Square Enix has announced the launch of its own Steam Greenlight type system called ‘Collective'. As part of it, the publishing giant will be giving Indie developers the chance to pitch ideas and garner enough interest to be put up for crowd funding. The real exciting part however, Square Enix will also be making older Eidos IP's available for developers to work on.

Chrono Trigger anyone?

It's no secret that Square Enix  has refused to do re-makes or bring back old fan favourites such as FFVII or Chrono Trigger, games that people honestly would've loved to have seen remade. With this initiative we might get a good mix of new titles and franchises but also older games making a welcome return.

Earlier I mentioned the Collective initiative being a bit like Steam Greenlight and heres how: Developers will put games up for vote, the ones with the most interest generated after a month will be taken on by Square Enix.

Now here's how it's different: Once a game has generated the most interest, Square Enix will have a team evaluate how capable and reliable the developer is, ensuring they can actually make the game. Once that has been decided the project will go up for crowd funding on Indigogo.

So really it's a quality approved Kickstarter. We've been seeing so many crowd sourced projects go to waste along with games people were excited about and helped fund just never get finished, so at least Square Enix is ensuring quality and reassuring us as backers that these games will get made and won't just be abandoned with all of our money taken. It sounds like a win-win for everyone – especially Square, which gets to cash in further on its back catalogue without having to develop anything itself.

Full details and submission guidelines will be made available at GDC next month from the 5th-7th of November.

KitGuru Says: This is a great idea, publishers working together with hard working indie devs to bring us more awesome games; whats not to like? What older Eidos IP's would you guys like to see come back? 

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