I'll be honest, I don't entirely understand Square Enix's "Collective" initiative. It lets indie developers pitch ideas to the Square Enix community, and if they do well they... er, they get to do a Kickstarter. Couldn't they do that anyway? I guess it's a chance to utilise Square Enix's marketing apparatus while still retaining independence, but if Kickstarter is already a popularity contest, I'm not sure I'd want to go through an additional one before that point.
At least now there might be a better reason to use the service. Square Enix have announced that they will accept pitches for old Eidos properties—specifically, for new Gex, Fear Effect and Anachronox games.
"We have more IPs that we may open up in future," explains the Square Enix Collective site, "but we’ll start with those and see what the response is like."
According to Squenix, they'd "love to see different takes on those universes." They wonder Gex would look like as a turn-based strategy. Weird, I imagine is the answer.
Unlike with original games submitted to the Collective, playing in Square Enix's disused Eidos pool will guarantee distribution through the publisher. That means a 10% distribution fee plus a 10% "license fee for the use of the IP".
