Square would be another example actually. Especially during the Wada years when console titles were actually cancelled or retooled for mobile titles. After the failures of those mobile titles Wada was forced to step away. Funnily enough Matsuda continued this strategy further when he first stepped on as CEO. However, unlike Wada who seemed to be hellbent on making mobile work Matsuda seems to take much more of a "try and fail" approach to the market and it seems he figured out that DQ and FF will not work on mobile as well as consoles.
Still, Mevius kinda nullifies all that and it seems to be a throwback to Wada's era of making "handheld quality titles" for mobile. So I'm not sure what kind of strategy SE is pursing, but then again I doubt they know either.
I think that's a bit of a misread on their strategy. To me they never abandoned their mobile strategy - as demonstrable from their sea of mobile announcements and releases - but rather just brought mid-sized handheld games back in the gamut of things they make.
Here's a list of business models Square Enix has recently released games in or has in development:
-AAA Retail: Tomb Raider 10, Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts 3, Just Cause 3, Hitman 6, Deus Ex 4
-PC F2P: Nosgoth, Lords of Vermillion MOBA, Gods & Generals, Triad Wars
-Downloadable Games: Lara Croft TOO (haha get it?), Life is Strange
-Smaller Scale Console Retail: Dragon Quest Heroes, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
-Console F2P: Spelunker Z
-MMO: Final Fantasy XIV, Dragon Quest X
-Handheld: Final Fantasy Explorers, Bravely Second, SaGa, Theatrhythm
-Arcade: Dissidia: Final Fantasy, School of Ragnarok
-Mobile: Final Fantasy Legends, G-Bike, 3592e, Million Arthur 2, Mevius, Heavenstrike Rivals, Hitman Go, Hitman Sniper, Schoolgirl Strikers, Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light, Bravely Archive, Final Fantasy Agito, Arcadia no Aoki Miko
Beyond this they have two cloud gaming services and a crowdfunding service.
They're basically trying to do what EA historically did, which was be on every possible platform and in every possible business model. They were a bit narrower in years past, but they decided to make less AAA games (several appeared canceled both in Japan and the West) and distribute those to other business models which we see appearing more prominently again.
Well I was thinking more along the lines that, given the current capabilities of handhelds, that most console games would all in all transition fine (outside of shooters), just lack the HD luster of the graphics but, on that same note, their budgets would be much reduced as you wouldn't need an army to produce the visuals of today's consoles. Mobile offers an alternative for development for smaller groups in a studio to put out smaller titles of other success or otherwise. Of course, there is an issue (as you mentioned) of audience location and how many gamers of certain franchise or game types are simply not on mobile and don't want to be on mobile/handheld.
Yes, exactly. It's the audience expectation (and to an extent, developer expectation) driving this.
Like Square Enix decided to focus more on Final Fantasy XIV and mobile games, and it saw a lot of the people who used to make SaGa game - and were making them at the end of the DS era - leave the company and join a tiny handheld studio in order to make a game like SaGa again. Of course, now Square Enix is actually doing that themselves as well, but that was mostly likely untrue when these people first left.
We also see Koei Tecmo struggling to make a mobile success, even though they consider it their #1 priority, since the people they hired are primarily skilled at console game development. They've had some success on handhelds as well as that's a similar skill set, but not 100% the same.
Capcom's failure, to me, was more of an issue of short-sighted rushing to grab the golden goose in how they approached mobile as if just throwing money at it and a new studio would immediately generate profits. They have a solid franchise in handhelds and I think they'd have been better served spending their money not on immediately opening a new studio for mobile focus but gradually diversifying into mobile with their stronger IPs. I can't play my MH4U on a phone, wouldn't want to ever do such a terrifying thing, but nothing stop them from having some fun minigames on mobile that could tie in to the game proper or just be standalone distractions. An example of this is the Meowster Hunters in MH4U, its a rock-paper-scissors game with very limited control inputs and would work perfectly as a mobile stand-alone that could tie into the game proper. (That would, of course, be more of a down the road thing when the next handheld has a bit more capability in terms of internet and networking.)
Actually Capcom's original strategy was a lot like what you suggested.
Almost all of their mobile games were done by outsourcing studios and were kind of hollow titles that tried to tread on brand strength instead of the strength of the product in and of itself. They even had a conference where they had announced 13 games like this at once, but ended up canceling some as a lot of the initial ones bombed.
