Yoichi Wada resigns as Square Enix CEO

Holy shit this is something that I was not prepared for^^

"

Yoichi Wada, Square Enix has resigned as President and CEO

Toshiaki Konishi: Editorial

March 26, 2013, Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd., announced that he will step down as President and CEO Yoichi Wada, newly, Mr. Yosuke Matsuda of the current appointed representative director. The Reason for change is a "management system for reform."　The future of Mr. Wada has not been announced at this time."

http://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20130326067/

Holy shit....

About time.

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/130326.pdf

I want my Kingdom Hearts 3... Please?

@darji said:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/130326.pdf

If you think about it, Call of Duty is singlehandedly changing the face of this industry. It's quite fascinating..

"Please be excited."

I am please to be excited? Oh my gosh a mouse.

This is pretty shocking, but I honestly can't be surprised. Square is in desperate need of a serious restructuring, so hopefully it goes in the right direction. The decline of the Final Fantasy series and their inability to get those games reliably out the door alone must've done serious damage.

Edit:Holy God Damn, an over 100 million dollars loss? What the hell is going on over there?

Now go and make some good games again.

@officegamer said:

@darji said:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/130326.pdf

If you think about it, Call of Duty is singlehandedly changing the face of this industry. It's quite fascinating..

No, the Final Fantasy brand dropped the ball this generation, they made the poorly recieved FF13 and instead of putting their effort into the next game they whored out the 13 art assets for another 2 games, pretty sad really for this console generation, considered they put out FF7-9 whiten a 3 year timespan.

Square's not doing great this generation but they're still one of the best companies especially with the acquisition of Eidos. Tomb Raider/Arkham are both excellent IPs and Just Cause 3 is bound to be superb. That said I would like another Vagrant Story/actual FFT sequel/what have you. The timing isn't such that it's clear he was in dire straits; maybe he just wants to do something else and/or become a respected old guy that occasionally tosses protips at the young'ins and accumulates wealth as is Japan's wont.

@bourbon_warrior: Was 13 poorly received? I fucking hated it, but I remember the general consensus among a large amount of reviewers and consumers was that it was an okay game. Also, I feel the need to post this as it summarizes one of my many problems with Square.

No it was not. It sold over 6 or 7 million copies. If it were poorly recieved they would have not made FFXIII-2

I think there is something to the idea that Square-Enix missed the boat on the trends that lead to the rise of CoD on consoles and MOBA on PC. To suggest they dropped the ball on FF13 seems to suggest people wanted a team based RPG that behaves like this. I hate to admit it but when I look around I don't find much evidence anyone but a fringe group wants these games any more. I'm not even sure the Japanese want this style of game very much any more.

FF13 along with FF13-2 where the most successful genre to come out of Japan this gen. There are hundreds of other JRPGs that came out this gen which most were never seen or heard outside the hardcore circles and sold a pittance. I'm not sure that is a failure where it seems more like a success in spite of everything stacked against it.

Wow that makes me sad, I was one of those sales as well because I guess I trusted the Final Fantasy brand.

FFXIII sold entirely on brand name and hype. Most fans wanted a RPG like the PS1 games, but what we got was shit.

I really hope if Squeenix continues to screws its fans it'll go under, it's a shell of its former self. They blamed bad FFXIII-2 sales on the moronic idea that players thought you needed to play FFXIII first, then used that logic to justify a fucking FFXIII-3. Enough is enough.

I wish people would stop shitting on the XIII series and acting as if their opinion = law. Both games had problems but they both still sold a large amount of games because people enjoyed them. If everyone hated the series so much XIII-2 wouldn't have sold as well as it did.

pretty sure the disaster that was/is FF14 has a lot to do with this.

Final Fantasy 13 may have sold well, but I bet it didn't sell as much as they needed it to. That game was in development for like half a decade, and anyone who played it can testify to the sheer number of art assets that had to have been generated for it, which is one of the most expensive parts of development as I understand it. Then Final Fantasy 13-2 under performed, and Final Fantasy 14 has been bleeding money. So this isn't so much of a surprise to me.

I think it's good news though, there have been a lot of decisions at a corporate level that I think have been hurting their software. They need to be a lot smarter about how much time they spend on development, how they choose to announce and advertise their games, how they distribute their talent, and how well they communicate with their consumers, especially in the west. I hope this is the beginning of better things for Square.

It should not be forgotten that they did pick up Eidos under Wada and that has probably been the best thing they've invested in since grabbing Enix where they could have easily ended up like Enix instead.

