Masafumi Miyamoto - MobyGames (original) (raw)

Masafumi Miyamoto co-founded Square in 1983, as a subsidiary of Den-Yu-Sha, a power tools company that was owned by his father. Miyamoto wanted to hire university students part time to work together to make their games, and have them all contribute as opposed to one person. Two known students being Hironobu Sakaguchi and Hiromichi Tanaka, both of them quit university to work at the company full time after the development of The Death Trap.

He was the president of the company up until 1992 when he left to pursue other interests. Tetsuo Mizuno replaced him as president. He still owned roughly 51% of Square for years. He sold some of his shares in 2001, but still owned 40%.

During the merger of Square and Enix discussion in 2002, he opposed the merger because 100 shares of Square equalled 81 shares of Enix. He supported the merger once the ratio was changed to 1 share of Square to .85 of Enix.