Hiromichi Tanaka leaves Square Enix

[Mirage]

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.