Frisky Mongoose

Square Enix is one of the bigger traditional games publishers in the world, with them owning and developing the venerable Final Fantasy series of games. However, it’s CEO Yoichi Wada doesn’t have a very rosy outlook on the traditional package game product. Speaking to VentureBeat, he said that the retail channel is rough these days.

“There are two issues that have to be distinguished. Will content called “games” survive or not? And what kind of revenues can be derived from games? Today, packaged software sold in stores have fixed prices. Online games can use diverse revenue models. That can help the monetization of games. Of course, we will try to sell more digital content that is not games. That isn’t making up for lost revenues in packaged software games,” Wada said.

He added: “Without changing the business model, it will be difficult to survive in this business. Dependence on packaged software sales may not be viable.”

That’s quite a dire forecast from Wada.

However, he was much more rosy on social games:

“We are interested in social network games. We have produced some and have seen some already. This is an area we need to strengthen.”

To read the full interview, head over to VentureBeat.

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