John Yamamoto, the new head of Square Enix's European operations, has laid out his vision for the European market. Mr. Yamamoto's most immediate project is turning the London-based Square Enix localization office into a fully functional publishing house for the multinational game company. The first test of this concept will be with the European release of Final Fantasy XI on September 16th of this year. The London office will act as the publishing house for the title, with Ubi Soft distributing the game to retailers.

In the same vein, Square Enix Europe will begin building distribution channels to facilitate game publication. This will allow Square to quickly respond to the European market demands, as well as help push more Square games into the retail channel. The goal is to have these channels complete by the time Final Fantasy XII and Kingdom Hearts II are gold, which is currently slated for the next fiscal year.

In the future, Square is looking to bring a few other high profile titles to the European market. Full Metal Alchemist, a very popular anime and manga series in Japan, where is it is known as Hagane no Renkinjutsushi. There is also word that Macrospace will be working with Square Enix on publishing its cell phone games in Europe, such as Actraiser and Drag-on Dragoon, better known as Drakengard.

The new publishing arm in Europe will help steady company revenues against the decline in the Japanese marketplace. Mr. Yamamoto expressed his optimism for the European market and the potential success for the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series. These two franchises have proved instrumental in positioning Square Enix in the Japanese and U.S. markets. Mr. Yamamoto appears to be banking heavily on these title's appeal, with a sales target of four million units. How much of that target is made up of Final Fantasy XII and Kingdom Hearts II was not revealed, nor was the rest of the European lineup.

Mr. Yamamoto's vision for the European Square Enix office is one of translation, localization and publishing. He has hinted that potentially the newly expanded operations could take a crack at development, but there are no firm plans.