Square Enix president discusses the need to “reform with urgency”

New Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda recently sounded off on the need for the company to “reform with urgency”. Matsuda was speaking with Japanese site Infoseek when he shared the news.

Matsuda’s comments read (as translated by (Siliconera):

“The business model is at a turning-point. Up until now, the profit of home-console games have been decided by price times the number [sold]. Development and sales were divided, and the game developers only needed to concentrate on their work. That’s where the strengths of our company laid within.

“At the very beginning, the game business started out with ‘how can we get people to insert coins’. Afterwards, consoles became popular, and our company grew as game design and billing [methods] were divided. Presently, online games are prosperous, which again, has the theme of ‘how can we charge the people,’ as developers and sales have become inseparable. And the devices they can be played on has spread vastly. It’s truly a paradigm shift.

“Past gaming generation changes took roughly three to five years. Nowadays, released titles are updated every day, and it only takes about three months for a situation to completely change. In order to react with such speed, it is urgent for development and sales to be unified as one.

“Past gaming generation changes took roughly three to five years. Nowadays, released titles are updated every day, and it only takes about three months for a situation to completely change. In order to react with such speed, it is urgent for development and sales to be unified as one.

“The former core was ‘standardization’ and now it has become ‘personality’. An especially important index is ‘asset-turnover ratio’. When making something, developers want to spend more time and money. However, that can be related to lowering the asset-turnover ratio, so the key point is to find a good balance.

“In fact, one of the factors of the final deficit is the delay from the development to release. Such time-lag means a decrease of contact frequency with the players. It is necessary for us to set up a system that allows us to meet the demands of our customers in a more timely manner. We can’t just have a year of leniency. We must reform with urgency.”

“The DNA of providing high-quality content is in us. We will continue to honor this, while changing what needs to be changed. I am convinced we can make this drastic change into a chance of opportunity.”