Square Enix sale of Western studios marks the end of an existential crisis | Opinion
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Tuesday 3rd May 2022
Yesterday's news that Square Enix is selling off Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal marks the apparent end of a chapter in not just the publisher's history, but that of the entire Japanese game industry.
About 15 years ago, there was a bit of a malaise in the Japanese industry. The buzziest genres in the industry had been open-world action games like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed, and first-person shooters like the Call of Duty and Halo franchises. Rhythm games were also dominant, although most noticeably in the form of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises started by Boston-based Harmonix rather than the Japanese-developed rhythm games to which Harmonix owed a significant debt of inspiration.
Even as the industry was booming (at least until the global financial crisis really settled in), Japanese third-party publishers across the board were increasingly concerned that consumers around the world were just not interested in the types of games they were good at making.
It was the conventional wisdom of the day, a sentiment so benign and accepted that it was freely voiced by Konami's Hideo Kojima, Capcom's R&D head Keiji Inafune, Tango Gameworks' Shinji Mikami, and Square Enix' then-president Yoichi Wada.
Square Enix went bigger on the Western strategy than any of its peers
The answer for many Japanese publishers of the day was to start making games for the tastes of overseas customers, in many cases hiring overseas developers to make them.
Capcom was among the first to articulate its push to increase its appeal to Western audience, first finding success in 2006 with Japanese-developed games created with Western tastes in mind like Dead
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