A little less than a year after opening, Square Enix India is shutting down.
The Indian branch of the famous Japanese developer and publisher was focusing on mobile games. After opening in March 2013, it hadn’t released a single product. According to Polygon, Square Enix’s Latin America studio could soon face a similar fate.
Square Enix has made a big push on mobile. It has released updated versions of old classics like Final Fantasy VI and original titles like the card-based Guardian Cross. Square Enix India was focusing on games for the Indian market.
GamesBeat recently interviewed Rajesh Rao, founder of Indian developer Dhruva Interactive. He spoke about the blossoming mobile market in his country.
“We took eight years to reach an installed base of 80 smartphones, and then this year we’re adding 100 million more,” Rao told GamesBeat. “It’s going to the next level in a very rapid way. We have the cheapest 3G in the world, and it’s going to get cheaper because 4G is coming. We have very cheap Android smartphones coming in. Games are doing good downloads. Recently there was an endless runner based on a very big Bollywood movie, and it did 15 million downloads. I know of three or four more games like that, breaking five, seven, eight million downloads. Last year, India had about 1.2 billion downloads on Android. It’s the fourth-largest market for Android.”
With the closing of the Indian branch, Square Enix will have to count on international hits to take advantage of this growing territory for mobile gaming.