Speaking with industry and consumer website Edge, president and CEO of Square Enix, Yoichi Wada, has commented on the future direction of Final Fantasy games from the studio.

While Wada believes that the publisher’s latest entry to the franchise, Final Fantasy XIII, is “something special,” he does expect his internal developers to start thinking about moving on to “next generation forms of play”:

“I believe Final Fantasy XIII is going be something special, and that it’s going to be well received by the audience,” said Wada. “But whether we are going to continue to internally create this type of game remains to be seen, because I actually feel that the team that was involved with Final Fantasy XIII should next move on to create and generate some ‘next generation’ forms of play.”

Future directions for the Final Fantasy series may be dictated by pressures not only from fans of the series, but internal developers working on Square Enix’s games:

“Internally and externally I feel there’s an expectation of Square Enix to offer something new,” Wada continued, “and I really think that the Final Fantasy team could create something completely different, but at the moment they’re strictly catering to the particular audience they have now.”

Wada also comments on consumers’ perceptions of Square Enix as ‘the Final Fantasy’ or ‘the Dragon Quest’ company, and how he wants Square Enix to instead become synonymous with ‘high quality’:

“We don’t want to be seen as the company that only has Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest, it’s true,” says Wada, “but we would like to maintain the prospective of the audience thinking when they hear the words Square Enix that they would only think of high-quality games.

“So the only image that we aspire to have is of high-quality, and there is no conflict with that with Eidos in the group. Actually, the people in the Eidos studios have been more worried about the Final Fantasy connection – at their end they’re saying: “Well, actually, our game has a lot of blood in it…” [Laughs] But that’s not a problem to us – it makes their game more faithful to their vision!”

Be sure to read through Edge’s full interview with Yoichi Wada, where he discusses his industry beginnings, (and how, as a gamer years ago, he didn’t realise that Square Soft made Final Fantasy), Square Enix’s focus on the Western market, and changes the president and CEO hopes to implement in the future.