Ex-Eidos Montreal boss Stephane D’Astous, who left the studio last Friday, has come out firing shots at his former parent company. Eidos Montreal is the development studio behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the upcoming Thief reboot. Their parent company, Square Enix, develops games both in Japan and in the west under their Eidos branch.
In an interview with Polygon today, D’Astous slammed his former employers, blaming Square Enix Europe boss Phil Rogers and other leadership at the company for miscommunication and an inability to sell the number of games that they wanted to sell.
“Obviously our last fiscal year was not exactly a great one,” D’Astous said. “I think that senior executives at [Square Enix Europe] almost started to panic and it was difficult to know what type of changes we needed to do, and it took a lot of time before some information came out from HQ.”
The company has a “new strategic plan,” D’Astous told Polygon, but he disagrees with the details.
“Square Enix is in a tight spot because there are compromises that are made, investments that are made that should not have been and things that they didn’t invest in but should have,” he said. “Communication is very lacking.”
D’Astous said he had threatened to leave if things didn’t improve. “It has been in discussion for the last few months,” he said. “I’ve been really communicating my concerns, communicating my suggestions, my recommendations, since March. It has been quite tense.”
The last year has not been kind to Square Enix — the Japanese publisher has suffered massive financial losses, failed to meet sales expectations, and faced criticism for strange moves like the cash-mongering Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. Back in March, then-president Yoichi Wada stepped down as the company went through massive reorganization.
Things seemed to be taking a turn for the better at E3, at least for their Japanese division — Square Enix’s showing this year was for many one of the highlights of E3 2013.
When reached by Kotaku, Square Enix declined to comment for this story.
Comments
5 responses to “Ex-Eidos Boss Slams Square Enix”
They have unreal expectations of sales. It’s that simple. They are making fantastic western games but expect to outsell CoD. You can’t outsell that, don’t expect to, don’t attempt to.
“Square Enix is in a tight spot because there are compromises that are made, investments that are made that should not have been and things that they didn’t invest in but should have,” he said.
Oh, like sinking all their money into the Failure Fantasy series, and expecting Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to sell triple what’s reasonable to bankroll it? Yeah. Even
gaming blog commentersidiots can tell that.Making mobile games nobody asked for cant help either.
I don’t think you even need to work at SE to see how disorganised they are, the stuff they have pulled in the last 24months has been pretty outrageous to their fans, coming up with those mobile scams (i wouldn’t even call most of them games) and the amount of times they have released FF7 inconveniently until finally releasing it on steam has been a nightmare.
I’m still hopeful SE redeems itself with Lightning Returns and FF15. One can only hope yeah?
ummm its not about miscommunication in how much you want to sell, its the miscommunication in the quality you want to sell,
Quality > Quantity