It seems as though Square Enix isn't quite ready to jump onto the Next-Gen hyper train with new releases set to be exclusively launched on the PS5 or Xbox Series X. According to a recent investor Q&A hosted by Square Enix, the company will continue to work on games for the current generation of consoles, likely to keep games like the episodic Final Fantasy 7 Remake contained on one console generation.
This news comes from a financial briefing conducted on February 5th, 2020, and is meant to give investors an idea of where the company is headed in the next fiscal year. President and Representative Director Yosuke Matsuda presided as the main speaker, and it would seem that his answer to one of the questions in the Q&A is what confirmed Square Enix's current development strategy to focus away from exciting next-gen features and towards availability of titles.
When asked about the company's intentions with development on Next-Gen releases, Matsuda claims that at the moment, Square Enix is looking to utilize the backwards compatibility that is meant to come standard with both PS5 and Xbox Series X. As a result, the company feels confident in continuing to developing games for current gen consoles for the time being, and allowing the next-gen systems' most compelling feature to offer players the chance to try out these games on the new consoles. Considering the long-term goals for Square Enix's titles like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, a decision like this makes sense from a business standpoint, to keep related games together.
"The next-generation consoles will have backward compatibility, so we plan for the time being to make our new titles available for both current and next-generation consoles. It will therefore be somewhat farther down the road that we release titles exclusively for the next-generation consoles."
The Q&A also came with some important info straight from Matsuda about some of the titles that are currently in development and the future releases for 2020. According to an answer to another question, recent delays likely won't affect the prepared release schedule for Final Fantasy 7 Remake's future episodes, or other releases within the continuing series. However, it should be noted that since this is an investor Q&A and intended to keep those investors interested in the company, some of these statements may need to be taken with a grain of salt.
When all is said and done, Square Enix deciding to hold off on making Next-Gen exclusive content may be beneficial to both the company and fans. At some point, new games will be coming exclusively to Next-Gen consoles, although it seems that even some PS5 launch titles won't be exclusive for the beginning of the systems lifetime. For now though, players can rest assured that upgrading to PS5 and Xbox Series X will be more about features than games when the consoles release this holiday season.
Source: Square Enix
