SanAndreasX said:
It's a weird situation. Sony definitely did well with the arrangement, no question. But Square ended up collapsing under its own weight within a few short years after FF7. According to the interview they were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in 2000, when FFIX was released. The movie was merely the nail in the coffin. They also ended up losing Sakaguchi and a lot of their other talent over the fallout from TSW. FFX-2 was what saved them from total collapse before Enix absorbed them into Square Enix. They were successful, but they spent money like drunken sailors at a Bangkok brothel. And Sakaguchi hasn't been a roaring success since he left. I haven't even seen any mobile games from his studio since Terra Battle, let alone console games. Maybe they'd ultimately have been better off in the long term staying with Nintendo, who knows? In retrospect, Square didn't seem capable of coping with their sudden global success. |
The merger between Square and Enix was in talks long before then though. It was FF:TSW that led Square taking a massive loss and posting their first quarterly loss. They weren't really bleeding dry but it led to doubts about the merger. The timing of the movie's loss was also bad, as it was during the generational leap so PS2 titles were still in development and needed funding before release. Hence the Sony share buyout.
Once FFX and KH were out, 2002, Square posted record breaking profits. The merger went ahead and SE was formed.
Talent leaving is part of the gaming industry. Creatives want to take hold of their own projects, work on different franchises etc and since each company only has a set amount of projects/ directorial positions, talent moves a lot in the gaming industry.
Honestly, Sakaguchi leaving hurt Sakaguchi far more than Square.
Definitely not. Sony saw that the gaming market did not have to be concentrated in NA and JP. They opened up a market, EU, larger than both NA and JP, and with the PS2 showed how to sell gaming consoles on a truly global level to less developed countries on a level that Nintendo could have never dreamed of. Even to this day, Sony has presence in far more countries, many of which Nintendo does not even officially sell in.
Its hard to argue that Square and Sony did not make their best move.