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Bloomberg: Multiple potential Buyers interested in Square Enix (Debunked: See OP)
- Thread starter MicrosoftMediaPro
- Start date
SlimeGooGoo
Party Gooper
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amstradcpc
Member
Lets be clear. If anybody is really interested in SE the acquisition movements will kick in. Sony will be forced to buy it. And this will involve MS going for Capcom that will force again Sony to acquire it. The trend will be that. Those are the two publishers that Sony cant allow itself to lose. Although in the end they will lose GTA as i am sure Take 2 will finish in MS hands as an answer to all that. The wildcard will be CD project red as now are cheaper but still expensive while its nex Witcher game is still far off.
Is the same that will happen in football if Real Madrid signs Mbappe. PSG will take Messi, Barsa will take Haaland...
Is the same that will happen in football if Real Madrid signs Mbappe. PSG will take Messi, Barsa will take Haaland...
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
I don't think anyone is taking Take 2.
The days for Xbox's big acquisitions are over, for now at least. They have purchased enough studios and properties. Their challenge is to manage them all properly, actually produce stuff, and make sure that output is good enough to bring in a positive ROI. There is a limit to what they will be allowed to spend before showing a positive return on investment. Going by PS5 and XSX | S sales ratio so far (limited supply, I know), this can turn out to be very tough for Xbox in the next 1-2 years.
If GP subscribers actually do balloon up, and Xbox division brings in decent profits, they might go on another buying spree. But I don't think it will happen before that.
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v_iHuGi
Banned
SoraNoKuni
Member
I doubt the Japanese want to sell out to an American company, but money is sweet.
If Microsoft starts being really aggresive trying to buy Japanese devs I can see Sony trying to outbid them, or force some weird Japanese venture/front as they did with KADOKAWA.
Edit: Also Sony is under the Japan National Security thing that protects them from getting acquired, I am pretty sure there will be more companies under that umbrella soon.
Japan is really serious on preserving their national goods, and rightly so, I really wouldn't want any Japanese Dev to get acquired by any American, Chinese, or European company.
If Microsoft starts being really aggresive trying to buy Japanese devs I can see Sony trying to outbid them, or force some weird Japanese venture/front as they did with KADOKAWA.
Edit: Also Sony is under the Japan National Security thing that protects them from getting acquired, I am pretty sure there will be more companies under that umbrella soon.
Japan is really serious on preserving their national goods, and rightly so, I really wouldn't want any Japanese Dev to get acquired by any American, Chinese, or European company.
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Chukhopops
Member
I don’t see why MS would buy Square Enix. It makes a lot more sense for Sony since they would secure some exclusives they already kind of have but may want to keep.
IMO Square Enix has been pretty meh for the last couple of years with some exceptions (Trials of Mana was good and Outriders is fun) so I couldn’t care less either way.
IMO Square Enix has been pretty meh for the last couple of years with some exceptions (Trials of Mana was good and Outriders is fun) so I couldn’t care less either way.
Swipeyowifelike
Member
All I say is if Sony was to buy SE, a Legend of Dragoon remake becomes more likely.
Woopah
Member
I think its worth pointing out that SE's statement doesn't necessarily debunk the original article:Turns out thats exactly what they do after all
I ain't trusting any of these outlets or journalists unless they provide some real, concrete info on the matter
Bloomberg - Serval institutions are interested in buying Square Enix
Square Enix - We are not interested in selling and no one has made an official offer
Both things can be true.
Guilty_AI
Member
Of course there are, except that information alone means nothing. It was just used because author of the article knew it'd make waves despite being meaningless, its clickbait journalism at its finest.
Woopah
Member
That's a fair point and it probably was done to get clicks. I was just pointing out that SE's statement doesn't mean Bloomberg's report is fake or inaccurate. It can be true and clickbait simultaneously.
BacklashWave534
Member
Well, with Sony reverting back to an awful piece of shit company (denying Day's Gone 2, shutting down their legacy stores and shutting down their patch servers for older games) I would like to see Microsoft buy them. Basically guarantees we will get the games on PC which means they can be preserved for all time.
Dabaus
Banned
Consider this Zenimax was a pretty unique scenario for Microsoft in that:
-the company itself was looking to sell
-their newer games werent performing well review or sales wise
-they werent public traded so we never knew who was in discussions
-one of the few publishers that has a positive history with Microsoft because A lot of previous PC development in early days.
-Has had real success working together in the past.
-Probably also being approached by Amazon and google who were serious about getting into the games industry. So it was almost more of a defensive move for Microsoft.
-People like to point out that Sony has timed exclusive with Bethesda and look what happened. Yes but death loop and Tokyo ghostwire are brand new unproven IPs, not staple franchises.
