Takehiro Ando, one of Square Enix's mobile game division's producers used to run a weekly blog on Famitsu App called Smartphone Game ★ Revolution where he discussed various things about mobile game development, including his own philosophy regarding these games and the various things they had planned. The blog was also used for announcing things like Crystal Defenders' 3.0 update or Drakerider/Star Burial Dragnir.
A few months ago the blog ended but today it received a new entry since "season 2" began:
(Yes, all pictures in it are as ridiculous as that one)
Anyway, today's entry is called "Good bye, social games."
In it he discusses how since the release of SE's first social game, Knights of the Crystals, many other similar, or in some cases, identical games have appeared and taken over the mobile gaming platforms, which has led to basically everything being a reskinned version of other games, specially the ones that involve card collecting and gacha. He admits SE is also guilty of this, since they have a lot of games that follow this pattern like Circle of Mana (which came out yesterday), Guardian Cross, Million Arthur, etc. While these kinds of "games" have drawn in a lot of new gamers, the old gamers, the ones used to console and handheld games, are being shunned, which is why this year they're planning on not releasing social games and instead release high quality games that appeal to "hardcore" gamers.
He also discusses other things which I think are not of much importance but maybe somebody will want to go and translate the whole thing, however, there's one thing which I think is really intriguing...
Near the end he mentions that during 2013, they're planning on releasing internally made epic and famous consumer games one after another.
I'm assuming that he's talking about mobile games since the blog is about that, but remember those silly rumors from yesterday about SE releasing Versus, LR, and other "internally made epic and famous consumer games" in a short span of time?
You can read the whole thing here: http://app.famitsu.com/20130306_136349/
A few months ago the blog ended but today it received a new entry since "season 2" began:
(Yes, all pictures in it are as ridiculous as that one)
Anyway, today's entry is called "Good bye, social games."
In it he discusses how since the release of SE's first social game, Knights of the Crystals, many other similar, or in some cases, identical games have appeared and taken over the mobile gaming platforms, which has led to basically everything being a reskinned version of other games, specially the ones that involve card collecting and gacha. He admits SE is also guilty of this, since they have a lot of games that follow this pattern like Circle of Mana (which came out yesterday), Guardian Cross, Million Arthur, etc. While these kinds of "games" have drawn in a lot of new gamers, the old gamers, the ones used to console and handheld games, are being shunned, which is why this year they're planning on not releasing social games and instead release high quality games that appeal to "hardcore" gamers.
He also discusses other things which I think are not of much importance but maybe somebody will want to go and translate the whole thing, however, there's one thing which I think is really intriguing...
Near the end he mentions that during 2013, they're planning on releasing internally made epic and famous consumer games one after another.
I'm assuming that he's talking about mobile games since the blog is about that, but remember those silly rumors from yesterday about SE releasing Versus, LR, and other "internally made epic and famous consumer games" in a short span of time?
You can read the whole thing here: http://app.famitsu.com/20130306_136349/
