First article on Binance.
There was breaking news in the Japanese gaming industry last Saturday: Square Enix (SE) President Yosuke Matsuda was forced to retire because of his support for blockchain and NFT.
Yosuke Matsuda may be SE's most well-known president, if not for anything else, just because he has appeared as a BOSS in Final Fantasy XV and NieR Automata:
It was already Sunday when I saw this news, and I got it from a Taiwanese gaming media. Most of the comments were about Matsuda’s excessive emphasis on blockchain. Since SE has been at the center of controversy recently, I quickly looked for reports from Japan:
Square Enix has announced that President Yosuke Matsuda is retiring, and he will officially step down upon approval at the company's annual shareholder meeting scheduled for June 2023.
Current director Takashi Kiryu will succeed Matsuda, who has served as the company's president since 2013. SE explained the reasons for Matsuda's retirement, saying: "In the rapidly changing business environment surrounding the entertainment industry, we aim to provide better entertainment to everyone around the world by adopting evolving technological innovations and maximizing the creativity of the Group, and to renew our management structure. The new management structure aims to maximize the creativity of the Group and provide better entertainment to people around the world."
The article does emphasize the blockchain-related part:
In his New Year's address released on New Year's Day 2023, Matsuda stated that he has used "blockchain" 12 times (14 times in the English version) and that he is "particularly focused on blockchain entertainment" in new business areas.
In his New Year's speech delivered on New Year's Day 2023, Matsuda used "blockchain" 12 times (14 times in the English version) and said he was "paying special attention to blockchain entertainment" in the new business area.
This is not the first time Yosuke Matsuda has mentioned blockchain and NFT. On New Year's Day in 2022, Matsuda stated in an open letter to players that "Square Enix is very interested in NFT and blockchain games" (in fact, as early as 2021, SE provided the "asset-based ミリオンアーサー" electronic sticker platform service ), which also attracted criticism from many people. However, on the second day after the announcement, SE's stock price soared 8%.
Everything seems to be a perfect start. Matsuda Yosuke may feel that under his leadership, SE will create brilliance in the traditional game field this year and explore new ways in the blockchain entertainment and NFT fields.
However, what the world lacks the least is accidents. In May 2022, SE sold Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and SE Montreal to the Swedish publisher Embracer Group for $300 million. In 2022, SE released 35 games, but because there was no new FF game that could carry the tripod, FF14 did not have a large expansion pack, and most of the remaining games were reheated or shoddy sequels & derivatives (the IPs of Dragon Quest and Goddess Profile were wasted), as well as some experimental independent IP works, which made its main business very weak. And this year, the decline has not diminished. "Fall of Babylon", which only started operating in March last year, stopped service on February 27, 2023 and deleted all data.
Finally, according to the financial report released last month, Square Enix's sales in the fiscal year 22-23 ending at the end of December were 255.616 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 6.6%, and its operating profit was 41.315 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 17.6%.
Therefore, although many people think that it was Matsuda’s blockchain and NFT strategies that led to the president’s resignation, the biggest reason may still be the weakness of the core business - although SE’s press conference also denied this statement, saying that it had nothing to do with performance, it was just normal personnel rotation, the development system would not change, and blockchain-related strategies would continue (source).
Matsuda has been the president of SE for 10 consecutive years. Some old players may still remember that when he took office, SE was in a life-or-death crisis due to the extremely poor quality of the original FF14, and had to start a new FF14 from scratch. After that, the new version of FF14 completely reversed the previous reputation, repeatedly broke the record of the number of concurrent online users of MMORPGs, and became SE's most successful game (of course, FF14's turnaround was mainly due to the credit of the producer Yoshida Naoki who took over). And the subsequent FF7RE, DQ11, and Kingdom Hearts 3 were also inseparable from him.
Yosuke Matsuda will step down in June, which happens to be the month FFXVI is released. I hope that the latest game in the FF series, 16, which he last served as president, will have better results.
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