Square Enix Continues to dominate the PSN charts!

[Aulayna]

I can't believe I'm letting myself get dragged into this but here goes...

I fully understand you but I just do not think it's the best way to look at them as a development and publishing powerhouse.

The product development divisions at Square Enix are in-house as part of the parent company Square Enix Holdings Co. For all intents and purposes they are Square Enix. When a Final Fantasy main instalment is released it comes directly from them which is when people attribute Square Enix as the developer because for all intents and purposes it is a first-party title.

Eidos, Square Enix Europe etc are all subsidiaries and for the large part can probably operate quite autominously of the Holding Company barring any budgets/major projects that need signing off on etc. Eidos Montreal inparticular is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of the Holding Co.

Eidos Montreal developed Deus Ex whilst the parent company of it's parent company took on the publishing role of the game. This is why the Eidos Montreal brand name is on the game to show that it was developed by that studio and to identify it as a product of Eidos Montreal. The Holding Co. (which is what the Square Enix brand name is best known for) had to little to no involvement hence why it is not referred to as the publisher.

The term developer is used to refer directly to the studio that had the most involvement in the development process in the case it is not done in house by the holding company itself. These studios very often have their own PR, back office etc departments and for the most parts are independently operating business units within the organisation.

As I said before there is a very big difference between "developer" and "publisher" and context is everything. In the case of Deus Ex it was developed by Square Enix's studio Eidos Montreal not directly by Square Enix Holdings Co. which published it. Ergo Eidos Montreal is classed as the developer and Square Enix as the publisher.

For the most part being the publisher is a financial investment that's expecting a RoI.

Tommarrow if SE felt like changing the name of one of their western studios to have Square Enix in it, they can. You know why? BECAUSE THEY OWN THEM.

Not really considering Eidos Montreal is a subsidiary of a subsidiary so there is an entire beauraucratic chain of command such a re-branding would have to get signed off on first let alone barring major shareholder approval. Theoretically they indeed could do this. If they did then the games developed by that newly re-branded studio would still be considered games developed by that newly re-branded studio.

Of course you can argue that as Square Enix Holdings Co. own Square Enix Europe who own Eidos Montreal that Deus Ex was developed by Square Enix but that is a rather reductive point of view and does not properly credit the studio who is directly responsible for the game nor the colossal amount of business involved in making it and the phrase developed by Square Enix would generally refer to stuff made by the Product Development Divisions to avoid consumer confusion.

For example if you apply to work for Eidos Montreal you are applying to work directly for them on their payroll which is based according to investment and market performance of that studio, you are contracted directly to them - not SE Holdings Co. - and are the responsibility of Eidos Montreal's HR and business operations teams. Now of course in the unlikely event that whilst you're working at Eidos Montreal you gleam of information of a secret project that Product Development Division 1 is working on and then go and tell the internet - the Holdings Co. has every feasible grounds to start an internal audit to get you ass kicked out the door.

Just how the gaming community bitches to EA when Biware or DICE do something they don't like, the same treatment is sent towards Square Enix when of their Eidos studios messes up (Dues Ex:HR bosses come to mind).

Not entirely accurate. EA gets a lot of flack for it's rather aggressive absorbtion of studios in the early 2000s where when acting in the publisher role the destroyed the IPs of the studios they absorbed by becomming too controlling in the development process. So when EA acquires a new studio and the next product from that studios IP isn't up the par the gaming community has a rather self-perpetuating ideology that the smurf-up was because of EA, not because of the studio - regardless of whether or not that was the case. No-one goes around saying that EA developed Mass Effect or Dragon Age for example because it was BioWare and BioWare were the ones who were getting pretty thoroughly blasted by the community for DA2 and the ME3 endings. It's not like people phoned up DICE going "oh you're part of EA so you're responsible for how bad ME3 was /rage" - see hence the whole context between "developer" and "publisher."

Likewise Eidos Montreal directly got the brunt of criticism through their own social channels for the faults in DXHR and then in turn it was Eidos Montreal's PR guy who gave us the look at DXHR Director's Cut because they are the ones developing it.

Context is everything - the industry is pretty smart at differentiating between the two. Infact the term second-party developers is used specifically for this.

Out of breath yet from all the back and forth? Well...

EDIT: For what it's worth, I still consider Tomb Raider a Crystal Dynamics game, too. Likewise DE:HR a Eidos game. I just also see them as Square Enix games... I don't see it as mutually exclusive.

TLDR Version: This^

But Square Enix's games are doing well so hurrah!