Yuji Naka joins Square Enix to ‘develop an enjoyable game’

Legendary developer Yuji Naka, programmer of Sonic The Hedgehog and subsequent head of Sonic Team at Sega, has joined Square Enix. This news comes from Naka’s personal twitter feed, which strikes us as a strange venue to announce such a high profile hire.

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.

— Yuji Naka / 中　裕司 (@nakayuji) January 22, 2018

Details on what Naka will be doing at Square (other than developing ‘an enjoyable game’) are lacking, but it’s great to see more known names at the Japanese developer which has suffered in the past from stagnating creative leadership. Fresh energy and new perspectives are a boon for the company. Naka’s legacy speaks for itself, with credits on great titles like Nights Into Dreams, Phantasy Star Online and Billy Hatcher.

Whether Naka is heading up a new team or joining an existing one, it’s likely we won’t be seeing the fruits of his labours for a while yet. Hopefully not the ten years it took for Final Fantasy XV to finally see the light of day, but depending on the scope of the title we wouldn’t expect to hear much more this year.

You never know, though. Either way, we’ll be doing as Naka requests and looking forward to it.