Naoki Yoshida, who is known as a Yoshi-P in Final Fantasy XIV’s community, was secretly degraded by Square Enix. He is no longer a director and a longing wish from him is fulfilled.
Why does he have more time for the game? Yoshida has been in Square Enix’s director position since 2018. Only 8 people hold this position in the company. They coordinate teams and pay attention to time and resource management when developing video games.
However, as Square Enix announced a few days ago, the number of director positions should be reduced from 8 to 4. Yoshi-P is also one of those affected. However, after his release, he will remain as a director at Square Enix.
From May 2025 it will no longer be used as a director, but only as an executive officer. This degraded Yoshida in his position. But that’s exactly in his sense.
Naoki Yoshida is primarily known in connection with Final Fantasy XIV:
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Yoshida wants to play more games
Why is that his wish? In an interview from 2023, he revealed that he actually has no desire for the position (via dot eSports). He tried to hand over the job as a director, but Square Enix did not want to grant his wish.
The post as a director would take so much time that Yoshida has little time left to work on Final Fantasy XIV. Yoshida “would have more fun developing games”, as he reveals.
Yoshi-P don’t understand why his colleagues want to stay in the position of the director. He suspects that they “want to make a lot of money”, but according to him, that would also be possible as a game developer.
What does that mean for the MMORPG? With his degradation, Yoshi-P finally has more time to take care of the development of Final Fantasy XIV. This gives future updates and content of the game a stronger input from Yoshida, which can go out for good or bad.
Maybe it could be that even harder challenges will appear in the MMORPG in the future. In an earlier interview, Yoshida revealed that Dawntrail should be more difficult again. If the developer has more time to bring in his ideas in Final Fantasy XIV, that could mean even more difficult challenges.
Dawntrail is already proving that there is a lot to do in the endgame. Meinmmo tell you what you can do after completing the story in a clear guide: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail: Endgame-Chaotic Alliance Raids, Exams, Treasure Cards and more