Story by Brenna Hillier
Tue, Jul 23, 2013 | 23:34 BST
Just-resigned Eidos Montreal founder Stephane D’Astous has said Square Enix failed to capitalise on its development talent last financial year.
Square Enix had a fairly disastrous time of it last financial year despite releasing a number of triple-A titles – Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs.
Speaking to Polygon, D’Astous said Square Enix failed to translate game quality into sales success.
“We are in a situation that we have great games that could have sold more,” he said.
“They need to attack that very, very seriously. Last year was supposed to be a home-run season, but we didn’t hit a single home run; maybe a double or a triple, but they weren’t home runs.”
The publisher “has some things to learn about how to sell their games”, he noted.
“They have great, great franchises. In my book content is king,” he said. “I’m quite confident in the developer side of things.”
D’Astous said that Square Enix management needs to interface and communicate more with its teams.
“It took a lot of time before some information came out from HQ. It was unfortunate that the senior staff of the studios didn’t really participate in the new strategic plan,” he said.
“My management style is to have your major players participate in building a new strategic plan. But that wasn’t the case and it was then very hard to have the buy-in of the plan that landed on our desks. It wasn’t the way I would have worked.
“Communication is very lacking,” he added.
He now plans to remain on vacation until at least September, and noted that his departure from Eidos Montreal on Friday was carefully pre-meditated.
“It has been in discussion for the last few months. I’ve been really communicating my concerns, communicating my suggestions, my recommendations, since March. It has been quite tense,” he said.
D’Astous had plenty more to say about Square Enix; hit the link above for more of his thoughts.
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