Episodic gaming will work on mobile - Okada

Speaking at the Mobile Game Conference last week, Square Enix president and COO Daishiro Okada told the audience that he believes there to be a major market for episodic content on mobile devices.

In a series of comments transcribed by mobile gaming blog QuicklyBored, Okada said that subscriber-based gameplay where providers constantly release new episodes of the game to keep customers interested in what's happening next could work well on mobiles.

Square Enix itself has had great success with this model in Japan with Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, a title which also reflected another aspect of Okada's strategy - to leverage cross platform development in order to promote mobile gaming.

His comments on episodic gaming came only a day after Epic Games boss Mark Rein told an audience at the Develop conference in Brighton that he does not believe that episodic content will work as a business model for PC or console games, describing the model as "broken."

On the mobile platform, however, users may be more prepared to enjoy episodic content in small regular chunks - and the lower development costs of mobile content could make the business model easier to implement.

Okada also addressed the question of cross-regional differences between gamers, saying that while it is generally considered that US gamers prefer action titles and Japanese gamers prefer RPGs, this stereotype does not necessarily hold true in the mobile market.

Casual gaming extends beyond ethnicity, he said - arguing that a solid mobile game will be enjoyed by everyone, like key arcade titles of the 80s and 90s were.

Source: QuicklyBored