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Square Enix Closing Cloud Gaming Company Shinra Technologies
Shinra Technologies, the recently founded cloud gaming company from Square Enix, is shutting its doors.
In a press release (translated by Gematsu), Square Enix said the young company's closure is due to a lack of third-party investors. As a result, the company will report an “extraordinary loss” of approximately ¥2 billion (~$16,800,000) for the end of its fiscal year in March.
Shinra Technologies was founded in 2014 and is affiliated with Just Cause 3 developer, Avalanche. The Final Fantasy VII reference of Avalanche and Shinra was not lost on the company, and we talked to them about the clever naming reference here. For more on Shinra Technologies, you can head here to learn about its now former intentions.
Update: We've removed the "report" tag from this story as Shinra Technologies' former production coordinator has confirmed the closure.
So yeah, this happened to me today: https://t.co/tRzV1ZVFR1 Job offers welcome!
— Jean Snow (@jeansnow) January 6, 2016
[Source: TDNet, Gematsu, @jeansnow, Gamasutra via @mochi_wsj, @Wario64]
Our Take
This is a big surprise considering Shinra was unveiled less than two years ago. The company never really got a chance to show off its technology publicly. It was founded on the idea of cloud computing being integral to the future of gaming, but now its unclear if cloud computing has a strong future. We hope all those affected by the company's closure are able to recover quickly.
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