History
Square was founded in Yokohama in September 1983 by Masashi Miyamoto after he graduated from Waseda, one of Japan's top universities. Back then, Square was a computer game software division of Den-Yu-Sha, a power line construction company owned by Miyamoto's father. While at the time game development was usually conducted by only one programmer, Miyamoto believed that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers and professional story writers working together on common projects. Square's first two titles were The Death Trap and its sequel Will: The Death Trap II, both designed by part-time employee Hironobu Sakaguchi and released on the NEC PC-8801.
Despite an initial reluctance to develop for video game consoles, Square entered the Nintendo Famicom market in December 1985 with the porting of Thexder. In September 1986, Square spun off from Den-Yu-Sha and became an independent company officially named Square Co., Ltd. Sakaguchi then became a full-time employee as the Director of Planning and Development of the company. After releasing several unsuccessful games for the Famicom, Square relocated to Ueno, Tokyo in 1987 and developed a role-playing video game titled Final Fantasy, inspired by Enix's success with the genre, Dragon Quest (later released in North America as Dragon Warrior). With 400,000 copies sold, Final Fantasy spawned multiple sequels over the years and became Square's main franchise.
Square has also made other widely known games such as Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Secret of Mana, Legend of Mana, Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, Parasite Eve 2, Saga Frontier, Romancing Saga, Vagrant Story, Kingdom Hearts (done in collaboration with Disney Interactive), and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (done under the guidance of Shigeru Miyamoto).
Square was one of the many companies that had planned to develop and publish their games for the Nintendo 64, but with the cheaper costs associated with developing games on CDs for the Sony PlayStation, the games were instead made for PlayStation. Final Fantasy VII was one of these games, and it sold 9.8 million copies, making it the second best selling game for the PlayStation.
A merger between Square and its competitor Enix was in consideration since at least 2000; however, the financial failure of the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within made Enix hesitant to join with a company which was losing money, and the merge was delayed until April 1, 2003, when the two companies finally merged to form Square Enix.
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