As brought up in most stories relating to Squaresoft's demise and the reason for Square Enix's merger, the popular conclusion seems to rest solely and inaccurately on "Sakaguchi bringing the company to bankruptcy therefore forcing Square and Enix to merge."

While The Spirits Within was a financial failure and played its role in hurting the company, it did not destroy Squaresoft nor did it force the company to merge with Enix. Sparking the interest of others and myself, a few select gaffer's provided fascinating and lesser known details that seemed to add up and make a ton of sense considering the general structure and output in the last decade. Through LevelNth and Drek's posts on the subject, here is Cheerilee's simplified summary of their posts touching on some issues that never seem to be recognized [READ THE ENTIRE THREAD]

PREMIERING A YEAR AFTER the theatrical deubut of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), NuMetal Band Linkin Park's computer animated music video for the remix of "Points of Authority" was inspired by video game aesthetics (like Bungie's Halo: Combat Evolved) and dream sequences and Proto Phantom in the finale of Hironobu Sakaguchi's aforementioned film. "Pts.OF.Athrty" is also one of the few music videos (after Daft Punk's chronicle for "Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem" and Gorillaz "Clint Eastwood") to premiere on the cartoon block Toonami.

NEW NETFLIX INSTANT MOVIES – JUNE 2012
The new Netflix Instant movies for June 2012 may not be better than the summer blockbusters, but they’ll surely make the wait for ‘Prometheus‘ and ‘Rock of Ages‘ much more bearable. Check out all the titles you’ll be able to watch without having to leave the house.

JUNE 1, 2012
‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’ (2001) Starring Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, and Ming-Na — A female scientist must defend Earth against an alien invasion in this animated film based on the beloved Japanese video game series.

JUNE 9, 2012
‘Thor’ (2011) Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, and Anthony Hopkins — Thor is cast out of Asgard and forced to live on Earth when his trickster brother Loki hatches a plan to steal his brother’s rightful throne. [SOURCE]

"So, what are you doing in London today?" The hairdresser speaks in broken English, pausing every few words with the sheer effort of foreign sentence construction. "I am a video game journalist," I reply, hopefully. "Ahhh!" he laughs, a mixture of amusement and the relief of simply understanding the response."I just interviewed Hironobu Sakaguchi," I offer. A pause. "Do you know the Final Fantasy games? He made those."

I need a haircut, sort of, but really I came to this unassuming hairdressers near Oxford Street for this specific conversation. Never meet your heroes, they say: they can only disappoint. There's bruising truth in the cliché. When I was a teenager I would take the train to central London and walk through Soho to peer in the windows of Squaresoft's London office in the hope of catching a glimpse of a developer.

Of course, Golden Square was home only to weary marketing men, the company's creative teams housed thousands of miles away on two floors of the Phizer building in Shinjuku, Tokyo. There was never any chance of bumping into a Final Fantasy artist or Secret of Mana coder. Deep down maybe I suspected as much. If nothing else, video games make masters of suspension of disbelief of us all. [READ MORE]

Still in Europe to promote the upcoming launch of his newest game, The Last Story, we already learned that Hironobu Sakaguchi would be attending and speaking at this month’s Midlands MCM Expo, but recently he has also announced his plans to give a speech about his long time efforts in the video game industry at the 2012 BAFTA awards come February 16. During the event, Mr. Sakaguchi will demonstrate Wii title, The Last Story, to an audience of press and fans, talk about his life as a video game producer/director and close with a QA session with the audience.

Those unaware of Sakaguchi’s achievements should take note that the man is the father of the 100 million unit selling Final Fantasy series and most recently Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey on the Xbox 360, The Last Story for Nintendo’s Wii and even a number of Nintendo DS games and classic RPGs. He even tried his hand at movie directing with the 2001 CG film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. [SOURCE]

We showcase the work of a lot of talented artists here on Fine Art. But we're in for a real treat today, as few are as talented or as influential as Craig Mullins. Even though these pieces are digital, Mullins' work maintains a traditional "painted" look, which explains why his stuff is both so evocative and easy on the eye.

In nearly two decades in the business he's worked on movies like The Matrix Revolutions, Forrest Gump and Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, and on games and game franchises as diverse as Halo, Prince of Persia, BioShock, Fallout 3, Marathon, Need for Speed 3, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect 2. Just to name a few.

If you like what you see, there's a lot more artwork at Mullins' personal site, and you can buy fancy coffee table books from Ballistic (the same guys behind the excellent Sony art books) featuring his art as well. [SOURCE]