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[Skifi28]

Yeah, it's only ok when MS does it.

No, it's ok when nobody does it.

 

[Knitted Knight]

Not needed. Strategically speaking, they operate perfectly within Sony's sphere right now. Europe is where is at, before Embracer gobbles all of it.

 

[Kumomeme]

The only reason this rumor started is beacuse sony fanboys can't handle that Microsoft bought Zenimax.
Now some finally are realising that they won't be able to play any of those games on their favorite plastic box they start this fake story.
Damn these people look like Trump, repeat a lie everytime and you start believing it yourself.
Oh yeah there's a word for that, DELUSIONAL

Also funny people think that Sony is all about Playstation, they're a big company that money is not for buying your favorite gaming studios they have more divisions.

 

[Shmunter]

Waste of money. Create new studio. You have the talent and people to mentor it.

 

[DrAspirino]

Not that I believe the rumor, but Square probably is the one Japanese company that Sony wouldn't have to pay a premium for since their games really don't do well on the Xbox anyway.

Capcom and others tend to sell decently on Xbox on a relative basis, but Square is overwhelmingly Sony already.

It depends. Sagas like Tomb Raider or Just Cause sell a ton on Xbox and PC, as well as the Dragon Quest saga sells a lot on Nintendo platforms. If this was Square alone, then sure, it's japanese and most of those games are bought more on PS anyway; BUT since it's Square-ENIX, then I find this rumor very hard to believe, considering how much money they're worth and how Sony has little "cash-on-hand" compared to the behemoth Microsoft has.

 

[sublimit]

I don't think it will happen but it would have been worth it just for the reactions of certain people...

 

[FStubbs]

It's niche anime game. There's nothing else to call it.

It's a retro jRPG.

A niche anime game would be something like the Fairy Tail game Gust put out last year. The fact you clearly can't tell the difference (or don't care to tell the difference) means you probably aren't qualified to speak on the subject.

 

[Daymos]

If they do I will buy both an xbox series X + a playstation 5 and have no regrets at all. It would actually make the decision very easy and save me some stress. Sounds like a great rumor to me.

Of course we're talking in like 2022 or 2023 here by the time I buy both consoles, I'll be buying final fantasy 16 and elder scrolls 6 ONLY after they get patched and have their DLC and I can actually buy the FULL freaking game for $60. Both skyrim in ff15 needed like another 2 years in the oven before they became truly playable and fully realized.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

It's a retro jRPG.

Yeah, so it's niche

A game that takes 2 years to reach 1 million is niche as far as i'm concerened. And with 40% of that all coming from Japan? Oh yeah, it's niche.

Fairy Tail is also a niche game. They fall under a spectrum

 

[Birdo]

RIP Tifa's tits.

 

[Captain Toad]

I don't even know what they made beside Final Fantasy. Or, I probably do when I hear the names, but FF is what I rally connect them with.

Dragon Quest, Tomb Raider, Kingdom Hearts, Deus Ex, etc

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

It depends. Sagas like Tomb Raider or Just Cause sell a ton on Xbox and PC, as well as the Dragon Quest saga sells a lot on Nintendo platforms. If this was Square alone, then sure, it's japanese and most of those games are bought more on PS anyway; BUT since it's Square-ENIX, then I find this rumor very hard to believe, considering how much money they're worth and how Sony has little "cash-on-hand" compared to the behemoth Microsoft has.

Nvidia has little cash on hand compared to Microsoft. Didn't stop them from getting ARM

like another poster said. This isn't Ebay

 

[RoadHazard]

Sony does lack in the RPG department. Maybe under their wing SquareEnix could make good ones again.

 

[Papacheeks]

Waste of money. Create new studio. You have the talent and people to mentor it.

I would agree, but I also would argue that how many PS4/PS4PRO's were bought for FFXV and FFVIIRemake? They bundled those and they sold like hot cakes. Sony has shifted a lot of their developers more to the west, with Japan studio really being the only big studio that handles Japanese development. It costs a lot more money in the long run to build up a studio from scratch with talent for Japanese development that have already moved on to other companies.

You have to rent/buy a space, cultivate a team which means sometimes buying their contracts out or offering them a ton of money to come work over at Sony.

Buying square would give them so many brands that have done well on Playstation by themselves. And maybe under Sony's tutelage we get better properties that dont turn out like Marvel's avengers? And also they could trim the fat of some of the studios and have them working either through square studio, or move them to a totally new team to spear head a project. Like over at bluepoint or Japan studio.

I don't think it's happening to be honest, but I do think in the next 24 months depending on how FF7R for PS5 and FFXVI do will be a big factor in continued exclusivity, or possibly lead to a buy out.

 

[ToadMan]

If SE choose to merge can they separate from Sony at some point in future or would the 2 companies become one with a new name like Sony Square.

