Square Enix has notified plans to replace Yosuke Matsuda as President of the Company, suggesting Takashi Kiryu for this position. Matsuda assumed the president role in 2013 following the resignation of Yoichi Wada at a time of poor sales for the Japanese video game publishing company that resulted in a significant restructuring. In recent months Matsuda has been at the center of several controversies associated with his strong support for NFTs and blockchain games, which he was still defending last January.
At a corporate level, Square Enix has been making notable restructuring moves in the last year: it sold a large part of its western development teams, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, to Embracer in 2022 and, earlier this week, announced the integration of Luminous Productions within Square Enix. Luminous Productions is the studio behind Forspoken, which didn’t have the best financial performance worldwide.
The president position will pass to Takashi Kiryu, a relative newcomer to the Company. He joined Square Enix in 2020 as the Company’s planning division manager. He has since moved through various positions at the Company, including director of Square Enix Corporation (the Company’s leading video game development associate in Japan) and, most recently, director of Square Enix Holdings. Now, he is to take on the role of CEO.
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The official Notification of Changes states that the chance of business environment surrounding the entertainment industry forces them to “reshape the management team with the goal of adopting ever-evolving technological innovations and maximizing the creativity of the Company’s group.” Furthermore, they hope this change allows them to “deliver even greater entertainment to its customers around the world.” The change will be voted on at Square Enix’s annual shareholders’ meeting in June for subsequent approval by the Board of Directors.
