RPG powerhouse Square Enix is hesitant to jump into the Virtual Console market, says the company’s Shinji Hashimoto in a new interview with Japan’s Nintendo Dream magazine.
While I’m glad that Square Enix is no longer taking the hilariously untenable position that they can’t put games on Virtual Console unless they find the floppy disks with the source code, I still don’t think they’re telling the whole truth.
For starters, Nintendo handles the billing systems, so I don’t see where Square Enix comes in on that one. And while I can’t speak to the success of digital distribution in Japan because Nintendo hasn’t released any worldwide numbers, I hasten to point out that Japan seems to be, at least for now, the gateway to the rest of the world as far as Virtual Console goes. While some games have come out in other territories early, they are exceptions — and Japan releases followed closely behind in all cases, even for US-centric games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tecmo Bowl.
A much more likely explanation — hinted at by Hashimoto’s point about physical media — is that Square Enix is still raking in too much cash by porting its old games and charging $30 a pop for them at retail to want to screw that up by letting people download Dragon Quest for $5.
Come on, guys. If Nintendo — Nintendo! — can bite the bullet on that one, so can you.
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