Square Enix plans to release fewer games in an attempt to ensure higher quality games
Square Enix is a major publisher, with many smaller studios under its umbrella. In the past few years, we've seen a lot more games than usual released by Square Enix, which included the likes of Harvestella, Various Daylife, Valkyrie Elysium, Octopath Traveler II, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Forspoken, and more. They also managed to launch a number of remakes and remasters, ranging from Live A Live, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, Tactics Ogre: Reborn, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, and the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, all within the last two years.
Following all this, it looks like Square won't be adhering to such a rapid output, going forward. In an interview that has been recently translated (courtesy of Twitter user Genki_JPN), Square Enix's current present and director, Takashi Kiryu, stated the company's aims to release a wide variety of titles that suit lots of players' genre preferences haven't gone as well as they'd hoped.
As our customers’ needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we have tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than by focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool.
Going forward, the new plan is to release fewer titles, with more structure, so that Square Enix's overall lineup has more quality and focus.
It has less to do with our development function and more to do with the numerous entries in our lineup. I want to structure our development function so that we are able to ensure higher quality from each title by slimming down our lineup.
Right now, Square only has a handful of titles in the pipeline that they've announced, with DLC for Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and SaGa: Emerald Beyond all due out before the end of this year.
Source