Square Enix’s next CEO, Takashi Kiryu, revealed in a stream that he plays the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. However, he is not as experienced as his wife.
A few weeks ago, the current CEO of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda, announced that he will be stepping down from his position soon. His successor will be Takashi Kiryu.
This is what the new CEO says: In the FFXIV producer stream, Naoki Yoshida had both CEOs as guests in front of the camera. While Matsuda said goodbye to the fans and thanked them, Kiryu introduced himself and chatted something out of the box.
So the new boss of Square Enix said that he himself is an FFXIV fan. He even appeared on the stream accompanied by the official FFXIV guitar, which Yoshida says he bought himself. Yoshida noted that instead of taking advantage of his position as a company employee, the new boss had to wait in line for a full 9 months for his delivery.
However, Kiryu said that he is not a hardcore gamer. That would be his wife in his family. She “forced” him to play the MMORPG.
She is a more experienced player than me. She makes “wall to walls” [also große Pulls] And I can’t keep up i am the healer […] When I come home, she always has appropriate weapons and gear ready for my level and for the level we are supposed to reach together. I love it.
Like so many experienced players, the woman still gets annoyed when her healer husband runs in the wrong direction in dungeons, Kiryu says with a laugh.
Who is Takashi Kiryu anyway? The soon-to-be CEO of Square Enix only joined the company in 2020 and has since changed positions several times before ending up on the director board in 2022.
The announcement of Yosuke Matsuda’s retirement raised hopes among some Square Enix fans. In his letters to investors, the former CEO repeatedly said that the developer wanted to rely more on NFTs in their games. This did not go down well with many gamers.
However, the new CEO does not seem to be any less NFT-affine. Before joining Square Enix, he worked at Innovation Initiative of Japan’s Dentsu Group, which invested in NFT services in July 2021.
In a 2022 interview, Kiryu also emphasized that he supports and will probably hold Square Enix’s NFT course:
It remains to be seen what course Square Enix will take under Kiryu and how his leadership will translate to the company’s existing and future IPs. But opponents of NFT shouldn’t get their hopes too high from the new CEO that Square Enix will completely drop interest in the feature for their games.
FFXIV boss Naoki Yoshida has also had his say on NFTs:
Final Fantasy XIV boss has a clear opinion on NFTs in his MMORPG