Square Enix had an election and decided to fire the mad dog Yoichi Wada, rest is history. But is this good or bad for gamers in terms of quality and the company in terms of profit. http://n4g.com/news/1220659...

A scientific study showed that if you took the CEOs with the best track records and brought them in to run the businesses with the worst performance, it is 60% more likely that the company will become profitable [Study by: Antoinette Schoar of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's]. Which means in most cases when a company is performing poorly and you replace the CEO with a good one, the company will become more profitable. Benefits of Wada leaving are more long lasting than the drawbacks. Here are some benefits both from a gaming perspective and a profit perspective:

1) Yoichi Wada made silly comments like this in regards to FF13: "Mass Effect and Fallout allow the players to play with more freedom, and within their story-lines it is quite successful. But we're more interested in things such as first person shooters like Call of Duty." [Source: techdigest]. And the management and schedule of game releases under Wada is terrible e.g announcing games like FF versus 13 more than 7 years before its released is not a good idea, and moving Square Enix headquarters based on the advice of a fortune teller named Pao doesn't look good. It seems most likely that whoever replaces Wada will be less crazy than him, which is good.

2) The guy who is going to replace him "Yosuke Matsuda" is currently the director of Taito Corporation, a division of Square Enix. Matsuda worked for Mitsui Life Insurance Company Ltd. and Actus (Gran Thornton Taiyo) before joining Square Co. in December 1998. He is from the old Square, he joined Square earlier than Wada. Maybe we can have the old Square back?

3) There is bad blood between Sakaguchi and Yoichi Wada, now that he has left. Maybe Sakaguchi is more likely to come back? However unlikely it was from start, this might be delusional, but which FF fan wouldn't want him back?

Here are the potential draw backs of Yoichi Wada leaving: 1) Yoichi Wada deserves a lot of credit for saving the company in the early 2000's and for wisely purchasing Eidos. Square Enix's record with handhelds (e.g WOWY) and acquisitions of companies as well as the Dragon Quest series were mianly positive. If Wada changes one will worry that these positive parts of his reign may change for the worst or better?

2) During the initial period when a CEO is changed some staff are demoralised, just like how some football players are attached to a certain manager or coach, some Square Enix employees would have been happy with Yoichi Wada. My point was proven recently when some existing and former employees went out of their way to defend Yoichi Wada. [Source: Rumor: Ex-Square Enix Developer Writes Defense of Recently Axed Boss]. A demoralised staff is never good for business, however on the flip side I guess there wwere some people who hated him and would have loved to see him ago. Either way the new CEO has a hard task of getting the admiration and support of his staff.

I also feel there are more thigns which will determine Square Enix's success both in terms of the quality of their games and profitability. Here are some things to think about: 1) How can one applaud the dismissal of Yoichi Wada, until the company fires the terrible writers e.g Toriyama? In my opinion now that management has changed, its more likely that managers e.g game directors are to change because they were the directors during the unprofitable period and the CEO will be pressured` to at least change something. He cant just keep everything the same, then people would question what the point was in changing the CEO.

2) Can we have HD towns now? I think most likely yes, because again management will change. If oyu don’t know what am referring to, look up the quote from Square Enix where they said that its too hard to put towns and shops in games.

3) This is only good news if the next guy doesn't have his head up his ass. What do you think about this, is it good or bad in long term that Wada is gonna go in June?

http://n4g.com/user/blogpost/ranma1/521479

This isn't good news! I was really looking forward to Final Fantasy XIII-3 Vanille Returns!

I doubt it. I'm just gonna expect more MMOs more IOS games and more shitty console games until I see otherwise.

I honestly don't know the guy or what he's done. But I will say that Square Enix has made some poor decisions lately. Most of them have been creative not management mistakes. FF XIII didn't sell because western gamers like open worlds to explore like in Elder Scrolls. FF XIII went the Japanese route of focusing on story and characters and a complex battle system and dumped what western gamers enjoyed, the exploration, even if it was never real exploration in JRPG to begin with. The characters and story were far too "Japanese" in style for international appeal.

That was the creative mistake. The management mistake was to stay on course and keep making more FF XIII games. They should have cut their loses and scraped their initial plans. They had all those resources and new multiplatform tools so they could have made a new Final Fantasy with an active combat system, explorable environments and characters and stories that make sense to non-Japanese gamers. But instead the Square Enix management decided to pump out more Final Fantasy XIII games.

Square Enix needs to focus on multiplatform games that a maintain a Japanese flavor while appealing to western gamers. They've done well with their western studios and Tomb Raider has a bright future. Final Fantasy is stuck in a kind of limbo. Fans don't want change, but change is all that will save it. The majority of RPG fans in today's world want Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls and it's time for Square Enix to realize this.

The management changes Square Enix had been making may mean they have figured all this out and are getting ready for the future and leaving the past behind. I for one thing this is a good thing.

Final Fantasy 13 had a bad confusing story boring and annoying characters it took away control and pushed you where it wanted you to go until the end when it finally opened up the few good things about it were the music and battle system.Nothing to do with going the japanese route or people wanting games like Elder Scrolls they simply made a bad game.

Well, let's look at it this way. When Wada joined Square-Enix, he had zero experience in the games industry. He was a money man (I think he actually came straight from corporate banking) who was fast-tracked to the CEO position within a year of joining. It was a recipe for disaster.

So if a project director goes to him and says they want to incorporate something into their next big budget title, his response would be "How much does it cost?". Fair enough you might think, but unfortunately his lack of experience in the industry almost certainly meant that he wouldn't be able to judge whether the cost would have any benefit for the project.

Instead we get the last decade of games from SE. Numerous shameless remakes (which is actually somewhat fair enough considering their original quality), adapting horribly to new development techniques/technology and ruining what little market share they had in the subscription MMO scene with FF XIV. The one light is that they've managed to fuel some Western expansion in the acquisition of Eidos.

All in all, it's shocking they kept him as CEO for 13 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had the final say. If incorporating towns into the game was going to cost a lot then I can imagine the CEO telling managers to remove the feature.

It was a bullshit excuse but one that may well have been born of poor decision making and management (due to a CEO not having any prior experience in the games industry maybe?). The FFXIII sequels inclusion of towns were a direct response to criticisms of XIII.

I still think it's unfair to blame him for that when theirs been no indication he's been heavy handed in that direction particularly when he encouraged Eidos to do extra things for the PC versions of multiple titles. because those developers wanted to do it, with less of a track record. Especially if Toriyama or Kitase thought towns were vital to the gameplay, and thus would have defended against.

While there has been indication from interviews that the direction and reasoning for FFXIII was from toriyama and  kitase. Particularly since FFX did the same thing, FFXIII just took it to an extreme.

He did deserve to be canned though, just like sakaguchi deserved to be canned, I think his misteps were more trying to fix FFXIV, letting it be released, making MMO's because of the Profit FF11 had, and trying desperately to get that profit again despite the markets changing.

you have thwrong idea of managers. they are not their to stop all spending. with out knowing the man or any quotes from himn saying that, its easier to beleive it was a decision of the game makers.