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[anaron]

You're giving me too much credit, since I was just rephrasing what others had said. And I imagine LevelNth and Drek might say the same.

The thing is that you liked the way I said it, and now everyone likes the way you said it, which is totally justified because you really knocked the ball out of the park.

Your summary was so concise that I bookmarked it to be quoted in many future discussions.

 

[Glix]

Posters like the OP and Mama R should be given special gold stars or something under their usernames.

The fact that someone would spend so much time researching and then putting together a post like this that interests and educates us while also promotes interesting discussing is so awesome and is really a part of what makes GAF such a great place.

 

[encephalon]

Great thread anaron. Thanks for helping dispel the myth

Spoiler

which I believed before seeing your frustration in a previous thread

that Spirits Within tanked the company and led to the merger.

I continue to be suspicious of the notion that Sakaguchi has the creative vision to bring Final Fantasy back to greatness, but it seems readily apparent that he was at least very good at managing the company and that perhaps Square is lost without him for that reason alone.

My god, this company is so depressing.

 

[BONKERS]

Great job and

Sakaguchi in 2001:
GIA: Are you ever worried that Square will become too heavily dependent on the Final Fantasy name?

HS: Avoiding that has actually been one of Square's goals for a long time. It is our aim to try and develop a few more major franchises for the company; that has always been on our minds.

So heart breaking .

It's not really. Square was milking FF just as much pre-Square Enix.

And really, there hasn't truly been THAT many awful FF games since then.

Just because you didn't like something =/= it's bad either.

 

[tafer]

Excellent work anaron, personally I find this 2 quotes interesting:

Now today, in spite of all of Enix's money, SquareEnix is worth less than Square was when it was supposedly "dying" after The Spirits Within. And Hisashi Suzuki is laughing at SquareEnix over Twitter.

GIA: Are you ever worried that Square will become too heavily dependent on the Final Fantasy name?

HS: Avoiding that has actually been one of Square's goals for a long time. It is our aim to try and develop a few more major franchises for the company; that has always been on our minds.

... and sad at the same time.

 

[anaron]

It's not really. Square was milking FF just as much pre-Square Enix.


And really, there hasn't truly been THAT many awful FF games since then.

Just because you didn't like something =/= it's bad either.

That's not what they were saying but...sure.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

The Q Fund was hardly a bribe, Nintendo invested equity into GDS and this partially paid for the development of the one game for the Gamecube as Sony had an exclusive for mainline FF and had considerable influence over Square's revenue streams, so it was a way to work around the situation. The GBA games were developed outside of the Q Fund or GDS and were generally very profitable with Tactics selling over a million. SE eventually bought out GDS and made Yamauchi whole.



The reason it's never recognized is because the blame he is placing is incorrect. Yoichi Wada was an inevitability after Square's stock price continued to crater despite the investment by Sony and the success of Kingdom Hearts and FFX - they were having tremendous difficulty managing cashflows. The merger basically unlocked tremendous value in Square's stock and helped generate liquidity for shareholders. Had they not merged, the company would have continued to struggle with covering their development costs as their cash position was very poor and their in-house overheads were very high.

I was a shareholder in Square before the merger was announced and it was clear to me that they were going to have to go back to the market to raise more cash - instead the shares spiked up the day the merger was announced - to the point that the exchange stopped allowing people to trade shares of both companies due to speculation. Square received a premium of about 60% to the closing price, and then squeezed more out of it by the end because Enix realized that everyone was a winner - the combined value of the two companies was well above what Enix was giving up by providing more concessions to Square - Yoichi Wada basically ensured that Square's shareholders got the best deal possible at the time.

So the question is - would Square have survived without the merger with Enix? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what they would have done without access to Enix'es pockets. They may have released more games with their existing cash position, possibly borrowed money from banks, or even gone back to Sony for another round of financing. Speculating about such things is useless because the vast majority of shareholders on both sides consented, and Square's shareholders were able to get out of the doldrums in terms of valuation.

