Takehiko Inoue
While Sakaguchi continued to receive credits as executive producer, he described himself as "doing nothing" in Hawaii over the following three years, having been demoralized by the movie's failure. At one point, he felt guilty about his lack of contributions to the industry. Motivated to return to the game industry and create his own original properties, Sakaguchi got into contact with his friends artists Akira Toriyama and Takehiko Inoue about possibly collaborating on game projects. He left Square in 2003, with his last credit with the company being "Final Fantasy X-2". Mistwalker was officially formed in July 2004, although its trademark existed as early as 2001. Mistwalker is noted as being one of a group of video game companies—alongside Sacnoth, Love-de-Lic and Monolith Soft—founded by Square staff who had worked on notable games produced during the 1990s. Some of the funds for its foundation came from Microsoft. The studio offices are based in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Tokyo, Japan.