Nobuo Uematsu leaving SquareEnix.
 

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/0426244

Damn. I suppose it it was going to happen eventually.

Well I'd say "Shit" if that whole article didn't make it look like he was really more working freelance.

"well he's leaving square. Or maybe he's not, we're not sure, but he is working for another company now. I think. Maybe?"

Sad news though. I love FF music.

"Final Fantasy on Playstation 2, with music by Nobuo and graphics by Wong Chu..."

Oh crap. Does that mean Square's going to stick to the musical crapfest they've been churning out lately *cough* FFX-2 *cough*? Why, Nobuo, WHY?!

http://www.flashplayer.com/music/chocoborobovoice.html
i tribute to ff

Why must it be??!?! Damn, that guy was great...

You missed the ambiguity of the article. he's leaving Square, but he'll still do work for them. It's basically him going freelance.

An odd name for a studio, but it's all good since it's Nobu. (they better have a cool logo :p)

And since he's going freelance, perhaps his works will appear in more games. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not, seeing that there'd always be some company that'd offer him a large amount of money to do the music to some game that turns out to be a crapfest and possibly screws over his reputation with the rest of the videogaming world that hadn't heard of him.

I can read the reviews already. "The game sucks. But, the music was AWESOME!!! Uematsu gives a horrible game it's ONLY good point." God, I hope not. Pity that Nobuo will leave Square, but for some reason with the merger I'm not as surprised as I normally would be. But, still, pity.

I don't think hes as much leaving as he is freeing himself from all of the extra corporate nonsense inevitably caused by the merger. I think Square's doing this so that He'll do exclusive work for probly FF titles, they dont nessesarily want Dragon Quest to have everything FF does now do they?

Well, given the way the article reads, this really isn't anything new; Uematsu has been doing less and less work on the Final Fantasy series since the merger. There used to be a time when he was solely responsible for all of the songs in the game; from what I understand that hasn't been the case since FFX. He did say that he was going to be working for Square-Enix from time to time, however. Which is great; spending nearly 16 years doing masterful work for a particular franchise carries a lot of weight. In every interview I've heard him do, he always mentions how much he enjoyed working on the Final Fantasy series. My guess is Square-Enix would have him do the more important songs for the game: Unique bosses and such.

Truthfully, I don't think Uematsu is going to drop off the face of the Earth. His work will probably have a prominant feature in upcoming Final Fantasy titles unless he was lying though his teeth about how much he liked working on the series.

Wow... That means there's almost no one left in Square Enix from its "humble" beginnings.