Shake-ups at Square Enix see Dragon Quest’s long standing top producer step down

05.04.2024 - 10:55 / rockpapershotgun.com / Akira Toriyama / Square Enix / Takashi Kiryu / Ios

The long-serving top producer of legendary RPG series Dragon Quest has stepped down from the role, according to sources that spoke to RPS Maw tribute site Bloomberg. Yu Miyake, who has been involved with numerous DQ games since he joined Enix in 1989 as marketer on DQ books, is moving on to head up Square Enix’s mobile games.

The change comes as part of shake-ups at Squeenix under new President and blockchain enjoyer Takashi Kiryu, who Bloomberg point out has committed to reverse SE’s flagging sales of both big releases (like Final Fantasy 16) and mobile titles (like Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis), possibly so he can profit handsomely enough to construct himself an arm-mounted Australian Shepherd launcher (like Final Fantasy 8.)

“He told investors in February that the new structure will help the company rely less on external resources,” write Bloomberg, “and focus more on in-house triple-A games.” Thanks Bloomberg, all that time spent studying the Maw’s mind-numbingly perfect form and taking notes surely paid off.

Without pulling out my woefully misinformed ‘this really says a lot about the industry’ graph, I have been thinking recently about what a strange year, both sad and remarkable or otherwise eventful, its been for JRPGs and the people who make and play them. We lost one of Dragon Quest’s key figures in the singular talent that was artist Akira Toriyama, who also worked on Chrono Trigger, last month.

Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of both the Suikoden franchise and the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, sadly passed away in February. His work meant a great deal to me growing up, and I hope he left us happy in the knowledge that so many fans still held his games in high enough regard to make the Eiyuden kickstarter the smash success it turned out to be. We should be seeing remakes of Suikoden 1 & 2 this year, as well. Please play them, providing Konami doesn’t pull a Konami on them.

On the flipside, the year has already seen some absolute corkers in LAD: Infinite Wealth, FF7: Rebirth and, depending on your definition, Dragon's Dogma 2. If you wanted a big, lavish, well-regarded release in the first few months of the year, chances are you were grabbing a JRPG. Persona 3: Reload and Granblue Fantasy: Relink were no slouches either, depending on who you ask. Again, I don’t have a unifying theory here, just something that struck me is all. It’s certainly been a year for a genre that, whether its your bag or not, is clearly far from irrelevant.