Former Square president calls Enix merger 'a complete disaster'

Former Squaresoft president Hisashi Suzuki has called the company's merger with Square Enix "a complete failure," and said that the company lacks a "vision for the future."

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Square Enix isn't the powerhouse publisher it once was. Missteps like Final Fantasy XIV's troubled launch have led to somewhat of a reputation drop for the Japanese company, and recent quarter reports showed a loss of 5.5 billion yen (approximately $69 million). A former executive of Square has criticized the company, citing its Enix merger and lack of vision as the cause of the troubles.

"The merger is a complete failure," former Square president Hisashi Suzuki said on Twitter (via Develop). "There is no vision for the future."

Suzuki himself was president at Squaresoft, then served as a director at Square Enix for two years following the merger. He pointed out that when the merger first happened, the market cap was at 150 billion yen, but has now posted a market cap of 124 billion yen.

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  • reply
    November 9, 2012 3:00 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Former Square president calls Enix merger 'a complete disaster'.

    Former Squaresoft president Hisashi Suzuki has called the company's merger with Square Enix "a complete failure," and said that the company lacks a "vision for the future."

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      November 9, 2012 3:20 PM

      [deleted]

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        November 9, 2012 3:40 PM

        All I can think is maybe Enix was trying to get into the Western market. They were known, but never had a very large presence in the West.

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      November 9, 2012 3:28 PM

      But Enix published way better stuff before the merger. Just look at all the tri-Ace and Quintet games.
      Square obviously dragged it down with all their Final Fantasies, didn't even bother making a good Secret of Mana.

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        November 9, 2012 3:46 PM

        There is only one Secret of Mana!

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          November 9, 2012 3:50 PM

          I guess that's technically correct since they all have different titles with the word Mana in them outside of Japan. Mana series game, then.

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          November 12, 2012 8:06 AM

          Actually Seiken Densetsu 3 "Secret of Mana 2" was in many ways even better than Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2). Of course, unless you had the Japanese game and understood Japanese or played a translated version on an emulator, you probably never had a chance to play it. Personally I really enjoyed SD3 as it still allowed for the multiplayer like SD2 (which is what made it the forever favorite in my family with my siblings, the only RPG we were ever able to all enjoy together, (unlike that crap game Chronotrigger - had to play it by yourself all alone like a loser... sorry just really hated CT because I played SD2 before CT, huge letdown)

          Also SD3 had better graphics, better sounding score (although very little of it was as memorable as SD2 soundtrack), better/bigger/epic storyline, and cool ways of getting around (love Flammie, but there is some cooler stuff in this one), not to mention multiple storylines. Really it was just amazingly better in almost every way. If you never had a chance to play it, I recommend downloading the English Translated Version with the Enhanced Graphics mod and play it on a good SNES emulator with GL filtering. You'll swear it looks like a modern 2-D game, but better since it actually has a storyline unlike most new games.

          But yes, let us not speak of the other horrible "Mana" games. Ugh (hey guys, lets completely change what everyone loved about our game and that'll make it better. Hey that didnt work, I know! Lets turn our RPG into an RTS, that'll make all of our fans come back! Hrmmm that horribly bombed.. I know! Dungeon Crawlers are really popular, let's take our amazing rich RPG franchise and make a shitty Dungeon Crawler out of it, yeah!) *barf*

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      November 9, 2012 3:37 PM

      Hey, Human Revolution got made, that's all I care about.

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        November 9, 2012 3:39 PM

        Yeah oddly enough the merger was a disaster for both Japanese companies but the Eidos stuff seems to be doing pretty well... which it wasn't at the time of the merger... so weird.

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          November 9, 2012 3:45 PM

          Yeah I agree this whole thing is weird I hope no good IPs are effected.

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          November 9, 2012 3:55 PM

          Square + Enix = merger

          Square-Enix $ Eidos = buyout

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        November 11, 2012 11:01 AM

        Thank god for that:)

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      November 9, 2012 4:49 PM

      Well "square" and "enix" sound really bad on their own so atleast they got a really cool name now.

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        November 9, 2012 11:33 PM

        I've been calling them 'Squenix' since the merger.
        Not quite as savvy.

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        November 10, 2012 7:44 AM

        yeah, but Squaresoft was just fine.

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      November 9, 2012 5:21 PM

      I think one year of bad performance isn't damning on the merger at all. Look at EA they been in the red for years.

      Some companies even prefer to declare a loss so as to not pay taxes.

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        November 9, 2012 9:16 PM

        They've been making less money than they did in the past, and even losing money occasionally. This is not a good thing. They're doing better than EA, so what? Who wants to use a company that's in the red often as their measuring stick?

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      November 10, 2012 4:06 AM

      I prefered all of the games made before the merger (Not counting the new stuff they've published from other developers) and maybe they could have done better as seperate companies, but calling it a disaster when they're still one of the biggest players almost ten years after the merger seems a bit odd.

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        November 10, 2012 4:23 AM

        FF9 was the swan song.

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          November 10, 2012 6:36 AM

          10 and 12 were great.

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            November 10, 2012 7:44 AM

            10 is my favorite FF, and i've played most all of them.

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              November 10, 2012 8:16 AM

              I would say FF6 is my favorite and then FF4.

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              November 10, 2012 8:18 AM

              If we could replace tidus...with cloud....10 would be PERFECT. Well except for kimahri...who is the sedcond worse character ever, aside from Red XIII.

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              November 10, 2012 8:45 AM

              Where is that HD remake? I want this game again.

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          November 10, 2012 6:38 AM

          Yeah I mean I did like FFX, but it was the begining of a move away from a lot of the gameplay elements that made the first games.

          I'm playing through FFIX on my Vita now though, really love it.

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            November 11, 2012 10:45 AM

            X is a lump of dog poop next to IX. IX was the last great FF, and the only good game made in house post Square Enix merger.

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          November 10, 2012 10:26 AM

          Eh. I gave up with 8... and then I went Western RPG's.

          You know what they say, once you go Baldur's Gate you'll never go back.

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      November 10, 2012 7:35 AM

      Well, this guy now works for SEGA, so he should really keep his mouth shut.

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        November 10, 2012 8:59 AM

        Yeah, that's what I thought when I saw this headline on wire.vg, and then saw that he worked for Sega.

        I think it would be funny to re-headline stories on bombastic quotes to put more context into who's saying it, and where they're saying it. "'Square Enix merger a complete failure', says former Square exec who now works for Sega."

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          November 11, 2012 6:51 AM

          I don't think it's neccessary to put it in the headline (sounds kinda weird, too), but it should be a side-note somewhere in the article.

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            November 12, 2012 6:04 AM

            Maybe somewhere here

            Suzuki himself was president at Squaresoft, then served as a director at Square Enix for two years following the merger. He pointed out that when the merger first happened, the market cap was at 150 billion yen, but has now posted a market cap of 124 billion yen.

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