Square Enix Popular Books

Square Enix Biography & Facts

Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational holding company, video game publisher and entertainment conglomerate. It releases role-playing game franchises, such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts, among numerous others. Outside of video game publishing and development, it is also in the business of merchandise, arcade facilities, and manga publication under its Gangan Comics brand. The original Square Enix Co., Ltd. was formed in April 2003 from a merger between Square and Enix, with the latter as the surviving company. Each share of Square's common stock was exchanged for 0.85 shares of Enix's common stock. At the time, 80% of Square Enix staff were made up of former Square employees. As part of the merger, former Square president Yoichi Wada was appointed the president of the new corporation, while former Enix president Keiji Honda was named vice president. Yasuhiro Fukushima, the largest shareholder of the combined corporation and founder of Enix, became chairman. In October 2008, Square Enix conducted a company split between its corporate business and video game operations, reorganizing itself as the holding company Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd., while its internally domestic video game operations were formed under the subsidiary Square Enix Co., Ltd. The group operates American, Chinese, Indian, and European branches, based in Los Angeles, Beijing, Bangalore, and London respectively. Several of Square Enix's franchises have sold over 10 million copies worldwide after 2020, with Final Fantasy selling 173 million, Dragon Quest selling 85 million, and Kingdom Hearts shipping 36 million. In 2005, Square Enix acquired arcade corporation Taito. In 2009, Square Enix acquired Eidos plc, the parent company of British game publisher Eidos Interactive, which was then absorbed into its European branch. Square Enix is headquartered at the Shinjuku Eastside Square Building in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and has over 5,000 employees worldwide through its base operations and subsidiaries. Corporate history Origins and pre-merger (1975–2003) Enix (1975–2003) Enix was founded on September 22, 1975, as Eidansha Boshu Service Center by Japanese architect-turned-entrepreneur Yasuhiro Fukushima. Enix focused on publishing games, often by companies who exclusively partnered with the company. In the 1980s, in a partnership with developers Chunsoft, the company began publishing the Dragon Quest series of console games. Key members of the developer's staff consisted of director Koichi Nakamura, writer Yuji Horii, artist Akira Toriyama, and composer Koichi Sugiyama, among others. The first game, Dragon Warrior, in the Famicom-based RPG series, was released in 1986 and would eventually sell 1.5 million copies in Japan, establishing Dragon Quest as the company's most profitable franchise. Despite the announcement that Enix's long-time competitor Square would develop exclusively for PlayStation, Enix announced in January 1997 that it would release games for both Nintendo and Sony consoles. This caused a significant rise in stock for both Enix and Sony. By November 1999, Enix was listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange's first section, indicating it as a "large company". Square (1983–2003) Square was started in October 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto as a computer game software division of Den-Yu-Sha, a power line construction company owned by his 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. In September 1986, the division was spun off into an independent company led by Miyamoto, officially named Square Co., Ltd. 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, which was inspired by Enix's success in the genre with the 1986 Dragon Quest. Final Fantasy was a success with over 400,000 copies sold, and it became Square's leading franchise, spawning dozens of games in a series that continues to the present. Buoyed by the success of their Final Fantasy franchise, Square developed notable games and franchises such as Chrono, Mana, Kingdom Hearts (in collaboration with The Walt Disney Company), and Super Mario RPG (under the guidance of Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto). By late 1994 they had developed a reputation as a producer of high-quality role-playing video games. 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 CD-based consoles such as the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation, Square decided to develop titles for the latter system. 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. Merger (2003) A merger between Square and Enix was considered since at least 2000; the financial failure in 2001 of Square's first movie, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, made Enix reluctant to proceed while Square was losing money. With the company facing its second year of financial losses, Square approached Sony for a capital injection, and on October 8, 2001, Sony purchased an 18.6% stake in Square. Following the success of both Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts, the company's finances stabilized, and it recorded the highest operating margin in its history in the fiscal year 2002. It was announced on November 25, 2002, that Square and Enix's previous plans to merge were to officially proceed, intending to decrease development costs and to compete with foreign developers. As described by Square's president and CEO Yoichi Wada: "Square has also fully recovered, meaning this merger is occurring at a time when both companies are at their height." Some shareholders expressed concerns about the merger, notably Miyamoto (the founder and largest shareholder of Square), who would find himself holding a significantly smaller percentage of the combined companies. Other criticism came from Takashi Oya of Deutsche Securities, who expressed doubts about the benefits of such a merger: "Enix outsources game development and has few in-house creators, while Square does everything by itself. The combination of the two provides no negative factors but would bring little in the way of operational synergies." Miyamoto's concerns were eventually resolved by altering the exchange ratio of the merger so that each Square share would be exchanged for 0.85 Enix shares rather than 0.81 shares, and the merger was greenlit. The merger was set for April 1, 2003, on which date the newly merged entity Square Enix came into being. At the time of the merger, 80% of Square Enix staff were made up of former Square employees. As part of the merger, former Square president Yoichi Wada was appointed the president of the new .... Discover the Square Enix popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Square Enix books.