Motonori Sakakibara:
In the late '90s, all the game companies had lots of money — especially Square, of course. So Square prioritized quality rather than obsessing over costs. That was how Sakaguchi-san operated. He always asked for a lot from the team and gave us tight schedules, but he backed up those requests with big teams and the best hardware. That was a very rare situation. He was always looking at a big vision, but at the same time, how to make it a reality.
The company seemed like it was becoming [more about costs than creativity]. At the beginning of this interview, I mentioned that Square was very creative — the first priority was creativity, right? But I think after the movie project, they changed some of the direction of the company, especially after Sakaguchi left.