President and CEO Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has admitted his company ”takes too long” developing titles, he criticizes their own management control.
Better cost performance and good quality games aren’t mutually exclusive, they ”can co-exist” with CEO Wada focusing to ”change the mindset” of their developers to this.
Square Enix has now bought up Eidos and while some may complain the European publisher rushed some titles to reach financial deadlines, it’s Japanese owner isn’t afraid to admit it has its own development troubles.
Yoichi Wada says he’s looking to inject confidence back into the Eidos brand of titles. ”Yes - that’s what I hope to achieve for the entire group,” said Wada-san, in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. ”But we at Square Enix also have a problem - it takes too long for us to produce a game…”
”In reality I think the issues we have are basically the same. On one side you might say that because of the budgetary constraints they released the games without having the games polished to perfection, but on the other side we take too long to release the game.”
”So we have the same issue in the management and control of the process isn’t strict enough. Even though we’re producing entertainment products we need to have the right production process in place - and that is something that I’d like to implement across the entire business in our group.”
The issue lies in finding the right balance, being able to reduce the cost of development without diluting the quality of a title - which the Square Enix boss is adamant it can be achieved.
”I personally believe that having a good cost performance and having a good quality game can co-exist - I think that this relationship is actually a positive one. But when you look to the creators they tend to think that if they’re asked to pursue a better cost performance, they have to sacrifice quality.”
”It’s not true, but we have to change the mindset of the creators.”
Does Square Enix sound like they have the right stuff to revitalise Eidos brands?
