Hiromichi Tanaka leaves Square Enix

After being an employee since the 80s, Hiromichi Tanaka leaves the company, citing health reasons as the reason for quitting. The announcement was made near the end of this year's VanaFest event.

Tanaka was known for his work on titles such as Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Secret of Mana as well as a few of the older Final Fantasy games. His focus for the last decade has been on Final Fantasy XI and XIV, with varying degrees of success.

Without doing too much speculation, it is possible that he was laid off because of his somehow lacking ability of giving the customers the kind of experience they were looking for in FFXI, and then of course the many arguably terrible design choices of FF14.

He says he is afflicted with an incurable disease in famitsu interview.?????FFXI??????????????????????????????????????????????????? - ????.com

I can't read Japanese, so I can't verify any of that.

So he was the guy who made the boring parts of FFXI and the terrible launch version of FFXIV?

Pretty much.

Japanese companies don't fire employees, they "promote" them until they retire. Still, I don't know about his handling of the MMO entries, but he was a pretty big figure when it came to Secret of Mana and Chrono Cross, not to mention he worked on the first four FF titles and was partly helping with the DS remake of FFIII. He was also the only important guy at Squenix who was still interest in doing more with the Chrono franchise but I guess we can finally place the last nail in the coffin for that franchise ever seeing the light of day again.

Now that Tanaka is gone, only Akitoshi Kawazu and Hiroyuki Ito are left from the original Square team.

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Originally Posted by ShinGundam

He says he is afflicted with an incurable disease in famitsu interview.?????FFXI??????????????????????????????????????????????????? - ????.com

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Something sounds fishy in the article, but if it is true, really sad, especially with the tenth anniversary of 11 happening.

I believe I read in one article that he was going to focus on single-player experiences? Does that mean he has another company on the horizon, or contracting to Square Enix?

I've loved every game he's been involved in, especially Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy IX. However, in recent years he has really failed to keep up to speed with what the players want and for that he ruined his own career (e.g. FFXIV and late-FFXI). Hopefully his sickness isn't too serious, whilst I wished him gone from Square I would never wish sickness upon him. :\

You need to be careful of what you wish for next time you acquire a monkey's paw, Ome.

Very sad to see, I think he got scapegoated hard for FFXIV.

He's technically the true "Father of Final Fantasy," the one who, along with Koichi Ishii, came up with the world of swords and sorcery that Final Fantasy would inhibit, directed FFIII and IV, and went on to create the Mana franchise once the junior developers took over. He's the man who put the "Dream Team" of Square and Enix's best and brightest together for Chrono Trigger, and believed enough in the Monolith guys to give them another shot with Chrono Cross after their relative failure with Xenogears. He was the driving force for Final Fantasy XI and the reason why we got such awesome remakes with Final Fantasy III and IV on the DS.

He was probably the only executive more truly on the "production side" with any sense left at Square Enix, and now he's gone. Off to make "smaller" experiences, just like Keiji Inafune, Matsuo, and so many other giants. The idea of a "Big Video Game" is dead.

If you want AAA titles, you better get used to generic shooters and horrifically boring WRPGs.

Or play Xenoblade Chronicles.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Very sad to see, I think he got scapegoated hard for FFXIV.

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I agree, this definetly comes across as him retiring after becoming the fall guy for XIV's failure. While I'm sure he is partially responsible for some of the games problems, I don't necessarily feel he's completely at fault here for whatever issues fans have with XI and XIV.

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He's technically the true "Father of Final Fantasy," the one who, along with Koichi Ishii, came up with the world of swords and sorcery that Final Fantasy would inhibit, directed FFIII and IV,

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I know you're still on your "Sakaguchi is a hack" campaign, but it was actually Sakaguchi who co-wrote FFI's plot with Koichi Ishii, Tanaka was a co-designer along with the two of them, but they are the ones who were charge of the actual story and Sakaguchi says it was Ishii who was the one who came up with the Crystal concept, but Sakaguchi came up with the whole concept of what the game was going to be. He also didn't direct FFIV, he didn't even really work on it cause he jumped to do Seiken Denetsu instead. Tanaka is also only credited with directing the DS remake of FFIII, he was simply one of the main designers in III who came up with Chocobos and the Job class system. ,

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He's the man who put the "Dream Team" of Square and Enix's best and brightest together for Chrono Trigger,

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This is also incorrect, he never worked on Chrono Trigger, only Chrono Cross as producer and battle designer, and as a supervisor for the PSX port of CT. The Dream Team was created when Horii, Sakaguchi, and Akira Toriyama were in America on business trips, and they got to talking about making a game that has never been done, which ended up creating the "Dream Team" and Chrono Trigger.

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and believed enough in the Monolith guys to give them another shot with Chrono Cross after their relative failure with Xenogears.

