Square Enix reportedly reassigns top Dragon Quest producer following delays | VGC

Square Enix has reportedly reassigned top Dragon Quest producer Yu Miyake following delays to the next mainline series entry.

Yu Miyake, a director of the board who joined Square Enix in 1992 and had long overseen the RPG franchise, will now lead the Japanese company’s mobile games, according to Bloomberg‘s sources.

Nier series producer Yosuke Saito is a strong candidate to replace Miyake as the lead Dragon Quest producer, it’s claimed.

The first Dragon Quest game was released in 1986. Featuring artwork by the late Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, the franchise had sold over 88 million units as of June 2023, according to Square Enix.

The company announced five new Dragon Quest titles, including the twelfth main game in the series, during a 35th anniversary livestream in 2021.

Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate would introduce some changes to the franchise’s turn-based battle system, be darker in tone and have a simultaneous worldwide release, series creator Yuji Horii said at the time.

The most recent mainline series entry was 2017’s Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age.

According to Bloomberg, Miyake’s reassignment is part of a wider reshuffle designed to make Square Enix less reliant on external resources as it focuses more on triple-A games developed internally.

It recently promoted a new group of creators to the position of executive officers, who carry out decisions made by the board and are responsible for specific parts of the company.

They included Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi, and Tomoya Asano, producer of the Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default games.