Sq. Enix’s crypto-loving president more likely to be ousted in favor of a special, nonetheless crypto-loving president
On: March 4, 2023
First reported by VGC, Sq. Enix introduced that it plans on ousting firm president Yosuke Matsuda. Following shareholder approval, Matsuda shall be changed with Takashi Kiryu, who got here to the corporate from managing the Dentsu Innovation Initiative in 2020.
Matsuda’s run since taking on for Yoichi Wada in 2013 has been, what else, a blended bag. His tenure noticed an elevated variety of PC ports, some concurrently launching with their console counterparts, however that timeliness is hardly a given—Last Fantasy 7 Remake took over a yr to return to PC, whereas Last Fantasy 16 will possible take greater than six months.
It is also value noting that the writer has develop into synonymous with poor PC ports extra broadly: Stranger of Paradise: Last Fantasy Origins, Forspoken, and Last 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, 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 gorgeous contraction in late 2022 and the continued investigation and/or prosecution of a number of main exchanges. “We’re most targeted on blockchain funding, to which we have now devoted aggressive funding,” Matsuda wrote in the beginning 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 relatively uncertain. Incoming president Kiryu’s earlier job at Dentsu concerned “scouting of recent 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 up to now. Moreover, they’ll mint Cait Sith NFT traces to their hearts’ content material so long as they simply let my man, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, cook dinner in peace. Slime NFTs in Dragon Quest 12—that is once I’m breaking the glass.
