A developer who worked on Final Fantasy 10 has said that assembling the game's team was made harder because Kingdom Hearts, Square's crossover with Disney, had already claimed director Tetsuya Nomura and several other experienced JRPG staff. With many of the studio's veteran talent tied up on the new Disney-themed project, Final Fantasy 10's production reportedly had to lean more heavily on less experienced or newly recruited developers, shaping how the team came together for what became a landmark entry in the series.

The remarks highlight the internal competition for staff at Square around the turn of the millennium, when Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy 10 were being developed in parallel and both needed experienced RPG creators. Nomura, best known for character design work on the Final Fantasy series, became a key figure on Kingdom Hearts rather than Final Fantasy 10, illustrating how the two high-profile projects effectively competed for the same limited pool of veteran developers within the company.