Hajime Tabata

Hajime Tabata
Hajime Tabata at Lucca Comics & Games 2016
Native name	田畑 端
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	Video game director at Square Enix

Hajime Tabata (田畑 端, Tabata Hajime^?) is a Japanese game director who works for Square Enix. He is the Head of Square Enix's Business Division 2 and part of the Final Fantasy Committee that is tasked with keeping the franchise's releases and content consistent.

When Tabata was in Middle school, he played a historical role-playing game made by Koei and first imagined how much fun it would be to make his own game. In his last year of university, he applied for jobs in the video game industry and in other media arts such as documentaries, television and film. He worked at several different video game publishers prior to his being hired at Square Enix, which he said gave him experience making action games, arcade games, and role-playing games.

In the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the international outpouring of support for Japan was paralleled at Square Enix by fan letters about the upcoming release of Type-0, and encouraged Tabata to make something special for the fans and those living through difficult times.

He became the director Final Fantasy XV after taking over from Tetsuya Nomura, a change that was announced in September 2014. He used to be co-director on the project. During his work on Final Fantasy XV, Tabata joked about his busy schedule, mentioning he regularly got only three hours sleep. Tabata, whose previous experience was with portable gaming devices, stated he is excited to work on console systems and "help players dive even deeper into their experiences".