
Square was legendarily troubled in the years immediately leading up to its 2003 merger with Enix, and a big part of those troubles came down to the financial failure of Hironobu Sakaguchi's CG epic, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Sakaguchi resigned from the company before the merger went down, and according to fellow Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu, Square just wasn't the same without him.
"Square collapsed after Sakaguchi left," Uematsu said on a recent episode of his Together with NOBIYO podcast, as translated by Automaton. Sakaguchi was a guest on that episode, and the two reminisced on their time together at the company. "To put it simply – he is the big boss. Always has been and always will be," Uematsu explained.