Wyrdness said:
Sony gave Squaresoft a vastly reduced licensing fee and agreed to handle the marketing campaign as well as give Square some of the funding in exchange Sony also obtained a small share percentage in the company which they later increased to 18% when the FF movie and animes flopped as those caused Square to ask for money, this was one factor behind the merger with Enix as it reduced Sony's stake in them giving the latter less influence in decisions. Sony would later sell their shares as they no longer would have any say after the merger as it reduced their stake to about 8% (a link on them selling the shares below) https://venturebeat.com/2014/04/16/sony-is-selling-off-all-its-shares-in-final-fantasy-publisher-square-enix/ |
Giving a company a more attractive business deal, with more opportunity for success, isn't "money-hatting". That same misconception could be errantly applied to all PS1 third party support, because PS1 introduced lower licensing fees across the board compared to Nintendo. Asking for less of a cut, does not, AT ALL, equate to "money-hatting". To say nothing for the inherent benefits of cost reduction the CD medium provided over carts. There were reasons why so many 3rd parties went to PS in that era, and most of them didn't involve direct payments from Sony. Also, you're saying "Sony gave Squaresoft a vastly reduced licensing fee" on FF VII. Vastly? The fee was already low. I'd appreciate a source on that to see how much it was reduced from the standard percentage.
- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."
