Those who follow Square Enix know that in June of this year, Takashi Kiryu became the President and Chief Executive Officer of the ever-popular Japanese video game company. As with any major position switch, especially one of this magnitude, one can expect many changes and new goals to be set within the corporation, and Mr. Kiryu announced these goals at briefing held on August 4. The entire transcription can be found here.
There’s a lot of information to parse through here, the most interesting tidbit is the admittance that Final Fantasy XVI performed well financially all things considered, at least as well as expected, as a big concern surrounding Final Fantasy XVI was its ability to sell up to Square Enix’s standards, especially being confined exclusively to the PS5.
This achievement was in line with our expectations. To expand sales, we have planned a variety of PR activities and other
initiatives to encourage more of the growing PlayStation5 installed base to play the title.
Another note of interest would be Mr. Kiryu’s interest in the HD games market, as well as a focus on existing IPs this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering they’ve stated in the past their interest in remasters.
The big question on everyone’s mind upon hearing this is likely which IPs they’re considering remastering. Of course, the massive hype surrounding the Final Fantasy VII sequels points that the obvious choice would be to remaster older Final Fantasy titles such as the popular classics Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy X. But Square Enix isn’t just a Final Fantasy company, there are several properties under their banner such as SaGa, Parasite Eve, Drakengard, as well as franchises like Front Mission, which recently had its first game remastered on the Switch and PC, with the second game’s remaster on the way.
Indeed, Square Enix has its fingers in many pies, and it will be exciting to hear which one Square decides to put back in the oven.