Intriguing...so from a share value idea, it was good, but his ass shoulda left the CEO chair right after that, as his only smart decision was buying Eidos.

Spoiler

...then treating them like a whipping boy.

Yeah, Nintendo definitely has its own issues, but I love how they're kinda stubborn and almost insular. They don't seem to run business in an overly reactionary manner to what's going on in the market to the point where it completely compromises their integrity. They have a strong sense of who they are and what they're about, and they stick to it. Not everything they do strikes gold, but they deliver quality 90% of the time, so their name still means something. I really hope WiiU's performance doesn't change this.



There's absolutely no way they can recapture the magic and chemistry they internally had as a company during the Squaresoft days. But, XV can potentially (and hopefully) mark a new chapter and turning point for SE where they rise from mediocrity and show the world what a AAA, mainline JRPG looks like. (Assuming it all lives to the hype.)

It's really insane that almost a decade's worth of fuck-ups from Toriyama and goddamn Wada all rest on Nomura's shoulders to undo.

And going back to the merger, as a fan back in the day, I was actually sadly (and naively) excited for the two companies to unite. I thought we were actually gonna get games that'd result from collaborations from the talents from the Square and Enix sides. Not just sit here while the two companies now just stagger their releases so they don't cannibalize each other.

I fear if Iwata is couped instead of him leaving thru an escape hatch he's been building, Nintendo's corporate culture will vastly shift to the unhealthy like this. They're one of the few development houses over there from 10 years ago that haven't shrank, went stupid, suffered incredible turnover, or changed demographic aims drastically.

 

[MechaX]

It's not really. Square was milking FF just as much pre-Square Enix.

Except... no, not really?

We're forgetting that in the SE era, we got the Compilation of FFVII, the first sequel to a mainline game (X-2) tons of spin-offs like Revenant Wings, All the Bravest, Type-0, Theatrythmn, and The After Years, more ports than in the SNES/PSX era (Not withstanding three different versions of FF4, but the iOS ports as well), an online game that has been running for a decade, another online game that literally had to be revived from the dead, and three Final Fantasy XIII games.

Pre-Enix, what did you get? Some PSX ports, Mystic Quest, Tactics, and Ehrgeiz, and Chocobo games.

And really, there hasn't truly been THAT many awful FF games since then.

Just because you didn't like something =/= it's bad either.

While I agree that not a lot of SE's output has been truly, truly awful, people make the same defenses for liking Sonic '06 and Ride to Hell Retribution too.

 

[Mandoric]

Pre-Enix, what did you get? Some PSX ports, Mystic Quest, Tactics, and Ehrgeiz, and Chocobo games.

Mana was originally sold as an FF spinoff worldwide, and SaGa was in the US. There was also a PC port of FF1, an official multicart of FF1+2, portable versions of FF1, 2, and 4 (each with their own limited edition system), a spinoff cartoon, and probably more.

 

[gamergirly]

It's really sad what has happened to what was formerly known as a rpg machine - Squaresoft. You can't play jrpgs for this long and not have such sadness. Fuck mergers and Wada

 

[MechaX]

Mana was originally sold as an FF spinoff worldwide, and SaGa was in the US. There was also a PC port of FF1, an official multicart of FF1+2, portable versions of FF1, 2, and 4 (each with their own limited edition system), a spinoff cartoon, and probably more.

I can't really speak for Mana, but by the time SaGa Frontier came around, a lot of the pretense of the "Final Fantasy Adventure" stuff went away. And the portable versions of FF1, 2, and 4 came on the Wonderswan true... until they were ported over to the GBA in the SE era, and then re-ported (and even remade again in I and II's case) to the PSP... Cartoon wise, you get one four episode OVA that was comically bad (Legend of the Crystals) and one 26 episode series that nobody cared about or watched (Final Fantasy Unlimited), let alone Square themselves.

