“In all of the games we will be releasing going forward, some kind of multiplayer element will be incorporated one way or another,” Yoichi Wada, CEO of Square Enix, said to Forbes. "What we will encourage them to do is to incorporate some kind of multiplayer element even in single player games."
In addition to games like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and Front Mission Evolved, both of which are natural fits for multiplayer game design, Square Enix has been adding mulitplayer elements to their RPGs for the past few years.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has a Monster Hunter Freedom-esque ad-hoc mode. Dragon Quest IX has local Wi-Fi and tag mode, an option where players can passively share treasure maps. And Final Fantasy XIV will follow in the footsteps of Final Fantasy XI, a full-blown MMORPG.
Interestingly, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, one of the most talked about games in Square Enix’s lineup, has no multiplayer modes. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is strictly a single player game.
