Many exciting things are happening around Square Enix lately. We recently wrote about Final Fantasy XV Royal edition coming to Xbox One and PS4 and, just yesterday, we also wrote about the latest patch that is coming to their MMO, Final Fantasy XIV. But, Square Enix will have another reason to fill our front pages. And what a reason that is - the company hired the legendary Yuji Naka, "the big daddy" and the lead programmer behind everyone's favorite blue hedgehog - Sonic.
This information is both epic and sad at the same time (from my point of view). As someone who grew up on Sonic games, it saddens me that Naka is now working for another company. On the other hand, this is certainly a big deal for Square Enix and I can see Naka really contributing a lot to their (mutual) future games.
We don't have many details on this "transfer" but Naka himself stated the following: " Just a quick note to let you know, I joined SQUARE ENIX in January. I'm joining game development as before, and strive to develop games at SQUARE ENIX. I aim to develop an enjoyable game, please look forward to it ". That's coming straight from his Twitter account. There are no details on the game he's working on at the moment but we will certainly keep an eye out for more information.
Yuji Naka made the name for himself by being in charge of the Sonic Team (at Sega). He was a part of Sega until 2006 (good thing that, at least, he wasn't a part of that monstrosity called Sonic 06) and that is when he left the company in order to start his own studio - Prope. Prope developed several notable games, including Let's Tap ( released in 2008 for the Nintendo Wii) and a couple of Digimon games (Digimon Adventure released in 2013 for the PSP and Digimon All-Star Rumble released in 2014 for the PS3). Although these games were (obviously) far from the legacy that was created by the Sonic games, they still had their own trademarks and you could feel Naka's touch while playing them.
We will see what the new era will bring to both Mr. Naka himself and Square Enix as well. Let's hope that this cooperation will bring us many great games that will last for ages to come!