How many Square Enix titles have you played on the PlayStation 3 thus far this generation, demos aside? Pretty small number, isn’t it? Unfortunately, gamers who have been faithful to the roleplaying giant have had to endure long stretches of time between titles on the Sony platform. Wada has acknowledged the fact in a recent interview, saying that the company is taking too long to make games. When asked if consumers could expect more out of the Eidos brand since its purchase by Square Enix, Wada had the following to say.
"Yes – that’s what I hope to achieve for the entire group," said Wada-san. "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."
While we can’t fault Square Enix for trying to release the best games possible, it’s hard to give the company the benefit of the doubt considering its track record thus far in accordance to recent Metacritic scores. Despite Final Fantasy XIII’s demo gaining worldwide attention and love, Square Enix is going to have to do something incredible to make up for the time it has taken to finish off this title.
"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."
We’ll see Wada, we’ll see.