Struggling Square Enix make staff cut-backs

It’s already proving to be a rocky year for Square Enix as the company has been forced to make layoffs, announce a massive net loss, and appoint a new president.

Late last month Square Enix made the announcement that the expected loss for the quarter ending March 31 was around 13 billion yen (which is around $166,270,000 NZD – thank you, Google).

As a result of that massive loss, a restructuring of the company is currently underway and has already caused Yoichi Wada to resign as president.

Yosuke Matsuda will take the reins of Square Enix in his place, and will oversee the restructuring, he told Siliconera.com.

“After having succeeded the important role as the president, I plan on reviewing all Square Enix duties, business and assets on a zero-based budgeting standpoint.

"Due to the radical change of environment, I’d like to fundamentally review what works and what doesn’t work for our company, then cast all of our resources towards extending what makes us successful and thoroughly squeezing out what doesn’t,” said Matsuda.

One thing that evidently does not make them successful is their branch in Los Angeles, which was hit yesterday with a round of layoffs.

Director of public relations Reilly Brennan told Polygon the cuts were regrettable.

“This is an unfortunate situation and we are offering assistance and severance packages to any employees affected by this, we want to thank them for their hard work and sincerely wish them well in the future.”

The primary focus of the LA branch was marketing and public relations, so there is most likely no direct loss to the gaming community, however future cuts to Square Enix staffing could have a strong impact on the end products.

Most importantly, I would like to take this opportunity to remind Square Enix that should they delay Final Fantasy X HD any longer my year will be ruined, so if you could organise your re-staffing around that, that would be great.