Namco ex-CEO moves to Square Enix

[Jiro]

Becomes VP of Global Mobile Content.
Interesting to see a big name switch companies, wonder what impacts it'll have. Obviously a sign that SE is going to continue to push their mobile market.

[black orb]

>>> CEOs are good for something? they are just bussines men right?. I have always wondered about that..

[Jiro]

A good businessman can have powerful impacts.

[VeloZer0]

The small percentage of good businessmen can have an enormous positive impact on the company, the vast majority of businessmen are easily replaceable by the vast pool of applicants, and the wrong one will bankrupt you.

[SuperMillionaire]

Interesting... he switched from Namco to Square Enix... I know they're using him to run mobile stuff, but if possible, maybe he can also perhaps get Square Enix to start making Soul Calibur-style fighting games with Final Fantasy characters in the near future?

[Del Murder]

Don't really care about SE's mobile market. A good CEO can make a difference, though, like Velo said.

[Roogle]

Right. We may not see much of this because our mobile phones are underdeveloped when compared to Japan. I mean, we are catching up, at least, but they are progressing just as fast. I don't think we could run higher end mobile games on our current generation of phones. It's possible that we might miss out on a lot of the content produced by this department.

[Mirage]

I don't think Japan is ahead of Europe and North America in terms of processing power on mobile phones, just when it comes to network speed. Mobile games are not huge enough for that to make a significant difference.

Typically, japanese phones have been able to be smaller than ours because they did not need dual network functionality. Because of the low population density in many areas of Europe and North America, it is not viable to have 100% coverage of whatever is the newest network tehcnology at the moment. This leads to mobile phones requiring antennas and stuff for both 3G networks and 2G networks at the same time in order to be usable outside of population centers. In Japan however, the population density is extremely high, so it is much easier and cheaper to build enough network infrastructure to cover 95+% of the population, which leads to new technologies becoming common at a faster rate. However, because mobile phone size today is mostly determined by the size of the touch display, extra network equipment inside the phone taking up extra space is no longer much of an issue.

Because transfer rates have been higher for a longer time in Japan, phones with lots of processing power have been useful for a longer time, but we're not at the point where networks, at least here in Europe, are more than fast enough to justify the same amount of processing power that Japanese phones have. Take for example the newest HTC phone nowadays. It has a quad core 1.5 GHz ARM processor and 1 GB RAM, and is available in Europe and North America. I doubt there are japanese phones with significantly better specs than this, and this phone is just the last model of a series of powerful phones we have seen the last 3-4 years.

[Roogle]

Oh, is that so? Thanks for the explanation. If we can run the games on our mobile phones now, then they should localize them and make them available to us. Somehow, I don't see it, though.

[Mirage]

Some japanese games have seen iOS releases lately, such as Final Fantasy 1/2 and Soul Calibur 1. HTC does however use Windows Mobile or Android as their operating systems, and both of these are considerably more open than iOS. iPhone customers also buy more applications on average, even if the Android install base is larger, this may partly be because the Android OS is easier to pirate on. It is not hard to jailbreak iOS in order to use pirated applications either, but on android you don't even need to do this. You can just download the app on your PC, and transfer the executable to your phone via USB and it'll usually work.

[black orb]

The small percentage of good businessmen can have an enormous positive impact on the company, the vast majority of businessmen are easily replaceable by the vast pool of applicants, and the wrong one will bankrupt you.

>>> Making crappy games will bankrupt you, I still think that game developers are the important people.
Bussines men are just... Bussines men...

[Mirage]

What do you think a code monkey or a graphics artist knows about running a game company with several thousand employees?

Actually, you're a graphics artist, aren't you? Do you know how to run a big company?

Now of course, that doesn't mean you couldn't learn how to do it.

Imagine this:

You're a graphics artist for a team of various artists, and you all collectively find out that one of you should take charge and make sure you're all on the same page, not developing in terribly different directions. You're doing a good job organizing the team, and you manage to make several good games.

As time passes by, you come in touch with some other group of developers. You become good friends with many in the other team, and you can see that they have talent, but they don't have a good leader in the group. Seeing as you have some experience with leading teams like that, you come up with a brilliant idea! What if you help them organize their team, as well as organizing your own team? They think it is worth a shot, and agrees to that. Both teams are working excellently under your awesome leadership, and your two teams manages to make 50% more games than the two groups were able to on their own.

However, because you spend so much time and energy organizing the two teams, you end up having to work 12 hours a day to manage to both lead the teams and produce graphics for one of the teams. But being the smart and competent leader that you are, you soon figure out that if you hire another graphics designer to do most of your old work, and just give that guy you hired some pointers and concepts to work with, you can focus entirely on the huge job that leading several development teams is. And before you know what hit you, you're suddenly a CEO.

[black orb]

>>> Probably, money management doesnt sound that hard..

[Mercen-X]

How old are you again? If management sounds like a simple enough job to you, then that's most likely what you're better suited to do. People may be willing to pay you for your awesome graphics, but clearly it's better suited as a hobby/job on the side. If you really think you've got the cojones to produce quality work and run a large-scale company simultaneously, then you may be better suited to run our country. I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who'd disagree other than you.
By no means am I implying that all CEO's are reliable. The people with said title as individuals each have their own agendas and motivations and can vary in reliability. But the title of CEO carries with it a huge weight in responsibility. Managing a production companies funds is about more than filling out checks and filing your taxes. The CEO has to decide what projects the company can afford to begin or complete and have a grasp on the ratio of expense to potential income from producing that game. That entails at least having a grasp on the tastes of the fanbase. Naturally, the CEO should welcome input from his employees who most likely would also be paying close attention to the fanbase, but in the end the call falls on his shoulders alone.


As for the phones... have they released the VII snowboarding or motorcycle games over here?

[black orb]

>>> This thread is not about me or my graphics, I dont want/care to produce quality work and run a large-scale company simultaneously.. If you guys think that CEOs are that great then good you, I have nothing to do with that..