Square fits none of those categories for Microsoft. Not one. Factor in the hoops Microsoft may have to jump through with Japanese laws, and probably the price they’d have to pay anywhere from 10-15 billion.
Another thing to ask yourself is, what’s in it for square? What do they get by doing this. Money? Yeah money talks that’s for sure but don’t they have a steady stream of money coming in from ff14 subs and cellphone games? Imagine a scenario where Phil’s at the round table with square developers, do you think Nomura and kitase are going to be yucking it up with Phil going on about how great Xbox is and how much they love gamespass? I actually think they’d more likely walk away from the company. Kitase is older now and nomura is like the biggest PlayStation fanboy in Japan.
Does square want to abandon the Japanese market, most of their fan base, and they’re independence to sign up with a foreign company that they’ve had no real success with because Phil told them gamespass is the future, look how many hours of outriders has been played?
I know money talks and bullshit walks but can money and bullshit talk? I’m not convinced.
-the company itself was looking to sell
-their newer games werent performing well review or sales wise
-they werent public traded so we never knew who was in discussions
-one of the few publishers that has a positive history with Microsoft because A lot of previous PC development in early days.
-Has had real success working together in the past.
-Probably also being approached by Amazon and google who were serious about getting into the games industry. So it was almost more of a defensive move for Microsoft.
-People like to point out that Sony has timed exclusive with Bethesda and look what happened. Yes but death loop and Tokyo ghostwire are brand new unproven IPs, not staple franchises.
Square fits none of those categories for Microsoft. Not one. Factor in the hoops Microsoft may have to jump through with Japanese laws, and probably the price they’d have to pay anywhere from 10-15 billion.
Another thing to ask yourself is, what’s in it for square? What do they get by doing this. Money? Yeah money talks that’s for sure but don’t they have a steady stream of money coming in from ff14 subs and cellphone games? Imagine a scenario where Phil’s at the round table with square developers, do you think Nomura and kitase are going to be yucking it up with Phil going on about how great Xbox is and how much they love gamespass? I actually think they’d more likely walk away from the company. Kitase is older now and nomura is like the biggest PlayStation fanboy in Japan.
Does square want to abandon the Japanese market, most of their fan base, and they’re independence to sign up with a foreign company that they’ve had no real success with because Phil told them gamespass is the future, look how many hours of outriders has been played?
I know money talks and bullshit walks but can money and bullshit talk? I’m not convinced.
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Bryank75
Banned
Especially with 30% of their business being anime, manga, arcades and film. With a significant portion of the gaming pie being mobile games.
Also if MSFT bought them, they would have a 3rd publishing business, a language and cultural barrier and a massive amount of staff to manage (over 5000).
Then you have to consider over 80% of the fanbase is on PlayStation and are unlikely to change.
If Sony bought them, it would still need a lot of work... the publishing operations would have to be vertically integrated and many would become redundant from that area. But that would make Square more efficient.
They could bring back Legacy of Kain, would be cool with Amy Hennig writing.
Here is a song from my friends in acquisitions....
Business cards are very important in Japan.
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Abriael_GN
RSI Employee of the Year
Actually, it does, unless you think the "bankers" were just idly chatting about random possibilities while soaking at the hot springs within earshot of this "journalist" (quotation marks are obligatory). In which case, it would be still extremely unprofessional and despicable to write an article about it.
Let's not start playing devil's advocate for Bloomberg, please, they've been peddling anonymous sources for a decade, and a large part of what they peddle never happens.
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no, they are just getting started.
google shut their in house studio/s recently after microsoft acquired zenimax, because they figured building up studios is time consuming, so its easier to just buy them out. they are working on that right now.
amazon also launched their service, and they will also run into this problem. these companies need content,and they have the cash to buy them.
microsoft wont sit back and let these entrants gobble up all the studios. they were content with battling sony with each making third party exclusive deals in the past generations, but this is now different. you got these other bigger companies wanting to enter this space, so it will be a studio buying battle.
yurinka
Member
As I remember at least Nintendo was also protected by this JNS thing. So maybe it's the case for other big Japanese game companies like Konami, Square, Sega or Capcom.
Square has many big deals with Sony: look at FFVIIR, Project Athia, FF16 and so on. It's ok for them, Sony has enough while also selling their games in more platforms, because making these huge ass games need them to be released on many places to keep them profitable and secure them from huge loses in case one of them tanks.
It wouldn't be smart for Square to go full exclusive, they depend of multiplatform releases to be profitable. So I highly doubt they would want to sell.
To buy Square Enix also must be expensive as fuck. Sony wouldn't be interested on buying it because they already get the exclusives and they already posted the record yearly revenue for any platform holder in gaming history, so don't need to purchase a big publisher. Some dev studio maybe yes, but don't need to buy a big publisher.
