Square Enix, DeNA Team Up For Japanese Final Fantasy Social Game

Square Enix and Japanese mobile social gaming company DeNA are teaming up to create the first social game based on the popular Final Fantasy series. Few details have been announced regarding the Mobage title, which is based around the theme of "fighting for teammates," but DeNA said it will be developing the game in-house using familair characters from Square Enix's Final Fantasy series. Japanese players can pre-register for the upcoming game starting today, and those that purchase the newly released PSP game Final Fantasy Type-0 will receive unspecified in-game benefits for the social title, DeNA said. Last November, Square Enix launched Chocobo's Crystal Tower and Knights of the Crystals, its first Facebook titles. The company is also bringing the SaGa RPG series to social network GREE this fall as Emperors SaGa. In a July interview with Gamasutra, Square Enix CEO Mike Fischer said he felt the social gaming sector was somewhat over-hyped, and that the company wouldn't be chasing that particular bandwagon any time soon. "I grew up a gamer, my entire career is in the games industry, so even though right now things like social gaming is already hot, and it's attracting a lot of VC attention, I'm not confident that a lot of that interest will still be there in a number of years as some other category becomes hot down the road," he said.