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Square Enix To Concentrate On Remaking Their Back Catalog
An anonymous reader writes: You may remember that at E3, the major announcement from Square Enix and Sony wasn't a new game, but rather that Square Enix would be remaking Final Fantasy VII in HD and releasing it for PS4 first. Square Enix's recent annual report indicates that they intend to make more HD remakes of old titles. Like many Japanese developers, they indicate in the report that they also intend to focus more on mobile platforms, including porting more of their back catalog to mobile devices. With the impending release of Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix knows a thing or two about rehashing old content, but Square Enix also owns the Dragon Quest, Deus Ex, and Tomb Raider series, giving them a fairly large library to give the HD treatment to.
And wish them well in confusing lots of teen boys and girls.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Essentially they've run out of ideas and need to get on with rehashing everything?
And here I though this might be limited to Hollywood, with their endless reboots because they lack anyone who can up with something new.
Because, really, we don't need to see the Spider Man origin story again.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It's not ideas video game companies have run out of. It's consumer trust.
Gamers are increasingly reluctant to shell out full price for even "AAA" software these days. We're now into, by my personal reckoning at least, at least 7 years of declining standards and/or patchy product quality from even the most trusted studios. 15 years ago Square released FFX which, despite its flaws, was leagues above anything they've done recently, in terms of value, design, and innovation. So, when faced with a choice of the newer dus, or the proven older titles, I think a lot of gamers are simply choosing to go with the classics they know are good, verses the new titles which are increasingly becoming a crap shoot.
It's the same for practically every major studio, declining game quality across the board. Konami with the MGS series, Ubisoft with Assassin's creed, EA with Battlefront, Bethesda with ES, ID with Doom 3 and Rage, EA with Mass Effect 3, the list goes on. Valve have basically stopped making games. Recent years have seen an increasing rate of high profile, high priced duds being released by top studios and gamers as consumers have become increasingly skeptical and wary of new and even existing IPs.
We're now seeing AAA games release with zero-day patches on consoles -- consoles. In 2006 on 6th gen you couldn't patch the game, but now consumers are routinely expected to not only pay for but in fact pre-order what may well be a public late beta. There are only so many times people can get burned before they become permanently skeptical and consequently over-cautious with their money, and I think the game industry past that point several years ago. Square is simply reaping the consequences of it's failure to maintain its brand reputation for quality and value over the last 10 years. So is the entire industry.