Wada: Business 'not viable' without new IP

Square Enix global president has added his voice to the argument that continuing to produce new videogames IP is crucial to the future of the industry.

Speaking in an exclusive interview, he echoed comments made to GamesIndustry.biz by Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens, saying that without new IP the "business won't be viable".

But he also added that, as a company with a number of high profile franchises including Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider, there wasn't a need for complete revolution as far as they were concerned.

"As an entertainment company the business won't be viable if we don't continue to nurture new IPs," Wada-san explained. "But we don't need to come up with something that's dramatically new for the existing franchises, because we already have fans for those. If we carefully evolve them, that should be sufficient."

He also explained that the company had learned lessons on the process of bringing new products to market - and that quality is more important than quantity.

"In nurturing new IP, the exchange of culture and technology becomes very important," he said. "In the past both Eidos and Square Enix have made investments in new IPs, but sometimes it's proved to be quite challenging.

"This is probably because we didn't do enough work before the actual production - our priority was to come up with new IPs, so we rushed ourselves and had too many projects coming along at the same time.

"The lesson we learned is that we have to be very selective in that area," he added.

The first part of the exclusive interview with Yoichi Wada is available now, with part two to follow next week.