Square Enix: OH SH*T, People Like JRPGS. Us: Yeahnoduhbruh.
Don’t get excited! Don’t! But there are signs that Square Enix may actually be pulling their head out of their ass. It’s fucking up there, so it may take some time. Fecaltainment spraying everywhere. A frightening, rumbling sucking sound as their cranium emerges. But after the sales of Bravely Default, the company is all like: wait, people like JRPGs. No fucking shit. Now can we get a real Final Fantasy?
Once upon a time ago, a Japanese company named Squaresoft made lots and lots of RPGs that people really really liked. Today, a Japanese company named Square Enix makes video games.
One of those games, an RPG called Bravely Default, sold a lot of copies both in Japan and in the west, which has made Square Enix realize something very important: people everywhere—not just in Japan—like Japanese role-playing games.
“Due to having split [the development mindset] according to regions around the world, we weren’t able to see this clearly up until now, but fans of JRPGs are really spread around the world,” Square Enix head honcho Yosuke Matsuda told Nikkei (as translated by Siliconera).
You’d think the worldwide success of all those other RPGs over the past two decades might have tipped them off, but hey. Never too late to change your ways. Now here’s the money quote…
“For the new games we’ll be developing from this point on,” Matsuda said, “while this may sound a bit extreme, we’ve been talking about making them as heavy JRPGs. I believe that way, we can better focus on our target, which will also bring better results.