Atomix entrevista a Yasuhiro Fukushima, Honorary Chairman de Square Enix

Back when Square Enix's first contest started, the Japanese game industry had just been born. People were making games individually, and those individually made works were becoming commercial products. There were maybe about 10 game development companies operating at the time.

It was an era where the industry was barely establishing itself as a viable business. When I look at Latin America now, it's the same situation — software houses are multiplying. But in terms of intellectual property, the number of companies that have established it is still very small, so I think it's at that early stage.

What I can say is that in three to five years, Latin America will have a fully established game industry, and I believe large companies will begin to emerge there.

The reason I came this time is twofold: one is to decide which country in Latin America to establish a company in, and the other is to make this contest successful. Those are the two reasons I'm here. As for what business we'll run in Latin America — among the contest winners and other talented people we find, we plan to pick them up and develop games for the Latin American market together with them.

We'll be working together with those people to create games — I'm not sure how many teams will form, but regarding this contest, we'll be distributing the winning entries for free. Among those, we see potential for something even more interesting, so we'll develop those together with the creators, release them as commercial products, and distribute them on iOS as well. And if we find other talented people along the way, we'll work with them too to create new intellectual property.

Over the next few years, I believe things will become cloud-based. I chose that direction because packaged games won't grow much in Latin America going forward. Console games will continue, but we'll be putting our strength into the rapidly growing areas like mobile and tablets.

For example, games made in Japan have been huge hits in the domestic market. However, abroad — only a few titles in Europe, for instance — the games made there are very successful in Europe, and we're looking at America too. But they don't necessarily hit big in Japan. The reason is, as I mentioned, entertainment industries are strongest when created within their own country, resonating most with local audiences. So for Latin America, the games should be made by Latin Americans for Latin Americans.

Similarly, games for Europe should be made by Europeans — that's the natural approach we believe in.

Over the past 10 years, the Japanese domestic game market has been stable. The global game market has been growing rapidly, so Japan may appear to be declining, but domestically it's been stable. What people are saying is that Japanese hardware — Nintendo, Sony — those hardware sales have weakened, and that's what gives the appearance of decline. But the software industry has remained stable all along.

Meanwhile, sales from mobile games and that segment have been growing significantly. We were the ones who filed a lawsuit over the used game market. The used game market is more than double the packaged market, and when used games are bought, we receive zero revenue.

This was suppressing our industry's growth and reducing our profits, so that's why we filed the lawsuit. Our industry association also pursued a collective lawsuit. Under Japanese law, users were respected and used games were deemed acceptable. But I still believe that without used games, the Japanese game industry would have grown much larger.

Regarding used games, it's simple. It all comes down to this: people in each country should make games suited to their own country. That's the most important thing.

For example, in entertainment — movies, dramas, music, novels — the entertainment industries that occupy the largest market share in each country are the ones creating locally. Games will be the same in about 10 years. So games made in Latin America will occupy a large share of the Latin American market. That's what I believe will happen. People of each country should make games that suit their country — that's what I think is most important.