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End of an era - Yoichi Wada is officially out of Square Enix

Theonik

Theonik

Member
duckroll said:
But no one is saying Wada is a victim of the times. I'm saying it's stupid to saying something like "I will remember him as the person who cancelled TWEWY2 instead of FFXIII-2!"

Also, Fengshui/Geomancy stuff is huge in Asia, even for big companies. It's dumb but it is what it is! :p



Okay? I fail to see your point. What is it that you think CEOs at big publishers actually do? They're businessmen who are responsible for making sure the company is profitable and attractive to investors.
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I misinterpreted your post then. I wasn't following the specific discussion. Obviously this is very common in enthusiast communities especially when outsiders are involved, not every bad thing that is attributed to Wada will be his fault but it is what it is.

And I am well aware that is the case. It's still hilarious.
 
A

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
Sir_Crocodile said:
This is the culture that Wada fostered within SE, and what projects were promoted and what was suppressed. This is what I will remember him for. Which is apparently "childish and uniformed" of me. Okay.

I don't really care if he's a businessman. Do you expect me to remember him for YoY profit?
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No, but perhaps as the man who saved Square from becoming another bankrupted relic of the past.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Sir_Crocodile said:
This is the culture that Wada promoted within SE, and what projects were promoted and what was suppressed. This is what I will remember him for. Which is apparently "childish and uniformed" of me. Okay.

I don't really care if he's a businessman. Do you expect me to remember him for YoY profit?
Click to expand...

You specifically said "The main thing that comes to my mind is him nixing TWEWY2 while green lighting 13-2 & 13-3". That's just made up shit. Was TWEWY2 in development at any point? Was there a project proposal? Was Wada the one who nixed it? It is related in any way at all to more FFXIII games being made?

That's what I mean by being childish and uninformed. People are quick to jump to conclusions and want someone to blame for not having the products they want. That's fine, but it's a base instinct that isn't informed by any actual facts or evidence.
 
R

RyougaSaotome

Member
A lot of bad choices were made, during what can only be described as a turbulent era for SE.

That said, I appreciate that he tried to broaden the business, as that's ultimately what kept the company breathing while it fucked up elsewhere.

Peace out, Wada.
 
O

On Demand

Banned
Windows RT said:
For me, give our Xbox fans FFXI online, FFXIII, FFXIII-2, Lighting Returns, Star Ocean 4, Last Remnant, Front Missions, etc. But I think to some people, this is why he is hated.

Every coin has 2 sides...
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None of those sold that well on XB and those exclusives helped slow the growth of PS3 in Japan. He made seriously dumb decisions by trying to sell to a market that doesn't buy JRPG's.

There's a reason PS4 is getting tons of JRPG's now.
 
D

Dreamwriter

Member
duckroll said:
https://www.facebook.com/yoichiwada528/posts/861079537280134

Yesterday Yoichi Wada posted on his Facebook account that the last day of his contract with Square Enix was June 16 2015. After he stepped down as CEO of Square Enix in 2013, he stayed on for two more years on a contract basis. Now that has been fulfilled and he is out of the company for good.

He remains the president of Shinra Technologies (Power of the Cloud!) and a director at Metaps.

gDbRbJ2.jpg
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Wow, that's definitely not how I imagined he'd look...
 
S

Sir_Crocodile

Member
Aureon said:
No, but perhaps as the man who saved Square from becoming another bankrupted relic of the past.
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Possibly, we'll never really know.

duckroll said:
You specifically said "The main thing that comes to my mind is him nixing TWEWY2 while green lighting 13-2 & 13-3". That's just made up shit. Was TWEWY2 in development at any point? Was there a project proposal? Was Wada the one who nixed it? It is related in any way at all to more FFXIII games being made?

That's what I mean by being childish and uninformed. People are quick to jump to conclusions and want someone to blame for not having the products they want. That's fine, but it's a base instinct that isn't informed by any actual facts or evidence.
Click to expand...

What? When did I say it was actively in development? Obviously at some point the question would have come up as to whether they'd make a sequel and he'd have said yes or no. From memory Nomura wanted to make one.

I'm not saying a game x months into production was cancellled, I'm saying twewy, and games like it, weren't the type to be fostered or given a chance for the majority of his time there. We've had articles for yonks suggesting that, like the kotaku one I posted earlier.
 
D

demosthenes

Member
JeffZero said:
Insert joke here about "because of course he remains President of Shinra."

Anyway, godspeed, Mr. Wada. You... well, you presided over my least favorite era of my lifelong favorite game developer, but you weren't all bad and I felt bad for you that day your Xbox 360 broke.
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No, he was all bad.
 
TGO

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I wonder if he was responsible for the ROTTR mess last year, I bet he was.
 
Druz

Druz

Member
He made a few good decisions yeah? Eidos ended up being pretty smart. It's his fault they were in the shitter to begin with though.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Sir_Crocodile said:
What? When did I say it was actively in development? Obviously at some point the question would have come up as to whether they'd make a sequel and he'd have said yes or no. From memory Nomura wanted to make one.

I'm not saying a game x months into production was cancellled, I'm saying twewy, and games like it, weren't the type to be fostered or given a chance for the majority of his time there. We've had articles for yonks suggesting that, like the kotaku one I posted earlier.
Click to expand...

So you're saying that TWEWY and games like it, which were conceptualized, developed, and released while Wada was CEO, weren't the type to be fostered or given a chance for the majority of his time there?