Regarding MS who knows, because their strategy doesn't make sense at all. Seems that in addition to kill their console releasing all their exclusives to PC and including them day one on a subscription, with that move they also want to kill the main revenue source for their 3rd party publishers and devs, and also for the ones of the other consoles: game sales. And on top of that they spent over 10B on studios to give away for basically free their games on a game rental subscription service with no known strategy of how they will turn that into something profitable.
It would make sense for them to try to figure out how they get their ROI for all recent investments and start to be profitable instead of making more big purchases. But who knows, maybe they still want to spend more billions and try to buy Square, Konami, Sega, Capcom, Sony, Nintendo, Godzilla, Doraemon and the mount Fuji to be more important in Japan, that market that every year generates a smaller % of the global console market revenue and every year console market is a smaller % of the Japanese gaming market.
On top of that, companies like Square Enix, Capcom, Sega or Konami have an important part of their business on mobile gaming, arcade or in some cases movies, comics and in Konami case even stuff like gyms. I don't see why MS would be interested on that.
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Bryank75
Banned
It's funny that you think Google and Amazon are the competition... it was a good line but it's not anywhere near the truth.
Amazon won't buy anyone, that's not how they operate...look at their moves in streaming, they buy content in.
Amazon Prime don't have their own film studio.... actually most of it is made by Sony.
Tencent is the real threat, they have money in everything and the backing of their government.
Also with all of the developments in communications and other business to business software, Microsoft need cash to protect their position with skype and teams..... Discord would be more important to them than another studio..... especially when they have no shown any capability to get games out yet and Sony is still winning by a large margin despite everyting they've done.
How many tens of billions is it going to take to even get over 50 million subs? While PS will just sell another 120-140 million consoles and keep trucking along.....
They are shoveling money into a blackhole aqnd if you think investors won't say anything eventually.... LOL
Bryank75
Banned
Square have anime, manga, film and mobile businesses....it's about half of their company. So it would make sense for Sony.
yurinka
Member
It would have a better fit for Sony because they also have that (excluding manga, but maybe they could give that to their friends Kadokawa) and are also Japanese, so they wouldn't have the language and cultural barrier, plus that national security stuff wouldn't block the sale.
But still, Sony has no reason to buy them. Doesn't need to make a purchase like that. And on Square Enix side, it wouldn't make sense to sell to a console maker company because they make super huge AAA games that depend on multiplatform to keep profitable.
In fact, Square Enix they don't need to sell their company at all. But hey, it may be true that someone from MS or Tencent may have asked for it, because MS is going crazy with acquisitions and Tencent likes to invest everywhere.
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SenjutsuSage
Banned
Over? We were told by many experts for years it would never begin because Xbox being a part of Microsoft doesn't mean they get to use Microsoft's financial firepower. Then they went and bought Bethesda for them. Then the CEO of Microsoft after approving that said they are still interested in purchasing more publishers, backed up by Phil Spencer.
Then Microsoft on the very day Bethesda was officially now part of Microsoft, created a new position specifically tasked with identifying and then informing more game specific acquisitions. I'd bet their acquisition days are far from over. As far as Square Enix, it need not be in the form of a traditional acquisition, so much as it can come through a major, multi-year business arrangement with a partner. Would Square be opposed to a more all encompassing game pass arrangement for some of its big releases? Doubt it.
Dabaus
Banned
Didn’t we hear recently that MS approached bungie but was turned down? That was a rumor. Then the devs that makes the medium said they didn’t want to be acquired recently. Moon studios won’t sell. I feel like there was another studio close to ms that took a large investment from net ease or something, and then sega who is non stop rumored to be bought by ms just took like an 800 million dollar investment from someone as well.
So asobo, bungie, moon, sega, and maybe another if all the rumors are to be believed turned MS down but all these Japanese publishers who have no relationship with Microsoft whose games never sold well on Xbox are going to forsake their domestic market, actual fan base, and all sales so they can give their games away on a subscription service while their two main sources of income Sony and Nintendo are both seeing record sales.
Ok.
Edit: The only person making the claim that Microsoft and Sony and bidding on square enix is that scped ed whatever his name is Twitter guy. Just last week he said Jim Ryan turned down Kojimas game. So within a week he’s gone from Jim Ryan is canceling Kojima games to Microsoft is trying to buy square. He runs a podcast called “Xbox era.” That’s be like me running a podcast called “PlayStation rocks” and whenever a rumor comes up saying “Sony’s already on it.”
Ok he got a gamespass game and ps plus game prediction right and maybe he has sources for that sort of stuff but how would anyone know ALL of that?
So asobo, bungie, moon, sega, and maybe another if all the rumors are to be believed turned MS down but all these Japanese publishers who have no relationship with Microsoft whose games never sold well on Xbox are going to forsake their domestic market, actual fan base, and all sales so they can give their games away on a subscription service while their two main sources of income Sony and Nintendo are both seeing record sales.
