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The blockchain is still a “focus” for Square Enix in 2024, along with “aggressive” use of AI in gamedevNew president looks back on “a year of tumult”
New president looks back on “a year of tumult”
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Square Enix
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Square Enix
Square Enix representative director and president Takashi Kiryu has written a new year’s letter outlining theFinal Fantasypublisher’s plans for 2024, while offering a few reflections on the year that was. The topline: they want to do more with generative “AI” machine learning tools, and they’re still dead keen on metaversy VR/AR stuff. The blockchain remains a “focus”, too, though it gets much less of a billing than in2023’s new year letterfrom Square Enix’s previous president Yosuke Matsuda.
“In the realm of digital entertainment”, meanwhile, “the experiential value of digital content itself increased dramatically” alongside the introduction of the latest AR and VR gadgets, and “the next step will be applying these technologies to new forms of content that fuse the real and virtual worlds.”
This sounds like the usual utopic metaverse rhetoric to me, but I will defer to Rick Lane’s VR wisdom. In one of our own 2023 reflection pieces, henotedthat “2023 has gone from being a pretty dry affair in VR land, to a bit of a bumper year right at the death” caveating that “the quality of your harvest depends heavily on which headset you’ve got, and the big question going forward is how much further the existing VR platforms are likely to drift apart.”
Square Enix intend “to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions,” he commented. “In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.”
This echoes recent moves from Microsoft, who havelaunched a couple of generative tools for videogame quest and dialogue writing and aspects of NPC behaviour, and one question as ever is to what extent “generative tools” will be a pretext for reducing team sizes. Microsoft recentlyreached an agreement with ZeniMax Workers Unitedthat gave the union some say over how exactly “AI” is used in game development.
AI is one of Square Enix’s “three focus investment fields” from 2023, the others being “blockchain entertainment/Web 3.0” and the cloud. “Last year we redefined our overarching mission and goals for these three fields,” Kiryu wrote. “We are currently working to modify our organizational structure and optimize our resource allocations to support these efforts.”
Square Enix are also looking into creating “mechanisms that enable us to diversify our earnings sources” with a view to being able “to adapt flexibly to a changing business environment”, which suggests that Square Enix expect last year’s rough wider economic conditions to continue. Kiryu says that they’re working “to vet our existing pipeline of titles under development”, which I interpret as an acknowledgement that cancellations are possible, and are “optimizing our resource allocation across our entire development chain in order to accelerate an effort that was already underway to strengthen our internal development capabilities.” Kiryu hopes to “expand knowledge sharing with the goal of standardizing our processes and enhancing our efficiency.”
In terms of selling and publishing games, Square Enix want to do more to “promote the shift to digital”, and want teams in different regions to work together more effectively, “not only to maximize our sales of new titles, but also to deliver our rich back catalog to more customers and in turn to expand the fan base for our Group’s intellectual properties”. They also want devs and publishing teams to exchange advice and feedback more often, so as “to strike a balance between a product-oriented and a market-oriented approach”. All very dry, but potentially more decisive than any individual swanky new technology.
Here are some things we’re expecting from Square Enix in 2024:the first new Mana game in 15 yearsand who knows, perhaps aFinal Fantasy 16 PC release.
