Nope. He didn't work on FFX or FFVII either.

From what I've read, he started off as a sound programmer on FFI and somehow worked his way up over the NES generation to be in charge of the combat for FFIV, when he invented ATB, IMO one of the great gaming ideas to ever come out of the medium. FFV is where he stepped up into the director-like position he's been in ever since. While Sakaguchi is listed as Director in the English manuals, he was in charge of everything that happened in the battle screen (basically the gameplay) while Yoshinori Kitase was in charge of everything that happened on the field screen (basically the story). They formalized these duties with Ito and Kitase co-directing Final Fantasy VI, and I think the results speak for themselves. After that, he helped the Quest team to merge the Ogre Battle universe with the Final Fantasy mythos (result = Ivalice) on Final Fantasy Tactics while Kitase and the rest of the team worked on FFVII. He didn't "direct" FFVIII, but he was credited for the Junction system I believe, which a lot of people will probably consider as his one misstep. Sakaguchi chose him to be the sole Director of Final Fantasy IX. I wish I knew what he was doing now, but his last major project was as co-Director of Final Fantasy XII.

He's probably my favorite developer who's worked on the franchise. A lot of people categorize JRPGs as games with horrible gameplay that we only tolerate because of the awesome stories, but I've never looked at it that way. As a kid I fell for the stories, but as I've matured into an adult, what kept me replaying favorites and sticking with the genre was deep customization and strategic combat. Hiroyuki Ito's systems are the gold standard of what it means to be a Japanese Role Playing Game.

I'm amazed at how he's taken real life mechanics from professional sports and incorporated them into his titles. I knew about the American football's influence on FFXII, but I didn't know it went deeper beyond that until I read the article. It seems like he was really dying to talk about the NFL with Jeremy Parish and it's a shame he was stuck with a non-fan.

But I know we have some NFL fans here and EoFF is getting tighter with Square Enix, what're the chances we could get an interview with him here?