Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Final Fantasy, final fantasy 7, hitman, io interactive, Jim sterling, Square Enix
Jim Sterling Reports On Why Square Enix Made Hitman And Final Fantasy 7 Remake Episodic
Jim Sterling is a personal favorite commentator in the games industry, often looking reflectively on much of the 'nonsense' of the games industry and parsing why it is in fact 'nonsense', better than most anyone.
This weeks Jimquisition is very interesting indeed though. He claims to know sources who have intimate knowledge on Square Enix and why they are currently making their games, including Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Hitman, episodic. He claims that this is all because the studio thought console sales were failing at the end of last generation, meaning that the studio was trying to find new ways to generate money from games for what they expected to be a disappointing next generation. He claims even Just Cause 3 and the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided might have been hurt by this belief. This is also why so many HD remakes come from the studio since.
It was stated, that because the PlayStation 4 has been a knockout seller though, we can probably expect things to get 'better'…unless the episodic model ends up really working for the studio, and then all bets are off.
Of course, this is all a report. The sources Sterling have quoted seemed to guess episodic games over two years ago, but they remain just anonymous sources, so take this all with a little grain of salt.
Take a look at everything Sterling has to say here (oh, and fair warning for those of you new to Sterling…he has some comments you might call NSFW…)