Square Enix: Japanese decline is ‘almost humiliating’

Despite grabbing lots of the E3 headlines with its impressive showing of the new Tomb Raider game, a senior Square Enix exec has said that this year’s show has painted a grave picture for Japanese games development.

As well as Tomb Raider, other stars of Square Enix’s show this week included Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Hitman Absolution – all properties obtained via its buyout of Britsoft publisher Eidos.

Some Japanese IP such as Final Fantasy XIII-2 was on show, but it was heavily overshadowed by the company’s Western developed offerings.

"Because we merged with Eidos and had games like Tomb Raider, Deus and Hitman, as a company we were able to keep face," the company’s senior executive officer Koji Taguchi stated, according to Andriasang.

"But the decline in Japanese titles was almost humiliating. This has been a week where I worried daily about how we can fix this."