Kingdom Hearts (game): Difference between revisions
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==Development== | ==Development== | ||
During the late 1990's and into the early 2000's, video game developer and producer Squaresoft was in a financially rocky position. Their first quarterly loss since going public on the stock market was published on February 8, 2001 and their value continued to decrease for several quarters after. This is largely due to increasingly expensive and risky ventures that did gain back its investment, including underperforming titles and the ballooning costs of their floundering ''Square Pictures'' feature film subsidiary. Square was also in negotiations with with fellow game publisher Enix since 2000, but negotiations stalled after the failure of ''Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'' made Enix wary of merging. Sony ended up buying a 20% stake in the company to bail them out on the grounds that their games would be exclusive to PlayStation consoles for several years. Square had the occasional success story like ''Final Fantasy X'', but it just wasn't enough to stay afloat. | During the late 1990's and into the early 2000's, video game developer and producer Squaresoft was in a financially rocky position. Their first quarterly loss since going public on the stock market was published on February 8, 2001 and their value continued to decrease for several quarters after. This is largely due to increasingly expensive and risky ventures that did not gain back its investment, including underperforming titles and the ballooning costs of their floundering ''Square Pictures'' feature film subsidiary. Square was also in negotiations with with fellow game publisher Enix since 2000, but negotiations stalled after the failure of ''Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'' made Enix wary of merging. Sony ended up buying a 20% stake in the company to bail them out on the grounds that their games would be exclusive to PlayStation consoles for several years. Square had the occasional success story like ''Final Fantasy X'', but it just wasn't enough to stay afloat. | ||
During these trying times, Squaresoft executive Shinji Hashimoto and ''Final Fantasy'' series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi had conversations about needing a game like ''Super Mario 64'', as in an open-world game that would wow the masses and sell a massive amount of copies, but bemoaned that only a company like Disney has characters that could rival the popularity of Mario. Final Fantasy character designer [[Tetsuya Nomura]] overheard these conversations and volunteered to create this project. By a stroke of luck, Square and Disney of Japan shared an office building at the time. Hashimoto would have a chance encounter with a Disney executive in an elevator which allowed him to pitch the concept of using Disney properties in this game, which was eventually approved in 2000. | During these trying times, Squaresoft executive Shinji Hashimoto and ''Final Fantasy'' series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi had conversations about needing a game like ''Super Mario 64'', as in an open-world game that would wow the masses and sell a massive amount of copies, but bemoaned that only a company like Disney has characters that could rival the popularity of Mario. Final Fantasy character designer [[Tetsuya Nomura]] overheard these conversations and volunteered to create this project. By a stroke of luck, Square and Disney of Japan shared an office building at the time. Hashimoto would have a chance encounter with a Disney executive in an elevator which allowed him to pitch the concept of using Disney properties in this game, which was eventually approved in 2000. | ||
