By now I’m guessing all of you have heard the biggest news in the RPG industry since the announcement of a sequel to the original Final Fantasy, but for those still in the dark, here goes. RPG giant Square and runner-up Enix have announced that they will merge into one company, tentatively titled Square Enix, as of April 2003. What does this mean? This editorial will attempt to discover that.

First and foremost, this means almost all RPGs the world sees will come from the same company - this isn’t in dispute. What is in dispute is what this will do for Square, Enix, the industry, and the gaming public.

Enix can’t really lose here. A company simply beyond famous in Japan with its Dragon Quest franchise, Enix hasn’t been able to venture to the worldwide market without financial repercussions. The second installment in the Star Ocean series fared well on the PlayStation. Dragon Quest VII wasn’t released overseas until outselling every other title for the PlayStation in Japan, only to sell relatively poorly abroad. During its hey-day on the Super Famicom a number of games made it outside Japan to the Super NES, largely in part of Enix’s strong relationship with Nintendo, but Enix left all of its gems on native shores for the N64. (Mischief Makers, an absolutely brilliant game, was published by Nintendo outside Japan, but the miracle that was the Wonder Project J series was never localized). With Square’s world-wide muscle and fool-hardy spending, Enix could have everything it ever needed to get back to making non-Dragon Quest, non-Star Ocean games to get the credit they deserve.

Square, however, might not have too much to gain. True, they are now the only company to release RPGs of large-scale importance, but this merger is worth nearly 100 billion yen, and this was after Square turned their first profitable quarter in some time. For those new to the scene, Square invested millions into making a motion picture, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a fiscal flop, regarded by most as a pretty, yet misguided piece of film. Their software quality had dwindled and sales followed suit. Square seems, with this merger, to be done with experimenting with other media and, honestly, experimenting with other genres. Back in the mid-80s Square made plenty of non-RPGs for the NES (see Rad Racer) and nearly went broke until Final Fantasy came along. Living large in the high times of the PSX, Square ventured out on the PS2 to make games of several genres, notably The Bouncer and Driving Emotion Type-S, not to mention other titles best left in Japan. These all cost the company millions and, much like The Spirits Within, were written off as “research experiments”, which would balance out their costs with development of various software technologies. Now, after Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X were blessed with good sales, Square is taking its money and throwing it at another risky venture.

Is it all really such a dangerous venture? Allow me to make this clear - Dragon Quest means money in Japan. Big money. There are laws as to when a Dragon Quest game may be sold in Japan due to the rampant demand for the games. However, Square is a company that has made ridiculous mistakes in managerial decisions in the past, and spending what little money they have to buy a company that itself is in a poor spot may not be the best decision for a lot of reasons. With that out of the way, the purchase of Enix gives Square the easy money of the Dragon Quest name, the use of the once-rival Star Ocean brand, and a veritable gold mine of past RPGs to bring back. If there’s one thing Square needs, it’s a whole lot of originality. The fact that they are making sequels of their sequels (FFX-2, the proposed FFVII-2, the Chocobo series) is clear proof of that. The merger with Enix opens doors - the Wonder Project J series, the Illusion of Gaia series, not to mention the possibility for a sequel to Slapstick (RoboTrek).

The gaming industry might have some big problems over this one. Not with having one giant RPG company (although that seems a little scary), but instead over rights issues. Time for a history lesson (feel free to skip over this if you are as hardcore as I’m gonna guess you are). Once upon a time Nintendo decided to take a dead concept - the video game console - and give it life. Everyone liked that. There was no competition (there was Sega later, but neither Square nor Enix did anything with Sega, so just forget about them for a minute). This company Enix came along and basically invented the RPG with Dragon Quest. Everyone was happy. Then Square came along and copied it, and gave it their own flavour, with Final Fantasy. Everyone was happier. Pretty soon Nintendo came out with a new system, the SFC/SNES, and Enix and Square kept making games for it. Square became very rich, and more popular than Enix. Enix didn’t bring their Super Famicom Dragon Quest games to North America or Europe, and so Square made a ton of money as the big RPG company. Nintendo sure did like Enix and Square. Nintendo made a deal with Enix to give away Dragon Warrior (the name of the Dragon Quest series in North America - legal issue) with subscriptions to Nintendo Power. Nintendo also released the Enix game Illusion of Gaia in North America. Nintendo, Enix and Square all had their American offices in Redmond, Washington, so they could be close buddies. Nintendo helped them with their localization.