 

[anaron]

Originally Posted by tehrik-e-insaaf
The Q Fund was hardly a bribe, Nintendo invested equity into GDS and this partially paid for the development of the one game for the Gamecube as Sony had an exclusive for mainline FF and had considerable influence over Square's revenue streams, so it was a way to work around the situation. The GBA games were developed outside of the Q Fund or GDS and were generally very profitable with Tactics selling over a million. SE eventually bought out GDS and made Yamauchi whole.



The reason it's never recognized is because the blame he is placing is incorrect. Yoichi Wada was an inevitability after Square's stock price continued to crater despite the investment by Sony and the success of Kingdom Hearts and FFX - they were having tremendous difficulty managing cashflows. The merger basically unlocked tremendous value in Square's stock and helped generate liquidity for shareholders. Had they not merged, the company would have continued to struggle with covering their development costs as their cash position was very poor and their in-house overheads were very high.

I was a shareholder in Square before the merger was announced and it was clear to me that they were going to have to go back to the market to raise more cash - instead the shares spiked up the day the merger was announced - to the point that the exchange stopped allowing people to trade shares of both companies due to speculation. Square received a premium of about 60% to the closing price, and then squeezed more out of it by the end because Enix realized that everyone was a winner - the combined value of the two companies was well above what Enix was giving up by providing more concessions to Square - Yoichi Wada basically ensured that Square's shareholders got the best deal possible at the time.

So the question is - would Square have survived without the merger with Enix? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what they would have done without access to Enix'es pockets. They may have released more games with their existing cash position, possibly borrowed money from banks, or even gone back to Sony for another round of financing. Speculating about such things is useless because the vast majority of shareholders on both sides consented, and Square's shareholders were able to get out of the doldrums in terms of valuation.

How on earth would speculating on the case and imagining a "what if" be pointless? Yes, the management issues were apparent before Wada so he can't be held accountable for everything; but when placed in a position to directly influence the structure and environment, he effectively destroyed the successful one in place and drove away several of the company's most talented designers and the heart of the operation himself.

I'm not going to consider decisions like that an inevitability. It was shortsighted, atrocious maneuvering and deathly damanging to the long term health of the company. The idea behind the merger wasn't terrible, it was (yet again) the management of it that was.

 

[MagnaderAlpha]

But not a good director. And the movie was still a mess production wise.

He shouldn't have took the project or let it in hands of more capable ppl.

The project should've never been. Even with Advent Children, I don't feel Square(alone or as Square Enix) is capable of making "good" movies. They'd best stick to what they KNOW, games. Hell, if that was purged from their collective mind, they might be kickin' ass today(with Sakaguchi still there)!

The Gooch. I could only imagine someone bringing up Fal'cie and L'cie to him and the Gooch saying "The fuck is this"?

I think Sakaguchi was the type to put many people in their place. He obviously put a "limiter" on Toriyama. Remember all the crazy ideas Toriyama seemingly wanted to put into FFVII? SOMEONE had to have said "no" to him. Sometimes guys like Toriyama NEED to be told "No, you have bad ideas." to at least inspire them to churn out something good.

Moral of the story is don't put beancounters in charge of companies. It's a recipe for failure in any industry.

That's actually the moral of the story for a LOT of video game companies. You need people who know the industry to be in charge. When you put accountants who only have experience with crunching numbers, you're setting yourself up for disaster. A big pile of sellout disastrous shit. Not saying the world doesn't need accountants and business peeps, but keep them in their own place. Keep them out of big decisions regarding franchises and games. They have no business deciding that stuff just like a air guitarist has no business building a rocket ship.

 

[enzo241]

Damn , great job op

 

[george_us]

Amazing thread OP. Would love to see more like this from you in the future regarding other companies if you can dig up the info.

 

[Dark_castle]

The worst part about this misconception is that, to my knowledge, Nomura's biggest involvement with FF, is actual changing the entire ending of FFV, because of a suggestion he made to Sakaguchi, and Guch liked it.

