Shinji Hashimoto

Shinji Hashimoto (橋本 真司) is a Japanese former game producer at Square Enix and currently senior advisor at Sony Music Entertainment Japan and a board member at Forwardworks. He served as the Final Fantasy series brand manager for over a decade, was an executive officer at Square Enix board of directors and he was the Head of Square Enix's Business Division 3 for 6 years. He is also the co-creator of the Kingdom Hearts series. He served as corporate executive of the company's 1st Production Department during its entire existence.

In May 2021, Hashimoto announced he would be working in Square Enix Holdings as Corporate Advisor training future leaders of the company, after he stepped down from his position of executive director and Final Fantasy brand manager at Square Enix Co.

Hashimoto retired from his duties at Square Enix on May 31, 2022. On June 16, 2022, Hashimoto announced he would be a senior advisor at Sony Music Entertainment Japan, as well as board member for ForwardWorks.

Early work
Hashimoto previously worked for the toy company Bandai. He joined Squaresoft (later known as Square Enix) in 1995, which is where he spent the rest of his career.

Final Fantasy
He was the promotions producer for Final Fantasy VII. When asked at E3 2008 about the possibility of a remake of Final Fantasy VII, he said that Square Enix is aware fans would like that, and that they are very busy making other titles first. As Final Fantasy X-2 and Kingdom Hearts were being completed, the learning experience the team had during the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project spawned the Fabula Nova Crystallis series which was supposed to build on it.

Kingdom Hearts
When Square was sharing a building in Tokyo with the Disney corporation, Hashimoto found himself conversing in an elevator with a Disney executive, and there they conceived the crossover between Square Enix and Disney called Kingdom Hearts. Hashimoto has stated that the new features in Kingdom Hearts II were the result of the success of the first game and Disney's increased trust in Square Enix to pull off an excellent product.

Other games
While working on Front Mission Evolved, one of the challenges was balancing the speed of the real time battles the wanzers, or mechs, were having so that the game was realistic to the mechs size, but also still fast enough to be engaging.

Priorities
While discussing Final Fantasy XIII, Hashimoto mentioned that Square Enix has been attempting to make localization of their game releases close the release gap between Japan and the rest of the world.