Yosuke Matsuda is finally on his way out of Square-Enix: The company’s Board of Directors announced early this morning that Matsuda will step down as president, to be replaced with Takashi Kiryu, previously the company director. Matsuda has been president of Square-Enix’s various congloms for the last 10 years.
“Under the rapid change of business environment surrounding the entertainment industry, the proposed change is intended to reshape the management team with the goal of adopting ever-evolving technological innovations and maximizing on the creativity of the Company’s group in order to deliver even greater entertainment to its customers around the world,” Square’s board says by way of a reason for the switcharoo.
Matsuda has been an unpopular figure with gamers in the last year owing to his clearly stated (and repeated) focus on NFTs/P2E blockchain technology and flopped NFT action figures; his 2022 New Year’s Day address expressed bewilderment over “people who ‘play to have fun'” and essentially proposed exploiting “people whose motivation is to ‘play to contribute’ [and] make the game more exciting.”
Gamers, of course, don’t get a vote, and shareholders are more interested in the company’s declining revenues and failed games, like Babylon’s Fall. Final Fantasy XIV has generally been one of the few bright spots on the company’s dance card in the last few years, but even Creative Business Unit III’s popular MMO wasn’t enough to make up for the rest of the company’s finances last quarter – so maybe a changeup in leadership wasn’t unwarranted.