That and Nomura's involvement in FFVI as the scenario designer for Shadow and Setzer, and then base story idea for FFVII, including the infamous certain someone's death.

 

[Dark_castle]

Except... no, not really?

We're forgetting that in the SE era, we got the Compilation of FFVII, the first sequel to a mainline game (X-2) tons of spin-offs like Revenant Wings, All the Bravest, Type-0, Theatrythmn, and The After Years, more ports than in the SNES/PSX era (Not withstanding three different versions of FF4, but the iOS ports as well), an online game that has been running for a decade, another online game that literally had to be revived from the dead, and three Final Fantasy XIII games.

Pre-Enix, what did you get? Some PSX ports, Mystic Quest, Tactics, and Ehrgeiz, and Chocobo games.

X-2 was made when it was still Squaresoft.

 

[Laughing Banana]

I still can't believe that that SE actually lost his most famous composer because a fortune teller told Wada that they needed to relocate their offices. I mean, what kind of company lets it's CEO take decisions based on the recommendations of a fortune teller?

Wow, I didn't know this.

Incredible :O

Shows you how much they think of their historical value :\

 

[Novan Leon]

If I were in charge at Square Enix, I would temporarily halt all future development and put my entire development staff on giving the HD upgrade treatment to all the old classic Square and Enix games...

• Final Fantasy I - IX
• Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross
• Xenogears
• Secret of Mana
• Secret of Evermore
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Bushido Blade
• Romancing Saga / Saga Frontier
• Illusion of Gaia
• Terranigma
• Dragon Quest I - V
• Robotrek

...giving them tasteful 2D graphical updates and porting them to new consoles for the sole purpose of trying to understand what made them so magical and hopefully trying to recapture some of that magic before working on new games.

The entire company seriously needs to have a "come to Jesus" moment in order to get back on track at this point. Going back and doing a company-wide history study of their heritage (and maybe even bringing back some of that lost talent, if possible) would probably be the first step towards doing this. Make it a right of passage for every Square Enix developer to have worked on one of these games in some capacity before being allowed to work on anything new. Then maybe some of that magic will carry over to their newer games.

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

Wow, I didn't know this.

Incredible :O

Shows you how much they think of their historical value :\

Seriously. Wadayoudoin' Wada?

 

[A-V-B]

The entire company seriously needs to have a "come to Jesus" moment in order to get back on track at this point.

They already had a "come to Jesus" moment, and when they did they said, "Who's this guy?"

 

[Mael]

Koichi Ishii left Square Enix before the release of Heroes of Mana. Anyway, there is a new Mana game in development. The only thing we know about it for now is that Yoko Shimomura is composing.

Still he most certainly worked on Heroes before he left.
There's not even Ito left from the original games.
The only good thing we can expect from them is a good soundtrack (because Shimomura is THAT awesome) but they might as well call it something else because really there's nothing they could do to make that new project interesting.

Yeah I can see the arguments against as pretty strong. It just seems to me that Nintendo employs or regularly contracts a whole ton of former SE people and since they're in the market for funding dormant Japanese IP revivals there's some opportunity here to do something older Square stuff like Mana, SaGa or Ogre. Something that's not browser based social fare or cheapo hacked iOS ports.

Mana is dead for many different reasons, Ogre is...probably dead too now that they fired everyone from Quest anyway...
And SaGa they tried with Ministrel Song and even that didn't sell as much as when it was at its height (then again what could sell after the disaster that was Unlimited).
And really Ministrel Song is like the quintessential SaGa experience (and Kawazu doesn't look like he's that interested in making another one anyway).
Heck the DS remakes sold even worse but then again they were tricky to make enticing.

 

[anaron]

If I were in charge at Square Enix, I would temporarily halt all future development and put my entire development staff on giving the HD upgrade treatment to all the old classic Square and Enix games...

