Square Enix Wants All Of Its Past Games Available Digitally
Square Enix is porting a lot of its older games to newer consoles as of late, and that's not by accident. It seems the company has an internal projected devoted specifically to this task, because Square Enix wants all of its past titles to be available digitally.
Speaking with Game Informer recently, Square Enix's President and CEO Yosuke Matsuda talked a bit about the company's massive library and how fans would like to see more older games come forward.
"That is a request that we hear often," Matsuda said. "As far as our major titles go, most of those, we still have variations out that you can play now. The more classic titles that you might have played on NES, we are still working hard to make it so you can play those."
Interestingly enough, Square Enix is at least thinking about offering some kind of subscription service, similar to those put forward by other publishers like EA and Ubisoft. That might not be where the final decision lands, mind you; Square Enix could simply continue re-releasing its past games the same way it's been doing for a while. But if Square Enix went the subscription route, it might feel compelled to offer more recent games, too, and that means more than just Final Fantasy games. There are the Tomb Raider titles, for instance, as well as games like NieR: Automata. Those paired with Square Enix's older classics would truly be something to contend with.
But for some of the older games, Square Enix needs to find the source code first. That's apparently a big problem (and one we heard kept Final Fantasy 8 from coming forward sooner).
"I'm embarrassed to admit it, but in some cases, we don't know where the code is anymore," Matsuda said. "It's very hard to find them sometimes, because back in the day you just made them and put them out there and you were done – you didn't think of how you were going to sell them down the road."
The aforementioned Final Fantasy 8 Remastered is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch sometime this year. We'll keep you apprised of any other Square Enix ports and remasters as they're announced.