Square Enix kills off Dive In cloud gaming service

Square Enix has announced the closure of its game streaming service, Dive In, before it even reaches a year old - crushing hopes that the service would appear outside Japan.

Unveiled by Square Enix at the Tokyo Game Show in October last year, Dive In offered Android and iOS mobile gamers a chance to play through the company's most-loved franchises using the power of the cloud. Rather than create native ports of the games, such as Final Fantasy XIII, the hard work of rendering the game is performed on remote servers before the resulting video stream is compressed and sent to the mobile device - similar to Sony's PlayStation Now, or the late OnLive.

The service launched in Japan, but uptake was slow - and now Square Enix has confirmed that Dive In is no more. In a statement spotted and translated by MCV, the company has announced that the streaming platform will close for good on the 13th of September. Apologising to users, the company said that it will refund the full value of any subscriptions still active at the time of the closure.

Despite the failure of Dive In, the company has indicated that it intends to continue investigating streaming technology for future titles. 'We will continue our various initiatives,' the translated statement reads, promising its next use of cloud gaming technology will be 'in a better shape in the future.'