The Square Enix Cafe sits in Akihabara in the heart of Tokyo’s otaku district. Just moments from the gates of the train station, it opened inside the Yodobashi Camera store in 2016 before moving to its current location, and has served as the home of promotional efforts for Square Enix games as well as a celebration of their vast catalogue. With how fans connect with series like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts far beyond the games themselves, it made sense for the company to have their own cafe to join the myriad of other themed stores across the city.

On March 31st, the cafe will close for good. A celebration of the NieR franchise with items themed to the original game, Automata and Reincarnation, is currently serving as the final collaboration to be hosted in the space.

It made for a bittersweet visit as I attended with friends to both celebrate a series I love and pay respects in its closing weeks. We made a 4-person reservation online in advance, paying a cover charge of ¥1,000 that included one drink, before ordering from an array of themed food options inspired by the games. The appeal of these sorts of places has always been in presentation, merchandise and a chance to celebrate a series you like beyond the media itself or as a social activity, with food always priced above standard to make up for the theming and limited nature. Yet amidst such spaces offering a premium experience for fans, the Square Enix Cafe, as a permanent location with rotating themes as opposed to being a temporary pop-up, always resulted in food that tasted a step-up from your typical collaboration cafe offerings.

The service offered has remained remarkably unchanged over the years. You order from a tablet nowadays, but otherwise a visit five years ago will feel remarkably similar to the one we experienced in these final weeks. Everything was impeccably themed to the occasion, whether that be a houjicha latte the color of Pascal from Automata, a surprisingly-juicy and high-quality meat skewer to build up muscle for battle for NieR, or a valentine dessert with the reluctant energy of 2B sharing their appreciation for 9S via a coffee jelly-and-cream dessert. It’s a great way to share love for the series without breaking the bank.

The cafe has thrived for years on the loyalty not just of fans of the series they highlight, but from patrons who simply enjoy the cafe space and integrate it into their routine. It’s easy to get a nice bit of themed food from the take-out counter, especially with its location, and it can even be a way to get the collectable coasters if you can’t or don’t have time for a full sit-down reservation. They have stamp cards that you can use to build points in the hope of securing extra themed bonus items, too, which can be earned both from the cafe and take-out stall. No one misses out, and you don’t need to set aside 1-2 hours to enjoy the experience and still get the items you seek if you’re in a rush.

For all the cafe has exclusive merchandise themed to the collabs, it also doesn’t require a reservation to buy the exclusive items, just an in-person visit. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and Square Enix have heeded that message in the tried-and-true familiarity of the space that has changed its theming but little else over the years. In many ways it's a relic to time, and considering Square Enix's vastly-shifting priorities, it’s clear that the cafe is no longer a key part of their future, for better or worse.

Recent financial results have revealed underperformance for the company’s biggest games including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the company announced a restructure of their release priorities that included a reduced emphasis on smaller titles and the cancelation of unannounced internal projects. It's hard not to see how this alone could impact the cafe, considering how it not only served as a hub for major collaborations but for smaller but no-less important titles like Romancing SaGa or Trials of Mana.

More broadly, while the cafe will close, it’s not the only place you can get themed food on Square Enix titles in Tokyo, or even in the small radius of Akihabara itself. Externally-handled by Pasela, just a few streets away exist permanent Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy XIV cafes that themselves partake in special events and have vastly more space to embrace in unique theming than the admittedly-cramped space of Square Enix Cafe Tokyo. The Final Fantasy XIV cafe, for example, has space for grand maps of the lands of the game, moogle statues and more within its walls alongside more elaborate menu items. As good as the experience was for the NieR cafe, theming is limited to Yoko Taro’s mask being on display in a glass box, some framed artwork, and TV screens playing trailers for the games on loop.

This ignores the Artnia cafe in Shinjuku on the Square Enix company office grounds. While only very rarely holding themed collaborations, it does offer food based on the company's games alongside merchandise. How long this will continue operating with the closure of this Akihabara store remains to be seen, but its location and bespoke building suggest it could continue with little overhead and at least scratch an itch for some fans.

Most telling, however, is that Square Enix coincided the announcement with plans that Taito, who operate the store, will remodel and reopen the space as a location exclusively dedicated to official merchandise.

Merchandising has always been a key area of the company's revenue, taking advantage of the strength of their name-recognition as a company and love for the series they produce. People love the music for Square Enix games as much as the games themselves, allowing them to expand aggressively into concerts, vinyl and CDs, never mind the figures, collectable merchandise and more that the company sell through their website and in-store. They handle Dragon Quest! This has only become a larger proportion of the company’s yearly profits in recent years, taking advantage of growing global interest in Japanese culture and tourism to Japan. In their most recent financial reports, as Digital Entertainment operating income dropped by 9.9%, Amusement income grew 10.9%. while merchandising grew 54.9%.

Unsurprisingly, the company has aggressively sought to capitalize on this. The company opened a new store in Shibuya Sakura Stage in December, expanded their own space for merchandise within Animate Akihabara, and have affirmed their desires to further increase the number of locations, methods, and accessibility to merchandise moving forwards.

For a company undergoing restructuring, it’s likely they saw these numbers and simply deemed it more profitable to move out of operating their own cafe in place of Artnia and external pop-ups, freeing up the space to expand their merchandising even further. Having said my goodbyes to the space, it’s hard not to see this is a major disappointment. Not only is it a great experience to attend the cafe, simply replacing a gathering hub for fans to meet and share their love collectively for yet-another storefront begging you to part with your cash feels cold.

It’s not the end of Square Enix doing collaborative spaces like this, but it is the end of the permanent home and community of this one. It’s a shame, really.