By Nelson Schneider - 08/10/25 at 04:40 PM CT
Square-Enix, the company that single-handedly boosted both the SNES and Original PlayStation to the heights of gaming godhood, has been in dire straits lately. It seems like all I ever get to write about regarding my two one-time favorite developer/publishers involves them doing something incredibly stupid or half-assed.
Unfortunately, this long-term pursuit of half-assedness has caught up with the former RPG powerhouse, to the point where the company has decided to pivot from a focus on ‘quantity to quality.’ That’s a hoary old chestnut in and of itself, but within the very same business presentation, made earlier this year, the company laid it out in black and white that they will be focused solely on re-releasing and re-making old games until after the third quarter of 2028.
So, if you ever thought what you needed in your life as an RPG fan is a chance to re-purchase slightly-prettied-up versions of games you probably already own on multiple vintage consoles (or emulators), or if you thought Square-Enix’s mediocre DS and 3DS titles just needed the non-handheld treatment to make them suck less, the next three years should be great for you. If not, feel free to join the rest of Square-Enix’s former fans in forgetting that the company even exists.
It has been a LONG time since I bought a ‘Final Fantasy’ game, and all of Square-Enix’s recent fare outside of ‘Dragon Quest’ spinoffs has been pretty dismal. Will the publisher even still be relevant after three years of rehashing old stuff?
Optimistically, maybe Square-Enix is going to force their dev teams to work on rehashes for three years in the hopes that the teams will somehow figure out the magical Special Sauce that made Square’s and Enix’s old games so groundbreaking in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Getting back to basics and letting dev studios learn from the past could, theoretically, lead to the post-2028 releases in the flagship ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Dragon Quest’ IPs to be heavily course-corrected and significantly better than more recent offerings. Furthermore, giving a new audience the ability to experience their Golden Age classics “for the first time” might provide a necessary bump-up in awareness and increase the said new audience’s interest in new games. After all, it’s pretty hard to get an audience excited about a sequel in an IP they’ve either never heard of or consider to be ancient history.
Pessimistically, Square-Enix has been trying to get back to basics for a decade already, and only manage to release tedious, grindy, boring flops when they try to start a new IP, or butcher the core mechanics and storytelling, making each new ‘Final Fantasy’ since 12 worse than the last.
Ultimately, the only thing I really care to see out of Square-Enix over the next three years of rebooting is a Western release for “Dragon Quest 10: Offline.” Everything else from their back catalog that I care about is lovingly curated in my physical media collection, and easily accessible at any time through RetroArch. Good luck to Square-Enix in competing with their own past selves.
