S.T.A.G.E. said:
FInal Fantasy was already popular on Nintendo but became something bigger on Playstation.Sony used to have shares in Square Enix no different than Nintendo had on Rare. Sony gave third party a platform where they could thrive without the strangehold of playing second fiddle commercially to first party. They could be just as competitive. |
@bold It's not like Nintendo didn't try to help 3rd party games like Final Fantasy sell. Nintendo's official magazine, Nintendo Power (which had a paid subscription base of over 1.5 million at the time), dedicated a whole issue solely to the original Final Fantasy and was a complete guide to the game.
Nintendo and Square had fairly close relations back then, Squaresoft (the US subsidiary of Square) had headquarters that were located next to Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
@italic There were some differences betweeen Sony's shares in Square, and Nintendo's shares in Rare. Square was a publicly traded company, while Rare was not. Sony purchased a 18.6% stake in Square (which was prior to the Square merger with Enix [it went down to 8.4% after the Square-Enix merger]), Nintnedo's ownership of Rare was 49%.
The Sony purchase of Square stock happened in late 2001. Square was looking to recoup some of it's losses from the production of it's expensive CGI movie "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", which was distributed by Sony/Columbia Pictures. The Sony investment in Square stock was 14.9 billion yen (~$124 million), the production costs for the movie (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) was 16.4 billion yen (~$137 million).
If Square never made the movie they wouldn't have needed the investment from Sony.
In 2014 Sony sold all its shares in Square Enix to Nikko Securities Inc for 15.3 billion yen.