TWEWY came out in 2007.
The Last Remnant came out in 2008.
Nier came out in 2010.
Drakengard 3 came out in 2013.

Wada was CEO from 2001 to 2013.

I'm so confused.
 
S

Scum

Junior Member
duckroll said:
Wada pushed for diversifying S-E's business into MMOs, mobile, and western interests. These are still the main elements today which represent the most successful parts of the company. He recognized that traditional Japanese business the company was known for was weakening in the last decade, and that they were struggling with development and satisfying products. If they didn't diversify their interests, they would have nothing successful instead of just having successful things which their core fans would "hate" them for. He also pushed hard for more efficiency in development from the internal Japanese teams, and he wanted better quality products. He was much less successful there, but it's hard to say that the failure was entirely his own.
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Good on Wada.
 
M

matmanx1

Member
I have mixed feelings. On one hand he presided over the worst string of mainline Final Fantasy titles to have ever come out of SE. It's fairly awful to think what has happened to that franchise during his time at Square.

But! He also greenlit Nier 1 (and it seems Nier 2) and for that I tip my hat to him. Nier 1 is a very, very special game to me and I can't say bad things about the man that ultimately made it happen.

I hope he is successful in his future endeavors.
 
D

dramatis

Member
manipulate said:
Curious as to how 'brave' this decision was as opposed to 'necessary'.

Surely they were banking on that MMO cash cow for the next 5+ years and couldn't afford to throw it away?
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I'm sure that was part of the decision why SE doubled down. But in a generation where most Japanese companies just discarded IPs when the games didn't perform at some crazy level? Particularly for MMOs where SE could have gone the easy route and stripped it down and made it F2P like most other failed MMOs (even Bethesda stripped the subscription from Elder Scrolls, and Star Wars The Old Republic had to go partially F2P)? FF14 is the only success story of its kind. Wada had choices, and he chose this one. I don't think the CEO of any other game company in Japan would have done the same.
 
E

Elman

Member
silvermember said:
How is that entirely his fault??

Short of him canceling games, he doesn't design them.
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I'm realllly curious to see how much damage can be attributed to White Engine/Crystal Tools engine and dev environment. As I understand it, FFXIII was going to be a PS2 game first before they embarked on the nightmare of building the game from scratch in an unfinished engine. FFXIV (obviously) had it even worse, since the engine wasn't made for MMO's.
 
S

Steroyd

Member
It can't be coincidence that I think Square Enix is going back to why I used to like them as publisher after this year's conference.

I hated on this guy all these years and never knew, *mind blown*.
 
K

Koozek

Member
duckroll said:
When I look back on Wada's era as Square Enix CEO, the main thing that comes to mind is that he was pretty much the only big Japanese game publisher CEO who had his own twitter account, and he ones made a passionate series of tweets about how much he loves The Last Remnant as a game, while conceding that the market makes it really hard for such games to exist.
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Coincidentally I played TLR for the first time last week on Steam and I really enjoyed the few hours I had with it (though, I don't think I will finish 60+ hours games like this these days, except for mainline FFs). The dialogue and VA is pretty nice, imo. Doesn't feel too melodramatic outside of a few silly moments.

Finale Fireworker said:
Didn't Level-5 just announce this Yoichi Wada getting localized in the West? Very surprised at this news.
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Wasn't Level-5's big PS4 game supposed to be revealed at this E3 or was Verendus just hinting at it in general?
EDIT: LOL, I didn't even read your post :D Just saw "Level-5".
 
Y

Yazuka

Member
He steps down as president and everything turns around. Yeah, he will not be missed.
The Square Enix we saw at this years E3 was a fierce and hungry SE, ready to take back fans. Sure they still have a long way to go, 3DS Dragon Quest games and such.
But that we are getting so much console love, is great! They won me back.
 
Danny Dudekisser

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Good riddance. Square's really turned a corner these last few months -- I'm actually excited to see what they do again.
 
D

Defuser

Member
He will be missed, he made some good and bad decisions but hey no CEO is perfect.

Just unfortunate some things went wrong beyond his control and he has to bear it.
 
R

RiverBed

Banned
What fucking 'era' are you talking about? Good fucking riddance. I hope this guy joins him soon:
cDTl3nb.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gDbRbJ2.jpg[/im]
nope, not needed at all. AT ALL.
 
D

DiipuSurotu

Banned
QuiteWhittle said:
I hope Hashimoto never leaves. He's always entertaining.
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Being brand producer of FF except for the MMO ones, he's in the perfect position. If something is successful, it's the creative guys below him who are credited. If something fails, it's the executives above him who are blamed.
 
ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Giving some thoughts about it, majority of the big Japanese publishers were having a hard time due to Western pressures. Namdai had to adapt and make pseudo Western inspired games, Konami had to adapt and make pseudo Western inspired games, Square Enix had to make pseudo Western inspired games (but made the good decision to buy out Eidos).

It ain't purely Wada's fault, it's also the gamers' fault too and the changing trends.

I'm glad this new era is much more open to Japanese console games and it seems Matsuda is more open to change.
 
TGO

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I'm just happy Square is back, although awkward their presser was fantastic and the PlayStation support reminded me of the PSX era, let hope their games output mirror the PSX era too.
And FFVII Remake!
 
D

daniels

Member
If he is the guy that is responsible for buying eidos than he was the best possible CEO at that particular moment :p
But for the rest of the time yeah no clue i just want to forget PS3 Final Fantasy games lol
 
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