Depends on the terms of the merger but since SE is a much smaller corporate entity I’d imagine they’d be incorporated into Sony as a company but retain their brand identity like Naughty Dog, Insomniac and even Polyphony. I’d actually expect Sony to keep them largely 3rd party - SE are a publisher that turns a decent profit, no need for Sony to interfere - they’d just bank the profit.

This is all spit balling though - this kind of merger/acquisition isn’t going to happen. I’m confident of that for the simple fact we’re talking about it here.

Such a move would require SE and Sony to prepare their cooperative statement of intent to the relevant shareholders and get a vote of approval from SE shareholders to complete the deal.

They wouldn’t let this leak since that would pump the price Sony has to pay, tip off investors and perhaps encourage competing hostile bids to sway shareholder’s votes.

Think back a few months before MS announced the Zenimax thing - people speculated about all kinds of companies - sega, SE, Ubi, Warner, Bloober! - Zenimax came out of left field as a surprise. That’s how it would come - not a leak here.

 

[HaveButOneLife]

It was a CGI trailer lol

Still gonna look pretty close to that.

 

[The_Mike]

Dragon Quest, Tomb Raider, Kingdom Hearts, Deus Ex, etc

I see. Still seems like Tomb Raider will be my only loss, however a big one.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Still gonna look pretty close to that.

Lmao sure it will

 

[HaveButOneLife]

Lmao sure it will

Ok GAF graphics expert, see ya whenever there's gameplay of it.

 

[Astorian]

Outside of Dragon Quest which is Horii's own thing, Square haven't made a classic or even a truly great in what feels like more than a decade at least. Someone prove me wrong. Nier Automata was a Platinum game.

FF14 is their best game to date.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Ok GAF graphics expert, see ya whenever there's gameplay of it.

You're expecting Naughty Dog tier graphics or better in an open world game from a bottom tier developer

Trust me you don't need to be an expert to see the delusion in that lmao

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

I think Sony buying them is the only way Final Fantasy will be good again tbh

 

[Captain Toad]

I see. Still seems like Tomb Raider will be my only loss, however a big one.

Well, it's not happening, so don't worry.

 

[CaptainConlock]

It depends. Sagas like Tomb Raider or Just Cause sell a ton on Xbox and PC, as well as the Dragon Quest saga sells a lot on Nintendo platforms. If this was Square alone, then sure, it's japanese and most of those games are bought more on PS anyway; BUT since it's Square-ENIX, then I find this rumor very hard to believe, considering how much money they're worth and how Sony has little "cash-on-hand" compared to the behemoth Microsoft has.

Sony has more than enough for Square Enix though. Only question is budget allocation since Sony has a lot of different businesses.

 

[Derktron]

Yeah who knows what will happen or even IF it'll happen.

But one fact is that it'll be much easier (in terms of revenue and profit) for Sony to make SE games PlayStation exclusives than it would be for MS to make Bethesda games locked to Xbox.

SE games do not sell as much on Xbox anyway. But Bethesda does make a lot of revenue on PlayStation exclusives. Besides, PS5 will likely have a significantly bigger market share than Series X|S consoles once again this generation. This makes it slightly more difficult for Xbox to recover those dev costs without utilizing that PS userbase.

But who knows: anything could happen. We don't have the hard data. We're all just speculating.

That's what I'm saying, it's going to be very interesting over the fact that Microsoft has one of the biggest devs ever in gaming and they could do so much more. But we're talking about Sony here, so if they do end up buying SE then Sony just won over everything Microsoft will ever do. Remember SE has more than Final Fantasy. They also have the Publish Tomb Raider.

 

[TheKillerStove]

Setting aside the fact that there are suitors who have far deeper pockets (and a willingness to up the ante), a 24-month timeline is a strange number to land on if the deal is still in negotiation and would be even more strange to say it's going to take two years to integrate into PSS with agreed upon terms.

I don't believe it. If anything, it seems it would be planted to try and drum up discussion or signal to other suitors that S-E is in play.

I'm not business savvy in the slightest, but I think I can see why. If they have products in development they want to release pre-acquisition, 24 months is a solid time frame. As for why they'd do that, I'd imagine profits after an acquisition would go in part to Sony. This way the lions share of FF XVI profits would stay in house.

 

[Derktron]

No, it's ok when nobody does it.

Finally someone with common sense.

 

[Woopah]

I can't see SE wanting to be bought so it would have to be a hostile takeover, and I don't think Sony would want to do that.

SE have had a bit of a rough year with the Avengers flop, but with Final Fantasy and Project Athia on PlayStation as well as Dragon Quest and mid-budget JRPGs on Switch, they have a promising couple of years ahead. That's not even including the money they can make on Xbox and PC.