Kitase and Toriyama are the ones who need to back off from that company. I am hopeful that it will happen when XIII-3 bombs hard.

Interesting news. Can't say I'm surprised that their sales haven't been up to expectations. I remember disliking XIII back when it came out, but going back to it now it's been a fairly fun game to play. Can't say anything for XIII-2 (heard its better in some ways) or the train wreck that was XIV though.

Tomb Raider is over three million sold, and is considered a sales disappointment. There is something fundamentally wrongwith that line of thinking.

Don't worry, now they can rehire everyone from Cavia and then all will be well.

I just read a Joystiq article with sales figures for the Hitman, Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider. If those are poor sales then either S-E or the entire industry is broken. I'm hoping it's just S-E (which their massive loss would indicate) because restructuring a company would be a lot easier than the other option

The impending failure of FFXIV:ARR (their pride project) is probably what's going to hurt SE the most.

Budgets and, as a result, sales expectations for "AAA" games have reached ridiculous, unrealistic levels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but KoA:R had to sell something like 3 million just to break even which is kinda fucking nuts. I'm not sure how much those other games cost to make (and then advertise), but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they were in that same ballpark.

I don't think the entire industry is broken but this shitty "AAA game arms race" all the big publishers seem to in has long since gotten out of hand. They seem more concerned about trying to outdo each other than trying to put out good games. Yes, I know their businesses and everything, but look where that line of thinking has gotten us...

From Wikipedia concerning FFXIII

"The game sold more than one million copies in North America in its release month. In March 2010, Square Enix stated that Final Fantasy XIII was the fastest-selling title in the franchise's history."

Tomb Raider came out this month, reported numbers almost quadrupled those of FFXIII, and IT DOESN'T EVEN INCLUDE PC DOWNLOADS. Evenif you did the math and applied the same ratio (reportedly TR only sold 2/3 in the US of what it sold in the EU) to FFXIII's sales, TR is still very successful.

Square Enix clearly has a bias toward its own IP against those that its taken in if they refuse to acknowledge how badly the FF series is going.

@babychoochoo: But if they are all in the AAA arms race, then its broken. Jeff has mentioned the absence of the b-tier game, and that's what they need to get back to. Not every major movie studio release needs to be the Avengers, and every game shouldn't need to be CoD

@mildmolasses: Oh, don't get me wrong, I fully agree with you and Jeff. It's broken and they definitely need to get back to B-tier games. I just simply avoided saying 'the entire industry' because of all the smaller publishers and indie developers out there who seem to "get it" for lack of a better word :)

I'd kinda call Sleeping Dogs B-tier, with it being a non-established IP, and them buying the publishing rights with it half-finished. We may not know for how much they purchased those rights, and how that stacked up to the possible costs of developing a game from scratch, but that amount would be a good indicator of how much return they expected from this game compared to their investment.

@bourbon_warrior said:

@officegamer said:

@darji said:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/130326.pdf

If you think about it, Call of Duty is singlehandedly changing the face of this industry. It's quite fascinating..

No, the Final Fantasy brand dropped the ball this generation, they made the poorly recieved FF13 and instead of putting their effort into the next game they whored out the 13 art assets for another 2 games, pretty sad really for this console generation, considered they put out FF7-9 whiten a 3 year timespan.

I think the Call of Duty sales figures have to have affected the industry in some way. Modern Warfare 3 sold 27.52 million copies across both the PS3 and Xbox360 alone according to VGChartz while FF13 "only" sold 6.88 million and Tomb Raider has "only" sold 3.4 million. That's 25% and 12% of CoD sales respectively. The only way I can really see publishers considering those sales disappointing is if they're using CoD sales as a metric--which is cray cray. This industry totally needs the b-tier game to come back.

Agreed. I really loved both games and looking forward to the third and final installment. Heck I got the Platinum Trophy for XIII-2.

The problem with consoles right now is that doing "B-Tier" is way to expensive on consoles where the price production costs are too high and the pricing is too rigid where every step on the way to the consumer various middle guys are extracting their pound of flesh/fee leaving the company with pocket change unless they do 5 million in sales over an ever decreasing release window.

Square-Enix need to be more careful about how and what they produce but the problem is also in the consoles and their market places. Unless the console vendors change their procedures on how games are released it only gets more grim from.

FF7 HD remake incoming?

We all know that only financial trouble could push squeenix towards it.