• Final Fantasy I - IX
• Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross
• Xenogears
• Secret of Mana
• Secret of Evermore
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Bushido Blade
• Romancing Saga / Saga Frontier
• Illusion of Gaia
• Terranigma
• Dragon Quest I - V
• Robotrek

...giving them tasteful 2D graphical updates and porting them to new consoles for the sole purpose of trying to understand what made them so magical and hopefully trying to recapture some of that magic before working on new games.

The entire company seriously needs to have a "come to Jesus" moment in order to get back on track at this point. Going back and doing a company-wide history study of their heritage (and maybe even bringing back some of that lost talent, if possible) would probably be the first step towards doing this. Make it a right of passage for every Square Enix developer to have worked on one of these games in some capacity before being allowed to work on anything new. Then maybe some of that magic will carry over to their newer games.

It needs a management and development reform, pronto. There's still some very brilliant people at the company and actually acknowledging that would be a first step, as would treating their employees like humans.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Except... no, not really?

We're forgetting that in the SE era, we got the Compilation of FFVII, the first sequel to a mainline game (X-2) tons of spin-offs like Revenant Wings, All the Bravest, Type-0, Theatrythmn, and The After Years, more ports than in the SNES/PSX era (Not withstanding three different versions of FF4, but the iOS ports as well), an online game that has been running for a decade, another online game that literally had to be revived from the dead, and three Final Fantasy XIII games.

Pre-Enix, what did you get? Some PSX ports, Mystic Quest, Tactics, and Ehrgeiz, and Chocobo games.

Did you miss this post?

Well Hisashi Suzuki is not all innocent either:

Foremost among the announcements was the company's confirmation of 23 games currently under development, eleven of which are remakes. Among these remakes are every game in the Final Fantasy series to this date, and some of the plans for these titles come as a bit of a surprise. [...]

The reason for this explosion in titles bearing the prestigious Final Fantasy name is, according to Suzuki, that "The fact must be accepted that middle-rank games are no longer selling these days...this year, we will use the brand name of 'Final Fantasy' to its full extent."

Hisashi Suzuki, CEO of Squaresoft, in 2001. When he says "every game in the Final Fantasy series to date" this was literally FF1 to 9. They wanted to remake even FF7-8-9.

The project should've never been. Even with Advent Children, I don't feel Square(alone or as Square Enix) is capable of making "good" movies. They'd best stick to what they KNOW, games. Hell, if that was purged from their collective mind, they might be kickin' ass today(with Sakaguchi still there)!

I think Sakaguchi was the type to put many people in their place. He obviously put a "limiter" on Toriyama. Remember all the crazy ideas Toriyama seemingly wanted to put into FFVII? SOMEONE had to have said "no" to him. Sometimes guys like Toriyama NEED to be told "No, you have bad ideas." to at least inspire them to churn out something good.

That's actually the moral of the story for a LOT of video game companies. You need people who know the industry to be in charge. When you put accountants who only have experience with crunching numbers, you're setting yourself up for disaster. A big pile of sellout disastrous shit. Not saying the world doesn't need accountants and business peeps, but keep them in their own place. Keep them out of big decisions regarding franchises and games. They have no business deciding that stuff just like a air guitarist has no business building a rocket ship.

Yeah, Sakaguchi was actually a rather severe boss, albeit very efficient. When he first showed his plans for what would become FF1 in 1987 no one at Square wanted to join his Team-A except like 3 guys because Hiromichi Tanaka at Team-B was known as the nicer director, lol.

 

[Cheerilee]

Did you miss this post?

Hisashi Suzuki, CEO of Squaresoft, in 2001. When he says "every game in the Final Fantasy series to date" this was literally FF1 to 9. They wanted to remake even FF7-8-9.

Square was in a financially tight position at the time because of the movie. They talked about FFX, XI, and XII for the PS2. They had already signed a three-game commitment to support the Wonderswan Color

Spoiler

(FF3 was apparently un-portable for some surprise reason, resulting in FF4 on the WSC instead, and eventually a complete remake of FF3 on the DS)

, and they wanted 4-5-6 on the GBA, because everyone loved the idea of SNES on GBA.

