Hironobu Sakaguchi

Hironobu Sakaguchi cofounded Square with Masafumi Miyamoto in September of 1983. Their first games were very unsuccessful so with no other choice the pair decided to conclude their stay in the game industry by creating one title with the rest of Squares available funds. They called it: Final Fantasy. The game was released in Japan for the Famicom also known internationally as the Nintendo Entertainment System on December 18 1987 and became an instant hit across Japan. This of course surprised Sakaguchisan who decided to delay his retirement. Final Fantasy developed into a successful franchise under his watchful eye and now spans from stand alone stories to spinoffs and direct sequels. After directing every title in the flagship series through Final Fantasy V for the Super Famicom he took on the role of executive producer for the series along with producing many of Squares other game projects. Sakaguchi has enjoyed a distinguished career in game development with his titles selling over 80 million units worldwide. A longtime proponent of bringing together the storytelling tradition of film and the interactive elements of games he took on the directorial role on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within an animated motion picture loosely based on previously established Final Fantasy series themes. Unfortunately the movie was a catastrophic financial failure the secondbiggest animated box office bomb in cinema history losing over 120 million and leading to the closure of Square Pictures. The upset for which Sakaguchi was responsible affected Squares financial capital and may well have precipitated the merger with rival roleplaying game creator Enix. As a consequence feelings towards Sakaguchis tenure at Square are somewhat mixed. In 2000 Sakaguchi became the third person inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. After voluntarily resigning from Square he founded the game development studio Mistwalker with the financial backing of Microsoft Game Studios. In February of 2005 it was announced that Mistwalker would be working with Microsoft Game Studios to produce two roleplaying titles for the Xbox 360 game console. Nevertheless despite Microsofts financial backing Mistwalker remains independent of console exclusivity. Apart from Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey Sakaguchi is also producing Archaic Sealed Heat for Nintendo DS. He has at least three more titles planned for Nintendo game consoles.