I wish people would stop acting as if their opinion = law and pretending that #sold copies cooraltes in any way to the quality of finished product or how much people enjoyed it AFTER the purchase has been made.

PS: I bought both FF13 and 13-2, didnt like 13, 13-2 was okay.

PPS: The financial trouble probably has most to do with FF14.

I sure hope this leads bigger developers and publishers to take a step back next generation from this absurd push of AAA titles to do quieter, less flashy $40-50 "budget" games like Sly Cooper or Nuts and Bolts.

@crosstheatlantic said:

@bourbon_warrior said:

@officegamer said:

@darji said:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/130326.pdf

If you think about it, Call of Duty is singlehandedly changing the face of this industry. It's quite fascinating..

No, the Final Fantasy brand dropped the ball this generation, they made the poorly recieved FF13 and instead of putting their effort into the next game they whored out the 13 art assets for another 2 games, pretty sad really for this console generation, considered they put out FF7-9 whiten a 3 year timespan.

I think the Call of Duty sales figures have to have affected the industry in some way. Modern Warfare 3 sold 27.52 million copies across both the PS3 and Xbox360 alone according to VGChartz while FF13 "only" sold 6.88 million and Tomb Raider has "only" sold 3.4 million. That's 25% and 12% of CoD sales respectively. The only way I can really see publishers considering those sales disappointing is if they're using CoD sales as a metric--which is cray cray. This industry totally needs the b-tier game to come back.

But on the other hand Tomb Raider is no B- Tier kind of game. Still I can not believe that they think over 3 million for Tomb Raider in such a short time is bad. I never thought Hitman would ship this much as well. Either ere are a ton of copies of this games in stores or it sold reasonable well.

As for FFXIII. I liked . I think it was much better than the terrible FFVII and FFIX. Yes I hate these games. And the BS is one of the best in this series in my opinion. I never liked 13-2 though. with 13-2 they tried to "fix" everything people complained about gameplay wise and somewhere they lost a clear concept... Serious fuck these multiple endings or exploration, when it hurts the story.

I can not wait to play FFXIV again and I hope its getting a new chance even from the press because right now it is already a fantastic game. Also I think Versus hurt them too. How long is it now in development? 8 years?

Here are your "sold" copies.

Remember FFXIII came out back before journalists started really questioning the differences between "sold to consumers" and "sold to retailers"(a.k.a. shipped)

And this was only a few months after release.

Yoichi and John Riccitiello really just wanted to start up a band together.

So these are still sold. Retailers bought them.

I agree with other voices here that the market needs to shift to accommodate successes at a low number of millions of copies sold. I've mentioned in other threads that I wonder if increasing the cost of games would help more than it hurts.

The tickets for their shows are going to be expensive.

Calling them one of the best companies is a bit of a stretch at least right now. The acquisition of Eidos was a very smart play for them but other then that it was all Eidos on making those games cool. Square has lost its way of sorts and slipping up on final fantasy 13 overload and final fantasy 14 being a train wreck at launch is not good for them right now.

All that money sunk on Final Fantasy can do that to a company. 13 and 13-2 might have sold well, but 14 bombed and whatever happened to that Versus game? And Type O or whatever it was?

I'm all for a return of b-tier games and a complete restructuring of how budgets work (not every game is going to be CoD).

EDIT: Also, does anyone else find it ironic that the franchise that saved Square is also the one that seems to be sinking them a bit now?

It's called one-trick-pony syndrome.

Scratch that, beating-a-dead-horse syndrome. The pony grew up, died, and SE spends hundreds of millions on bats to beat it with.

I would have to disagree because the mindset that every jrpg has to be ff13 or westernized has made some really average jrpgs that still don't sell. You don't have to sacrifice the core elements to make a game sell or good. Many people were going to buy ff13 no matter what and in the end a big chuck of players were disappointed. Granted people talk in broad brushes because it not a bad game at all but it lacked so many elements that made a final fantasy game great to most people. Square needs to take lessons from Persona 4 Golden , Fire Emblem Awakening and NI no Kuni for games that can be modern without being watered down.

That is a valid point and i just wish companies would be a little smarter and not always go for a make or break plan for a game. Atlus, Level 5 and other companies of their type have done pretty well for themselves when making games that have a lower budget and lower expected sale figures. Not all games need to follow this plan but as you say the B-Tier games could benefit from not being expected to sell five million on release. Square could pull a company together that only make unique lower budget games, maybe even tap into the well and brings some franchises back on a smaller scale.