And yeah, they also wanted to remake FF7-8-9 for the PS2. Honestly, I think that would've been so awesome that I don't care if it was FF overkill. FF7 remake on PS2 implies a "Resident Evil 1 remake on GameCube" kind of remake, not the modern "HD towns are hard" kind of never-happening remake.

So they said that for this year they were going to push FF, admitting that it was both abnormal and temporary. And a few months later, Sakaguchi said that FF burnout has always been a concern for the company, and that they work hard on building new IPs and will continue to do so. He even said that a Parasite Eve movie (from the TSW studio) was possible.


After Wada, and after the Enix merger and all the money and stability that came with it, the company's openly stated goals are "continue to exploit Final Fantasy", and "FFX-2 was very profitable because it reused a bunch of assets, so we should reuse more assets".

The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged.

 

[anaron]

Square was in a financially tight position at the time because of the movie. They talked about FFX, XI, and XII for the PS2. They had already signed a three-game commitment to support the Wonderswan Color

Spoiler

(FF3 was apparently un-portable for some surprise reason, resulting in FF4 on the WSC instead, and eventually a complete remake of FF3 on the DS)

, and they wanted 4-5-6 on the GBA, because everyone loved the idea of SNES on GBA.

And yeah, they also wanted to remake FF7-8-9 for the PS2. Honestly, I think that would've been so awesome that I don't care if it was FF overkill. FF7 remake on PS2 implies a "Resident Evil 1 remake on GameCube" kind of remake, not the modern "HD towns are hard" kind of never-happening remake.

So they said that for this year they were going to push FF, admitting that it was both abnormal and temporary. And a few months later, Sakaguchi said that FF burnout has always been a concern for the company, and that they work hard on building new IPs and will continue to do so. He even said that a Parasite Eve movie (from the TSW studio) was possible.


After Wada, and after the Enix merger and all the money and stability that came with it, the company's openly stated goals are "continue to exploit Final Fantasy", and "FFX-2 was very profitable because it reused a bunch of assets, so we should reuse more assets".

http://www.vg247.com/2011/09/27/final-fantasy-brand-greatly-damaged-says-wada/

I'm not saying it officially was or anything, but it also seemed kind of strained and uncertain when when they were talking about those remakes, as if they weren't entirely comfortable with the whole idea (Sakaguchi obviously wasn't) and that the plans were never solidified but maybe more or less used as an attempt to build up buzz and loyalty of interest, perhaps? I need a damn expose!

And not to say it's not excessive, but I don't really consider ports of older classics or even remakes to be milking the franchise; at least not the same way I do in the vein of Square-Enix's methodology, one that strives to exploit and actively screw with the legacy of existing games.

 

[R-User!]

I wonder if he stopped going to that fortune teller now. Or, y'know, fortune tellers in general.

Hmm, let me look into my Final Fantasy Crystal Ball...

...Yes! It's becoming clearer now...

...You will lose your position and step down!...

...that is all.

 

[R-User!]

Posters like the OP and Mama R should be given special gold stars or something under their usernames.

The fact that someone would spend so much time researching and then putting together a post like this that interests and educates us while also promotes interesting discussing is so awesome and is really a part of what makes GAF such a great place.

I agree!

 

[Pyrrhus]

Hisashi Suzuki, CEO of Squaresoft, in 2001. When he says "every game in the Final Fantasy series to date" this was literally FF1 to 9. They wanted to remake even FF7-8-9.

I wish they had. We'd have nice, definitive versions of those games to give HD remixes to instead of them being considered nonstarters because the source material is not suitable to quick remastering.

 

[BocoDragon]

I wish they had. We'd have nice, definitive versions of those games to give HD remixes to instead of them being considered nonstarters because the source material is not suitable to quick remastering.

