Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Recently, the newest edition to the Final Fantasy series was released. The new title Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII joined the popular Square Enix franchise. When it comes to gaming companies, the ones that use test marketing are always better off. The way gaming companies test market is through releasing demos of their games. A demo allows gamers to play a bit of the game without being able to get the entire story of it. Square Enix released a demo for the newest title to the franchise.

I think that releasing demos as as test marketing strategy is a smart move. This allows players to get an initial feel for the game and decide whether or not to purchase it. It also gives the company free publicity because it causes a buzz in online forums. 

chapter 12

Square Enix sells products that all have a search quality. When it comes to gaming graphics, their products have some of the best graphics out there. One key part to a game most people look at are the graphics. The ability to make the characters almost appear real is a great quality. This search quality can easily be seen in a trailer for one of their games or even on the back of the game box. Here is one example.

 Graphics are one thing most companies still need to work on. Especially with me platforms being in HD. Since Square Enix already has wonderful graphics for their games, they can only improve.

Ch. 10 - Product Concepts

Square Enix produces and sells video games which can be classified as a shopping product. Since video games are not sold everywhere, there are few competing places to buy them from. Usually, all game retailers sell at the same price. The two popular product lines that Square Enix has to date are "Final Fantasy" and "Kingdom Hearts". Each title is a series of games so far, "Final Fantasy" being the larger one.

All games of this franchise are related to each other. Whether it's connected by a simple character or two stories collide. This product line is much larger than that of Kingdom Hearts because it started way before. 

Although Kingdom Hearts has a smaller product line, it reaches more people because of its additional Disney characters. Doing this makes it possible to pull in new customers like kids and keep the old ones which are now in their late teens or are adults. Both product lines are doing well at this moment in time. 

Chapter 17

Square Enix like some other gaming companies, use knowledge management to help work on their games. On their blog they leave space for people to comment and talk about any issues they ate having with a specific game or what they would like to see in a new game. Although Square Enix obviously can't put everything that is suggested into a game, they try their best to make everyone happy. By using the comments people leave, the company can immediately fix any bugs or see what they can do better in a game next time. I think that many companies do this and that they gather their information to try to make every product better than the last. I think Square Enix could go a little more out of the way though. Perhaps they could do a better job by possibly having people ready to respond to any problems they are having with one of their products because not many gaming companies do that.