is a Japanese investor and businessman best known as the founder of the video game developer

Square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

. Miyamoto graduated from

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

in 1983, and joined his father's electric power conglomerate, Den-Yu-Sha as a programmer in their software division. After transforming the games division from a group of generalist programmers into specialists working together on a common project, the group was spun out into its own company in 1986. Miyamoto served as president of the company until 1991, though he remained a major shareholder in the company.

Biography

Square

Miyamoto graduated from

in 1983, but he was not interested in joining his father's electric power conglomerate, Den-Yu-Sha, instead pondering a career in women's clothing manufacturing. He started his career developing computer games in the software division of Den-Yu-Sha at

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

. At the time, game development in Japan was usually conducted by only one programmer. Miyamoto recognized that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers, and professional story writers working together on common projects. To recruit for this new organizational structure, Miyamoto opened an

Internet café An Internet café, also known as a cybercafé, is a café (or a convenience store or a fully dedicated Internet access business) that provides the use of computers with high bandwidth Internet access on the payment of a fee. Usage is generall ...

-like salon in Yokohama and offered jobs to those who demonstrated exceptional programming skills. This strategy discovered Hisashi Suzuki, who would go on to become CEO of Square, and he in turn recruited

Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game designer, director, producer, and writer. Originally working for Square (later Square Enix) from 1983 to 2003, he departed the company and founded independent studio Mistwalker in 2004. He is known as the creator of the ''Fin ...

, the eventual creator of ''

Final Fantasy is a Japanese video game, Japanese science fantasy anthology media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and developed and owned by Square Enix (formerly Square (video game company), Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and ...

''. In 1986, Miyamoto spun Square out from Den-Yu-Sha to become an independent company with a focus on making games for the

Famicom The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...

video game system in Japan. He stepped down as president of Square in 1991.

Square Enix Merger

During the discussion of the merger of Square and

Enix was a Japanese video game publisher that produced video games, anime and manga. Enix is known for publishing the ''Dragon Quest'' series of role-playing video games. The company was founded by Yasuhiro Fukushima on September 22, 1975, as . Th ...

in 2002, his approval of the merger was essential because of his major stake in Square. Initially, the ratio of Square shares was to be 1 to .81 shares of Enix, which Miyamoto objected to. When the merger went through, 1 share of Square resulted in 0.85 shares of Enix. Miyamoto made 5 million shares, or 9% of the company, available for purchase in the summer of 2002, but still retained 31.04% ownership. He is as of March 31, 2018 the tenth largest shareholder of

Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, production enterprise and entertainment conglomerate, best known for its ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', ''Star Ocean'' and ''Kingdom Hearts'' role-playing video game ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miyamoto, Masafumi Square (video game company) 1957 births Living people Japanese businesspeople Square Enix people