Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada resigns

**Gokulo** · 2013-03-26 05:30

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/26/414...i-wada-resigns

Square Enix President and CEO Yoichi Wada is resigning, according to a recent statement from the company.

Wada will be replaced by current representative director Yosuke Matsuda, making this one of the company's first major steps toward "management reform." The decision will be subject to a resolution during the company's general meeting of shareholders this June, then later by a resolution from its board of directors.

This follows the publisher's release of consolidated results forecast which revealed its expectations of an "extraordinary loss" in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013. Square Enix announced today its plans to begin major restructuring throughout, which is expected to result in a loss of roughly 10 billion yen (or just over $105 million) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013.

Polygon has contacted Square Enix and will update this post when further information is made available.

Document in English:
http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ne...30326_02en.pdf

'dat smile (new guy)

http://www.k-wam.jp/images/img-gm-musota.jpg

**Sho** · 2013-03-26 05:36

Haha.

**Deuce** · 2013-03-26 08:18

Not too surprised with this; however, I would've expected to it have come sooner after the failure of FFXIV.

**Correction** · 2013-03-26 09:31

Welp, that's it for Versus lol

**Tyrath** · 2013-03-26 09:32

Is that pic really him? Doesn't look 53..

**Gokulo** · 2013-03-26 09:37

Originally Posted by Tyrath

Is that pic really him? Doesn't look 53..

Not really sure actually

Couldn't locate the pic myself, but someone posted that somewhere saying it's him and I just copied. Might be someone else, lol.

**Tyrath** · 2013-03-26 09:42

Actual pic

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks...4tgso1_400.jpg

**Gokulo** · 2013-03-26 09:44

Originally Posted by Tyrath

Actual pic

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks...4tgso1_400.jpg

Wait, that's Wada. I thought you meant the other guy.

**Tyrath** · 2013-03-26 09:52

Oh derp, thought your pic was supposed to be Wada. Thats why im like...doesn't look right lol

**Correction** · 2013-03-26 10:01

Financial report.

They didn't have any mind-blowingly awful sales this quarter but it's presumed Hitman missed targets. We already know Sleeping Dogs didn't make as much as they wanted. And although their f2p stuff was profitable it probably wasn't profitable enough for a AAA developer with 2 gigantic cash sinks (Versus and ARR) on their balance sheet. I wonder if they were expecting more out of DQX as well.

**The Blackrose** · 2013-03-26 10:22

Shit was a long time coming. Especially once you read into how he ousted Suzuki and Sakaguchi.

SE also announced that they are selling off their F2P portfolio: http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/25/sq...restructuring/

Probably going to move this to main discussion in a bit. It's a major piece of news.

**miokomioko** · 2013-03-26 10:25

I'm surprised this didn't happen a lot sooner. That financial report though... yikes.

**Kurokikaze** · 2013-03-26 10:41

Yeah given the financial data you'd think the stock would've taken a hit... It actually went up 20 JPY lol.

**Correction** · 2013-03-26 10:43

Originally Posted by Kurokikaze

Yeah given the financial data you'd think the stock would've taken a hit... It actually went up 20 JPY lol.

When a CFO replaces a CEO it usually means they're in serious cost-cutting mode which attracts speculators to your stock :D

**Melena** · 2013-03-26 10:55

According to Joystiq, Hitman and Tomb Raider did just under 7million units combined and that was still below expectations. Makes me think they had a target of 4-5million units each for those games.

**Correction** · 2013-03-26 10:57

Originally Posted by Melena

According to Joystiq, Hitman and Tomb Raider did just under 7million units combined and that was still below expectations. Makes me think they had a target of 4-5million units each for those games.

They were expecting Tomb Raider to sell over 3 million in 3 weeks. That's the sign of upper management desperate to conceal a fire in the basement. The whole board is getting replaced.

**The Blackrose** · 2013-03-26 10:58

Judging from the look of reports relating to FY13, it looks like they're shifting blame onto the NA/EU market/Eidos and avoid any sort of punch to their internal JP development.

Some slides that I've seen in circulation elsewhere. Trying to find the source on these.
EDIT: Correction beat me. Do you have the full slide deck anywhere?

**vrumpt** · 2013-03-26 11:02

I mean... poor game sales were Square Enix's fault.

They gave us XIII which was kinda shitty.
They gave us XIII-2 which wasn't deserved and nobody wanted.
They're giving us XIII-3, which I'm sure even less people want.
They gave us XIV 1.0 which failed hard.

They didn't give us Versus-XIII.
They didn't give us Kingdom Hearts III.
They didn't give us remakes of games we're still waiting for (VI, VII).
They've had nothing to show in recent years at shows except that one tech demo nobody cares about.

The only decent thing I can think of that can really help them is the new Tomb Raider that just came out, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
Oh yeah, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs were good I guess, but they didn't make them. X/X-2 HD will be nice, but that isn't now.

So yeah, to me its no surprise that SE is in deep shit. They've had a really crappy decade.

**The Blackrose** · 2013-03-26 11:04

Found the full slide deck: http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ne...0326slides.pdf

**Takiwaki** · 2013-03-26 11:11

Its true though, none of those games had any real marketing push in NA. Especially tomb raider. I literally had to sell my brother on it, after which he beat it in a day of non stop play and was like omg that was an amazing game.

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