Square Enix Boss Talks New IPs Success

Yosuke Matsuda says "many games take off or get their big break at their third title."

According to Square Enix boss Yosuke Matsuda, the third time's the charm for new IP.

"Cultivating a new IP is very important. This is my own personal view, but I believe that it is very difficult to immediately build up a big IP," Matsuda told Famitsu (via Kotaku). "Looking retrospectively at the gaming industry, many games take off or get their big break at their third title. There are cases where the opposite is true of course. [laughs] But regardless, you need at least three games before you can tell whether an IP is going to be really successful or not."

"I call this my Law of Third Titles. [laughs] That's why for the first and second games, you experiment to a degree where you can still be flexible, and if the series has grown enough to be able to expect a big hit for the third game, you expand the scale. If the third title is successful then all is well."

Recently, Square Enix made the surprise announcement of a PS4 sequel for Nier, the action RPG released back in 2010.