In a November financial briefing picked up on by My Nintendo News, Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu said that he wants to structure Square Enix "to ensure higher quality from each title by slimming down our lineup." It's the exact kind of thing CEOs say all the time, and most videogame publishers seem to vacillate between fewer, bigger games and more small games every half decade or so. But based on Square Enix's output over the last few years, a slimmed-down lineup would eliminate most of the publisher's games that are actually worth paying attention to.
Square Enix has had a volatile, well, decade in the games business. There seems to be a "throw everything at the wall" mentality over at Square Enix HQ, which has resulted in a few genuinely great and surprising games, and a few pitches so embarrassing you have to wonder how the hell they got the green light. This spaghetti-based idiom can only extend so far, you know, and I think at a few points in the last 10 years Square Enix has thrown some bowling balls straight through the wall of common sense. Final Fantasy 15's strung out development, Forspoken's memed-on writing, Marvel's Avengers' memed-on… everything. Selling IO Interactive, only to turn around and watch the studio crush it with Hitman 2 and 3.
