First reported by VGC (opens in a new tab)Square Enix announced (opens in a new tab) that it plans to remove company president Yosuke Matsuda. After shareholder approval, Matsuda will be replaced with Takashi Kiryu, who joined the company from leading the Dentsu Innovation Initiative (opens in a new tab) in 2020.
Matsuda’s run since taking over for Yoichi Wada in 2013 has been a mixed bag. His tenure led to an increased number of PC ports, some launching at the same time as their console counterparts, but that timeliness is hardly a given—Final Fantasy 7 Remake took over a year to come to PC, while Final Fantasy 16 will likely take more than six months (opens in a new tab).
It’s also worth noting that the publisher has become synonymous with bad PC ports (opens in a new tab) more generally: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins, Foresaw, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake all boasted varying degrees of stuttering, low FPS caps, and limited option menus. Matsuda’s tenure also saw Square Enix’s western developers shut down (opens in a new tab)sells Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix Montreal to Embracer Group.
And of course the elephant in the room: Matsuda love blockchain stuff; still does, too, even after crypto’s striking contraction in late 2022 and the ongoing investigation and/or prosecution of several major exchanges. “We are most focused on blockchain investments, to which we have devoted aggressive investments,” Matsuda wrote (opens in a new tab) at the beginning of the year.
Now, you might hope that this tone-deaf commitment – even though crypto boosters have remained after the market collapse – might be what led to Matsuda’s ouster, but it seems rather doubtful. President-elect Kiryu’s previous job at Dentsu involved “diffusion of new and disruptive technologies,” and not the kind that make JRPGs run at arbitrary frame rates above 60 fps. The company is heavily leveraged in NFTs, the metaverse and Web 3.0 – all of these buzzwords that just seem strangely outdated now that the kids are all in on AI.
Whatever comes of shuffling the top dog at Square Enix, I wouldn’t worry just yet—not much has come of the company’s blockchain bullishness to date. Also, they can stamp Cait Sith NFT lines to their heart’s content as long as they just leave my husband, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, to cook in peace. Slime NFTs in Dragon Quest 12 – that’s when I break the glass.
