To mark the merger of Square and Enix into a single super-entity, Reuters has posted an interview with the new
company's president, Youchi Wada. Within it, he discusses such topics as the continued use of subcontractors to the
old companies under their new umbrella, Square-Enix's preferences towards genres, and the coming financial plans of
the fledgling company. More importantly, however, he also commented quite clearly on Square-Enix's plans for the
Kingdom Hearts series, as well as others. Specifically, he said, "Although there are still some remaining
negotiations with Disney on the matter, we will release a sequel to Kingdom Hearts and make it, Final Fantasy and
Dragon Quest into three pillars of the company." Considering that the first Kingdom Hearts sold roughly 3,150,000
copies worldwide, it had been suspected for some time that a sequel was on the horizon, just never confirmed.
In addition to talk of the pillar franchises of the company, Wada also went on to lay out the production plans of
Square-Enix for the coming years. Within 2003, Wada stated that Square-Enix will try to produce roughly 20 titles for
market and a similar number in the coming years. This would be comparable to the total number of games produced by
the companies while independent, which came to a grand total of nineteen games for the 2002 fiscal year. Also,
among these games, they are hoping to have at least one "mega-hit" per year which may be alluding to the release
cycle for their three pillar franchises.
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