Final Fantasy composer: "The situation at Square was awful after Hironobu Sakaguchi quit"

Then the company merged with Enix and things took a turn for the better once more.

Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has enjoyed a career that is exciting to say the least. The small and battered company Square was on the verge of bankruptcy in the 1980s and put all its eggs in one basket with the definitive Final Fantasy for the NES.

It became a success and despite the name not particularly "final" at all, and just a few years ago Final Fantasy XVI was released, as well as lots of spin-offs and remakes. However, after Final Fantasy X in 2001, Sakaguchi left Square, and in 2003, they merged with Enix. The reason for the merger was that Square was once again in poor shape, not least after the film fiasco with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Now, Final Fantasy composer and industry legend Nobuo Uematsu reveals in an interview on the Nobiyo To Isshoni podcast (thanks, Automaton) that Sakaguchi's departure nearly broke them. From the start, he had been something of a boss that people looked up to, even back when Square was barely even a company, just a bunch of guys making games together:

"To put it simply - he is the big boss. Always has been and always will be. But Sakaguchi was able to manage the work even in that kind of environment. We didn't even have a proper corporate organization, yet everybody listened to him. It's a kind of quality you just have to be born with."

When such a person leaves, a vacuum naturally arises, and Uematsu continues:

"Maybe Sakaguchi isn't aware of this, but the situation at Square was awful after he quit. He left and the organization suddenly collapsed. I thought to myself - Oh no, I should get away from here."

Uematsu left Square Enix (as they have been called since 2003) in 2004, and the merger with Enix seems to have done the trick. Since then, Final Fantasy has continued to flourish, although the focus on action role-playing games seems to have led to lower sales recently. But as we reported yesterday, it appears that Square Enix will begin rolling out more turn-based role-playing games in the future.