That sad comment tho

Wish they did a better job at crushing them. The world would be better off with nintendo as a 3rd party developer.

— BrewPounder (@brewpounder) April 12, 2020

padib said: This article is very old. I read it almost last year. This thread is very biased against Nintendo (I have no ill towards OP, just stating the truth about the content), you have to understand that Nintendo and Square were in an almost exclusive relationship. If you read the article it's clear that basically they were only producing for Nintendo, not Sega, not Neo Geo, not anybody else. "[In September 1995] I was hired by the president of the company, [Tetsuo] Mizuno-san, and he told me that, “Squaresoft will always be with Nintendo. … As long as you work for us, it’s basically the same as working for Nintendo.” And the week after I joined, they started saying, “Oh, maybe we should switch to Sony.” So I was kind of shocked." Nintendo published Final Fantasy in the US, and helped promote the jRPG in the west. If you read the article, you would know that making jRPGs mainstream in the west was a gargantuan task. Nintendo didn't succeed what Sony succeeded in doing, but they very much helped the brand in its infancy, when Square was producing its final ... fantasy game. They were going bankrupt. Put simply, Square was almost a 2nd party to Nintendo, and they cheated on Nintendo because Nintendo was being a bad boyfriend, in relationship terms basically is it in a nutshell. These topics are sensitive, as the article mentions: Hironobu Sakaguchi Producer and executive vice president, Square Japan; Chairman and chief executive officer, Square USA When we made our decision, the president of Square [Masafumi Miyamoto], our lead programmer [Ken Narita] and I went to a meeting with Yamauchi-san. There is an old cultural tradition where, in Kyoto, someone will welcome you with tea, but you’re not supposed to really drink that tea. It’s just polite to have it there. And Yamauchi-san welcomed us with a very expensive bento meal and beer, and gave us a very nice welcome and basically patted us on the back to say, “I wish you the best.” No bitter feelings or anything. Hiroshi Kawai Character programmer, Square Japan I think [Sakaguchi] is just trying to be politically correct with that one. Yoshihiro Maruyama Executive vice president, Square U.S. I don’t think [anyone from Nintendo gave us a hard time]. They said, “Oh, we don’t need that.” That’s what they said. [Laughs] Their philosophy has always been that Nintendo hardware is for their games, and if a publisher wants to publish, “OK you can do it.” But if you don’t like it, “We don’t want you.” Hiroshi Kawai Character programmer, Square Japan What I heard was Nintendo said, “If you’re leaving us, never come back.” [Note: In October 2001, then Square president Hisashi Suzuki said in an interview that Nintendo became especially frustrated not when Square left, but later when Square helped convince others, such as Enix, to leave as well. Suzuki declined an interview request for this story.] These tweets are bad press towards Nintendo and only serve to prop up Polygon. I very much loved their article but this is in very bad taste and they should apologize to both Square and Nintendo for this stunt. The state of journalism is very bad it seems.

Actually Nintendo was bad at that time and 99% developer and game publisher agree . This article not picking any side just stating a real fact. Even Nintendo employee agree and another prove isNintendo has changed a lot since then, which great. 

This happen on N64 and FF7 decisison , before that (SNES) it's  diffrent story. 

Yeah, I've always loved Nintendo's games, but their business practices have not always been something to look back on with pride.

Yes we know. Nintendo's was terrible back in the day.

HollyGamer said: padib said: This article is very old. I read it almost last year. This thread is very biased against Nintendo (I have no ill towards OP, just stating the truth about the content), you have to understand that Nintendo and Square were in an almost exclusive relationship. If you read the article it's clear that basically they were only producing for Nintendo, not Sega, not Neo Geo, not anybody else. "[In September 1995] I was hired by the president of the company, [Tetsuo] Mizuno-san, and he told me that, “Squaresoft will always be with Nintendo. … As long as you work for us, it’s basically the same as working for Nintendo.” And the week after I joined, they started saying, “Oh, maybe we should switch to Sony.” So I was kind of shocked." Nintendo published Final Fantasy in the US, and helped promote the jRPG in the west. If you read the article, you would know that making jRPGs mainstream in the west was a gargantuan task. Nintendo didn't succeed what Sony succeeded in doing, but they very much helped the brand in its infancy, when Square was producing its final ... fantasy game. They were going bankrupt. Put simply, Square was almost a 2nd party to Nintendo, and they cheated on Nintendo because Nintendo was being a bad boyfriend, in relationship terms basically is it in a nutshell. These topics are sensitive, as the article mentions: Hironobu Sakaguchi Producer and executive vice president, Square Japan; Chairman and chief executive officer, Square USA When we made our decision, the president of Square [Masafumi Miyamoto], our lead programmer [Ken Narita] and I went to a meeting with Yamauchi-san. There is an old cultural tradition where, in Kyoto, someone will welcome you with tea, but you’re not supposed to really drink that tea. It’s just polite to have it there. And Yamauchi-san welcomed us with a very expensive bento meal and beer, and gave us a very nice welcome and basically patted us on the back to say, “I wish you the best.” No bitter feelings or anything. Hiroshi Kawai Character programmer, Square Japan I think [Sakaguchi] is just trying to be politically correct with that one. Yoshihiro Maruyama Executive vice president, Square U.S. I don’t think [anyone from Nintendo gave us a hard time]. They said, “Oh, we don’t need that.” That’s what they said. [Laughs] Their philosophy has always been that Nintendo hardware is for their games, and if a publisher wants to publish, “OK you can do it.” But if you don’t like it, “We don’t want you.” Hiroshi Kawai Character programmer, Square Japan What I heard was Nintendo said, “If you’re leaving us, never come back.” [Note: In October 2001, then Square president Hisashi Suzuki said in an interview that Nintendo became especially frustrated not when Square left, but later when Square helped convince others, such as Enix, to leave as well. Suzuki declined an interview request for this story.] These tweets are bad press towards Nintendo and only serve to prop up Polygon. I very much loved their article but this is in very bad taste and they should apologize to both Square and Nintendo for this stunt. The state of journalism is very bad it seems. Actually Nintendo was bad at that time and 99% developer and game publisher agree . This article not picking any side just stating a real fact. Even Nintendo employee agree and another prove isNintendo has changed a lot since then, which great.  This happen on N64 and FF7 decisison , before that (SNES) it's  diffrent story.

"Bad" is very subjective.  The most consumer friendly company I've ever encountered in all of gaming was Nintendo in the 80s.  And console gaming would not even exist if it were not for Yamauchi.  On the other hand the third party company that always hated them the most was EA, which happens to be the least consumer friendly company in all of gaming.

There are always at least two sides to every story.  And often time being "hard on third parties" actually means being "aggressively pro-consumer". 

Bad for buesness partners sometimes comes becasue the comany is good for consumers, which nintendo obviously was, thats the reasonthey were abe to pull the US out of the video game crash. strict quality control filterd out the majority of the shovelware that would have been on the NES/SNES, and back in the days before the internet, it was hard to find out whether games were good or not, thus shovelware easily scammed even the most wary consumers, which is the reason the crash happened in the first place!

Will always be one of the most fascinating stories in gaming

@TheBraveGallade - Lets be clear I Respect Nintendo's path deeply: building of their brand, the restoration of this industry and even Yamauchi, but the man was a dick that burned a lot of bridges. When those 3rd parties had the chance to flourish elsewhere, they all took it.

@Xxain 

I agree on that part, though I think yamauchi buring so many bridges (a lot of them for justifiable reasons though he was a bit trigger happy) allowed iwata and others to build what nintendo is nowadays.

and with sony, sony was and still is a fucking dick when it comes to corperate policy and relations. they offerd the partenership to nintendo (and later sega) trying to exploit them to hell and back, sega JP realized this early and told them to basically fuck off, but not before they snuck some tech from sega of america (and people wonder why the relations between sega's american and japanese branches are bad....)

square's move is somewhat justifyable but was still a major dick move, and honestly square was crapping itself untill enix basically took over.

nintendo never made up with squaresoft. it was always in good relations with enix from what I understand, and its enix that was the one taking control in the merger....

Nintendo's stranglehold on developers sure sucked. I'm glad Sega started to break it with the Genesis and then Sony kept doing it when they entered the market.