A fairly unlikely possobility of Square going under.

[NeoCracker]

I'd like Atlus to grab them all, honestly. They're a company that actually knows how to right (which is getting rarer and rarer in this industry), and they know how to make excellent traditional JRPGs in terms of mechanics.

Oh, and they're pretty good about listening to their fans as well.

Atlus would rock a Chrono Trigger sequel, and anyone who's played Radiant Historia knows it.

The Problem here is all of the best Atlus titles are coming from the same team. If you throw all of these RPG's to Atlus, we are going to have massive gaps between each release for the titles given all the work is on so few people.

[Roogle]

How did Square Enix come to hold the Lufia series as a property? I thought they were only involved in publishing the titles.

[Ouch!]

Wait, people thought Lost Odyssey was disappointing? What the hell is wrong with people?

[Quindiana Jones]

Nobody thought Lost Odyssey was disappointing. Everybody appreciated how fantastic it was.

Note: "everybody" refers only to people whose opinions are worth considering.

[Flaming Ice]

Hand FF over to Monolith Soft!

Exactly this.


And lost odyssey is a good game (besides those kelolons)

[Skyblade]

I'd like Atlus to grab them all, honestly. They're a company that actually knows how to right (which is getting rarer and rarer in this industry), and they know how to make excellent traditional JRPGs in terms of mechanics.

Oh, and they're pretty good about listening to their fans as well.

Atlus would rock a Chrono Trigger sequel, and anyone who's played Radiant Historia knows it.

The Problem here is all of the best Atlus titles are coming from the same team. If you throw all of these RPG's to Atlus, we are going to have massive gaps between each release for the titles given all the work is on so few people.

So, Atlus will have to hire more guys and there will finally be a job opening for me there, yay!

Yeah, Atlus doesn't have the fastest turn around time. But if they could increase their size while holding on to their quality, we would have the most awesome development company ever.

[NeoCracker]

Wait, people thought Lost Odyssey was disappointing? What the hell is wrong with people?

It wasn't a bad game, just kind of lack luster. I was a bit put off mostly because I fealt "The Thousand Years of Memories' were telling more interesting tales then the main plot, which couldn't hold my attention that well.

I'd like Atlus to grab them all, honestly. They're a company that actually knows how to right (which is getting rarer and rarer in this industry), and they know how to make excellent traditional JRPGs in terms of mechanics.

Oh, and they're pretty good about listening to their fans as well.

Atlus would rock a Chrono Trigger sequel, and anyone who's played Radiant Historia knows it.

The Problem here is all of the best Atlus titles are coming from the same team. If you throw all of these RPG's to Atlus, we are going to have massive gaps between each release for the titles given all the work is on so few people.

So, Atlus will have to hire more guys and there will finally be a job opening for me there, yay!

Yeah, Atlus doesn't have the fastest turn around time. But if they could increase their size while holding on to their quality, we would have the most awesome development company ever.

Yeah, unless you find a way to clone them, I don't see that being to likely.

Also, we'd want a good variety of people making different games to keep the market full of varied titles.

[Bolivar]

I'm not sure if SE actually owns Dragon Quest; Yuji Horii isn't an employee, and as long as his production company could still design the game and farm out development to whoever they want, which is the typical case, I think we'd be good. But I don't think anyone other than Level 5 deserves it.

As with most of the others, I think the best scenario would be to see a few of the key developers form a smaller company, attract investors, and buy out the properties. A small team of Kitase, Ito, Minagawa, Nomura, etc. developing new ideas and then outsourcing development to From Software/Platinum Games would be really great IMO.

I'd like to see Ogre Battle get bought out by Yatsumi Matsuno who would then form his own production company. Honestly, I would just like to see successor studios to Square.

Actually Spirits Within did technically kill Squaresoft, leading to the formation of Square Enix.

This is correct, the Spirits Within caused Square to be bought by Enix and immediately implement a strategy of exploiting only 2-3 IPs in not just spinoffs, but entire spinoff series'. Most mergers are in fact acquisitions, and this was certainly the case when you look at share conversion and board control.

