Spurred by company-wide changes beginning late the next year and Square Enix's decision to designate a studio to focus on mobile games, Square Enix Montréal pivoted to mobile game development with an emphasis on the Hitman franchise and tablet computers in June 2013. The studio also received support from the Quebecois government. Singleton planned a slow design process, with no rush to production. Square Enix Montréal began with four staff members-Singleton and three developers from IO Interactive-but planned to grow beyond the single Hitman team to have multiple concurrent projects with up to 150 employees. Its first project was a new Hitman series game for home consoles, to be co-developed with another Square Enix subsidiary, IO Interactive of Denmark, which created the series and was at work on Hitman: Absolution (2012). The new studio was founded to create high-production quality (AAA) titles within Square Enix intellectual properties. Video game developer Square Enix announced the opening of Square Enix Montréal on November 21, 2011, aiming to debut operations in 2012 with 150 employees headed by Lee Singleton, a former general manager at Square Enix London Studios. The studio was briefly rebranded Onoma in October 2022 before it closed the next month. It focused on free-to-play games after 2016 and later added the London-based studio Square Enix London Mobile founded in 2021.Įmbracer Group acquired Square Enix Montréal alongside several other Square Enix Europe assets in August 2022, which formed CDE Entertainment. The commercial success of the latter and the critical success of the former led to two additional titles in the Go series: Lara Croft Go (2015), based on the Tomb Raider series, and Deus Ex Go (2016), based on the Deus Ex series. The company developed prototypes for two mobile Hitman games, which became the board game-inspired puzzle game Hitman Go (2014) and the shooter Hitman: Sniper (2015). Initially planning to create a new Hitman series game for consoles and employ several hundred people, its parent company mandated it to produce mobile games in 2013. Square Enix Montréal was founded in November 2011 as a traditional studio under Square Enix Europe. It created the Go series of turn-based puzzle games for mobile devices based on former Eidos Interactive intellectual properties. But such is the extent of their influence on video games, even if you haven't heard their music, you probably have.Square Enix Montréal was a Canadian video game developer based in Montreal. T-Square are a household name in their home country, but are not nearly as well known elsewhere-despite an ongoing wave of imagined nostalgia for Japanese city pop in the West. They toured Japan as recently as last year, and they still sound incredible. The line-up has changed dramatically over the years, but a few of the original band members-including leader Masahiro Andoh-are still part of the group. There are undoubtedly hundreds more soundtracks with audible echoes of T-Square's extensive discography, but these are some of the most notable examples.Īlmost 50 years after their formation, T-Square are still going strong. Interestingly, T-Square percussionist Satoshi Bandoh played drums on the Mario Kart 8 score-including an absolutely killer jazz fusion cover of F-Zero's Mute City theme. Meanwhile, Rodan (yet another track from Adventures) could easily be a lost composition from the SNES version of F-Zero. The Lava Reef Zone theme owes a lot to 1990's Wind Song. Other soundtracks influenced by T-Square include Sonic & Knuckles.
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