Today, new Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu sent his traditional New Year's Letter from the President, outlining the strategy for the developer and publisher in 2024.
Within the fairly long-winded message, Kiryu-san briefly mentions the value of virtual reality and augmented reality, opining that the next step will be applying them to "new forms of content that fuse the real and virtual worlds."
He also believes that generative has the potential to not only "reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming."
We hear that since he assumed the role of CEO succeeding Yosuke Matsuda, Kiryu-san has reassessed the entire Square Enix group, receiving feedback from "customers, shareholders, investors, employees, and other stakeholders."
That feedback helped him decide the direction to take to achieve further growth for the company.
In the Digital Entertainment business, which includes video games, Square Enix is working to strengthen both its content development and publishing capabilities.
On the content development size, the company is vetting its existing pipeline of titles under development and creating the capabilities to create "products and services that meet the expectations of our customers more than ever before."
On the publishing side, Square Enix is promoting the shift to digital and bolstering its global publishing capabilities both to maximize sales of new games and to sell more back catalog titles, also expanding the fanbase of the company's IPs.
The company is also working to increase the collaboration between its development and publishing sides to balance its approach between product-oriented and market-oriented.
The goal is to share the views of customers with the developers, enabling them to create content that will make customers "happier than ever before."
Lastly, Kiryu-san talked more about the application of AI to Square Enix's games.
"We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions. In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities."
After a brief passage hinting at the possibility of leveraging the company's IPs via film and animation adaptations, we get the inevitable passage about the focus investment fields of blockchain entertainment/Web 3.0, AI, and the cloud identified by Kiryu-san's predecessor.
In terms of new business domains, we previously identified three focus investment fields, namely blockchain entertainment/Web 3.0, AI, and the cloud. Last year we redefined our overarching mission and goals for these three fields. We are currently working to modify our organizational structure and optimize our resource allocations to support these efforts.
Kiryu-san concludes by mentioning that 2024 will mark the starting point for Square Enix to achieve additional strides forward and further growth.
He intends to organize the company's new corporate strategy in a "Grand Design" and to go forward without fearing change while having a "challenger’s mindset."
Square Enix isn't the only major gaming company that is looking into implementing generative AI in its process. Many more including giants like Microsoft have expressed their interest in the topic.
If you're interested in Square Enix's business performance, you can read the latest financial results announced in early November.
