Square Pictures
 |
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| Public | |
| Industry |
Interactive entertainment Publishing |
| Fate | Merged with Enix |
| Successor | Square Enix |
| Founded | September 1983 |
| Founder | Masafumi Miyamoto |
| Defunct | April 1, 2003 |
| Headquarters | Tokyo, Japan |
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Key people
|
Tomoyuki Takechi, Chairman Hironobu Sakaguchi, EVP (1991-2001) Hisashi Suzuki, President and CEO (1995-2001) Yoichi Wada, CFO (June 2000-September 2001), President (December 2001-2003) |
| Products | See complete products listing |
| Subsidiaries | See subsidiaries and related corporations |
| Website | www |
Square Co., Ltd. (株式会社スクウェア Kabushiki-gaisha Sukuwea?) was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became Square Enix. The company also used SquareSoft as a brand name to refer to their games, and the term is occasionally used to refer to the company itself. In addition, "Squaresoft, Inc" was the name of the company's American arm before the merger, after which it was renamed to "Square Enix, Inc".
Square was founded in Yokohama in September 1983 by Masafumi 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.
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Wikipedia