Yuji Naka has resurfaced on Twitter, with a spicy message to start off our week.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Naka has accused Yuu Miyake of lying about him in court. To quote Video Games Chronicle’s translation of his statement:
“Finally. I was hoping he would be gone soon because he is the kind of person who would submit a note with a lie (with evidence) to a court of law. I have never met him, but the new [Square Enix] president might be a good person.”
Yuu Miyake had been working on the Dragon Quest franchise since 1992. We reported that he was recently removed from being the person in charge of the franchise, because of delays in making Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate. Video Games Chronicle reports that Yuu has been moved to be in charge of the mobile games division. In spite of Naka’s sentiments, this could be perceived as a promotion.
Yuji Naka, at one time himself the steward of a major video game franchise in Sonic the Hedgehog, joined Square Enix to produce Balan Wonderworld. While Balan Wonderworld flopped with critics and fans, Naka’s tenure in the company is now infamous. After a whistleblower outed him for insider trading, Naka was convicted, and sentenced to 30 months in prison, with a four year suspension, and fined the equivalent of $ 1.2 million.
As reported by Takashi Mochizuki on Bloomberg, Miyake’s move between divisions is part of a broader reorganization within Square Enix. Square’s current president, Takashi Kiryu, has sold this move to investors as a push to rely less on external developers and do more of their work in-house. So far, investors have been positive to the move.
Mochizuki also reports that Yosuke Saito, who works closely with Yoko Taro on Nier and other projects, is highly favored to take over the position as head of Dragon Quest.
We had reported Yuji Naka’s case through the years, and it’s worth pointing out that he did write a confession stating, in translation:
“There is no doubt that I knew the facts about the game before it was made public and bought the stock.”
So if Naka is not disputing his earlier confession, he seems to still be claiming some injustice to the extent that he had been prosecuted on. But not all of the details of his court case carried over to the West, so there may be something else that we don’t know about, but has embarrassed him over in his native Japan.
In any case, if Naka feels confident about talking about the very case again in the middle of his suspended sentence, we may hear even more sordid details in the near future.
