Why there are next to no Square Enix games on the Wii Virtual Console
A recent interview by Jeremy Parish and Brandon Sheffield with the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (WiiWare) lead programmer Fumiaki Shiraishi and producer Toshihiro Tsuchida has revealed why there are next to no Square Enix games on the Wii Virtual Console, it’s because Square-Enix can ask more money for remakes.
Question: Do you foresee Square Enix doing more in the downloadable space for the other consoles, or will it just be WiiWare for now?
Toshihiro Tsuchida answers: We’re definitely looking into all the other download mediums.
Question: You mentioned in your speech that you initially saw the Virtual Console as the main competition for WiiWare. To date, Square Enix hasn’t really participated too much in the Virtual Console. I think you have a few games available for the system. Is that something you’re looking more into, or something you’ve tried to do and Nintendo has been hands-off with it?
Toshihiro Tsuchida answers: We don’t think the games and the IP that we have have lost value yet, so we haven’t decided if releasing them on Virtual Console is the best idea.
Question: So you feel that releasing older games for the Virtual Console suggests that they’re not as valuable anymore?
Toshihiro Tsuchida answers: It’s a matter of the package — which is downloading. You look at a game, and you have to decide whether it will be better to be sold in a retail store, or if it will be better for download. We’re making that decision carefully for each of the games that we have. It comes down to the games that we think we could make a good remake of haven’t been on Virtual Console yet.
Question: It’s interesting, because the one Square Enix game that has been on the Virtual Console is ActRaiser. This game reminds me a lot of the sim elements of ActRaiser. I don’t know if that means anything, but I am kind of curious about how this became a Final Fantasy game instead of an ActRaiser sequel, because it didn’t originally start out as a Final Fantasy.
Fumiaki Shiraishi answers: I’d like to make an ActRaiser sequel. That would be kind of fun.
Read the full interview at Gamasutra.
I wonder what this means for our chances of seeing the Square-developer SNES game Super Mario RPG on the Wii Virtual Console any time soon? They make it sound like it could be years until people are fed up with Final Fantasy remake after remake before they make all their RPG’s downloadable. Well, if anything, those Super Mario RPG DS remake rumors might come true.
I feel like this was pretty obvious, without SE even needing to say it.
..and I can’t blame them. It’s just business.
Sure, money makes the world go around, still you’re pretty smart if you thought it was obvious. I mainly wanted to clear up that Square Enix fans should not expect any of their classic games on the Wii Virtual Console. It’s sad news for them, but beats waiting for nothing.
