Kazuyuki Ikumori, general manager and chief creative director at Square Enix's Visual Works division.
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Inside Square Enix’s Tokyo HQ: the house that Final Fantasy built

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Square Enix’s mission is to spread happiness across the globe with unforgettable experiences. The Japanese company has done that with the Final Fantasy series, which has sold more than 115 million copies worldwide since its debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987. The company released its latest installment, Final Fantasy XV, and I happened to be there in Tokyo for the Hollywood-style launch. I toured of the company’s headquarters in the urban jungle of the Shinjuku ward in Japan.

The headquarters is housed within multiple floors of a 25-story building. On the ground floor, I met public relations official Misa Tokunaga, and she took me into the $1.9 billion company’s lobby. We walked a short way to a waiting room with a bunch of plush toys from Square Enix’s Dragon Quest series, one of its most iconic role-playing brands.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.