Square Enix is preparing to launch a mobile games streaming service called Dive In that’ll allow Android and iOS gamers to rent titles right on their phone or tablet. The service will initially launch with three titles: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XIII and Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders.
The company plans to add Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Murdered: Soul Suspect and The Last Remnant in the coming months.
Much like Sony’s PlayStation Now service, pricing for each game will be determined by the length of the rental. Users can play up to 30 minutes of any title free of charge to help decide if they want to go ahead with the rental.
For example, if you plan to zip right through Final Fantasy XIII in three days, you’d pay 250 yen ($2.35). A 10-day rental would set you back 510 yen ($4.80), 1250 yen ($11.76) would net you a month of play while 1800 yen ($16.94) would seal the deal for a full year. The longer the rental, the more you save on a per-day basis.
You may be asking why I quoted prices in the Japanese yen. Unfortunately, Dive In will be limited to Japan at launch. No word yet on whether or not Square Enix plans to expand the service to other regions but I can’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t do so. Getting your product in the hands of as many paying customers as possible using a relatively new business model seems like a good idea to me.
The service will go live in Japan on October 9.
