Square Enix and Eidos May Share IPs

CEOs of developers Square Enix and Eidos recently talked IPs, and how they might be able to swap and work on each other's franchises.

Yoichi Wada and Phil Rogers discussed franchise sharing at E3 with Gamasutra last week, after the completion of Square Enix's takeover of the UK studio and in light of California-based Double Helix working on an existing Squaresoft franchise, Front Mission.

Before I jump to conclusions, is there a possibility that one of the Eidos development teams could work with what was originally Square Enix IP, or vice versa?

Yoichi Wada: I think that's possible. But what's more important is that the two companies, for example, are going to be creating a new IP together.

What's going to be important is to be able to get a mutual understanding of each of the quarters so that we will be able [to create it], and what is going to be born from this new unity.

But I believe that there is also going to be the mutual exchange of the IPs between the two parties as well. That can happen in areas outside of the game as well; for example, Square Enix not only has IP for games, but there's also IP for animation or manga, as well. So those IPs might be leveraged, for example, by Eidos -- in order to turn them into a game.

Or it can be vice versa as well: the game IP that the Eidos team has might be transferred over to the Square Enix team to turn it into a comic book, for example, or animation, or figures as well. And so those are some of the areas that this question concerns, as well.

Do you have any reaction to the idea of potentially collaborating in that way? Or any of these ways?

Phil Rogers: I think the short term opportunities and ideas that we're already thinking about... Certainly, we look at the broad exploitation and management of IP expertise at Square Enix, so the potential to further IPs in that direction is quite clear.

So, figurines, or comics... We have tried this in the past, and had some success, and had some challenges as well, but we should keep working on that direction. I think I'd be disappointed having the same discussion in five or 10 years' time, and we haven't seen that IP exchange. I see that within Eidos today.

And it's an interesting trend, too: three years ago, a certain studio may never have thought about working on someone else's IP, or actually having the confidence to say, "I wonder what this studio within the same group could do with this IP." We're trying to create a very strong studio structure now within Eidos, and have a lot of good exchange and great competition, and I think with that trust we'll see that information on IP exchange. So, you know, I hope we do. I hope we do.

Thanks to NeoGAF.

What franchises would you like to see resurrected/worked on by either studio?