Square Enix

Square Enix is a Japanese video game developer, publisher, and distributing company.  They are widely known for their role-playing games.  Its headquarters are located in the Shinjuku Bunka Quint Building in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo.  It was formed from the merging of both Square and Enix on April 1 of 2003, and has since released many game titles.

Square Enix uses a polymorphic content method in order to not restrict themselves from developing for only one console.  By doing this they can expand to all gaming platforms.  Some of their widely known games are the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and Kingdom Hearts series.  Each have proven to be very popular and successful.  Square Enix is also in charge of publishing all of Eidos' IPs and runs Eidos' development studios.  The standard game design model of Square Enix is to establish the plot, characters and art of the game first. Battle systems, field maps and cut scenes are created next. A typical game of the company involves a team of at most 200 people.  Another interesting aspect is that they prefer to code their own engine from scratch instead of using a pre-existing one.

Square Enix originally had its' own sound team, but have since made a budgetary cut.  They will now rely primarily on independent composers and production studios to create the scores for their games.  This will most likely come from their own studios operated by former Square Enix composers Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yoko Shimomura, and Kenji Ito.  Recently Masayoshi Soken used Sound Forge Pro and Vegas Pro for Funal Fantasy XIV.  Although it is sad to see a good sound team disappear, hopefully we can still expect great sound coming from future titles by Square Enix.

Overall,  Square Enix has been very successful throughout the years, and will most likely continue their success.  I will certainly look forward to their upcoming games.