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually Spirits Within did technically kill Squaresoft, leading to the formation of Square Enix.

This is correct, the Spirits Within caused Square to be bought by Enix and immediately implement a strategy of exploiting only 2-3 IPs in not just spinoffs, but entire spinoff series'. Most mergers are in fact acquisitions, and this was certainly the case when you look at share conversion and board control.

This is incorrect, the merger was being talked about before Spirits Within had been released. Though as I stated earlier, the film flopping allowed Enix to have the upper hand in the merger. You are correct that Wada's solution was creating sequels and exploiting IPs though, so we can blame the film for that.

I honestly don't understand why Horii doesn't just join Level-5 at this point. I'm sure it would make the companies legal departments happy to say the least.

I'm also more for the company just breaking up into smaller companies though I would prefer if Ito formed his own company with Matsuno or got swooped up by Mistwalker, Atlus, or Level-5. I honestly wouldn't mind seeing Nomura go into manga. I just feel like his art style and his stories would work better that way. I could see Kitase joing Mistwalker as well, or going independent consultant designer, I couldn't imagine him joining a company and not be expecting to be in charge so those two options would give him the best leverage.

[Bolivar]

Hmm, those articles seem to only have evidence about an online partnership that included other companies. Businesses "talk" all the time, but I don't think that shifts the perception that Enix acquired Square after TSW and adapted to a safe IP-exploitation strategy.

[black orb]

Valkyrie Profile.

>>> Dont dare to touch it..
I know tri-Ace guys can be lame at times but hell, the original one was flawless..

[Wolf Kanno]

Hmm, those articles seem to only have evidence about an online partnership that included other companies. Businesses "talk" all the time, but I don't think that shifts the perception that Enix acquired Square after TSW and adapted to a safe IP-exploitation strategy.

Except this article states from Enix's former president that they were discussing a merger prior to the release of TSW and that TSW's poor performance almost made Enix back out of the deal. For clarity sakes, Drakengard, which was mentioned in the article was a 2003 title in Japan and early 2004 US title, meaning they were discussing the possibility of a merger in late 2000/early 2001 which would still make it months prior to TSW's release. The main article I linked even showed it wasn't until Wada had lead the company back into the black financially in 2003 that the merger actually went through, meaning it was most likely an inevitable business deal that wasn't directly a result of the TSW (since it almost killed the deal and largely delayed everything among other issues) though I will concur that the idea of making sequels and milking franchises for wealth is partly TSW's fault, since had X-2 bombed, I'm not sure what direction the company would have taken, but the resignation of the former president due to the lost from the film let Wada into power, and as this article has shown, he's pretty much an accountant and the mastermind of making franchises out of popular games in the company catalog. I still find it amusing that despite the financial lost, Square's shares were still more profitable than Enix.

[Skyblade]

In the event they do go under, I think EoFF should hold a fundraiser with the intent of purchasing the Ivalice Alliance and Chrono IPs.

Think about it. We have writers, artists, animators, programmers... We have tons of people with incredible dedication to the series and skills many would happily use to make such games.

If we could secure even one of our beloved franchises, think what we could do with it. We could start out with simple projects, released through Steam, XBox Live Arcade, and PSN, and slowly work up to bigger projects and full scale games if we can make a profit.

We could actually turn EoFF into a game developer. I'd happily work on an FF game for free, just for the experience and exposure. And I'm sure I'm not alone. And if the game started to make money, then we could start splitting profits and funding larger projects. It'd be complicated, but it could work.

[Old Manus]

Frankly a change of developer might stop the FF rot.

[Roogle]

In the event they do go under, I think EoFF should hold a fundraiser with the intent of purchasing the Ivalice Alliance and Chrono IPs.

We could actually turn EoFF into a game developer. I'd happily work on an FF game for free, just for the experience and exposure. And I'm sure I'm not alone. And if the game started to make money, then we could start splitting profits and funding larger projects. It'd be complicated, but it could work.

The price for the rights to a game series are likely too large for this community to handle. I cannot imagine that we would all be able to raise enough money to purchase the rights to a series. Also, the community is not in direct control of the ownership of the site, so there might be a conflict of interests there.