 

[yurinka]

I don't get why Sony would be interested on buying Square Enix, or why Square Enix would be interested to be acquired by anyone.

This rumor is total bullshit.

 

[Papacheeks]

I don't get why Sony would be interested on buying Square Enix, or why Square Enix would be interested to be acquired by anyone.

This rumor is total bullshit.

people could have said the same thing about Zenimax couple years back. Square Enix is in a similar position. They have like 2-3 major money makers IP wise they own. The rest is a lot of publishing. Their biggest money maker IP wise that they own is Final Fantasy. They lost shit loads on avengers, not inlcluding dragon quest which didnt sell as well as they had hoped. Even Kingdom hearts seemed to under perform.

Games that have done well a lot of them were Sony partnered.

I'm not saying this is happening, but when you look at the history it makes sense.

 

[Spukc]

lol rip tifa tits

 

[Elios83]

I think this particular rumor is just bullshit.
But Square Enix has always been close with Sony and many of their series have been Playstation staples. Getting the rights on series like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Tomb Raider, Nier, Deus Ex not to mention other older IPs like Chrono Trigger/Cross, Parasite Eve, Vagrant Story and many others would be huge.
Still SE is a valuable company, it would be more expensive than buying Bethesda to get them also they're a public company so things might be harder.
Given Sony's interest in both anime and gaming the Kadokawa group (From Software owners) might be a more feasible target and indeed they already made an alliance...so yeah it's clear they're interested.

 

[Derktron]

I can't see SE wanting to be bought so it would have to be a hostile takeover, and I don't think Sony would want to do that.

SE have had a bit of a rough year with the Avengers flop, but with Final Fantasy and Project Athia on PlayStation as well as Dragon Quest and mid-budget JRPGs on Switch, they have a promising couple of years ahead. That's not even including the money they can make on Xbox and PC.

I always thought it would be Capcom

 

[Woopah]

I always thought it would be Capcom

Capcom's in the same boat, about to make a lot of money off being on PlayStation and Switch.

I can't see the leadership there wanting to be bought and I can't see Sony being up for a hostile takeover.

The only largish Japanese publisher I can see wanting to be bought in the near future is Level 5, and only if they get desperate. But given the state they are in, who would really want to buy them?

 

[Derktron]

Capcom's in the same boat, about to make a lot of money off being on PlayStation and Switch.

I can't see the leadership there wanting to be bought and I can't see Sony being up for a hostile takeover.

The only largish Japanese publisher I can see wanting to be bought in the near future is Level 5, and only if they get desperate. But given the state they are in, who would really want to buy them?

I mean to me I always thought they'd be bought out. Or hell even BandiNamco and yeah Sony would be stupid enough to do a hostile takeover on any company.

 

[mejin]

Sony should also save Capcom, Koei Tecmo, Namco Bandai and Sega from the evil corporations.

 

[Woopah]

I mean to me I always thought they'd be bought out. Or hell even BandiNamco and yeah Sony would be stupid enough to do a hostile takeover on any company.

Has Sony done any hostile gaming takeovers recently? Usually they buy companies that want to be bought.

I could maybe see third parties further consolidating like Koei and Tecmo, Bandai and Namco, and Square and Enix have done. But I don't know if any first parties would get involved

Sony gets strong support from Japan publishers already and Nintendo doesn't need to acquire these companies to have them work on first party exclusives. Most of them do anyway.

That leaves Microsoft and I think they're more likely to buy a developer than another publisher.

people could have said the same thing about Zenimax couple years back. Square Enix is in a similar position. They have like 2-3 major money makers IP wise they own. The rest is a lot of publishing. Their biggest money maker IP wise that they own is Final Fantasy. They lost shit loads on avengers, not inlcluding dragon quest which didnt sell as well as they had hoped. Even Kingdom hearts seemed to under perform.

Games that have done well a lot of them were Sony partnered.

I'm not saying this is happening, but when you look at the history it makes sense.

Biggest difference is that Zenimax was a private company while SE is public. Plus SE will want to have strong sales for their brands in Japan, and for that they are better served by publishing on Switch too.

 

[Trogdor1123]

I really don't like the consolidation going on, I don't like it at all.

 

[Sid Of Bee]

I call BS because it makes no sense. They'd instantly have less Japanese presence ( whom they cater to) and I don't see them giving up Switch development.

 

[Papacheeks]

Has Sony done any hostile gaming takeovers recently? Usually they buy companies that want to be bought.

I could maybe see third parties further consolidating like Koei and Tecmo, Bandai and Namco, and Square and Enix have done. But I don't know if any first parties would get involved

Sony gets strong support from Japan publishers already and Nintendo doesn't need to acquire these companies to have them work on first party exclusives. Most of them do anyway.

