Had nothing to do with the merger, hironobu sakaguchi was a major driving force at the company, the man knows how to create magic but not by himself by finding the best people for a project and throwing a concept and letting them imagine the most fantastical music/settings/stories, he made a crap extremely expensive movie called spirits within that flopped hard and got booted for nearly bankrupting the company, after that merger/money became more important to keep square from dying and the creative teams afloat and the rest is history