First reported by VGC (opens in new tab), Sq. Enix introduced (opens in new tab) that it plans on ousting firm president Yosuke Matsuda. Following shareholder approval, Matsuda can be changed with Takashi Kiryu, who got here to the corporate from managing the Dentsu Innovation Initiative (opens in new tab) in 2020.
Matsuda’s run since taking on for Yoichi Wada in 2013 has been, what else, a combined bag. His tenure noticed an elevated variety of PC ports, some concurrently launching with their console counterparts, however that timeliness is hardly a given—Remaining Fantasy 7 Remake took over a yr to return to PC, whereas Remaining Fantasy 16 will doubtless take greater than six months (opens in new tab).
It is also value noting that the writer has develop into synonymous with poor PC ports (opens in new tab) extra broadly: Stranger of Paradise: Remaining Fantasy Origins, Forspoken, and Remaining Fantasy 7 Remake all boasted various levels of stuttering, low FPS caps, and restricted choices menus. Matsuda’s tenure additionally noticed the sloughing off of Sq. Enix’s Western builders (opens in new tab), promoting Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, and Sq. Enix Montreal to the Embracer Group.
And naturally, the elephant within the room: Matsuda loves blockchain stuff; nonetheless does too, even after crypto’s beautiful contraction in late 2022 and the continuing investigation and/or prosecution of a number of main exchanges. “We’re most targeted on blockchain funding, to which now we have devoted aggressive funding,” Matsuda wrote (opens in new tab) firstly of the yr.
Now, you may hope that this tone-deaf dedication—at the same time as crypto boosters have been left holding the bag after the market collapsed—is perhaps what prompted Matsuda’s ouster, however that appears somewhat uncertain. Incoming president Kiryu’s earlier job at Dentsu concerned “scouting of latest and disruptive applied sciences,” and never the sort that make JRPGs run at arbitrary framerates above 60 fps. The corporate is closely leveraged in NFTs, the metaverse, and Net 3.0—all these buzzwords that simply appear weirdly dated now that the youngsters are all-in on AI.
No matter comes of shuffling the highest canine at Sq. Enix, I would not fear simply but—nothing a lot has come from the corporate’s blockchain bullishness thus far. Apart from, they’ll mint Cait Sith NFT strains to their hearts’ content material so long as they simply let my man, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, prepare dinner in peace. Slime NFTs in Dragon Quest 12—that is after I’m breaking the glass.
