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[Draugoth]

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In the past fiscal year, Square Enix saw a 70% decline in net profit and posted an extraordinary loss of 22.1 billion yen after abandoning previously greenlit projects that were deemed unprofitable. This was followed by the announcement of a big change in policy – including a focus on quality over quantity and regular AAA releases.

While this new mid-term business plan did include mention of “mid-class titles” too, the emphasis on “high-quality” and “AAA titles” caused people to wonder if Square Enix would be focusing solely on their major IPs at the expense of smaller, more experimental titles. In a recent shareholders’ meeting, Square Enix’s CEO Takashi Kiryu addressed this concern.

According to independent journalist michsuzuki, when asked if the “quality over quantity” approach of the new business plan means no more indie games, Kiryu responded, “If we define ‘indie games’ as casual, small- to medium- scale games – we are working hard on these too. I can’t name specific titles at the moment, but our development pipeline does not only include major titles. Indie game development should not be ruled out.”

Source

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

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[ChorizoPicozo]

lol, no.

"Indie" has nothing to do with "casual" and "scale".
It has to do with (financial) independence.

Square-Enix can't do indie games, they're a juggernaut of a company backed by investors.
If they invest into some indie developer to make a game for them, then it's just "outsourcing".

Anyway, Squeenix will continue with their low effort, low budget outsourced small-scale games.
Games that attempt nothing new, and have barely anything worth to write home about.

how long for SE goes caput? it seems the company has never been able to find a healthy way to be sustainable

 

[adamsapple]

Square-Enix can't do indie games, they're a juggernaut of a company backed by investors.

They can publish games from small indie studios, that's one way they can do it, I suppose.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

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[AzekZero]

"Indie" has nothing to do with "casual" and "scale".
It has to do with (financial) independence.

That doesn't change the fact that a substantial amount of people think Nexon's Dave the Diver is an indie game.

Personally, I've decided to call these small scale, skunkworks projects from big publishers Indielikes. If people think these 'Indielikes' are indie games and buy them because of that quality we will see more of them.

 

[Loomy]

This guy is all over the place in his messaging.

 

[EDMIX]

They can publish games from small indie studios, that's one way they can do it, I suppose.

I agree.

So long as they own the IP, its not "indie" as imho, independent game, is a game where the studio owns the IP and they are in charge o the choices behind the IP.

Can a big publisher publish a indie game? Sure, they can help market, distribute and simply not own the IP, but based on what Square is saying, I don't see that as what that term means and Square might be using that term for lack of a better word or something.

They were better off just saying smaller game, cause I feel "indie" for how they are talking about a genre or something, to them might just mean "smaller" and that sounds like how they are using it here

 

[Ailike]

Remember NFTs? Quaint times.

 

[Robb]

That’s nice, I’m all for having smaller projects between the juggernauts.