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Gematsu published an article with regards to Square Enix’s recent financial results briefing, including a Q&A with company president and representative director, Yosuke Matsuda.

Among one of the many topics discussed was Nintendo’s hybrid console:

Q: Where do you intend to prioritize allocation of your development resources going forward?

A: We base our development resource allocations on the unique attributes of each platform. In particular, Nintendo Switch makes it easier for us to leverage our back catalog of assets and expertise, so we want to be proactive in creating new IP and rebooting past titles for that platform.

Q: What do you think of Nintendo Switch, and how are you approaching development efforts for it?

A: Nintendo Switch is seeing rapid uptake, and we welcome the arrival of such a platform. We intend to be proactive in our development efforts given that it’s a platform that is well suited to the mid-sized titles at which we excel.

That’s great to hear. So perhaps a new Chrono game? Maybe a new Parasite Eve or Legacy Of Kain? Perhaps The World Ends With You 2 (which has actually been rumored to come to Switch)?

Some of the other interesting questions posed to Matsuda-san were:

Q: Why is the balance of your content production account larger now than it was at the end of FY2017/3 even though
“DRAGON QUEST XI” has already been released?

A: Development efforts for major titles are underway at both our overseas and domestic studios. We will be making
announcements about the release dates of those titles between the end of FY2018/3 and E3.

Q: What do you think of the platform Steam for downloading PC games?

A: Steam has many users, but our games tend to get lost amongst the many titles it offers. As such, we think it’s important
to guide users from our sales website to Steam.

Q: “Left Alive” was introduced in September. What will it cost to develop, and what is the positioning of the title?

A: We want to make it into a AAA brand, but that does not mean that we intend to devote massive development costs to
it. Content-wise, the game will be satisfying in a hardcore way, and that’s how we want to market it to players.

Q: You set a target development lead time of around three years for your games, especially your overseas titles. How
is that going?

A: I believe you will be able to tell how long our development lead times are based on the launch dates we will be
announcing for our games going forward. I will say that we are facing less risk of having to engage in re-work thanks to
the precision with which we are approaching our designs in the initial phase of each development project. I believe that the development efforts for the new titles we will be launching starting in FY2019/3 are proceeding in line with our plans.

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