Square Enix had a big showcase at E3 2019 with Final Fantasy VII Remake, Marvel's Avengers, and other upcoming titles such as Outriders, Dying Light 2, Oninaki and more.
Beyond games, though, E3 2019 saw Microsoft doubling down on Xbox Game Pass with the newly announced Ultimate offering and Ubisoft about to launch its own UPlay+. In an interview with GamesIndustry, Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda said the Japanese company is potentially interested in launching its own subscription service, too.
We are exploring at present both possibilities. And we do already provide games for Microsoft's Game Pass. But at the end of the day, the direction that we're thinking about is having a channel of our own.
That's true. But at the same time that would require significant preparations and investment. We'd also have to consider whether or not it will work well solely including our own catalogue titles. At present, as I say, we are offering our games on multiple subscription services, including Microsoft's. But eventually I do think that we need to get to the point where we have enough insight that we can build our own service.
In another interview with Game Informer, he said that the broad catalog of Square Enix titles would be the main appeal of such an offering, with the classic games from the days of yore being critical.
We're working on that in a variety of ways. That is a request that we hear often. As far as our major titles go, most of those, we still have variations out that you can play now. The more classic titles that you might have played on NES, we are still working hard to make it so you can play those. We actually have launched a dedicated project internally to port those, so we are working to make them available on a variety of platforms.
There is, however, a bit of a snag in that plan: apparently, Square Enix lost the code for some of those titles.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but in some cases, we don't know where the code is anymore. It's very hard to find them sometimes because back in the day you just made them and put them out there and you were done – you didn't think of how you were going to sell them down the road. Sometimes customers ask, 'Why haven't you released that yet?' And the truth of the matter is it's because we don't know where it has gone.
Would you subscribe to a Square Enix service?
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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