What is RDM all about?

[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.