Ex-Final Fantasy brand manager and Square Enix executive Shinji Hashimoto announced he is joining the Sony Music Entertainment subsidiary ForwardWorks. Starting June 16, 2022, Hashimoto will serve as a senior advisor at Sony Music Entertainment and as a board member at ForwardWorks. Hashimoto notes that this new endeavor will allow him to continue focusing on the “creation of entertainment.”
Hashimoto was a long-term employee at Square Enix up until his announced departure last month. The Square Enix veteran worked on numerous high-profile series such as Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and The World Ends With You, among many others. Hashimoto is also the co-creator of the Kingdom Hearts series and is frequently credited for the Disney crossover’s inception.
Hello, everyone! I have some news to share, if you can please take a look. pic.twitter.com/r2RwisPKqG
— shinji hashimoto (@shinjihashimot3) June 16, 2022
In an announcement tweet, Shinji Hashimoto revealed that he has started working at ForwardWorks, the company behind games like the Disgaea RPG and Everybody’s Golf app games. It’s unclear whether Hashimoto will continue to have a hand in producing games. However, Hashimoto does share that he will continue working in the creation of entertainment in some form or another. To this, Hashimoto asks fans to wait until “the time is right” for him to share further updates.
Notably, ForwardWorks is a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment. Sony Computer Entertainment originally founded the company back in 2016, before transferring ownership to SME. In 2020, it teamed up with Kadokawa Corporation and the developer Cave to release World Witches United Front.
