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Square Enix Targeting Simultaneous Global Releases

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

November 18, 2009

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Square Enix is reportedly prepared to delay game releases in Japan to ensure simultaneous worldwide product launches going forward.

"For the last three years, we have worked very hard to close the gap between Japanese release timing and North American and European release timing," Square CEO Yoichi Wada told Ars Technica following his Montreal International Game Summit keynote, in which he laid out the publisher’s new globally minded strategy.

While Final Fantasy XIII will debut in Japan this December and then in Europe and North America in March 2010 - the shortest gap between regional releases in the series' history - staggered launches look set to become a thing of the past for the publisher.

"We couldn't delay it any longer," Wada said of FFXIII’s Japanese launch. "We tried to go for the global, simultaneous release but that was something that was inconceivable, in a sense. But we have been able to close that release window gap to three months. For us, it was a very big step forward.”

Wada also noted during his MIGS keynote that the first development collaboration between Square Enix and recent acquisition Eidos will likely be created at Deus Ex and Thief studio Eidos Montreal.

Duncan_Stewart's picture
On November 18th Duncan_Stewart said:

The only thing that could make that game better is more spiky haired characters! Been playing a lot of FF7 and Crisis Core recently, Square Enix are a master at telling a story through amazing visuals, lets hope 13 is more like 7 than 9...!

AndyLC's picture
On November 18th AndyLC said:

Dues Ex or Thief with Square-Enix artists would be a treat, though that's unlikely.

Has any other Japanese company but Nintendo been successful with using western studios? The last time Square-Enix made a "made for America" product they lost $110 million or more.

squarepusher's picture
On November 19th squarepusher said:

While I can't think of any successful Japanese games that were outsourced to the west other than the ones from Nintendo, there have been plenty of successful joint-country of origin games.

Resident Evil 5 is one recent example - in the Making Of featurette you can see that nearly all of the facial animation/voice acting/motion capture work was all done in the US - including the orchestral music that was recorded at Fox Studios.