Like Nintendo with its upcoming Star Fox 64 remake, Square Enix is demonstrating its commitment to 1997 through its delectable Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy… and that isn't ideal, according to former Square Enix director of business development and current Genvid CEO Jacob Navok. The company will never appeal to fresh, young Genshin Impact players that way.
"What is it going to take to get my kid to care about the brand?" Navok wonders in a new Twitter post discussing Square Enix's failure to capitalize on its Final Fantasy 14 live-service expertise and build an online empire that the little kids with iPad fingers will love. "If we solve that problem we can open up the rest of the opportunity."
"I landed on Disney, Roblox and other partnerships," Navok decides. "You have to be where the young people are. Imagine a Kpop Demon Hunters x Final Fantasy Collab, and how that would draw headlines and interest into the brand." He names Fortnite's Kpop Demon Hunters collaboration mode "Demon Rush" as an example of the "simple tweaks to gameplay, art, and sound" Square Enix could make to entice new fans.
Two years ago I said that one of Square Enix's biggest mistakes was to let MiHoYo make Genshin Impact instead of Square Enix.In my thread from last week, I pointed out that Square Enix has failed to bring its IP to a new generation, and that this will eat away at its future.… https://t.co/WnXpFsT1u0May 21, 2026
"Yoshida would have been great at pulling this off," the exec muses about Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida, who resigned from Square Enix's board of directors in 2025, though he serves as a member of the executive management committee. Considering Yoshida's eagerness to make even tonally dissonant collaborations with Diablo 4 or One Piece work – and the fact that a Fall Guys crossover with Final Fantasy 14 is something that happened in real life – I think Navok is right.
But, as is the case with Nintendo, Square Enix's current issue in recruiting new diehards isn't a matter of capability – because of course the Final Fantasy giant is capable of making a satisfying online game loop, that's the point of Final Fantasy 14. Instead, Square Enix has a problem with desire.
Navok says, "I think Square Enix is so used to being slow that it can't imagine what life would be like if it acted fast. There's a lot of internal red tape; the CEO's job is to make a decision and cut that red tape so that innovation flourishes." Former Nintendo marketing leads Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang made a similar observation about the Mario maker earlier this week, saying they were sad to see a "truly creative company" decide to bury "that part of themselves away because they were too scared to take the risk."
As a pre-existing Square Enix fan (who is aging and doesn't play Fortnite), I nonetheless see its focus on old IP as a creative disappointment, and also a financial risk. To this last point, Navok calls the developer's 2026 financial results "embarrassing" compared to Capcom and Konami in a recent Twitter thread, adding that Dragon Quest producer Ryutaro Ichimura was right when he said last year that Square Enix was overly focused on "safe" games. Ichimura left the company in 2023.
So we're not getting that Dragon Quest crossover with Bluey, then.