I remember them teasing these "remakes" that never materialized. I wouldn't have expected that much out of them - the main point was the cutscenes were in DVD quality rather than compressed PS1 FMV. Perhaps higher res copies of the prerendered backgrounds. All the same assets, just sharper (but still firmly SD quality). Less of a "remake" and more what we'd call a "remaster" today. Still would have been nice.

 

[Shogun1337]

I wish they had. We'd have nice, definitive versions of those games to give HD remixes to instead of them being considered nonstarters because the source material is not suitable to quick remastering.

The Square Enix today isn't even capable of creating a proper HD version of FF7 to 9, it's out of their league. That's how far they've fallen.

 

[Mandoric]

The Square Enix today isn't even capable of creating a proper HD version of FF7 to 9, it's out of their league. That's how far they've fallen.

FF7-9 do a lot of things that aren't possible in HD full 3D or are only possible assuming sales greater than the -first- FF7, and you're the latest in a long line of market feedback going "do it exactly how we remember or no sale".

Unless you're looking for FF7PC with redrawn backgrounds?

 

[Shogun1337]

FF7-9 do a lot of things that aren't possible in HD full 3D or are only possible assuming sales greater than the -first- FF7, and you're the latest in a long line of market feedback going "do it exactly how we remember or no sale".

Unless you're looking for FF7PC with redrawn backgrounds?

Nope. Do it a la Shadow Hearts: just upgrade the character models and battle effects, but leave the pre-rendered backgrounds as they are: pre-rendered. They would fuck that up so hard it's unimaginable.

 

[Necroscope]

Just want to reply and say great job OP.

 

[jaxword]

It's clearly Hironobu Sakaguchi who ruined Hironobu Sakaguchi's career at Square. Yet people still keep clamoring as if he was a victim. I wonder if people will STILL claim this in 10 years?

I like the man's work, but let's not deny reality.

 

[anaron]

It's clearly Hironobu Sakaguchi who ruined Hironobu Sakaguchi's career at Square. Yet people still keep clamoring as if he was a victim. I wonder if people will STILL claim this in 10 years?

I like the man's work, but let's not deny reality.

Lol, ok.

Square owes their success to his franchise and management. Clearly they saw something desirable out of becoming "Japan's Pixar" and If the board approved the decision to make Square Pictures, that rests on them.

Clearly the development of TSW was a clusterfuck, but it was a risky endeavour from the get go.

 

[jaxword]

Lol, ok.

Square owes their success to his franchise and management. Clearly they saw something desirable out of becoming "Japan's Pixar" and If the board approved the decision to make Square Pictures, that rests on them.

Clearly the development of TSW was a clusterfuck, but it was a risky endeavour from the get go.

I never said Hironobu did a bad job building Square up from the start.

It was just his poor decision of TSW that cost him his job in the end.

 

[Jinko]

Great thread, interesting to read the 1up interview with Uematsu, it clearly shows how the company shifted focus after they merged up to this day.

They are less interested in making games and more interested in making money, but this is true for almost every publisher.

It's clearly Hironobu Sakaguchi who ruined Hironobu Sakaguchi's career at Square. Yet people still keep clamoring as if he was a victim. I wonder if people will STILL claim this in 10 years?

I like the man's work, but let's not deny reality.

Sure Sakaguchi had a huge role in being forced out of the company but he wasn't the only person in charge and it seemed clear Wada just wanted Him and Suzuki out of the way.

Wada has probably done more harm to SE than Sakaguchi ever did.

 

[jaxword]

Sure Sakaguchi had a huge role in being forced out of the company but he wasn't the only person in charge and it seemed clear Wada just wanted Him and Suzuki out of the way.

Wada has probably done more harm to SE than Sakaguchi ever did.

Who said anything about defending Wada? He's been the worst thing to happen to S-E.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

It's clearly Hironobu Sakaguchi who ruined Hironobu Sakaguchi's career at Square. Yet people still keep clamoring as if he was a victim. I wonder if people will STILL claim this in 10 years?

