14 DAY TRIAL // Social gaming, be it based around social networks like Facebook or powered by the big selling smartphones, seems to be one of the hottest trends in the video game world, but at least one high-level executive believes that at the moment the hype level does not match the realities of the market.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Mike Fischer, who is the chief executive officer and the president of the United States division of Square Enix, has said, “I grew up a gamer, my entire career is in the games industry, so even though right now things like social gaming is already hot, and it's attracting a lot of VC attention, I'm not confident that a lot of that interest will still be there in a number of years as some other category becomes hot down the road.”
He added that, “I don't believe that there's going to be any one single dominant model in the years ahead. I think if there's one thing that I see now, it's a diversification, and we're a big enough company so that we can't put all of our bets all on one business model if we wanted to, anyway.”
Following the most promising trends as soon as they are being created is not the best strategy when it comes to Square Enix and the CEO says that having a solid team that is passionate about its work is more important than just following what others are doing.
At the moment, the MMO Wakfu is being brought over to the United States market and will be the first foray into the free-to-play and microtransaction space for Square Enix.
Square Enix was a very traditional company until a few years ago, focusing on the development of Japanese role-playing games like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, but the outlook changed significantly after the company has acquired the European and North American operations of failing publisher Eidos.