The Square Enix boss who constantly pushed NFT games to be replaced

Square Enix is ​​getting a new boss. Yosuke Matsuda has served as Final Fantasy the publisher’s managing director for 10 years, and spent the last couple of those hype up NFTs and other blockchain scams. He will now be replaced by a relative newcomer, pending shareholder approval in June.

The company announced organizational change on Friday, arguing that it was necessary to chase more technological innovation. Takashi Kiryu, the new CEO, has only been at Square for a couple of years, and before that was the general manager at the Dentsu Innovation Initiative, a business group that explores exciting opportunities in e.g. the metaverse.

Here’s the reason Square Enix gave for changing bosses:

During the rapidly changing business environment surrounding the entertainment industry, the proposed change is intended to reshape the management team with the aim of adopting ever-evolving technological innovations and maximizing the creativity of the company’s group to deliver even better entertainment to its customers. around the Earth.

Square Enix has not been in a good place lately. Its share price has declined over the past five years, and it has struggled to find hits outside of mobile gacha games and its core franchise, Final Fantasy. Despite doubling the success of Final Fantasy VII Remakethe publisher recently cut North American studios Crystal Dynamics loose (Grave robber) and Eidos Montreal (Deus Ex) with a big discount. And when it is not disappointed by the sale of third-party projects such as Guardians of the Galaxythere are churning out games that don’t seem to get enough time, attention or resources to fully succeed.

Throughout this period, outgoing CEO Matsuda was consistent on one thing: being really bullish on crypto games. He never missed an opportunity to talk about exciting frontier for NFTs and other blockchain-based digital assets, and the company currently has several projects in the pipeline who will allegedly use these gimmicks to monetize players in new ways. It was a truly inspiring vision from the company whose biggest IP is about the heroics of eco-terrorism.

But while Matsuda leaving may immediately seem like an indictment of that path, Kiryu’s background and Square’s announcement make it seem like the opposite. If anything, Square Enix may be gearing up to double down on emerging technology trends, and just feels it needs a fresh leader with more experience in that realm to sell the snake oil. We’ll see.