What is RDM all about?

[cidbahamut]

They were so successful that they eventually bought out their main competitor, Enix, and became Square Enix.

Wrong. Squaresoft was financially in hole after blowing all their money on Spirits Within and the merge with Enix saved them. Square most definitely did not buy Enix out.

[saevel]

Wrong. Squaresoft was financially in hole after blowing all their money on Spirits Within and the merge with Enix saved them. Square most definitely did not buy Enix out.

Umm ... WTF over?

You realize that Squaresoft was worth many times more then Enix right? And that Enix had been barely floating for years prior to the merger.

And WTH is this crap about "losing all their money...", SWI was SE testing / showcasing new CGI technology. They didn't actually intend to make much money on that movie. FFVII AC on the other hand was intended to make money, and it did. Squaresoft has been swimming in cash for years now, they've several extremely successful IP's with the biggest being the Final Fantasy series. They also have Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana) and the Crono series along with various other minor productions. These guys rarely lose money with a RPG, which is why FFXIV was such a shocker to their management.

It's just mind boggling that people thought of Enix as the bigger of the two. Their Dragon Quest series was in decline and the only big seller was the monster raising spin off they did, it cached in on the whole pokemon craze. Enix's biggest issue was that it was mostly a Japanese only company, very few of it's titles were released overseas and usually not for a year+ and often to luke warm reception. Merging with Squaresoft allowed them to rebrand their IP's and successfully market them to international audiences. Dragon Quest IX is a perfect example of this, it's Enix's old DQ line but anyone playing it can easily spot the Squaresoft influence. In the end Squaresoft bought out Enix and merged with them rather then make them a subsidiary.

[cidbahamut]

Umm ... WTF over?

You realize that Squaresoft was worth many times more then Enix right? And that Enix had been barely floating for years prior to the merger.

And WTH is this crap about "losing all their money...", SWI was SE testing / showcasing new CGI technology. They didn't actually intend to make much money on that movie.

The way I've always heard it was that the engine for Spirits Within cost them a fortune and when the movie tanked they came dangerously close to bankruptcy. If you've got some reading material to the contrary I'd be glad to take a look.

[saevel]

The way I've always heard it was that the engine for Spirits Within cost them a fortune and when the movie tanked they came dangerously close to bankruptcy. If you've got some reading material to the contrary I'd be glad to take a look.

Tanked? SE has tons of cash on hand. Square Pictures made the movie, SP was a wholly earned subsidiary of Squaresoft, basically a company specifically made to produce this movie. When the movie lost money (137 mil cost, 85 mil return on investment) Square-soft decided that going into movies on their own was a bad idea and canned the subsidiary company. Square themselves were no where near financial trouble, they could of just made another CT or Xenogears and made money. The cost overruns were due to rendering technology at that time not being advanced enough to actually make this movie. Square had been used to making short FMV's for games and underestimated the amount of CPU work required to render a full production movie. They had all of zero experience doing actual movies and made mistakes. Modern render farms are powerful enough to produce full length movies using Squaresoft's photo-realistic technology, hence FFVII AC took less time then SWI.