Square Enix Montreal

History

Square Enix announced the opening of Square Enix Montreal in November 2011. The studio was led by Lee Singleton, who had led Square Enix London. Their first project was a new Hitman series game for consoles. Singleton said the studio was founded partially to work on such projects and create more high-quality games with Square Enix intellectual properties. The Hitman property, in particular, was to be co-developed with IO Interactive, which created the series and was at work on Hitman: Absolution (2012). Singleton planned to grow the studio beyond a single team to have multiple concurrent projects with up to 150 people, though the studio started with Singleton and three developers from IO Interactive. Singleton planned a slow design process, with no rush to production. The studio also received support from the Quebecois government.

As part of company-wide changes beginning in late 2012, led by a decision by Square Enix to move more into the mobile space and designate a studio to focus on that, in June 2013, Square Enix Montreal changed its focus to mobile game development with an emphasis on the Hitman franchise and tablet computers. It quietly cancelled its work on the Hitman console game that year, and IO Interactive assumed a similar project. After the internal announcement that Square Enix Montreal would be focusing on mobile games, many of the employees left for other large studios, and the studio's assistant director, Patrick Naud, became its director. The employees who remained with the company broke into small teams for two weeks to create game design proposals, with the only restriction that the game would have to be a Hitman mobile title. The winning design for a board game-inspired stealth assassination game, by Antoine Routon and Daniel Lutz, became Hitman Go (2014), and led to a series of similar titles from multiple franchises. Also envisioned in the two week period was a mobile shooting game, originally intended to be a large premium Hitman game similar to the console entries in the series, which became a smaller sniping game Hitman: Sniper (2015). Despite the studio becoming best known for its Go series, Hitman: Sniper became the studio's biggest revenue generator, and its success helped to fund the development of the Go series.

As of August 2016, the studio employs around 40 people, who work in an office originally intended to hold several hundred working on larger games. The smaller size led to nimbler development roles, akin to small, independent developers. As a result, employees who expected to work on a small slice of a larger game's development instead work across roles, such as programmers working on game design. Some employees have stated that the shift in focus to unique mobile titles and lessening of fixed roles within the company has led the team to be more invested in their titles. While the Go series has received the majority of the critical attention and awards for the studio, Square Enix Montreal brand manager Geneviève St-Onge noted in August 2016 that the more traditional title Hitman: Sniper was the company's most commercially successful game. Its success has led the studio to develop its latest Go title, Deus Ex Go (2016), using developers from both the team that made Sniper and the team that made Hitman Go, and also to plan to release updates for the game like were made for Sniper. The company has not released information on its future plans, though based on Square Enix's philosophy of each studio covering its own niche well, they are expected to continue making mobile games. Recent hires include indie developers from games including Hyper Light Drifter and Fez.

Go series

Square Enix Montreal's Go series of turn-based puzzle games for smartphones and tablets released to high praise. Ryan McCaffrey of IGN wrote that the first two releases were the "smartest" mobile games of any console franchise. Sam Loveridge of Digital Spy summarized the series as immensely successful. The games use simple touchscreen gameplay mechanics to move the main characters from each screen around a minimalist board game-like puzzle. With each entry, Square Enix Montreal distills and reinterprets the parent series' essential gameplay elements for the board game format. Hitman Go was released in 2014, Lara Croft Go (of the Tomb Raider series) in 2015, and Deus Ex Go of the Deus Ex series in 2016. The studio has focused on developing games with small teams. Of a 35-person staff, six were dedicated to the development of Lara Croft Go and 12 to Deus Ex Go. The studio partially attributes their success with the series to their unique position of being able to work with major franchises with the resources of a larger company, while retaining the smaller size and flexibility of an independent development studio. The studio sees their work as the converging intersection between Square Enix's AAA tradition and reputable mobile games.