Square-Enix Europe Boss Talks About Closures

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
17,672
0
0
Square-Enix Europe Boss Talks About Closures



Following a spate of cuts and closures, Square-Enix Europe boss Phil Rogers has talked about the company's cost cutting measures.

Making cuts to a workforce is always going to raise questions, and Square-Enix has made a lot of cuts recently. In a Q&A session with Develop [http://www.develop-online.net/news/34564/Square-Enix-comes-clean-on-cuts-Hungary-closure], Square-Enix Europe CEO Phil Rogers answered a number of questions about the cuts to Io Interactive and Beautiful Game Studios, and confirmed for the first time that Eidos Hungary - makers of the Battlestations games - had been closed.

"We took the decision back in October," he said, "and this all goes back to the broad strategy of focusing on games that are either first or best. We were pleased with Eidos Hungary, but I think we realized that to be first or best in the RTS genre was going to be really challenging. It wasn't necessarily something we were going to win. On the balance of all that we decided that we would focus elsewhere and not move forward with the Battlestations IP and Eidos Hungary."

Rogers also said that Beautiful Game Studios still had a role to play as a development and research hub, despite the loss of most of its programmers, and that Io Interactive had had "surpluses", but that the developer still had the capability to develop multiple projects

Rogers was also asked if he anticipated more cuts, to which he said: "I don't think right now I would use the word anticipate, I would say that we are in a world of constant change. The industry used to work in this cycle where there would be these set function changes every four or five years ... In terms of that kind of change, yes these things are going to be constantly looked at. There's nothing imminent on the horizon, but I think anyone in our industry today is got to look at all the opportunities that are emerging."

Source: Develop [http://www.develop-online.net/news/34564/Square-Enix-comes-clean-on-cuts-Hungary-closure]


Permalink
 

Delusibeta

Reachin' out...
Mar 7, 2010
2,594
0
0
R.I.P. Battlestations and presumably Championship Manager. Although I don't think either of them were very good.
 

Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
5,630
0
0
Shame to lose a good studio. Just shows how bad industry is at eight now.

Feels like everyone is feeling the pinch
 

Awexsome

Were it so easy
Mar 25, 2009
1,549
0
0
Aw... Battlestations? Midway was good, Pacific was good... kinda. Took some steps forward and tooks some steps back.

The two big issues I had with Pacific was the incredibly easy aiming system and the broken multiplayer. When crashing your planes into the ocean to rebuild new free ones from your endless supplies instantly is more efficient than actually landing them on your airfield/carrier to resupply... something's gone wrong.

It's a shame though because you don't see many WW2 games centered around naval combat... deploying a massive Iowa class battleship and utterly destroying anything that came within range was always satisfying... even if in multiplayer any ship you destroyed instantly respawned at the other team's base...
 

Midway Modders

New member
Apr 22, 2010
1
0
0
They deserved for it. For their ignorance in relation to small Battlestations community. In 2009 they released second game -Pacific - and it was not that, what we expected, except that this game has really nice graphic. Dissapointed battlestations players decided go back to Midway and create their own content to keep this game alive. After releasing 11 new maps for Battlestations Midway multiplayer (and that game was really hard to modify!) we contacted with Eidos, and they gives us nothing. No help no support no software NOTHING Remember Valve or EA Games support for modders? So... for their ignorance and pissing on community - they deserved for it. Bye Eidos Hungary and never go back.