Yoshinori Kitase of FFVII fame speaks

1up put up part of an interview Mr. Final Fanatsy VII, Yoshinori Kitase, did with the official Playstation Magazine.

One of the more interesting tidbits:

OPM: Hironobu Sakaguchi, who started the Final Fantasy series, recently left Square to start a new company, MistWalker. His company is making two RPGs for the Xbox 360. How do you feel about competing on next-generation consoles against the father of Final Fantasy?

Kitase: I sometimes go out to eat with Sakaguchi, so we have a good relationship. His message for me is something like, "Let's improve each other's quality. Let's grow up together and complete each other's work."

Before Square Enix was Square Enix, when it was still Squaresoft, there were multiple key titles like Mana, Saga, and Final Fantasy within the company, so the teams were sort of competing with each other to make better games than the rest. So a culture like that already existed.

That culture's kind of been extended, after Sakaguchi left. Our intention is still to make good games that impress each other. If you look at the market in Japan, it's somewhat saturated, so it's good to have a rival that stimulates you to do your best. That's our relationship.