Hiromichi Tanaka (田中 弘道)
Producer
Sakaguchi, Tanaka & Aoki, circa 1985
Hiromichi Tanaka was born January 7, 1962. Classmates with
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the two game developers dropped out of Yokohama National University in 1982 to intern at Square, a newly formed software branch of the Denyuusha Electric Company. It was there that they met
Kazuhiko Aoki, part of Square's original Planning and Development department. The three of them headed Square's original trio of design groups: Sakaguchi heading A Team, Tanaka leading B Team and C Team later being formed by Aoki.
Tanaka's B Team was responsible for the
Seiken Densetsu series of games, or
World of Mana as they are known in English. After
Seiken Densetsu 3 failed to meet its mark of one-million copies in sales, he served as producer on a variety of other game titles, including
Xenogears,
Threads of Fate, and
Chrono Cross.
When Square Enix transitioned to Playstation 2 game development and began its first venture in to mainstream MMO territory with
Final Fantasy XI, Tanaka served as producer. He is currently Senior Vice President of Software Development at Square Enix and one of the central developers of the PlayOnline network. Most recently Hiromichi Tanaka led the production of the Nintendo DS remake of
Final Fantasy III, which far surpassed sales forecasts by moving over 1.5 million units in Japan and the United States. He continues his role as the producer of
Final Fantasy XI's expansion packs and is currently set to keynote the Austin Game Developers Conference in September.
Source: ja.wikipedia.org, Austin GDC