Square Enix Tidbits: Past, Present, Future

Since Josh overheated from all that newsposting this morning (he's an old man now, he tires easily!), I'm here to pick up with the barrage of news!

First up on the docket is the sad news: Square Enix is laying off a few employees from their office in LA. This shouldn't surprise anyone, given the financial reports we've heard, but the company insists that the layoffs will not impact the release of any games currently in development.

We've all probably been wondering: what's up with all these mobile releases all of a sudden? I certainly am, having had to write up a dozen of them in the past month. The answer? Profitability, unsurprisingly. I'll let Yoichi Wada speak for himself: "In HD games, we usually have a mixture of profitable and unprofitable titles, generating profit as a whole. As for our Social Gaming & Others [division], we only have very few titles that are unprofitable." Accordingly, Wada remarked that the company would increase its presence in the mobile/social gaming market. He was quick to reassure, however, that this would in no way compromise the company's interests in console gaming.

Next is a fun 'favorite character' quiz from the official SE Japanese fan forum. Everyone loves quizzes, yeah? In a surprise finish, Zack Fair (FFVII) came out on top, followed by Cloud Strife (FFVII). While this shouldn't surprise anyone, top ten finishers represented a fair number of games: Zidane from FFIX, Tidus from FFX, Squall from FFVIII, Bartz from FFV (what?), and Kain from FFIV rounded out the top seven. A character from the most recent FF title (FFXIII-2), Noel, came in at 11th, with Noctis, from the yet-unreleased FF Versus XIII, coming in at 19th.

Speaking of Versus XIII, we may soon find ourselves calling the title by a new name. The hint comes from the game's Japanese Amazon page, where it is now listed as "tentative name." We've seen FFXIII Agito take on a new name, and given that the FFXIII project seems to be wrapping up with the third installment in Lightning's story, this potential rebranding seems like a good idea. Will Versus XIII become the next main installment in the FF series? Who knows!

Finally, Japan's Jump magazine has provided us with the first images of Lightning's new getup for Lightning Returns: FFXIII. That's about all, but I'll be darned if she doesn't look more attractive with each title. Due for release sometime in 2013.

Check out Josh's newspost commemorating the anniversary, well-articulate as ever, from earlier today; to all facebook and twitter followers, be sure to check out the CoN homepage for the several other anniversary-related newsposts from the past few days!

Source: Joystiq, Just Use a Phoenix Down, Siliconera, Gamechup, SGCafe