I recently watched a video about the japanese market, how Playstation and home console are losing market share and how how the mobile gaming continues to grow.

Knowing that, Yoshida discourse kinda make sense, especially for the japanese market where XIV is still mainly played on consoles.

But I see several flows in this line of thinking. You can add all the smartphone mechanics you want, a console and pc game will never be a mobile game. It seems delusionnal to me think you'll get magical players because you try to fill your pc and console game with mobile game mechanics : you'll still be on a platform mobile player don't play on. With the risk of losing the players you currently have, due to how pc and console players see mobile gaming. That might be less true in japan, but that lead me to my second point.

Despite being a japanese game, 70% of the players are not from japan. And about 70% of those play on pc. I can't say about Japan, but in the west, mmo culture and mobile game culture are basically complete opposite. Despite being a japanese game you can't ignore 70% of your playerbase unless you're ready to loose them. And I doubt SE is ready for that.