Square Enix Axes Sound Team

Square Enix Music Online reports: At SEMO, we can exclusively reveal that Square Enix has voted to disband their music team. The company made the decision at the end of 2009 for budget reasons. Their decision lies behind a number of well-publicised departures from the company in recent months. Among those that are affected are the six composers at the team, namely:

Masashi Hamauzu (Final Fantasy XIII, Dirge of Cerberus, SaGa Frontier II)
Junya Nakano (Final Fantasy X, Threads of Fate, Musashi: Samurai Legend)
Tsuyoshi Sekito (The Last Remnant, Dawn of Mana, Founder of The Black Mages)
Naoshi Mizuta (Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy Gaiden, Founder of The Star Onions)
Kumi Tanioka (Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Chocobo Series, Code Age Commanders)
Takeharu Ishimoto (The World Ends With You, Dissidia, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII)

[SpoonyRedMage]

Kawazu better keep employing Kumi Tanioka! and Tsuyoshi Sekito!

[Da One]

Go **** yourselves

The End.

Nomura needs to leave them, he and DQ are the only thing they have left Wada is hell bent on ****ing Final Fantasy up....

[Lucreto]

Sony should head hunt Nomura and give him his own studio with the kingdom team of course..

[Kain81]

WADA should be FIRED...

[Lucreto]

I feared the worst from the headline.

I just hope they keep the high music quality that I expect from SE games.

[Myst]

/womanly shriek and fall over.

As long as Versus and XIV has the music that they have done ( if they were on the projects in which I think they were ) then I hope that gets done before they get the boot. Certainly tough times and hopefully these talented musicians can find jobs again. They certainly have the skills to go places.

[edit]
I just checked and they did the songs for XIII and checked some of their discography didn't see either XIV or Versus so I guess I was wrong. Either way still hope they can find jobs :(. Square you really are starting to make me cry.

[SpoonyRedMage]

Versus is being composed by Shimomura and XIV by Uematsu, who are both hired by SE now that they are freelance which is what will probably happen with these people too.

It's actually beneficial to the composers as well because they can work on other projects and for other publishers.

It sounds worse than it actually is...(I hope)

[Myst]

Uematsu that's the name I probably had on mind, but couldn't remember and it would be interesting and hopefully they do become freelance then, in the hopes of another company asking them to do some music here and there.

Just hope they will land a few jobs soon.

[SpoonyRedMage]

Well Tanioka and Nakano have gone freelance by it, which is good because Tanioka's brilliant and it definitely seems like SE will be rehiring them externally(otherwise SE will have no music!).

It does say that most of them will retire though, it'll be sad if Sekito retires, he's awesome.