Warning: Opinionated discussions ahead; feel free to disagree but please do not comment / quote as though I am stating facts.

I've heard many forum goers rail against Square-Enix for their betrayal of Sony and the general direction the company has taken (greed > respect) ever since they first became Square-Enix rather than just plain ole Squaresoft.

But in all honesty, has Square really changed at all in their policy as a company? Looking back at their history and commercial decisions, I can see very little inconsistencies.

Square-Enix has always attempted to ‘back the winning horse’ so to speak. The company had been thick with Nintendo for two generation until it became apparent that the N64 wasn’t going to be the stellar success its two predecessors were, Squaresoft promptly jumped onto the Sony bandwagon and stuck with them until it became apparent that the PS3 was (again) not the fantastic performer that the PS1 and 2 were.

Why is Final Fantasy 13 still on the Sony platform? It was announced and began development when the PS2 was still dominating the market and it seems inconceivable the PS3 could be anything but a phenomenal success. But as development cost continue to spiral and the PS3 continue to not meet Square’s expectation, Square decided to jump ship once more in the only direction they could, the Xbox360, a console with a healthy install base and the necessary hardware to run their flagship title, a translation to the Wii is by that point impossible due to console’s hardware limitation.   

Don’t gloat yet my fellow HD compatriot, Square is not likely to jump onboard the Xbox bandwagon anytime soon, all the exclusive and timed exclusive Square is and have thus far produced are bought with Microsoft money, Square has reserved its ‘other’ flagship for the true leader of this generation’s console war in true Square(soft)-Enix fashion.

I am of course talking about the upcoming Dragon Quest exclusive to the Nintendo DS. This really shouldn’t surprise anyone, seeing as the biggest market for this venerable franchise has always been Japan, and with an install base of 1 in every 2 household, it was all but a foregone conclusion that the Nintendo would have their sweet revenge at last.

So there you have it people, Square-Enix hasn’t changed, they’ve been very consistence in their policy for a very long time now and one really shouldn’t criticize them for their ‘betrayal of Sony’, afterall they still make great games (sometimes).

What does everyone else think? :)

I think more than that the main conception was that Square became crap because of the merger with Enix.

This SONY Betrayal BS/nonsense is relatively new.

When people say Square changed they usually mean by quality. FF10 was the last Square Soft title....n some people say their last good game (I would disagree as FF7:CC & FF12 were brilliant)

Really they, FF12 was nothing special.

Well I and critics will disagree with you there.

FF12 dared to step out of a worn out formula....n it did it spectacularly.

If FF12's story was as brilliant as the gameplay....or if the story had Ashe & Basch as the main characters....trust me FF12 would've been seen as one of the best FF's by majority of the people.

That policy may have remained reasonably consistent but there's other things the company does that it didn't used to do. For example, the truly absurd number of remakes they currently produce. I'm not sure what the numbers would say, but it appears as though they used to focus more on original IPs (in addition to their core series) rather than simply remaking everything they've ever made.

yes, recentley. After FFX, everything they made sucked. FFXI wasnt too good. FFXII was crap. Dirge of Cerberus, Advent Children, Reverent Wings, FFX-2 = poop, only to name a few. After a few years they started making good games again (The World Ends WIth You and Crisis Core have been their only great games since.)

IMO, FFXII was the worst thing that ever happened to Square-Enix. It was without a doubt one of the worst FF games I've ever played. Took a step in the completley wrong direcetion. The story was TERRIBLE compared to FF 4,6,7-10. The battle system could of been really good, but they did too many things to it to F it up. 90% of people i know think that FFXII was crap too.

Theres a reason for this- the 3 main guys who made the FF games left the company after only 3 hours of the game was made (resulting in Mist Walker.)