I like the man's work, but let's not deny reality.

As a gamer and fan of RPGs, I just think that Sakaguchi at Square post-2001 could have produced better games than either Square Enix or Mistwalker. Regardless of whose fault it is, it's just a shame that he couldn't stay at Square in a meaningful position.

 

[Jinko]

Who said anything about defending Wada? He's been the worst thing to happen to S-E.

Nobody, I'm just saying lets place the blame where it fits the best

 

[anaron]

I never said Hironobu did a bad job building Square up from the start.

It was just his poor decision of TSW that cost him his job in the end.

He was demoted before the film even came out.

 

[jaxword]

He was demoted before the film even came out.

Your own OP suggests that it was corporate backstabbing and politics that cost Hironobu his job, and that even taking the risk with TSW at all was enough to expose him to his enemies.

As a gamer and fan of RPGs, I just think that Sakaguchi at Square post-2001 could have produced better games than either Square Enix or Mistwalker. Regardless of whose fault it is, it's just a shame that he couldn't stay at Square in a meaningful position.

We'll never know what Hironobu would have done, post FFX. Maybe FF11 and 12 would've been quite different beasts.

Nobody, I'm just saying lets place the blame where it fits the best

I think everyone can agree that Wada is terrible.

 

[Bladenic]

How did Enix have so much more money than Square before the financial troubles? Outsourced development? Yeah Dragon Quest was ultra popular but so was FF and FF was popular on a worldwide scale. Plus Square had other successful franchises. Just wondering.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

How did Enix have so much more money than Square before the financial troubles? Outsourced development? Yeah Dragon Quest was ultra popular but so was FF and FF was popular on a worldwide scale. Plus Square had other successful franchises. Just wondering.

Just guessing, but maybe it's because Enix was far more than a game publisher. They also published tons of mangas and books.

 

[anaron]

Your own OP suggests that it was corporate backstabbing and politics that cost Hironobu his job, and that even taking the risk with TSW at all was enough to expose him to his enemies.

The studio and film were approved by the company at large so it was a risk taken by everyone. The poor reactionary handling shouldn't be framed in a way that Sakaguchi deserved it because he exposed himself and the people in question got their chance to takeover. His management for game production was essentially the glue of the company and they should have never lost sight of that.

How did Enix have so much more money than Square before the financial troubles? Outsourced development? Yeah Dragon Quest was ultra popular but so was FF and FF was popular on a worldwide scale. Plus Square had other successful franchises. Just wondering.

They published a ton of different media in Japan, I believe. Particularly Anime and manga.

 

[EulaCapra]

 

[MagnaderAlpha]

The studio and film were approved by the company at large so it was a risk taken by everyone. The poor reactionary handling shouldn't be framed in a way that Sakaguchi deserved it because he exposed himself and the people in question got their chance to takeover. His management for game production was essentially the glue of the company and they should have never lost sight of that.

Does make me wonder had things gone differently, if Square would've been in a better state now than, well, they are at now? I'd like to think, perhaps. Though, you look at a lot of Japanese companies(Capcom, Konami..) and you see bad moves by the lot of them.

 

[Mandoric]

We'll never know what Hironobu would have done, post FFX. Maybe FF11 and 12 would've been quite different beasts.

11 was spun up at the same time as 9-10, and staffed from the old guard. It might have progressed differently in the later years, but it might have progressed -worse- (remember, that's where we got Naoki Yoshida from)

 

[Jinko]

11 was spun up at the same time as 9-10, and staffed from the old guard. It might have progressed differently in the later years, but it might have progressed -worse- (remember, that's where we got Naoki Yoshida from)

Um nope, Yoshida was making Dragon Quest Arcade games.

Unless you mean he was part of the new, but when you consider Tanaka (old guard) and what he did with FFXIV, its hard to see a worse scenario.