Naoki Yoshida

, also known by the nickname "Yoshi-P," is a Japanese video game producer, director and designer working for Square Enix. He is known primarily for his work on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), as chief planner on "Dragon Quest X" and as director and producer of "." He is also currently working as producer for the upcoming "Final Fantasy XVI". He is credited with rescuing the original "Final Fantasy XIV" project from its disastrous launch. Yoshida is an Executive Officer at Square Enix, the Head of Square Enix's Creative Business Unit III and part of the "Final Fantasy" Committee that is tasked with keeping the franchise's releases and content consistent.
Early career.
Yoshida joined the video game industry in 1993 and started his career at Hudson Soft, where he was assigned to the creation of PC Engine games at first. Later, he participated as scenario writer in the "Far East of Eden" series and as game designer in the "Bomberman" series. After he left Hudson Soft, he worked at several smaller game studios for five years.
Career at Square Enix.
One of Yoshida's favorite games is directed by Yasumi Matsuno, who worked at Square Enix at the time and went on to create games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII. Tactics Ogre had made such an impact on him that he built his career in order to have the opportunity to work with Matsuno and create a game together. Yoshida eventually joined Square Enix in 2004, but Matsuno left the company soon after. He became the head of the "" series as well as a game designer of "Dragon Quest X" in its early stages.
In December 2010, he was taken off the "Dragon Quest" team and placed in charge of the staff that developed the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Final Fantasy XIV", which had been unsuccessful since its launch several months before. Then company president Yoichi Wada attributed this decision to Yoshida's experience, "charismatic" leadership skills and "passionate" will to satisfy customers. Yoshida was not acquainted with any of the "Final Fantasy XIV" team's members and thus had to demonstrate his dedication to the project first to gain their trust as director. He then talked with the individual developers to find out their ideas for improvements to the revised version known as '. He proceeded with describing to the team the precise goals to achieve. Yoshida drew some inspiration from his long-lasting enthusiasm for MMORPGs, having played such titles as "Ultima Online", "EverQuest", "Dark Age of Camelot", "World of Warcraft", "Warhammer Online", "Rift", ' and "Guild Wars 2". As a result of his direction, reviewers and commentators have credited Yoshida with "rescuing" the "Final Fantasy XIV" project. He went on to work with Matsuno in creating the Return to Ivalice raid for , saying he "was able to fulfill [his] dream to work with Matsuno-san".
Between December 2013 and December 2019, Yoshida wrote a regular column for "Famitsu" titled , discussing his thoughts on "Final Fantasy XIV", video games, the game industry, and game development in general. It has been collected into three published volumes. Yoshida ended the column in December 2019 due to lack of time to write it.
In September 2020, "Final Fantasy XVI" was revealed to be in development for PlayStation 5 with Yoshida serving as producer.