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Xenogears was actually commercially successful, and even became a greatest hit, so it's far from a failure, considering the games success allowed Xenosaga to even be made. Hell Nintendo changed their latest entries name to reflect the Xeno brand name so I would argue that Xenogears was far from a failure.

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He was the driving force for Final Fantasy XI and the reason why we got such awesome remakes with Final Fantasy III and IV on the DS.

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Um, once again, he didn't work on the DS remake of IV, that was Tokita.

So yeah, while he was definetly an important founding member of the Final Fantasy series and did some great things with Mana series (from what I've gathered, he's like Ito, and specialized in battle systems since he has confirmed that as something he did for the first three games) I feel you have really kind of shot yourself in the foot in your attempt to discredit Sakaguchi (and to a lesser degree, Xenogears) with this post. :p

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Very sad to see, I think he got scapegoated hard for FFXIV.

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I agree, this definetly comes across as him retiring after becoming the fall guy for XIV's failure. While I'm sure he is partially responsible for some of the games problems, I don't necessarily feel he's completely at fault here for whatever issues fans have with XI and XIV.

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I can assure you that even if he probably wasn't given enough time to finish the product, the fundamentals of the game are bad enough for the game to have turned out terribly flawed anyway. FF14 was designed as a 2001 MMO with prettier graphics, and that definitely does not cut it for a game released in 2011, where the MMO competition is stronger than ever. The game feels like taking several huge steps backwards from what other games have to offer, and that's not strange, considering Tanaka pretty much lived in alone in a cave as far as MMO development goes.

As the executive director of the game, it is his responsibility to make sure the design choices in the game are sound, and it is also his responsibility to make sure that they're making something that the world actually wants. Without looking at the rest of the MMO community, how would he know?

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Or play Xenoblade Chronicles.

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I intend to, but I said "AAA" titles. ;)

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I know you're still on your "Sakaguchi is a hack" campaign,

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Look, Wolf, I came into this thread and posted all that to honor a guy and shed some light on his impressive resume in a discussion thread about him, not to get into collateral arguments with you. I've never said "Sakaguchi is a hack!" and to suggest that any comments amount to a "campaign" is ridiculous. I've only related information I've read over the years from interviews, about how Tanaka and Ishii created the concept for FF, how Tanaka coordinated the teams through FFIII and IV, was the one who initially got Sakaguchi and Horii in contact with eachother, and made the big executive push to remake III and IV on the DS. I once read Kitase attribute Tanaka as the director of FFIV, but you found an article where he himself repudiates that, so I won't challenge you.

And I said Xenogears was a relative failure, and it's true. Creatively, we can both agree that the final product is incomplete. Commercially, Square set the benchmark, that if Xenogears sold 1 million copies they would make the other episodes. It didn't, so they moved the team onto an already-existing franchise instead.

I'm mostly picking on you for some comments you made when you were trying to shut up the fanboys whining around about the series not being as good once Sakaguchi left, but I did feel you implied since your statement made it sound like Tanaka and Ishii did everything. You need to lighten up and remember I like to start conflict. It makes for more amusing conversation. Besides, you don't argue you with me anymore and I miss Chu. :(

Other than that, I was simply correcting some errors. I felt Tanank has his names attached to quite a few wonderful titles of my childhood, though reading into his career, I'm beginning to reconsider being sad that he left Squenix. Being the father of the Job Class system was his greatest contribution to the series, though I feel Itou is more responsible for making it as well loved as it is.

Though for Xenogears, it did actually sell a million units, about 1.19 million to be precise, which is why it was re-released as a Greatest Hits on the PS1 in 2003. It's just by the time it sold that number, the staff had already left Squenix and had formed Monolith Soft 2001-2002. Tanaka was actually the Battle Designer for both Xenogears and Chrono Cross so you may not be so quick to give him credit, since that was one of your larger issues with the game. ;)

I understand, Wolf, and the feeling is mutual, just don't accuse me of having an agenda!

Anyway, I don't doubt Sakaguchi's legacy, and I think what he and Tanaka were strong at was they knew how to put a team together to make a video game and make sure they don't veer too far off course during the making of it. Like with FFVII, Sakaguchi wrote the original scenario, but then he went to make sure the FMV's were top notch and laid out the ground rules - like how if the player ever became aware of the load times, he would consider that the team had failed. Stuff like that was important.

I think part of the sink in quality later is that Square naturally promoted guys like Kitase and Nomura to producer positions to let others try a hand at directing and writing. The problem is, Kitase and Nomura were a lot better developers than they are producers. And I'm not sure the current talent pool quite stacks up for them.

I think that's what I really lament about Sakaguchi and now Tanaka's departure. We don't have these true team leaders who can make sure a meaningful piece of work can be made, it's just a mess over there now.