Everyone was happy. Then Nintendo and Sony started to work on a new console, called the Super Nintendo CD. Sony wanted to big a piece of the pie, so Nintendo started to work with Phillips instead. Sony took the Super Nintendo CD and turned it into the Playstation. Nintendo gave up on CD technology altogether and appeased Phillips by letting it use Mario and Link in a handful of games for its Phillips CD-i. Square and Enix were both really into the idea of CDs though, and they went with Sony. Enix still developed for the N64, but soon devoted itself to Playstation development. Square, as mentioned before, made a whole ton of money at this point, and then decided to spend it. After movies were made and games were slapped together, Square was looking at bankruptcy. Sony, believing Square was the reason that it had an edge on the N64 with the Playstation, poured money into the company, buying a sizeable chunk. The whole time Square had very much wanted to work with Nintendo again, but after turning to Sony, Nintendo was not willing to take them back. After Sony had invested so much, however, Nintendo used a special program it had set up to fund development houses to create a company with Square which would be used to release games on GameCube and Game Boy Advance without (as much) legal trouble. Square has already started up with a ton of GBA development, not to mention a complement of GCN games, all while having Sony foot the bill.

What does this mean? Square was a company owned by Sony, working for Nintendo, and now Square owns Enix. Does Sony own Enix? Does Sony even still have the shares it once had in Square? Nintendo has been talking about big announcements, all the while proud of its investments in other companies. Did Nintendo buy out Sony’s stock in Square? These questions are many, and it really comes down to this - what is Sony’s role in Square Enix? Does it own a lot of it, still? With the combination of the two companies, is Sony’s stake far smaller? Did Sony fund this merger? Or, given Square’s apparent contempt for the company, does Sony even condone it? Did Sony sell it’s stock back? Or did Sony sell it to someone else? There had been rumours for a while about Microsoft buying - or at least bribing - Square, and X-Box exclusivity of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy would be about the only thing that would make the Japanese public take a look at the system. There was also a lot of questions about Nintendo buying Enix, not to mention that they’ve already put a lot in a partnership with Square. Add that to Nintendo’s recent attitude with buying Retro Studios, selling Rareware and buddying up with Capcom, Namco and Sega, as well as the history Nintendo’s shared with the two companies and the possibility of an involved Nintendo becomes a very real possibility. If Square Enix is going to be a company that develops for only one of these three, that one will almost definitely be the big winner in the console war.

Now for the most important one - how does this work for the gaming public? For you, the diligent gamer. For one, in the event of a Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest cross-over, it means many get to have their greatest wish come true. As for the games, only time can tell. It seems that Square will focus on RPGs again, which is always good. Square is also getting access to new franchise opportunities - good news for a company who boasts putting all their old characters into a game with 50-year-old Disney characters as a “fresh” idea. Enix gets to have the financial security and worldwide reach to have their games played, plus the very likely probability of getting some sorely-needed GBA development with help from their Square half. If you like Square or Enix, I’m going to say Square Enix is probably going to work in your favour.

In a few days Square and Enix will hold another press conference, one which will no doubt answer more of our endless stream of questions - their most recent one explained some staffing particulars, location information, and little else, except to say they’d planned collaboration for a long while. Until then, we’re left to speculate. I’d say if Square doesn’t go under with this, and the rights/ownership issues ever get figured out (and that may not happen, to be honest), this might be the dawn of a new golden age for RPG gaming.