Square-Enix discusses Console Neutrality and More

Scribbled on July 31st, 2008 by Jonathon Howard
Filed in Interviews, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii

The folks over at GamesIndustry.biz scored an interview with the President and CEO of Square-Enix, Yoichi Wada, in which they discuss Square-Enix’s move onto the Xbox 360 and various other aspects of the gaming industry: Nintendo’s recent success, original IP, other forms of media. I’m putting the here, but I recommend you check out the link for the entire interview.

On Final Fantasy XIII: “We always wanted a lot of users to enjoy the game, so we wanted to put it on the Xbox 360, and we’re happy that we could finally make the official announcement. But more than that, we’ve had a very positive response from the audience, so we’re very happy about that too.”
On Microsoft: ” We’re now in the age of the multi-platform, but depending on age and territory, users have different tastes. Therefore it’s very difficult to just deal with one company or one hardware platform - in order to offer our product to the vast majority of gamers we need to deal with multiple companies and platforms. In North America Microsoft is doing very well with its hardware, and for that reason it’s a very important partner for us.”
On Nintendo (the Wii): “Actually there was a demand for the service, so I was surprised that Nintendo did so well, but I wasn’t surprised that it was accepted - we saw that demand across the world.
On Square-Enix working with Nintendo: ” Actually with the Wii, we also appreciate the core gamers - fans of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. But we have various types of games, with content to satisfy the various types of consumers - not only casual games, but something like learning titles, for travelling, for wine. So we’re ready to offer various types of content to various types of users.”