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.

Quote Originally Posted by VeloZer0 View Post
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.