Square Enix is serious about courting Western audiences. Last week, they announced that they would publish Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander 2, a game targeted completely at North American and European gamers. Now, job listings on their site reveal that they're starting a new development studio in El Segundo, California, and that they're hiring staff to work on currently unannounced Xbox 360 and Wii action games.Listings on Gamasutra's job boards state that software engineers in the new studio will have "a chance to make sure that a studio starts off in the right direction" and that they will experience "the creative control of a start-up but the backing and funding of a major publisher." That last statement strongly suggests that this studio will not simply do technical work for Japanese-designed games, but will be responsible for original designs. Maybe this initiative will fare better than Square's other development studio in the US, Square Pictures.
