Huge Square Enix losses were a sign I should move on - Yoichi Wada

Gamasutra: "Former Square Enix president Yoichi Wada explains why he is stepping down from his management role at the Japanese publisher."

[Godmars290]

Pity hardened - former - fans of your company telling you to move on was sign that you move on. Or at least do things differently than you were doing them.

[Irishguy95]

Yep, he was just out of touch with reality.

"My psychic told me we should move to tokyo!"

[Snookies12]

Hey! We don't EVER question Lord Pao.

[dark-hollow]

and yet they will still release yet another spin off of FFXIII.......

[Dasteru]

Hear the news? FF XIII-6 is in development.

Supposedly they are also remaking XIII, XIII-2 and XIII-3 for the PS4.

XIII-4 & XIII-5 are being made at the same time as XIII-6 but will be for the PS1 because a psychic named baba told them it was a good idea.

FF VII, VIII & IX are also being remade finally. They will be using the paradigm system and lightning will be a hidden character in the game, Towns are also being removed and you will now recieve all quests from a parrot in an icecream truck.

I know you all think i'm full of shit now but just wait, only 6 months til all of them release.

[Marcello]

My comment from almost 3 years ago on N4G.

http://n4g.com/news/619907/...

If you had listened then to that 1 little sentence, you would have saved SquareEnix 137 million dollars. You had been given the controls to a Da Vinci machine & you managed to make crap with it ?? :/

[RememberThe357]

You know, he just seemed to make the wrong decision every single time. It baffles me that he's just now stepping down, how did they make money?

His unwillingness to invest in console development cost that company a lot of potential cash. Then they buy Edios and expect new IPs and nearly dead franchises to just emerge into sales juggernauts. His direction of this company was not only baffling, but often seemed arrogant and moronic. No offence to the man himself, but good riddance. Hopefully his replacement will have a better vision.

[porkChop]

Yeah, he clearly had no idea what he was doing. He's been running the company into the ground. I don't understand how he lasted this long.

But a new generation is starting, so it's a great for them to start fresh with new ideas and stronger leadership.

[belac09]

no one asked, just go.

[Taker_129]

Belac09 Your comment made me laugh out loud. Bubble for you :)

[Chard]

You don't say

[sithsylar]

Alf!!! Not in the diner!!!!!

[peowpeow]

Don't rape him in the diner!

[Chard]

I don't remember letting you out from the dungeon, c**t!

[iNFAMOUZ1]

or maybe a sign of of rethinking your strategy, what a coward

[Max-Zorin]

Looking back at the Final Fantasy 13 scenario and not listening to the fans, he won't be missed. All the man did was make people mad.

[DEATHxTHExKIDx]

Crazy thing is the XIII series sales wise is pretty damn good. SE even said they only need XIII-3 to sell a minimum on 300,000 copies so that the XIII series would have sold 10mil copies across 3 games.

[DragonKnight]

Whereas FFVII sold 9 million by itself.

[Zechs34]

I think it's kind of sad that this "series", FFXIII, needs to be multiplatform and have 3 different game on 2 different consoles in order to reach sales of a game like FFVII, which released on a "new" platform over 15 years ago, with a smaller install base at the time and with fans angry at the "backstabbing" done to Nintendo.

That's all I would've looked at if I was part of that company to see where my priorities should've been.

[DEATHxTHExKIDx]

That being said FFXIII sold 4mil close to 5 mil on PS3 alone which is still pretty good. MOST games never reach those numbers.

And FFVII is regarded by some as best in the series and was fairly revolutionary for its time.

All im saying is FFXIII sold pretty well despite it not being best quality FInal Fantasy game.

[miyamoto]

Selling your soul for $100 M to Microsoft is the worst move you have ever made Mr. Wada and you brought down a whole company with it. Now you have to dealwithit.

[The Rock Bottom]

"dealwithit"

I see what u did there. lol!

[sithsylar]

Huge losses was a sign???? Seriously try walking in a straight line for 40 hours... Just go back to basics with Final Fantasy. Just give me the final fantasy X battle system mixed with FF9 item/level system and i will die a happy man!

[Snookies12]

I wish they'd looked back at ANY FF game before X-2 and taken ideas from them... I mean, why are you going to have all those masterpieces of RPG history just sitting there and not draw ANYTHING from them?

[sithsylar]

Yep 100% agree to a certain degree. Back in the old days when final fantasy was good i used to love waiting for the next final fantasy to see what new battle system and item/level system they would introduce.... Now we are at a point where there is nothing but shit i feel like they need to look back to the past. No one has ever said less control is good i miss controlling all characters arghhh.

[Snookies12]

Well to be fair, people have complained that they want a faster battle system. Though, it's really hard to find a balance between fast gameplay and control. Although I always found X and X-2's battle systems the best in the series. Don't understand what's wrong with those... Even if they went off one of them as a basis and modified it a bit.

[abzdine]

screw you wada you killed squaresoft

[CEOSteveBallmer]

You know he should have just made one thing when he was still a CEO. Released FFversusXIII and discontinued FFXIII at the same time. Simple as that. Or FFVII remake would really appease the fans.

[kenshiro100]

You won't be missed.

[Zechs34]

This is just wishful thinking, but I hope when the "new" Square Enix release Versus, it eclipses the sales on the entire XIII trilogy, on a single platform(PS3) just to show how right the fans were from the very beginning.

Not to mention the fact that you don't tease a huge and salivating audience with a tech demo of your greatest achievement in FFVII,at the worlds biggest video game expo, only to ignore it and break the hearts of millions of gamers and potential buyers.

[-Gespenst-]

The hate for him is a little bit extreme. He was just enthusiastic about all the projects that went on in SE- he played all the games they released.

I think he was just a little bit too enthusiastic. It's almost like he was amazed by all those projects because he was seeing videogames for the first time or something.

I also don't think "fans telling him all along that he should move on" is valid. It's their creative project, not yours. He could have heeded your advice, but he never had to or should have done. Fans are getting too entitled. If you don't like their recent stuff, just move on yourself. Obviously if people don't like their stuff, they're going to make changes in the company, but that doesn't mean you can heckle them and hurl abuse at them. At most you should advise them- not shout "f*ck you SE! Give me games I want! Listen to me! You owe me good games!" These are luxuries we're talking about here.

That said,if something objectionable turned up in one of their games, then I think that kind of criticism would be warranted.