BTEC Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production Unit 7: Understanding the Creative Media Sector

The media sector is a large part of digital entertainment, including television, music, advertisements video games and films. Here I will be talking about a company which is well-known in the gaming industry.

Square and were originally separate companies but then there was horizontal integration, merging them together in April 1, 2003. The founder of Enix, Yasuhiro is the chairman and shareholder of this corporation. Majority of the current company’s employees were previously working for Square, which wasn’t as successful as Enix. Other key members are Yosuke Matsuda, the president and the representative director, where he must report to the board of directors all the time, and Phil Rogers is the CEO for this corporation. Furthermore, both him and are the heads of Europe. They vertically integrated for a larger audience and that’s how their products increased, improving the market and quality in merchandise.

The structure that this company has is the same as others; with Board of Directors, Corporate Auditors, committees etc. The purpose of the directors is to engage in discussions and opinions, enabling them to see what their target audience needs. The reason why board of directors are needed is to handle the performance of Square Enix, as well as being responsible for their government expenditures (the number of money spent). They look at their audience’s stats (profiles) to compare with their competitors and the revenue that they gain throughout the years. Auditors are the ones to handle opinions and evaluate and assess the clients’ work by testing it.

Ownership over the subsidiaries ( and Corporation) was needed as it was essential for the corporation to gain fame and more income to help their games and other merchandise to develop. Their publishers range from Asia to Europe as they publish Eidos’ IPs as well as their development studios (that is ran by them). This company has two main subsidiaries that are based in and Britain. One is Taito Corporation, famous for the which acquired by the company for £4 billion in 2005 and is now the publisher for their software. This benefited both as they gained profit, particularly for Taito as they weren’t gaining enough money at the time.

Kathlynne Camanzo BTEC Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production Unit 7: Understanding the Creative Media Sector

Square Enix Europe is another subsidiary, previously known as Eidos where they had Eidos Interactive who acted as publishers for famous games like , and Just Cause.

Square Enix has successfully allowed indie developers to get feedback, crowdfunding, development and distribution. Young adults, being the target audience of this company, can be attracted by this and this allows more people to look at what people are capable of, maybe the corporation itself could help reach future developers to be successful for the upcoming years.

The audience of this company is people over fourteen years old because they have complex gameplay and many , particularly Final . Even though their other game, has been made by them and Disney Interactive Studios, they’ve had an older audience due to nostalgia and the enjoyment in the gameplay.

This company has become global, with the structure increasing around North America and Europe although the one in Japan still has the most employees. Also, the way they don’t separate Westernised and Japanese things in games are quite successful, For example, when translating their

Kathlynne Camanzo BTEC Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production Unit 7: Understanding the Creative Media Sector

games, they manage to edit or localise features of the game that may offend the target audience, especially if it were to be released throughout the world. Also, Square Enix has several competitors such as , Activision and EA.

As you can see here, you can see the number of projects that this company has been able to do since 2002. The increase of the products sold in North America has risen these past few years particularly due to . When you look at their revenue, it was about £13.1 billion between 2011 and 2012. The number of products that they’ve been able to create have been successful so far, from games to comics and to films. Since Final Fantasy is their top-selling game throughout the years, they’ve been able to make a film called Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which sold 4.1 million copies worldwide.

Kingdom Hearts and (along with FF) are part of the top 3 selling Square Enix games. Kingdom Hearts, being second in place, was able to sell 20 million copies worldwide last year.

This corporation has been able to sell other different pieces of entertainment; online games (on Yahoo & ) and , where they have their own individual digital store by . Surprisingly, 30 million volumes were sold for one manga series which was Brotherhood. Even if they’ve only got Final Fantasy acting as their top successor, they are still able to gain profit through these different products. Merchandise such as ​this or ​this can be sold only for specific areas; Japan, US, Hong Kong and Europe. To conclude, I believe the company will stay the same with its successful revenues because of their continuous amount of Final Fantasy sequels but since they’re only known for those games and Kingdom Hearts, they may lose against their other competitors because of their lack of variety in games. The company has two main subsidiaries, Square Enix Europe and Taito Corporation, and these two have successfully given them more fame.

Bibliography Link

1 http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/10815-square-enix

2 http://www.giantbomb.com/square-enix/3010-104/

Kathlynne Camanzo BTEC Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production Unit 7: Understanding the Creative Media Sector

3 http://collective.square-enix.com/projects

4 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/square-enix-launching-crowdfunding-program/ 1100-6415484/

5 http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/policy/message2010_2.html

6 http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc07/slides/S4672i1.pdf

7 http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/competition.SQUARE_ENIX_(20 09)_LTD.e6ab155d19fb4a7f.html

Kathlynne Camanzo