That leaves Microsoft and I think they're more likely to buy a developer than another publisher.


Biggest difference is that Zenimax was a private company while SE is public. Plus SE will want to have strong sales for their brands in Japan, and for that they are better served by publishing on Switch too.

I would argue outside of of maybe Dragon quest FF, and Kingdom hearts sell better over in UK,EU and US. FF is s big brand World wide and pretty huge in States. You wonder if Sony ever makes another handheld that just plays the ps5/ps4 LIBRARY. I think that would be compelling, and fairly easy to do with 5nm chip.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

Has Sony done any hostile gaming takeovers recently? Usually they buy companies that want to be bought.

I could maybe see third parties further consolidating like Koei and Tecmo, Bandai and Namco, and Square and Enix have done. But I don't know if any first parties would get involved

Sony gets strong support from Japan publishers already and Nintendo doesn't need to acquire these companies to have them work on first party exclusives. Most of them do anyway.

That leaves Microsoft and I think they're more likely to buy a developer than another publisher.

EMI Music Publishing and Funimation were their latest takeovers a couple of years back

What do you mean by want to be bought? If the majority shareholders are fine with selling their shares then i'd say the company is okay with being bought

 

[Woopah]

I would argue outside of of maybe Dragon quest FF, and Kingdom hearts sell better over in UK,EU and US. FF is s big brand World wide and pretty huge in States. You wonder if Sony ever makes another handheld that just plays the ps5/ps4 LIBRARY. I think that would be compelling, and fairly easy to do with 5nm chip.

Even if Sony did make another handheld (which I think is unlikely) it's not enough to give them a big userbase in Japan and it wouldn't launch until a few years from now.

A lot of their franchises do well worldwide and do well on PlayStation, but a significant portion of their sales in the coming years are going to be from Switch (plus maybe Xbox, depending on how the new console does).

Square Enix's business is best served by being multiplatform and I can't see Sony exclusivity offering any benefits above what they are already getting (big cheques for FF and Athia).

 

[Grand Theft Scratchy]

I think you guys just want Sony to do a Bethesda-style studio acquisition because it would be so epic. But I don't think Nintendo would allow it, considering Dragon Quest has always been really popular on Nintendo platforms.

 

[Woopah]

EMI Music Publishing and Funimation were their latest takeovers a couple of years back

What do you mean by want to be bought? If the majority shareholders are fine with selling their shares then i'd say the company is okay with being bought

From what I could tell neither of those deals was a hostile takeover.

When I talked about not wanting to be bought, I meant the company's management. So if Sony started approaching shareholders but SE's management didn't want to be owned by Sony, they could take actions to prevent the hostile takeover. This is what Ubisoft recently did to successfully avoid being bought by Vivendi.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

I think you guys just want Sony to do a Bethesda-style studio acquisition because it would be so epic. But I don't think Nintendo would allow it, considering Dragon Quest has always been really popular on Nintendo platforms.

Sony doesn't care what Nintendo says and Nintendo is to cheap with how it spends capital to do anything about it.

 

[Croatoan]

This moves the needle 0 for me, like as a PC gamer this is a big yawn. I can play whatever square enix game I want when I eventually get a ps5.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

From what I could tell neither of those deals was a hostile takeover.

When I talked about not wanting to be bought, I meant the company's management. So if Sony started approaching shareholders but SE's management didn't want to be owned by Sony, they could take actions to prevent the hostile takeover. This is what Ubisoft recently did to successfully avoid being bought by Vivendi.

You're not going to find that out unless you personally ask the managment if they agree with the takeover. In all takeovers you're going to find a wide variety of opnions

And unless they're actually shareholders they're just employees like any other person in the company. So from Sony's perspective if they think there's value in aquiring SE managment views really don't matter.

 

[Bittermich]

Don't believe it for a second but it would be a good fit, and not THAT much of a loss for Xbox either.

With Bethesda at Xbox and Squareenix at Sony, it would pretty much guarantee that most serious gamers would need both boxes.

Really? IMHO SE didn’t have a good game in a long time. FF VX and KH III were horrible. I didn’t even finish those games.

 

[Panajev2001a]

You're not going to find that out unless you personally ask the managment if they agree with the takeover. In all takeeovers you're going to find a wide variety of opnions among managment.

And unless they're actually shareholders they're just employees like any other person in the company. So from Sony's perspective they don't really matter

It kind of does, you do not want to just buy the IP’s and be left without the talent or an unmotivated resentful workforce.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

It kind of does, you do not want to just buy the IP’s and be left without the talent or an unmotivated resentful workforce.

Unless they handle the takeover poorly and affect the company culture in a negative way then they'll be fine. They can just keep the status quo and fix what needs to be fixed

The pissy individuals at the top can leave