Ok.
Edit: The only person making the claim that Microsoft and Sony and bidding on square enix is that scped ed whatever his name is Twitter guy. Just last week he said Jim Ryan turned down Kojimas game. So within a week he’s gone from Jim Ryan is canceling Kojima games to Microsoft is trying to buy square. He runs a podcast called “Xbox era.” That’s be like me running a podcast called “PlayStation rocks” and whenever a rumor comes up saying “Sony’s already on it.”
Ok he got a gamespass game and ps plus game prediction right and maybe he has sources for that sort of stuff but how would anyone know ALL of that?
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Zeroing
Banned
Oh man, I dunno, would you like MS to have SE when Xbox own studios were closed because in 6 years they haven’t made anything? Or when bungie studio pay to leave MS?
I have low hopes MS can even manage a big group of studios... they don’t seem to have the expertise!
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
There will be lots of partnerships, I'm sure. There may even be smaller acquisitions, but I just don't think there will be big, gigantic acquisitions any time in the near future by Xbox though.
Beer Baelly
Al Pachinko, Konami President
Just sell Deus Ex to MS and let Arkane finish it.
Pallas
Gold Member
Good, they should stay third party. If Microsoft wants to get further into the Asian community side of gaming, they should look into talented small dev groups in Japan/China/Korea.
Interestingly enough Microsoft had almost purchased Squaresoft before they merged with Enix. The deal went all the way up to the highest level before Squaresoft wanted more money after feeling Microsoft’s offer wasn’t the right value for their company,
If the current Microsoft existed back then, we could of saw a completely gaming landscape, for better or worse I think Squaresoft not being purchased back then was the right call.
Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usgamer.net/amp/microsoft-almost-bought-square-final-fantasy-1999
Interestingly enough Microsoft had almost purchased Squaresoft before they merged with Enix. The deal went all the way up to the highest level before Squaresoft wanted more money after feeling Microsoft’s offer wasn’t the right value for their company,
If the current Microsoft existed back then, we could of saw a completely gaming landscape, for better or worse I think Squaresoft not being purchased back then was the right call.
Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usgamer.net/amp/microsoft-almost-bought-square-final-fantasy-1999
Pallas
Gold Member
Just bankers trying to drive up stock prices by creating rumors.
LisaMariaMartin
Banned
sharp as a cue ball this one
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Dabaus
Banned
Mind elaborating?
Ass of Can Whooping
Banned
SQE statement doesn't seem like a debunk to me
Bloomberg said that there are parties interested in aquiring SQE, not that any of them have actually made an offer yet
Bloomberg said that there are parties interested in aquiring SQE, not that any of them have actually made an offer yet
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Dabaus
Banned
Tin foil hat time:
I don’t believe the Twitter guy claiming Sony or MS are potential buyers but say he’s right for the sake of argument. What if Sony is serious about buying SE? They said that their new long term goal is IP investment. Gaming, anime, and movies. Square does all 3, plus mobile. None of their big final fantasy games have been announced for Xbox (yet). What if Sony is in talks and Ms caught wind and made a counter offer simply because they know losing SE altogether would be a really bad look. Not saying that SE would necessarily even be interested in MS offer but it would make sense in way.
Come to think of it this is like the third or fourth time recently this rumor has popped up. Remember not to long ago there was even a thread here on neo gaf about it? It keeps coming up and it’s not about anybody else.
I’m probably wrong here and it could all be smoke and mirrors from SE trying to boost stock.
I don’t believe the Twitter guy claiming Sony or MS are potential buyers but say he’s right for the sake of argument. What if Sony is serious about buying SE? They said that their new long term goal is IP investment. Gaming, anime, and movies. Square does all 3, plus mobile. None of their big final fantasy games have been announced for Xbox (yet). What if Sony is in talks and Ms caught wind and made a counter offer simply because they know losing SE altogether would be a really bad look. Not saying that SE would necessarily even be interested in MS offer but it would make sense in way.
Come to think of it this is like the third or fourth time recently this rumor has popped up. Remember not to long ago there was even a thread here on neo gaf about it? It keeps coming up and it’s not about anybody else.
I’m probably wrong here and it could all be smoke and mirrors from SE trying to boost stock.
Oddvintagechap
Member
Pretty sure Sony is interested.
And im pretty sure Tencent will bid double.
And im pretty sure Tencent will bid double.
Dabaus
Banned
Imru’ al-Qays
Member
It was actually post-Sakaguchi Squaresoft leadership (in particular Yoichi Wada) that took over management of the company and drove it into the dirt.
BacklashWave534
Member
Well, my preference would be for them to remain independent but anyone would be better then Sony. I was a huge Sony fan until them became arrogant and awful for no reason.