Square Enix to Lay Off Staff in the US and Europe - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 May 2024 / 2,599 Views
Square Enix has part of a restructuring will be laying off staff in the US and Europe, according to VideoGamesChronicle who spoke with employees who attended an internal meeting.
Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu in the internal meeting said the American and European division of the company will be hit with layoffs over the course of the next month.
It isn't known how many will be laid off, however, publishing, IT, and Square Enix's Collective indie games are where the majority of the layoffs will happen. Those laid off will be informed this week.
Square Enix in its latest earnings report said it will be putting less focus on releasing exclusive titles and shift its strategy to release more multiplatform titles for Nintendo consoles, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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If the suit guys at Square Enix think they can pull a Capcom 2.0 they better have a SF6 or Resident Evil 8 type of game in production right now. Something people actually want to play for what it is and not for what it was.
And now that they won't have Sony to blame for their failure they better make everything they can so all their games can be played on Switch so the Switch can put a little make up to the numbers.
They don't have Sony to blame to begin with, it wasn't like Sony showed up with a gun and make FF titles exclusive. SE signed a contract with Sony and got (most likely) a lot of money to make FF titles exclusive.
Sounds like Switch 2 might actually get some AAA titles from Square Enix since they are abandoning exclusive Playstation games now.
Finally a change of attitude from senior management! Exclusivity is only good for the platform owner, but there is no way to accurately predict revenue from other platforms. Switch, XBox and PC benefited immensely, so it's up to Square to produce good games.
Actually there is way to predict revenue, that's the whole point of having an statistics team and a big data team in your company. But you are right about "it's up to square" because their current state is their fault, the big games aren't good enough.
The prediction is not exact. In some areas of engineering, statistics and finance you work with estimates that give lower and upper limits. Many of these estimates follow the Gaussian distribution, however, the Gaussian distribution or any other method and algorithm will not always be correct 100% of the time, as otherwise there would be no investors losing money, products outside the specified limits, industries would get the future scenarios right, i.e. , prediction is not certainty.
I agree that the company calculates sales forecasts by platform, but look... we have Helldivers, Palworld, Baldur's Gate III and other games breaking all algorithms or logic.
Ff8 / ff9 or ff10 remake,
Ff13 hd remastered updated graphics max settings
What else does square enix Japan's main line titles other than final fantasy lol
To all the folks who were praising Squenix for their strategy shift towards mutliplatform in the earlier article, what say you now eh?
Here's a quote from said article: "To that end, it will first work to establish the optimal portfolio, striking a balance between a 'product-out' approach that reflects the imaginations of its employees to the utmost..."
Ah yes, employees' imagination of being fired sure is great for driving a business and lining shareholders' pockets first and foremost!
These AAA outfits are truly pathetics, the whole lot of them.
To Square Enix' defense, they are currently undergoing a relatively large-scale shift in strategy. It is incredibly unfortunate that there will be devs who are laid off as a consequence of this, but this is not a situation where I'll be bashing the higher-ups too hard. It's not like they just reported record profit and are looking to save some extra dollars, this is literally just Square trying to survive. Unpopular take, but this is just how I feel.
It's not like every CEO will pull an Iwata (bless his heart) by cutting their own wages at the expense of keeping their workers happy...as much as I would like for this to be the standard.
