Square Enix statement offers olive branch to gamers, reveals new Tomb Raider

In a statement released on its own blog, Phil Rogers–Square Enix’s CEO for the Americas and Europe–revealed that the sequel to this year’s Tomb Raider reboot is “well into development.”

While there are some nuggets like the one above  to be gleaned from the statement, Phil Rogers’s  main concern is addressing gamers’ (and investors’) concerns about the direction the publisher is taking.  As you  may know, Square Enix has had a rough year.  Several recent efforts have failed to meet sales expectations, despite decent sales and critical approval.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the head of Eidos Montreal–the studio that developed Deus Ex: Human Revolution–quit several weeks ago, citing a lack of faith in Square Enix’s leadership as his central reason for leaving.

In reaction to the concerns raised by the gaming community, Rogers reaffirmed Square Enix’s dedication to what he called “core, triple-A console and PC games.”  To address gamers concerns directly, Rogers’s statmement declares that…

First and foremost, we are a games company and today we devote most of our time and effort into developing new and rich gameplay experiences, worlds and characters. At the same time new business models have risen up, which we periodically will try to explore. I know this can be frustrating for some long-time fans of our games, particularly if it seems that we’re heading in unfamiliar directions without much in the way of explanation. Explaining our approach to these opportunities is something we’re working to improve on. That said, we need to experiment and adapt or it’s likely we won’t always be in a position to keep investing in the ways we need, to build-out our games and offer excellence to you, our gamers.

Rogers also shed some light on the actual steps Square Enix is taking to effect these changes:

We’ve recently re-orientated our studio leadership to focus production expertise at the top, to allow us to ship the best quality games possible, faster and with better cost control. We’ve taken away administrative duties from studio heads, so they get closer to the games, gameplay and gamers with fewer distractions. We’ve made these changes to all of our studios in the Americas and Europe and we believe this will improve not only the quality of our games, but also improve the time between releases.

Phil closes his statement by offering his own email address for gamers to reach him.  If you’ve got a comment to make, you can find it in the statement itself.