After rebooting Final Fantasy 7 as the trilogy of Remake, Rebirth and Really, You Went With That? (TBC), Square Enix are now planning to reboot themselves. Among the publishers’ revamped approach to making money – following a recent drop in profits, per their latest financials – is a more “aggressive” approach to bringing their games to more platforms than specific consoles (in other words, PlayStation) as exclusives, with a particular focus on “win[ning] over PC users”.
The New Medium-term Business Plan, which is also referred to in the presentation as “Square Enix Reboots, and Awakens” – which I especially like for how much it sounds like it could’ve come from a Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts trailer – plans to spend the next three years shifting “from quantity to quality”. (Thanks, Eurogamer.)
In a pleasing corporate balm to other multi-million/billion/trillion companies shutting down their more experimental projects that don’t instantly make a gazillion dollars, Square Enix say they will “be bold in attempting to create new IP, prioritizing novel forms of excitement and striking the right balance with earnings potential”, giving “bringing smiles to our customers’ faces” top billing to boost players’ loyalty to existing series while also releasing “mid-class” titles that aim to increase the company’s “hit rate”.
Part of the effort to grow existing audiences for their franchises and win over some new players to boot is an “aggressive” multiplatform push that aims to “build an environment where more customers can enjoy our titles in regards to major franchises and AAA titles”. That certainly sounds like corpo-talk for putting out games across more platforms than just PlayStation – the presentation mentions PC alongside Xbox and Nintendo consoles.
PC in particular is a real point of attention for Square Enix, as they say they will “pursue initiatives designed to win over PC users”, adding that PC is a “growth market” for the company – hard to argue with that, given how long we’ve been waiting for Final Fantasy 16 on PC now, with the currently PS5-exclusive Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth yet to even be officially confirmed to follow FF7 Remake over onto PC at some point.
It won’t just be console games that make their way over onto PC, mind. Square also plan to consider PC releases for their mobile games, starting with the already revealed Steam launch for gacha spin-off Final Fantasy Ever Crisis.
It’s not like Square Enix or Final Fantasy have a particularly weak showing on PC – though that arguably is largely thanks to the ongoing success of Final Fantasy XIV, while PC ports for the more mainline Final Fantasy games have been of more mixed quality and showing over the years. If this increased dedication to bringing games to PC more quickly and with higher quality pays off, who knows – perhaps we’ll even see the third FF7 Remake game land day and date with its console release. We can but dream (and give us Rebirth sooner, at least).