July 3, 2012 Update: Square Enix bumps up quite a bit for the month of June, with an impressive E3 line-up including Tomb Raider and Hitman, two games that have been the subjects of recent heated conversations.
Square Enix's CEO also gets the increased placement for the unveiling of an impressive new engine.
Why He's Powerful
There was a time when Final Fantasy was the biggest of deals. In that era, Yoichi Wada would have been a Power 40 top five.
Then there was Final Fantasy XII. Then XIII. Oh... XIV. Final Fantasy is no longer a video game main event.
Square-Enix does make Dragon Quest, too, which is still the biggest of deals in Japan and the smallest of curiosities in America. Cue the Konami-style fade of another proud Japanese game company.
But wait! They bought Eidos. Those Eidos people made a wonderful new Deus Ex in one of those great, giant Canadian-subsidized Montreal game development studios. Eidos has top people cracking away on a Tomb Raider revival that looks great. They've got multiple teams making multiple Hitman games.
Naturally, only the announcement of The World Ends With You 2 could vault Wada-san to the top of the Kotaku Power 40, but his company is, oddly, a Japanese publisher on the rebound. The steam lost in being a primarily-PlayStation-oriented studio going into the current generation has been regained with a diversification of content and the smart nabbing of Eidos. They're on the verge of making juggernauts again, even if the Square part of the company is, well, far less cool than it used to be.
Bonus power factor: They're all over iOS and other mobile platforms, which is good and all, but they're the masters of charging $5-$10 more for their games than you would expect to. This makes Yoichi Wada's rule seem brazen if a bit... unrealistic.