Square Enix Japan-America Collaboration Working On AAA Core Game

At the CEDEC conference in Yokohama, Square Enix announced their Japan studio and an American developer on the West coast are collaborating on an upcoming game. Yosuke Shiokawa who was the director on Dissidia: Final Fantasy is the creative director on the unannounced title. Yuki Matsuzawa is the concept artist.

While Square Enix didn’t reveal any details, a slide outlines the project’s parameters. Translated bullet points are below.

- Unpublished new large scale project
- Japan-America development collaboration
- Worldwide development
- Intended for core gamers
- Metacritic score over 90
- AAA game

[Kain81]

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[ZombieAutopsy]

Hope so it looked like it was going to be a good game.

Would also be nice if they brought back Legacy of Kain series since I believe SE own the rights now, just too bad Amy H. works for Naughty Dog now as she was one of the main script writers.

[a08andan]

NO. As I said below its "BUNNY SLAUGHTER: PINK REVOLUTION"

[PshycoNinja]

Kingdom Hearts 3?

I mean when Square is in development with its Kingdom Hearts games they have to take a lot of trips to see Disney and get things and approvals from them. Having the American Square, Japan Square and Tetsuya Nomura on the project could have the game come out faster and better polished with both studios working on it.

^^^^Of course this is just wishful thinking.

[darthdevidem01]

Interesting.

One positive is that they are AIMING this at Core Gamers instead of trying to "expand to casuals" which they also tried to do.

Eidos has some decent talent, combined with people from S-E this could be good.

Or it could be another Gun Loco :-D

[Optical_Matrix]

This must be the game they've been cock teasing us about for god knows how long. They need to announce it already. I'm getting bored of hearing "we'll be able to announce it soon".

[darthdevidem01]

Lets hope its a NEW IP.

[PirateThom]

"- Metacritic score over 90 "

Paid off reviews in coming.

[ReservoirDog316]

Haha, why so pessimistic?

[Bobbykotickrulesz]

Hey, here's 100 thousand dollars. Just you know, because!

.... 10/10.

[ReservoirDog316]

Haha

[Chris399]

Square Enix are relatively out of touch though with what gamers want (see: FFXIV). They couldn't even get their flagship title - FFXIII - to score over 90 on metacritic.

Bribery is their best bet.

[Sarick]

I hardly doubt any company in a busyness of making games would say "we expect a Metacritic score of around 40" What I'm trying to point out is most developers think they're making games that everyone will love. The bottom line is dispute what the developer thinks the critics don't always get the ratings they thought they'd be getting.

I just don't see how a developer can make these claims about something before it even hits the reviews.

[ElementX]

SE hasn't had a AAA game for a long time.

[darthdevidem01]

Well many of their games this gen are better than the recycled COD crap pumped out year after year that gets 90 on metacritic easily

so IMO its unfair they haven't had a AAA game this gen.

[eggbert]

its not unfair SQUARE ENIX doesn't have a AAA game, its unfair that COD is getting 90+ scores.

[Troll-without-Bridge]

AAA titles means production values, which FFXIII has.

[clrlite]

Edit: I'd like to see SE focusing more on high quality titles and less on money. However, they do have some life left in them. ::Sick of the corporate BS:::

[Godmars290]

Don't you mean Capcom w/Bionic Commando?

[Godmars290]

Bit sad, more so in fact, that the US and Japan have been in a long term cultural "relationship" and yet are very distant from each other. Like with what happened between the first Project Ako movie, and what the series devolved into as it went along.

In other words, especially considering the current shape Square's in, I'm not expecting much.

[mrv321]

I want to read an announcement that read

'Square Enix working on a mediocore casual game.'

[Chris399]

once you read past the hype. It's probably going to be some bizarre FPS/ RPG hybrid with shiny graphics and unnecessarily complex systems. It'll be entirely on rails, and will ship on launch date with DLC.

The FPS crowd is pretty "casual" these days. (Sorry but with something like COD selling 12 million copies, there's no way that all those people are "core" gamers).

[CimmerianDrake]

You want to read the truth.

[sanshatak]

let it be hitman 5

[CimmerianDrake]

A handheld title.

[a08andan]

Aaaaannndd its "BUNNY SLAUGHTER: PINK REVOLUTION"!!

[B-Zero]

Square has been full of this tripe for years now. They are quickly becoming irrelevant and out of touch. Go back to what you are good at.

[lightningsax]

Square needs to quickly become the developer of Einhander 2. That's what they were good at - they just didn't recognize their own level of shmup awesomeness at the time.

[atticus14]

I wouldn't mind them putting out a mass effect'ish clone. Mass effect is probably one of my favorite franchises of all time, but at the same time I want to take a crap on bioware for going DLC crazy on a game that lasts >10 hours - when at least 2 of those hours is straight up conversation.

I say this because despite that its cool to hate square these days, they haven't plunged into the DLC territory that other big companies have - when they could easily profit from it - and they provide long lasting games by today's standards.

[lightningsax]

I thought of Bethesda, but they have strong RPG intellectual property of their own, they don't need any help from Japan on the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout to sell games. I'm not denying that it would be cool, but it looks like that would be a waste of Bethesda's cash.

I thought of BioWare, but- well... they're finishing up The Old Republic... haven't really announced any new projects lately... man, that would be nice. Wishful thinking, though. That would be a project expensive enough to make Warren Buffett explode.

Gearbox hasn't really announced any solid info on their next Borderlands, but still. You'd want the creative director and concept artist from Borderlands for that - it was successful, they'll go with their old team for the sequel.

Really, it doesn't seem like Square's going to go with an awesome US alliance here - probably just a lower-cost developer or a subsidiary of some games megacorp like Activision or EA. Even then... I'm still interested.

[albel_nox]

As an avid FPS hater I'm hoping SE doesn't try jumping on that bandwagon. I would hate to see my favorite game company adding to the long list of generic shooters out these days. It is bad enough their making that crappy Gun Loco game.

[Aleusia]

You guys are dense. The fact that a 90+ metacritic score is outlined in their plans does not mean they will be paying off reviewers to achieve it. Stop thinking of the worst case scenerio. It's just a goal they have set as a company and it's an admirable goal at that. I am all for global collaboration instead of this East X West divide I have been seeing over the last few years.