Square Enix still cold on Xbox Live
Final Fantasy developer likes the look of XNA, but still regards Live as an alien concept.
Square Enix president Yoichi Wada last week insisted that the Final Fantasy developer has no plans to get involved with Xbox Live, echoing comments he made during E3 week when he described it as "completely contrary to our concept of networked business."
"The Xbox Live is a closed network, and we won't be joining it since it's different from our beliefs," he said last week as the publisher announced its first full year's financials since the merger of Square and Enix. His comments won't have come as too much of a surprise - Live may have the critical consensus over PS2 Online and Xbox may be a more powerful console, but Wada looks at it in terms of installed base.
"When you look at the Xbox from the standpoint of a standalone game console, it's not different from the PS2," he said earlier this month. "There is no reason for us to allocate development staff for Xbox when we can have PS2."
However the man at the top of Square Enix has already indicated that his company could work with Microsoft in the future, stating that the next generation Xbox "would fully deserve consideration." Last week, he also expressed interest in development platform XNA. "The recently announced XNA comes very close to our philosophy," he said. "In that sense, we'll have discussions about it."
Microsoft will certainly be hoping that it can lure Square Enix into developing for Xbox 2 and using XNA, having failed to capture the interest of Japanese gamers in recent years despite repeated price cuts, bundles and marketing efforts. With over half a million gamers actively participating in Final Fantasy XI over PS2 Online and PCs worldwide (more than half the total number of Live gamers - and that's without an official FFXI release in Europe to date), securing Square Enix for the next generation, even just as a third party, could do wonders for Microsoft's sales in Japan.
However one feels, based on Wada's recent comments, that the Final Fantasists' interest won't extend to the next generation of Xbox Live unless Microsoft makes some pretty substantial (and highly unlikely) changes to its business model.