After 8 years as director of Final Fantasy XV, Nomura steps down

Newsbrief: Square Enix announced today that long-time Final Fantasy developer Tetsuya Nomura is stepping down from his role as director on Final Fantasy XV to work on other projects in development, most notably Kingdom Hearts III. Nomura has been credited as the director of Final Fantasy XV for the eight years since the game was announced in 2006 under a different title (Final Fantasy Versus XIII.) His Square Enix compatriot Hajime Tabata joined the project as co-director last year, and will now be stepping up to serve as the game's sole director. Tabata -- who has previously directed development of multiple Square Enix mobile titles, including Final Fantasy Type 0 for the PlayStation Portable -- expressed some concern for the future of big-budget console RPGs earlier this month, postulating that if Final Fantasy XV doesn't perform well when it eventually comes out, "perhaps there's not much of a future for console games." [UPDATE: We accidentally linked to a parody Tetsuya Nomura account saying something sensible about stepping down - apologies!]