Tanaka Leaves Square Enix.

[Jynx]

Last night, at the end of VanaFest 2012, Hiromichi Tanaka, Final Fantasy XI's producer since the game's launch, announced that he will be retiring from Square Enix due to unspecified health reasons.

Tanaka's history with Square Enix brought about some of the most memorable titles ever released by the company, such as Xenogears and Chrono Cross, but also saw more troubling times recently with the rough launch of Final Fantasy XIV in 2010.

Tanaka's position with Final Fantasy XI will be replaced by Akihiko Matsui, who served as the game's director in 2010 before being brought on board Final Fantasy XIV as lead battle designer.

While many of may be aware of this news allready the original thread was shut down due to linking to another forum.

Let's all be respectfull to the man who brought us XI and even if poorly received XIV wouldn't exist today without him. I wish him well in all of his future endeavors and a speedy recovery.

Stay classy Tanaka.

[Answa]

This is gonna be ugly.

[Leyza]

As I said before, I hope he does get better and enjoys his retirement.

[RathSkybreaker]

It is relevant to XIV, he was our producer and he did try his best to give us the best game possible... his vision was just not what we wanted and we can't blame him for that, he's only human. Much respect to a man whose creative spark surely made us all have memorable moments.

I don't see why they would lock this thread.

[Jynx]

Please guys let's not get off topic about the previous thread. the Moderator made it perfectly clear why it was locked and this thread is devoid of said content.

let's leave it at that and keep to the topic at hand that will effect future design for XI and XIV (He was still in a consulting position to Yoshida and I'm sure he is sad to see him go as well)

[neorei]

as much as i love earlier games that tanaka has done he has a bitter taste to a lot from xi and xiv people. also this thread was shown a couple of time and have been locked because of it

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...es-Square-Enix

[Airget]

as much as i love earlier games that tanaka has done he has a bitter taste to a lot from xi and xiv people. also this thread was shown a couple of time and have been locked because of it

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...es-Square-Enix

It's because the OP mentioned another site, this OP is just bringing up the news and asking for community input over it, it's apparently different.

On topic though I hope there's a news post on it for the XI site at least it would be in poor taste if it was only mentioned through Vanafest and he wasn't even the proper respect of a departure note which he can leave to those he made the game for.

When all is said and done you always have to take the good with the bad and even though people may say things in XI were unforgiven and difficult it's those very aspects which made the community strong. You might be mad at Tanaka for making drop rates high or making mobs insanely difficult but when you finally got that drop or you finally defeated that foe you definitely felt an accomplishment over it. With that said I do hope after his rest he comes back and continues to produce games, he's a good developer but after dealing with 2 MMOs and having to deal with issues I can understand that he just needs a break. He is as young as Yoshida so he can't handle the insane hours like Yoshi anymore. But hopefully with a few months/yr of rest maybe he'll come back into the developers side and start working on some old school game brands like a sequal to the Chrono series <_< or maybe even Threads of Fate, I always recall enjoying that game to bad it was just one name game lol. Then of course there is Xenogears but that's hard to figure out with the whole xenosaga thing and how it's suppose to have ties to xenogear and yada yada lol.

But ya, hopefully he gets a well deserved rest having to deal with all the pressure and stress around him he definitely deserves some time to himself.

[DeadRiser]

It wasn't Tanaka's fault for the rushed release of XIV right? I don't know, I read that somewheres lol just curious.

[Alerith]

He's an excellent producer for offline games. I certainly hope he gets better.

[NefarioCall]

I <3 Tanaka. always have, always will.
I'm not sure what 'elements' led to the XIV launch disaster, but i do at least understand what he was going for,
and had it been finished, it would have been every bit as ground-breaking for the genre as VII.

Anyway, so we're losing the lead battle designer to XI then?
<___> I should be worried, but with Yoshi at the helm and given how well everything is going with XIV right now,
maybe it's just a turn of events that will somehow make future battle content even better than ever.