When Square left Nintendo, why did they go to Sony?

[MrPopo]

Yeah, favoring Nintendo for a decade was pretty much declaring war on Sega; that's all there was back then, besides not as popular options such as the TG16 and Neo Geo.

I disagree with your interpretation. Square wasn't that big of a company in those days; I'm more inclined to believe it was more of an economic reason. They started with the NES since that was the only worthwhile platform of that era. They moved to the SNES because many NES fans moved to the SNES and made their first SNES title. At this point they understand the SNES well, so gaining Genesis knowledge is expensive and risks annoying their fanbase who purchased SNES's for their games. So there was no compelling reason to move to the Genesis.

[GameMasterGuy]

Yeah, favoring Nintendo for a decade was pretty much declaring war on Sega; that's all there was back then, besides not as popular options such as the TG16 and Neo Geo.

I disagree with your interpretation. Square wasn't that big of a company in those days;

I guess I agree with everything after this part, but didn't everything FF1 onwards sell pretty well in Japan? I know it took until 7 before America loved them, but FF1 single-handedly saved them from bankruptcy. That's no easy feat, and I can only imagine classics such as 4 and 6 getting even more popular.

[Erik_Twice]

I guess I agree with everything after this part, but didn't everything FF1 onwards sell pretty well in Japan? I know it took until 7 before America loved them, but FF1 single-handedly saved them from bankruptcy. That's no easy feat, and I can only imagine classics such as 4 and 6 getting even more popular.

Square was known for one thing, and only one thing: ripping of OutRun and Space Harrier down to a T. Final Fantasy and sequels sold well, but nothing other Dragon Quest games didn't do, often better.

[Yancakes]

I'll try to find the facts/details about this.
http://www.unseen64.net/articles/square ... tendo-eng/

"Nintendo, until 1996, owned a certain percentage of Squaresoft shares and thus had some influence in Square’s marketing decisions. However, Nintendo sold those shares and they were bought by Sony. Square made an agreement with the new partner: all the expenses for the production and the initial release of Final Fantasy VII would be covered by Sony"

"Romancing Saga, a new RPG in development at Squaresoft that was supposed to debut on the Japanese market in the autumn of 1991, was delayed by more than two months due to numerous problems with the normal cartridges of the SNES. Squaresoft requested a permit to Nintendo to use carts bigger than 12 MB, in order to remove some bugs and limitations in the game. But the plans of the software house of Kyoto were quite different, and the request was denied. Yet Nintendo allowed the use of new 16 MB carts only a few months later on Chunsoft’s new RPG, Dragon Quest V. For Square, there was no other choice than to release the game without certain features."

"Autumn 1995: Square, due to productions problems, decided to release their next games with an initial print run of 700,000 instead of the usual 1,000,000. This choice of was not well greeted by Nintendo, who claimed this was a breach of contract."

This is awesome information, thanks!

Square was known for one thing, and only one thing: ripping of OutRun and Space Harrier down to a T. Final Fantasy and sequels sold well, but nothing other Dragon Quest games didn't do, often better.

Except that Thexder (their first game) was a huge hit.

[Erik_Twice]

Square was known for one thing, and only one thing: ripping of OutRun and Space Harrier down to a T. Final Fantasy and sequels sold well, but nothing other Dragon Quest games didn't do, often better.

Except that Thexder (their first game) was a huge hit.

As far as I have been able to gather Thexder was ported to the NES by them, but originally made by Game Arts.

[theclaw]

Looks that way. Game Arts holds a few original works. Not that they're doing much lately.

[Yancakes]

Ahh, I stand corrected.