Square Enix' NEW Focus on Quality & Consistency - The Square Enix Update

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]All right, gamers. Welcome back to another one. Today, we've got a small update on Square Enix as they recently dropped a progress report on their medium-term business plan, the reboot and awakens, I guess, restructure that's currently going on at Square Enix and has been for the past couple of years now. Uh, these are some pretty big changes that are going on towards the business side of Square and how they approach video games development. And over the past 2 years, I've uh made it an effort to talk about these whenever they do drop. I'll be honest, this one is uh a little less interesting than the normal. Over the past 2 years, these are generally quite exciting uh to read through whenever they do drop every so often. Uh but this one is just uh quite basic, quite calm, but still there is some interesting stuff to sort of talk about here. The first thing that I do want to bring up straight off the bat is uh how the overall progress of the medium-term business plan is going in regards to results. So, we can actually see here that the operating profit for Square Enix is on an incline uh right here with an 18.4% increase to their overall profits, which is a pretty good thing. That is obviously evidence that whatever they are currently doing, the changes that have been made at the company over the past few years are in fact working. As much as things have been quite quiet for Square, you know, we've still got releases coming out here and there and there's things happening. Uh there haven't really been a large amount of like bigname things or things that are making like a ton of noise. That sort of stuff we can expect hopefully starting in 2027 and beyond. But looking at that, that's good. Square Enix will obviously be incredibly happy to see that there is an increase right there to the operating profit. Now, most of the information in this report is really just reiterating what uh the reboot and awakens phase is aiming to do. So, it really is just acting as a reminder, but I do want to bring up this little section right here, which is probably the biggest takeaway from the most recent update. uh really reinforcing the fact that looking at the HD games department. So looking at AAA titles coming from Square, they are wanting to release these on a consistent basis though they are wanting to switch from quantity to quality. So that's kind of interesting. Uh Square are known for just pumping out a lot of stuff and that's you know whether we're looking at both HD or SD. So SD games are generally a lower budget, more so double A, but Square have always been known to like pump a lot of these out. So it seems as if the company are really wanting to shift more towards less releases uh but higher quality products, but at the same time still keep consistency. as it's mentioned here that apparently steady progress has also been made in establishing a framework that enables regular new title launches for major IP and both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are used as the example right here uh giving us a little idea as to the releases for both of these franchises that have uh come out over the past few years. Of course, we know that Dragon Quest is getting a 40th anniversary stream coming up, I believe, on the 27th or 28th of uh May, and there is set to be some announcements there for whatever the next project for Dragon Quest will be. It's very possible that could end up releasing uh within this fiscal year.

[00:03:34]So, either looking at sometime in 2026 or at the beginning of 2027. And we're also pretty sure that uh Final Fantasy 7 remake part 3 is probably going to end up getting announced at Summer Games Fest, likely along with some other smaller titles coming from Square. I really hope that they end up using Summer GamesFest uh as a means to promote and show off their upcoming pipeline of games because things are looking pretty dry right now for the company in terms of releases. I think we've only got The Adventures of Elliot for this year. That is basically it. So, what they're trying to reinforce with this section is that they are wanting to maintain regular releases for their major IP flag polls. And of course, looking at this, this is both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Number three right here, though, would of course be Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts though, as we know, is a special case due to the Square Enix Disney partnership. But I am definitely hopeful that Kingdom Hearts would slot into the same equation. That hopefully once Square Enix come out of the reboot and Awakens phase they're in right now, the company will be able to get Kingdom Hearts uh back on to releasing on a regular basis. Because if Tetsuamura truly does want to conclude Kingdom Hearts's story and retire sometime in 2030, God knows that the Kingdom Hearts series needs a serious kick up the ass in order to release a little bit more consistently. If Square Enix don't do anything to speed up the development process of releasing a major Kingdom Hearts game or really just a Kingdom Hearts game in general, uh then I really think it's going to be a case that Tetsu Numeurro will end up retiring. But the story that he is trying to tell will not be finished. I don't think Kingdom Hearts is ever truly going to end. I think that Square will continue it going forward once Tetssuamura has left. But of course, he needs to be able to finish the story he's telling for his vision and version of the game. So, while the mention of establishing a framework that enables regular new titles to drop for major IPs probably won't really change or shake things up too much when looking at Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, as they seem to get regular content and always have been. Hopefully, this will have a massive impact uh for Square Enix's other big franchises, namely looking at Kingdom Hearts and hopefully Nia as well, as I believe Nia would definitely be probably in spot number three, overtaking Kingdom Hearts if it had a few more games and more consistency behind its development cycle. It is great to see though that both Square Enix and Tekashi Keru are really trying to nail in quality over quantity because God knows there has been a countless amount of Square Enix slop that has released over the past decade. What I do find interesting here is there really isn't any mention of Square Enix's focus towards live service. As we know, for the past few years, Square Enix have really, really been trying to make a successful live service game when specifically looking towards PC and console. And basically, all of them have been DOA, dead on arrival. None of them have been successful and end up ending service very quickly. This is a trend that a lot of studios and publishers are trying to aim for to try and make the next Fortnite. So, it would at least appear that Square Enix might be might be giving up on that front cuz I think that we can all collectively agree when a new Square Enix live service game is announced at a gaming showcase, we all sit there and sigh, right? Like, I don't think there's many people that are that excited to see yet another live service project come out of Square. We really just want them to focus on what they do best. And for the most part, that is singleplayer experiences, specifically in the RPG genre. It also looks like their mobile game sector is slowing down a little bit. Uh not so much towards profits. I think that those are fine.

