Former Square boss says Square-Enix merger was a 'complete failure', company has 'no vision for the future'

Hisashi Suzuki, the man who was President of Square at the time of its 2003 merger with Enix, has taken to Twitter to blast Square-Enix's current direction. According to GamesIndustry.biz (whose Japanese-reading skills we trust more than our own), Suzuki branded the 2002 merger of the two companies 'a complete failure' and said Square-Enix has 'no vision for the future'.

Suzuki's outburst comes after Square-Enix released its financial report, lowering its forecasts after slow sales of 'a major HD game title', most likely Sleeping Dogs. He also pointed out that the total value of Square Enix as a publicly traded company has still not been able to exceed the value of the publisher before the merger.

After the merger, Suzuki served as director at the company from 2003-2005 and now works as a director at Sega (another merged company thanks to its fusion with Sammy). He said high development costs had been dragging Square-Enix down, but that its recent long-term deal with Epic to use Unreal Engine 3 and 4 should help.

Plus, we can't help but think that Square-Enix's next-gen tech demo isn't a bad vision of the future at all. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Sources: GamesIndustry, Kotaku

Justin Towell

Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.