Opening that new mobile/pc online studio was a reaction to their failures through the original strategy in a bid to try and increase game quality on mobile.
I realize a lot of mobile games probably seem quite awful to many GAF posters regardless of what they are, but the audience on mobile actually does have distinct tastes and preferences on what they do and don't find fun, and Capcom was definitely failing that taste test.
However, I think your first sentence overall is very correct, and not just for mobile. Capcom has very frequently been a business that tried to find huge profits as soon as humanly possible instead of aiming to build a solid sustainable business. This is why we got 12,000 versions of Street Fighter II, tons of other re-releases and half assed follow-ups, and a general decline in franchise quality as they tried to rush out games and move up release dates for business reasons instead of worrying about the quality of their products.
They handheld their staffing procedures in a similar manner and it caused a lot of their top staff to leave, and when they left, they took a lot of other top staff with them, leaving them with a shortage of both talent and good business leaders.
Capcom changed up their console strategy several times (internal games, then external new IPs and internal existing franchises, then external existing IPs and new internal franchises), and as all those started failing, they tried to switch to the 3DS (where a lot of their games failed again despite some successes), then external mobile games (which mostly failed), and now they're at internal mobile games and internal f2p games.
Given each of these models often take a different skill set, and Capcom never sticks around on one business model long enough anymore to actually get good at one, I wouldn't be shocked if they run into more trouble in the future.
As I see it, with so many publishers/developers throwing their eggs into the Playstation 4 basket, we're going to see more and more studios being unable to survive on smaller sales vs. burgeoning budgets and fatigue, and it would, from my naive point of view, make more sense to put some of those titles onto mobile/handheld where capable and try to foster a new audience than pursue a long-term gambit that seems bleak barring some miracle. Of course I don't mean for them to do it all in one go (again, the Capcom failure) but in a gradual transition of smaller titles making their way to handheld/mobile.)
Oh, no, I think that for many studios you're correct, and I actually do think we see that happening. Just look at the listing of Square Enix's games above and you'll see they're trying to find business models they can use in case one of the business models they're in falls apart, with a bias toward the business models they think they're most likely to find success in.
We certainly see Sega making huge moves toward mobile and digital, Koei Tecmo has noted it's one of their goals, and Namco is already a big mobile publisher (I think they are the #4th highest grossing in Japan if I remember that App Annie chart correctly). Even Falcom has a new mobile division.
There are some developers who have decided to straight up ignore these possibilities though, but for some of them the risk of failing on anything is too great to risk doing anything but what they know (see Nippon Ichi).
What the PS4 offers though is a business model they feel comfortable in and have had success in, and thus something they sincerely hope will survive. It also offers a place to put games they know will make money so they can take experimental risks elsewhere.
My picture of this revolves, a lot, around how BDefault and how it did perfectly well in Japan despite Square barely caring for the thing and Nintendo having to localize it. Furyu's LoL seems to have done fine too, and early on it felt like the 3DS was simply barren of RPGs as if the audience didn't exist for it and no one wanted to try and find out. There's plenty of room and a healthy userbase to welcome smaller projects on smaller budgets, and all the while studios/developers/publishers can still pursue their console dreams if they wish. (I feel like we're seeing, also, more and more successes on the 3DS from indie devs with moderate budgets and games, as they fill in that middleware ground of cheaper but still sizable titles that has all but been abandoned by full development studios in lieu of consoles.)
However, with these two examples, I think we're still in the kind of arena where success on almost any platform is plausible. Bravely Default did around 400K in Japan if we include the re-release and around ~320K-ish IIRC if we don't. That's not a hugely unattainable number on Vita and it's unlikely to be comically huge on PS4. When we look at Legend of Legacy we only have to hit 70K sales, which is very easily achievable on PlayStation consoles or the Vita.
When looking to move to a more successful platform with a better future, the types of games publishers are likely to look at are Puzzle & Dragons, Monster Strike, or Yokai Watch, which are new series that managed to take off for the stars despite not being from an existing license or major series. Those are the types of games that show there's huge success to be had.
If Bravely Default and Legacy of Legend are the bar third parties need, then Freedom Wars and Lord of Apocalypse show the Vita as a sun-filled land of promises.