[00:07:31]It's just that they don't have as many mobile services running as they once used to because as we know like over time almost 20 years now, Square Enix have started up and have killed off an insane amount of mobile services. Now, I think that Square Enix are going to be a lot more selective on what sort of mobile games they are creating and the number that they are currently operating. I think they're going in a direction of less is more. And in my opinion, I think that like, you know, the the less Square Enix mobile slop we have honestly the better. Takashi Kiru, the president of Square, also reminded people that Square are focusing on the multiplatform strategy, especially when looking at Nintendo Switch 2. So, we can expect further Switch 2 support coming from Square going forward. Hopefully, this means both new and old games as well. I think honestly there's actually a pretty good chance uh so long as they can get the optimizations down on Pat that Kingdom Hearts 4 will end up launching on Switch 2. Maybe not day one, but maybe like a few months down the track. I was a little bit skeptical about this and hesitant uh only because of how much optimization would need to take place to probably end up getting Kingdom Hearts 4 to run on Switch 2 given that it's also UE5 and that comes with a ton of problems in itself. But honestly, just considering that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is set to drop on Switch this June and that they got that game functional and uh stable, yeah, honestly that gives me a bit of hope.

[00:09:05]Otherwise, right now we are currently in the final fiscal year of this business strategy of the reboot and awakens phase. So, come March of next year 2027, Square Enix will be beginning a new era.

[00:09:20]And hopefully, this is when we'll start to see the true fruits uh and results of Tekashi Kiru's leadership. Again, I keep trying to remind people I don't think it's fair to start judging Tekashi Kiru's leadership until we've come out of the reboot and awakens phase. So, theoretically, this means that we've got about one year left of uh I call it the great Square Enix silence. Again, you know, there's still been things coming out for the company over the past few years while they've been going through this. I just think that things are going to get really busy, really loud, really quick come 2027. So, that basically wraps up the midterm business plan report. I do want to mention something else though separate to this uh that has recently been mentioned by Naoki Hamaguchi as he's been going around doing a ton of interviews through one of Genki's tweets. This information has uh made a little bit of noise, but he more or less just kind of talked about how he is currently uh one of the heads, one of the leaders of Creative Studio 1. Now, prior to the reorganization, uh, creative studios were known as creative business units or just really business units, and there were a lot more of them. Since then, Square Enix has reorganized a lot of these different sections of the company uh, and have merged multiple different ones uh, under something that is known as a creative studio. So, for example, creative studio 1 uh, is the Final Fantasy 7 remake team and the Kingdom Hearts team. Though, of course, they're still two separate teams. They just fall under the same category. Creative Studio 1 is led by both Katas and Hamaguchi. This is not new information, by the way, but clearly a lot of people didn't know about this, but through Genki's tweet right here, it's created a little bit of misconception, and this is no shade towards Genki. I think he explains the information perfectly fine. It's just, you know, it's Twitter and reading comprehension generally isn't a strong suit. A lot of people took this tweet as Genki saying that Naoki Hamaguchi is now the director of Kingdom Hearts 4. That is that's not the case. Pretty much Hamaguchi and Katas oversee the progress uh for both teams. So there is a little bit of input coming from both Katas and Tayoki Hamaguchi when looking at what the Kingdom Hearts team is doing. But the sole role of directing Kingdom Hearts 4 that is still very much Tetsu Yinamura. And by the way, this is a good thing, too. Naoki Hamaguchi's leadership along with Katas's uh is great. I mean, clearly look at the efficiency of the Final Fantasy 7 remake team. It's insane. So, it's kind of good to know that the Kingdom Hearts team does have a bit of leadership and a bit of guidance coming from these two figures. So, the final thing I want to talk about real quick here is again coming from Genki, and I feel the need to just clarify this a little bit due to the traction that this tweet has generated. Uh, but Genki mentioned that there is no mention of Kingdom Hearts at all in Square Enix's latest financial report. Looks like we'll have to wait a while longer for any Kingdom Hearts updates. I need to make this 100% clear. When it comes to the medium uh term business plan report updates that we get from Square or just general financial reports coming from the company, there will never be a mention or really an indication that Square Enix is gearing up to provide an update on one of their IPs. That's just not the purpose of these different updates and reports that come out from Square. They are not indicative of stuff happening or not happening. I do believe that it's going to be a little while longer before we hear about Kingdom Hearts. Absolutely. I think that the focus, at least it seems to be, that it's going to be on Final Fantasy 7 and Dragon Quest. But what I'm saying here is like never use these reports or these updates as absolute law that something is or isn't going to happen. And by the way, Kingdom Hearts generally isn't mentioned in these reports. Square Enix usually always use both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest uh as example pieces when it comes to these different slides to show shareholders and investors as again uh both of these IPs are the big milk makers. So that's all for the latest Square Enix drop. Again, some pretty, you know, like normal typical stuff, but it's always good to get the scoop as to what is happening. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's video.

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