Square Enix is going for bigger presence in Brazil and Russia. The company will make its F2P-games available in these markets in the nearest future.
On November 6, 2014 Square Enix held a briefing, discussing its financial results for the six-month period. The short transcript of that meeting recently became available online and we learned something interesting about the future plans of the Asian giant.
It was stated that the company is trying to reach a broader global audience. In the past the main targets of Square Enix were the regions with higher share of consoles. However PCs and smartphones became more popular in the recent years and Square Enix is trying to seize this opportunity. The company tries to develop different strategies for different regions, taking into the consideration the income levels, the platform penetration and monetization conditions.
Square Enix Regions 80.lv
One of the most interesting aspects of Square’s strategy is touching on regions, which were previously neglected. Among these markets are Middle East, South America (Brazil, in particular) and Russia.
Russia has long been considered a challenging market to go into, however this region is very active with F2P and online games. This region is also home to many talented developers, which are justification to consider Russia in many options, including sourcing for development studios, – says Square Enix representative.
While most players think of Square Enix as of “Final Fantasy factory”, the company actually has a lot of other games. F2P monetization model is the cornerstone of the company’s mobile strategy. While hardcore fans were mostly critical of SE mobile titles, 2015 may bring a couple of very cool products for smartphones in Japan and the rest of the world. Among one of the future headlines is Heavenstrike Rivals, which looks like a real winner.
Square Enix actually has some cool games for the PC-crowd as well. The company (its subsidiary Eidos Interactive, really) publishes Nosgoth – a fast-paced F2P arena-shooter. The game is in the Early Access stages right now, but judging by the looks of it, the product has a vast potential.
There are some fears as to the ability of Square Enix to create and support large F2P-projects. Not every F2P-game from the publisher. A year ago the company was even forced to sell four of its free-to-play titles to Sleepy Giant.
Russian F2P-market is crowded. There is a number of local publishers producing high-quality browser and client-based games. Many western publishers also found success in this region. Crytek and Mail.ru discovered Russia as a perfect place for Warface – a big-budget F2P-shooter. Don’t forget World of Tanks – a real East-European F2P-moster. It looks like Square Enix will face a lot of challenges in Russia but the prize is definitely worth fighting for.
via Siliconera