Admission from Hisashi Suzuki in 2001 Interview Finds Square Fully to Blame for Nintendo and Square's Relationship Falling Apart - DetroitOtaku Discussions

Hisashi “Nao” Suzuki, President & CEO of Square from 1995-2001

You won’t find the truth on either Nintendo or Square Enix’s Wikipedia pages, Polygon’s 2017 article on Final Fantasy VII’s development, nor any mention of any apology from Square to Nintendo in any of those pages. Which is already suspicious enough as is. 

But insiders know.

The gaming press, for decades now, has pushed the narrative that Square left Nintendo because of the N64’s limited storage space or because Hiroshi Yamauchi told Square to “never come back.” 

The gaming press will tell you that Square was a poor innocent victim of Nintendo’s “tyranny“, and that it wasn’t Square’s fault that the relationship fell apart.

However, this little 2001 interview with former Square President Hisashi Suzuki (aka “Nao”) from Japanese business newspaper Nikkei finds that, yes, it was Square’s fault.

Hiroshi Yamauchi (1927-2013), President & CEO of Nintendo from 1949-2004

Nikkei had the guts to publish this interview with Suzuki. The gaming press in the West completely ignored it, but for Nikkei, this story was too good to bury. It was one of the strongest pieces of gaming journalism to ever hit mainstream press.

This story went almost untouched in the West, but former video game journalist and writer Chris Kohler did talk about the Nikkei interview in his 2005 book Power-Up. The story was taken from what is probably the ONLY site in the West to report on this interview, Planet GameCube, which is now defunct. 

In the interview, Suzuki, before resigning from Square, admitted that it was indeed his and Square's fault that their relationship with Nintendo fell apart, and openly admitted to having meetings with other publishers like Enix to convince them to shift their N64 projects to the PS1:

“Our true enemy,’ he admitted, ‘was our pride’. This was pride that resulted from the heady years of the original PlayStation. When Square originally announced back in 1997 that the Final Fantasy series would be PlayStation exclusive from now on, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi treated the affront lightly, saying that the console selection ‘couldn’t be helped.’ Suzuki responded by publicly bashing the N64 and convincing Enix to join the PS camp along with them, which, looking back at it now, he realizes wasn’t an incredibly smart move. The little grudge match between them that resulted was the main reason Square failed in their bid for a Nintendo license earlier this year. Without Square, though, the PlayStation platform wouldn’t be half as interesting to a whole slew of gamers, and so the well-publicized buyout of last week occurred.” – Page 113 of Chris Kohler's Power-Up.

Their relationship was over because Square wanted it to be over, even though Nintendo had nothing against Square making FFVII for the PS1 and had no issue with them making games for the N64 if they wanted to.

Why did Square admit to this? They lost almost $120 million on their big movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and Sony purchased 19% of Square so they wouldn’t post their first major losses. Square also had to close a studio in Hawaii as a result of this. Square was BLEEDING money during this time and they were begging, yes, BEGGING Nintendo for a license to develop for the newly released Game Boy Advance so they could re-release some of their NES and SNES titles without going under.

That is why there were so many NES and SNES Square ports on the GBA. It’s also when the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles spinoff series was born, as Yamauchi told Square that if they wanted a GBA license they had to develop something for the GameCube first.

Unfortunately, the mainstream gaming press ignored this story, and even today, this story STILL has not been mentioned in any discussions about Nintendo and Square's relationship. And it likely never will be again. This story has basically been forgotten in time. Planet GameCube and Chris Kohler were the only ones to bring this story to light, and nobody has decided to follow in their footsteps since.

I think it’s time to put an end to this old narrative once and for all.