If they can get their Japanese side in order, I think Square Enix is probably the most exciting major publisher in the industry right now. They have a nice blend of great Western franchises like Hitman, Deus Ex, Thief, and many more, plus they also have the Square and Enix franchises from before the merger, like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts and such. And some of those aren't just fleeting success or overhyped properties that will fade from the public imagination once the next big thing comes along. They have hardcore and devoted fanbases that won't jump ship the second something else is better marketed to them.
Certainly, they have the means to create stellar and compelling line-ups. They just need to sort themselves out internally. Games take too long as they announce them too soon, whilst their release schedule looks like it's only been planned a few months in advance.
What they need is a long-term strategy of alternating Western and Japanese franchises taking the spotlight each year, allowing them to devote large amounts of resources to making sure each entry in their key franchises are all awesome (from a development and marketing perspective). I mean, when you're the company that owns Deus Ex, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, you can afford to take your damn sweet time on all three. Though not too long, obviously, as we saw with the problems FFXIII suffered from.
This isn't an Activision situation, where they're pretty much relying on yearly Call of Duty games and WoW subscriptions to keep the ship sailing. They have a stable of much-loved franchises on every platform out there that they can cleverly alternate to avoid franchise fatigue, both from a developer and customer perspective.
Besides that, my big irk from Square Enix is their PC support. The Western side has it down well; DXHR, whilst buggy, had a lot reverence for its PC roots in terms of interface design and such. But where's the PC version of Final Fantasy iterations? Dragon Quest? I don't doubt for a second that there's a market for those games on PC, but Square Enix needs to lead the way on that front, and they need to do so with the big guns. Other Japanese developers certainly won't until Square Enix has "pioneered" that territory.
