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?
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Joe 'Three Sheets' Neate (Executive Producer): "As I’m sure you can imagine, when it comes to Sea of Thieves my days are full of numbers. Development costs, active servers, days until the next update… Sometimes, though, a truly extraordinary number stands out – a number like 40 million, which I’m incredibly pleased to say is the number of pirates who’ve now set sail in Sea of Thieves!"
Garrr... more people to walk the plank and send to Davey Jones locker.
would have been funny to release this on talk like a pirate day.
40 million have set sail...that's great. How many are sailing now? Monthly active users....when it actually matters. How many people purchased the game is another important number.
You don't get numbers like that from MS mouth pieces, they just like to say stuff like "this game was looked at 129 million time, the biggest amount of people browsing a game of this genre on xbox gamepass ever in the last 3 weeks compared to before gamepass was out (small print only 2 million bothered playing longer than 20 seconds and only 100 people are playing it concurrently)
It's all smoke and mirrors
There are usually around 10,000 concurrent users on Steam not counting Xbox or PS but really it doesn't matter as long as there are enough people on the servers to play which there always were and will be for a long time now with the PS players coming on board. Same goes for how many people bought it and how many are on GP, we aren't the accountants of these console companies so why would we care?
It was under Wada's direction that SE has been floundering. It's obviously a leadership issue. Smaller JRPG companies like Atlus, NIS, Namco Bandai, and Level-5 have all been able to please their fans for years, with smaller budgets, smaller dev teams, less popular IPs, and less marketing. But amazingly, SE has been pretty horrible across the board.
what if they elect another president that is even worse than Wada? I always thought the main problem was Toriyama anyway. It was him who made FF13, FFX-2 and the terrible writing in 3rd Birthday not Wada.
And how will Sakaguchi comeback when he already made his own company? And beside, he has said on multiple times that he wants nothing to do with the FF franchise anymore.
I think you're a bit delusional on some of your propositions. lol
Why on Earth would Sakaguchi come back? He's got his own gaming production company now, Mistwalker. I can see him doing some sort of co-venture on some titles but that is about it.
This gen was definitely SE's worst by far. IMO one of the biggest failures was FF14. Which released then flopped wasting huge amounts of cash then they rebuilt it wasting even more cash. As far as I can tell it's re-release has flopped as well. (I don't actually keep track of it)
They promised it would make it to PS3 but that is obviously not going to be the case as that generation is basically over. The whole thing was a mess and at every turn they went the wrong direction with it.
What they should have done is just given FF11 which was still very popular a facelift brought it to PS3 which it would have ported to quickly and easily for huge profits.
Well the good news is when your at the bottom the only way you can go is up.
Good Luck!
Finally SE will be getting up, good Riddance Wada you wont be missed.