Yoichi Wada represents everything that is wrong with the current video game business. He is the president of Square-Enix, a video game developer that focuses on single player RPG's. The company makes millions upon millions of dollars, has millions of fans around the world, and has a great lineup of titles to be released over the next year. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, apparently it's not good enough. Not for Yoichi Wada.
When asked about the Final Fantasy series in an interview by EDGE, Yoichi Wada said: "But whether we are going to continue to internally create this type of game remains to be seen, because I actually feel that the team that was involved with Final Fantasy XIII should next move on to create and generate some ‘next generation’ forms of play." Next generation? Some of the best graphics, most intricate stories, and in depth, entertaining gameplay can't be considered good enough for the next generation? What the hell is wrong with you, Wada?! There are more fans of the Final Fantasy series than almost any other series of games. Changing it will do nothing more than piss off the millions of customers who got your company to where it is today. Bad idea.
In another interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Yoichi Wada says: "We always consider the territory and hardware for titles, and I just want to make sure that we're neutral about dealing with companies." Alas, Square-Enix has been anything but neutral. To date, 34 games have been developed for Nintendo's DS by Square-Enix, yet only 11 for Sony's PSP. Not to mention the rather surprising
exclusive launches for Microsoft's Xbox 360, such as The Last Remnant and Project Sylpheed, both of which should arguably have been multi-platform.
Yoichi Wada has been trying to shift his company's focus towards online play. He believes that this is where the gaming market has most room to grow. In that same interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Wada goes on to state: "...in ten years time what we traditionally call 'console games' simply won't exist... In the past the platform was hardware, but that switched to the network. So a time will come when the hardware isn't even needed any more." What he says most definitely has merit. However, he seems to forget that his company primarily makes SINGLE PLAYER games. His fan base is built around the offline single player gamer, not the MMO enthusiast. Final Fantasy XI is the only title Square-Enix has made that revolves around online play.
So, all in all, Yoichi Wada wants to drop his company's best selling series, change the genre of games his company is recognized and loved for world wide, switch to a totally new fanbase of cross-platform gamers, and go from making offline single player games to making network-intensive titles. You can't flip flop a gaming company much more than that.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if Square-Enix purchased an IP and, through them, started making titles in the way that Yoichi Wada desires. It would be a good side project, and would undoubtedly make plenty of money. However, turning the whole of Square-Enix into another cookie-cutter gaming company is not the right decision. People love Square-Enix for the types of games it makes, especially since they can't get them from anyone else. Abruptly stopping the production of
these games won't make anyone happy.
- Sean Casey
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
What does Yoichi think he's doing, he has no right to speak for everyone in the company's behalf and say that something next gen will be coming, thought i dont mind and look foward to anything new from Enix, but if this guy decides to get rid of the most beloved RPG series of all time, with all due respect,he's going to be the death of SE!!!