Square-Enix Looks To Expand West

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If you hadn't noticed, many of Square-Enix's releases - outside of the primary installments in their Final Fantasy franchise - have been mostly successful in Japan, but didn't make too big of a dent in other markets. Well, it seems they want to change this as they intend to extend their global reach. Speaking to Reuters at a Tokyo Summit today, Square-Enix's Yoichi Wada spoke about the need to move beyond their traditional borders, and that they intended to do:

"It may be a business alliance or it may be us taking a stake in others, but we need to go beyond traditional Square-Enix. We face competition not only from Japanese videogame companies but from game companies worldwide."

As a brief history reminder, Square-Enix is the result of a big merger between Square Co. and Enix back in 2003; a move that caused mixed reactions from loyal RPG fans. Square had already produced several unbelievable games on the original PlayStation and PS2, and Enix was responsible for more than a few excellent RPGs themselves. Many figured the combining of the two forces would result in even better titles, but most will agree that hasn't been the case (with the exception of Final Fantasy X and a few others). Nowadays, many of Square-Enix's products really only do well in Japan, and Wada wants to up the ratio of overseas software sales from the current 50% to a more profitable 80% within the next 3 years.

It'll be interesting to see what Square-Enix does to reach out to North America, Europe and other regions, so we'll have to keep an eye on any new business developments. In the meantime, we'll continue to look forward to Final Fantasy XIII with much anticipation.

5/20/2008 Ben Dutka

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