Square Enix

Big news on the second day of VanaFest: Hiromichi Tanaka, the current producer of Final Fantasy XI, is stepping down and will leave Square Enix mostly due to health problems.

Hiromichi Tanaka started his work at Square in 1983 and was one of the earliest members and eventually headed up  Square Enix's 3rd development division. Later he became Corporate Executive Online Business.

At Square he worked on games like Final Fantasy, II and III, Secret of Mana, Xenogears and Chrono Cross. Besides producer of Final Fantasy XI he was also producer of Final Fantasy XIV till December 2010 (which was badly received by the fans causing him to step down).

Akihiko Matsui will take over his spot as producer of Final Fantasy XI.

Square Enix has opened a mysterious teaser website for a new secret title that they will announce in 153 hours from now (Friday 30 March).

On the teaser website you can see a trailer with artwork of the new game and Masaki Hirooka and Yusuke Naora are credited as the illustrators. Also some keywords (like crystal and summons) are showed.

Edit: Seems to be hours and not days.

Update: The game is called Crystal Conquest and will be a real-time battle strategy browser game for Yahoo! Games in Japan.

Square Enix has announced that unknown parties has gained unauthorized access to a server related to Square Enix Members and therefore they have taken down the service in Japan and North America. Europe is not affected by the hack.

They said that it might take a few days to look into the matter and fix the security holes.

You can read the full statement below.

We have reason to believe that unknown parties may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server related to the free SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS service offered in North America and Japan. In response, Square Enix, Inc. has temporarily suspended operation of the SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS service starting at 10PM (PST) on December 12, 2011.

We are assessing the full extent of this potential breach to determine what data, if any, was compromised and will provide more details as soon as possible. While some personal information may have been accessed, we can confirm that there is no possibility of any credit card information leak from this incident, since the server in question stores no credit card information. We estimate that the suspension will continue for a few days until we complete our investigation and counter-measures. We will update you as we learn more.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by the temporary suspension of the SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS service. We take data security extremely seriously and we regret any inconvenience this may have caused our customers and fans. We appreciate your patience and support at this time.

Yoichi Wada, President and CEO of Square Enix, has made an announcement regarding Final Fantasy XIV.

Allow me to thank you all for your continued interest in FINAL FANTASY XIV. One year has passed since the game’s release, and despite the disappointment surrounding its launch, we have received a wealth of support from you, the players. Your encouraging words and continued loyalty have been a source of immeasurable inspiration to everyone involved with FINAL FANTASY XIV’s development. In the ten months since the FINAL FANTASY XIV team’s restructuring, we have put forth the utmost effort into not only improving the game’s existing features, but also creating a concrete plan to outline the game’s new direction. Today, I am pleased to announce we can confidently present that plan to our customers. We fully realize this is but a single step towards our ultimate goal, and that to meet the high standards set in the plan, more time is required. In the meantime, however, we will not waver in our commitment to bringing players exciting and engaging content, even as the game moves through its evolution. With this, it is my hope that we will continue to receive your support as we will need to bring the unbilled period to a close between late November and early December 2011, and introduce our subscription-based billing system. I appreciate that this decision will not be popular, but it is a necessary step in building upon the foundation our fans and development team have made together and to realize the full potential of FINAL FANTASY XIV. The team will stop short of nothing as they move towards realizing the new FINAL FANTASY XIV, and as they do so, I humbly ask for both your understanding and support. President and CEO, Yoichi Wada

This concludes that the you have to pay a monthly fee starting from end November, begin December. All subscriptions that are automatically renewed are temporary suspended, so that you have to renew it if you want to continue playing the game.

They also announced Final Fantasy XIV Version 2.0 which will be a complete rebuild of the game. The maps will be redesigned, a new graphics engine will be implemented, a complete redesign of the user interface and more community content will be added. They have announced to release Final Fantasy XIV Version 2.0 end 2012, begin 2013.

The PlayStation 3 version was indefinitely delayed previous year after the negative reactions on the game. They have stated that the PlayStation 3 version will be released together with Final Fantasy XIV Version 2.0.