Square Enix is in production with a number of next generation projects, including Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III, which were announced at this year’s E3, and Thief coming in 2014. I am also excited to reveal that we are well into development on a next-generation Tomb Raider sequel – something you may have heard about recently!

In the future, we’ll offer gamers more choice, support more platforms and try new things – but we will make sure that whatever the platform, we’ll always keep our focus on raising the quality bar. We feel that is what gamers should expect from a Square Enix game.  

I’ve spent the past few months building a senior team in the Americas and Europe to support our new and evolving strategy. We plan to share a fuller title release plan with you soon on games ranging from next-gen blockbusters (the above mentioned Tomb Raider sequel) to new cutting-edge tablet and mobile games (such as the recently released Deus Ex: The Fall), to live and online PC games (our now in beta Heroes & Generals).

You will definitely hear more soon about which games we’re working on, when you should look out for them and more frequent updates on how development is going. Please feel free to mail me your feedback. I can’t promise I’ll respond to every mail but you can be sure your concerns will be heard and taken on board. 

Thanks for reading,

Phil.