Square Enix to oust Yosuke Matsuda as President, Takashi Kiryu to replace him

Change still has to be approved at next annual shareholder meeting

Marco Wutz | Mar 3, 2023

Square Enix to oust Yosuke Matsuda as President, Takashi Kiryu to replace him /

A leadership change at Square Enix is underway as a new notification sent out by the company details. Yosuke Matsuda, President and Representative Director of Square Enix, will be replaced by the current Director Takashi Kiryu. Shareholders will still need to approve this change at the 43rd annual shareholder meeting, which is planned to be held in June 2023.

Square Enix launched a few high-profile duds under Yosuke Matsuda’s leadership recently, such as Marvel’s The Avengers, Babylon’s Fall, and Forspoken, and sold a majority of its overseas assets and IPs to Embracer Group to finance a controversial pivot to blockchain technology and NFTs.

Square Enix's release catalog was a real mixed bag in the last couple of years / Square Enix

Yosuke Matsuda repeatedly emphasized his will to invest heavily into those fields, most prominently in Square Enix’s last two New Years letters, which earned him massive criticism from the gaming community. Under his leadership, Square Enix also announced that it would merge subsidiary Luminous Productions back into the main company a few days ago.

Whether Yosuke Matsuda’s ousting is a reaction to recent failed game releases or indicates a different direction regarding the pivot to blockchain technology and NFTs is not known at this time.

His replacement, Takashi Kiryu, has been with the company since 2020. Before that, he was a General Manager and Director at Dentsu, where he oversaw the Strategic Investment Department of the Dentsu Innovation Initiative, which dealt with topics like the creator economy and the metaverse – not exactly fields of interest the gaming community will point towards as a good sign for a change in the right direction.

At least Square Enix has Final Fantasy 16 to look forward to this year, which looks like it will be a big hit and worthy successor to the iconic franchise according to our Final Fantasy 16 preview.

Published Mar 3, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg