The History - Final Fantasy VII (Why Square won't leave Sony)

he story of Squaresoft’s success in the US video games market appears at first glance to be like a fairy tale. Before Final Fantasy VII, console-based role-playing games (RPGs) were still a niche market, played only by a dedicated few who were willing to endure the long wait for the few games to cross the Pacific and onto American soil. Then came Final Fantasy VII in the September of 1997, wowing everybody with its amazing graphics, story and gameplay. The game single-handedly lifted console-based RPGs out of their little niche into the mainstream, selling millions of copies worldwide, and made Squaresoft a household name in video games.

Today console-based RPGs are a major industry, with players spoilt-for-choice on which RPG to buy every Christmas. The time of the garage-made RPGs was over. Now RPG development is an entire industry, with dedicated storywriters, character designers and even actors. Even the so-called “old-school” RPGs today sport the mandatory full-motion video (FMV) sequences. In one swift earth-shattering stroke, Squaresoft has altered the entire RPG scene forever. But it was not all plain sailing…

This paper attempts to trace Squaresoft’s rocky road to the American market and their eventual success with the release of Final Fantasy VII, the processes and decisions that went into the making of the game, and also takes a look at the future it heralds. Squaresoft’s history reads more like an RPG story, full of twists and turns, and bosses to battle. Its success in the US console-based RPG market was no fluke. It was the culmination of many years of hard work, a strong vision and several failed attempts.

The news shocked the industry, although it was already known by industry watchers for some time that Squaresoft was planning to leave Nintendo. Thus was finally ended Squaresoft’s 10-year long relationship with Nintendo. Sony’s CD-ROM system provided Squaresoft with the freedom and capacity it needed to make the next-generation Final Fantasy games without worrying about cartridge sizes.

At that time the Sega Saturn console was very popular in Japan, with a huge library of games. But Squaresoft decided, for unknown reasons, to go with Sony instead. It was even more surprising considering that Shiochiro Irimajiri, the president of Sega, and Tomoyuki Takechi, president of Squaresoft, grew up in the same city and are childhood friends.

It has been rumored that Sony gave Squaresoft a discount in the production cost for their CD-ROMs. Furthermore, Sony was willing to support Square’s independent marketing company, Digicube. By mid-March, Nintendo dumped all their Square stocks, which were bought up by Sony. In December 1996, Sony Computer Entertainment America agreed to a multi-title publishing deal with Square Co., Ltd., allowing the company full North American publishing and distribution rights to Square's 1997 PlayStation product line.

The impact on Nintendo was great. Soon after Squaresoft’s defection, Enix followed suit, taking along with them their Dragon Quest series. The loss of the two most popular RPGs in Japan left Nintendo reeling from the blow, and for a long time after that, there were no RPGs on the Nintendo platform. Many RPG players converted to the Playstation together with Squaresoft and Enix.

At the 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Sony's Phil Harrison made this argument against Nintendo using Final Fantasy VII: “FFVII, with three CD-ROMs, would weigh in at 1.8GB of data. There's no way that any Nintendo cartridge-based system could cram that much data into one game.”

George Harrison of Nintendo responded that he didn't care about Final Fantasy VII, because “most of our customers wouldn't want or appreciate such a slow and tedious game such as Final Fantasy VII.”

Squaresoft’s relationship with Nintendo remains touchy even to this day. The split was so bitter that even after Nintendo re-established relations with Namco in 1999, Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, still refused to consider working with Squaresoft. When asked about if Nintendo would allow Squaresoft to publish games for their upcoming GameCube console, Minoru Arakawa of Nintendo replied, “I don’t think it is yet time for Squaresoft.”

Work on Final Fantasy VII began in early 1996. The development budget for Final Fantasy VII was reported to be a whopping US$45 million. Never before had so much money gone into the making of an RPG. Over a hundred artists worked on producing the most amazing computer graphics ever seen in a video game. Beautifully rendered full-motion video (FMV) sequences were woven directly into the gameplay, and the game played out pretty much like a movie. Pre-rendered backdrops graced the screen throughout the entire game world.

It was a very radical thing to do. The conventional wisdom then was that RPGs were all about fighting monsters and leveling up – graphics was not seen as an important factor. Squaresoft believed otherwise, and thought that graphics would appeal to a much wider audience. They took a huge gamble with the production budget and proved that their intuition was right. They also showed that a Hollywood-sized budget can in fact for an RPG, and raised the status of RPGs away from the perception that RPGs were made by a few guys tinkering around in a garage.

Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to use developers on both sides of the Pacific. The main game engine was developed at the Japanese offices of Squaresoft, supervised by Hironobu Sakaguchi, while the impressive video sequences were created at the new and expensive offices of Square USA in Honolulu, Hawaii. Squaresoft fully took advantage of the many talented and experienced computer animators and powerful computers this side of the Pacific.

Padders wrote:I'll be honest here. I don't really like Final Fantasy that much. I played them all but done of them seems to beat my personal love of Final Fantasy VI (3 on SNES), IX came close. The series just became another eye candy market for Square Enix to show off and otakus to feed on ever since the move to playstation.

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

TRF wrote:

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

I meant the ''MAIN'' franchise. Correct me if I am wrong, but there hasn't been a full fledged Final Fantasy on a Nintendo home console in ages.

TRF, why would they do that? That is what this thread is trying to show..

TRF wrote:

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

I meant the ''MAIN'' franchise. Correct me if I am wrong, but there hasn't been a full fledged Final Fantasy on a Nintendo home console in ages.

TRF, why would they do that? That is what this thread is trying to show..

Is there really a such thing as a "main" Final Fantasy franchise? Really? The only ones in the "main" franchise that are related are Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. They're not hugging onto Sony and never letting them go, they're just making games for Sony and numbering those games sequentially, but when you think about it, there really is so such thing as a main FF franchise.

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

I meant the ''MAIN'' franchise. Correct me if I am wrong, but there hasn't been a full fledged Final Fantasy on a Nintendo home console in ages.

TRF, why would they do that? That is what this thread is trying to show..

Is there really a such thing as a "main" Final Fantasy franchise? Really? The only ones in the "main" franchise that are related are Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. They're not hugging onto Sony and never letting them go, they're just making games for Sony and numbering those games sequentially, but when you think about it, there really is so such thing as a main FF franchise.

What I mean is exclude ''Crystal Chronicles'' and other games like such. The BIG ones.

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

I meant the ''MAIN'' franchise. Correct me if I am wrong, but there hasn't been a full fledged Final Fantasy on a Nintendo home console in ages.

TRF, why would they do that? That is what this thread is trying to show..

Is there really a such thing as a "main" Final Fantasy franchise? Really? The only ones in the "main" franchise that are related are Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. They're not hugging onto Sony and never letting them go, they're just making games for Sony and numbering those games sequentially, but when you think about it, there really is so such thing as a main FF franchise.

What I mean is exclude ''Crystal Chronicles'' and other games like such. The BIG ones.

What I mean is that there's no difference between the "main" games and the Crystal Chronicles or Tactics games.

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

I meant the ''MAIN'' franchise. Correct me if I am wrong, but there hasn't been a full fledged Final Fantasy on a Nintendo home console in ages.

TRF, why would they do that? That is what this thread is trying to show..

Is there really a such thing as a "main" Final Fantasy franchise? Really? The only ones in the "main" franchise that are related are Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. They're not hugging onto Sony and never letting them go, they're just making games for Sony and numbering those games sequentially, but when you think about it, there really is so such thing as a main FF franchise.

What I mean is exclude ''Crystal Chronicles'' and other games like such. The BIG ones.

What I mean is that there's no difference between the "main" games and the Crystal Chronicles or Tactics games.

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

Why would they do that? You said it yourself that SE stays where the tech is. At this point, it's with Sony. Still, SE didn't totally "take their franchise and run". SE still makes Final Fantasy games for the Nintendo console, not to mention they ported all of the older games to DS, as well as made original/new games for the DS.

I meant the ''MAIN'' franchise. Correct me if I am wrong, but there hasn't been a full fledged Final Fantasy on a Nintendo home console in ages.

TRF, why would they do that? That is what this thread is trying to show..

Is there really a such thing as a "main" Final Fantasy franchise? Really? The only ones in the "main" franchise that are related are Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. They're not hugging onto Sony and never letting them go, they're just making games for Sony and numbering those games sequentially, but when you think about it, there really is so such thing as a main FF franchise.

What I mean is exclude ''Crystal Chronicles'' and other games like such. The BIG ones.

What I mean is that there's no difference between the "main" games and the Crystal Chronicles or Tactics games.

Then fine, the one WITHOUT the sub-titles [/quote
No, they're not going to abandon Sony with the games without the subtitles. Although . . . recent games/future games would say otherwise. FFXIII made it to 360, with Versus XIII being rumored to go to 360. XIV was also going to go with 360, but SE has issues to work out with M$.

Zillah wrote:STOP QUOTING. WTF!

SlySonji wrote:

Zillah wrote:STOP QUOTING. WTF!

It's my thread

Zillah wrote:

SlySonji wrote:

Zillah wrote:STOP QUOTING. WTF!

It's my thread

Hahahahaha!
No. It's The nation's.

SlySonji™ wrote:

TRF wrote:For once tahmidk is right. They're not with Sony anymore. FFXIII was multiplatform, and hell, they're working on a 360 exclusive called Gun Loco (they might just be publishing it, though).

Maybe I should rephrase myself.

People think that Square are going to do to Sony what they did to Nintendo. Jump ship. Take their franchise and run.

I, on the other hand, refuse to believe this.

tahmidk wrote:wait wait wait.. isn't ff4 the after years on the wii? and thats a direct sequel to ff4 and it's got all the characters and places and fucking everything. Anyway i doubt Nomura really is a hardcore sony fanboy considering he is making a cuple of games for DS exclusively and already has made 1 on DS.