Yu Miyake, a member of Square Enix who has overseen the development of a number of Dragon Quest games since joining the publisher all the way back in 1992, is reportedly set to step down from his position as a producer on the series, after some delays in the creation of the next entry in it.
This is according to Bloomberg, which reports that Miyake will be making a move over to taking charge of Square Enix’s mobile games department once he’s moved on from his current position on Dragon Quest. Apparently, there are already some folks being tabbed as potential replacements, with one in particular sounding like they’re maybe, er, NieRer than most.
Bloomberg cites sources as having said this move is part of a “large-scale reorganization” of the deveopment structure at Square, designed to fulfil the desire of president Takashi Kiryu – no relation to your favourite face-punching Yakuza protagonist – to make the publisher less reliant on external resources and focus more on producing in-house games that can diversify its output. Basically, he said he likes PowerWash Simulator earlier this year.
While it still doesn’t have a concrete release date, Dragon Quest 12 – which comes with the snappy moniker ‘The Flames of Fate’ – was announced all the way back in 2021. During the livestream that featured that reveal, which was designed to celebrate the series’ 35th anniversary, series creator Yuji Horii hinted at this next entry being pitched more towards adults. Though according to this latest report, it’s been hit by some delays since then.
One of the candiates cited potentially in line to step into the Dragon Quest producing post is Yosuke Saito, who’s been a producer on the NieR series for a good while now, having served in that role for the likes of NieR: Automata and NieR: Replicant. We’ll have to see how this chair-swapping shakes out for Square and some of its top RPG series.
Whenever Dragon Quest 12 arrives, it’ll be the first mainline entry in the series to be released following the death of Akira Toriyama back in March, with the legendary manga artist having provided the iconic character designs for the very first Dragon Quest game back in 1986, alongside a bunch of other work in the gaming sphere.