Had nothing to do with the merger, hironobu sakaguchi was a major driving force at the company, the man knows how to create magic but not by himself by finding the best people for a project and throwing a concept and letting them imagine the most fantastical music/settings/stories, he made a crap extremely expensive movie called spirits within that flopped hard and got booted for nearly bankrupting the company, after that merger/money became more important to keep square from dying and the creative teams afloat and the rest is history
This was back when everything square made was gold
Then right around square became square enix and finished ffx it all just went downhill
Had nothing to do with the merger, hironobu sakaguchi was a major driving force at the company, the man knows how to create magic but not by himself by finding the best people for a project and throwing a concept and letting them imagine the most fantastical music/settings/stories, he made a crap extremely expensive movie called spirits within that flopped hard and got booted for nearly bankrupting the company, after that merger/money became more important to keep square from dying and the creative teams afloat and the rest is history