Square Enix (スクウェア・エニックス)

Square and Enix were rivals for fifteen years, each holding one of the two great Japanese RPG series. Square nearly disappeared in 2001 after the commercial failure of its film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which cost over a hundred million dollars; the 2003 merger with Enix was as much a rescue as a marriage.

The group now publishes both series in parallel, plus Kingdom Hearts, NieR and one of the rare Western MMORPGs profitable over the long run, Final Fantasy XIV — rebuilt from scratch in 2013 after a catastrophic launch, a rare textbook case of a game entirely rewritten to repair its reputation.