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[Witchilich]

It's not unreasonable to think that'll happen in some cases, I've said that too, PC gaming is often about brute forcing through bad optimization.
Won't be like that with all games though. DF will have their hands full. And Alex when doing optimized settings videos…

A 1200 $ box with unoptimized games sounds like highway robbery.

 

[pulicat]

Asano's team is one of the most profitable teams in Square Enix with a modest budget and good sales results. kazuyamishima Please educate yourself more about Square Enix's organizational structure when it comes to profitability since you refused to blame PS5 console exclusive titles when those games were the main reason why Square Enix made a drastic decision to switch towards a multiplatform approach.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Sont won't buy them but there'll still be Sony fanboys rubbing themselves down to a nub at the thought.

It's Pikmins the ones doing fanfic in this thread. Delulu land as always.

Xenoblade is the closest thing to FF on Switch, so those are the prospect sales of FF being Nintendo exclusive.

 

[yurinka]

Dude, they have done their research. A big title like Final Fantasy confined to a single console for a whole year with a limited user base isn't going to grow your franchise. Take a look at this slide.

Final Fantasy, a series that used to sell 10m units, was on the brink of turning into another niche JRPG from Japan, but fortunately they are changing the direction for the next FF title for simultaneous release.

The graph is very misleading due to several reasons:

• Doesn't consider that big 3rd party games like Final Fantasy or Monster Hunter Rise released as timed console because get paid by the platform holders enough to compensate the lost sales in other platforms
• Makes an arbitrary cut at 1 year to only include the install base of the late PC port of Rise but not the FF late ports to PC, Xbox and Switch 2. Most games make most of their units after the first year, particularly timed console exclusives like MH Rise or the FF mentioned
• The decrease in install base from the first to the second game in each FF subsegment is normal because these 2nd games were released in an earlier point of the generation than these 1st games, where the installbase is smaller
• They only compare FF to only two Japanese RPG top sellers but are very different, but not to other Japanese RPG that are more similar/traditional SP JRPGs like FF (Tales of Berseria & Arise, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 & 3, Persona...) or to other Japanese RPGs that sold way worse than FF despite being in more platforms/having a biger userbase (Dragon's Dogma 2), or PS exclusive RPGs that like FF and unlike MH are SP only (like Horizon Zero Dawn / Horizon Forbidden West) etc. As an example, Horizon Zero Dawn got released with an installbase of 60M PS4 and sold more than any Monster Hunter.

Meaning:

• To release a game in more platforms or later in the generation to do it having a bigger userbase helps, but don't imply to sell more
• The chart is clearly biased making an arbitrary cut in 1 year to don't include the install base of late PC/Xbox/Switch ports of FF while including the MHRise late PC port
• The chart makes an arbitrary and biased selection of games to compare chossing pretty different games while keeping away more similar ones, because they'd show that

Asano's team is one of the most profitable teams in Square Enix with a modest budget and good sales results. kazuyamishima Please educate yourself more about Square Enix's organizational structure when it comes to profitability since you refused to blame PS5 console exclusive titles when those games were the main reason why Square Enix made a drastic decision to switch towards a multiplatform approach.

Most of these numbers seem very bad -and as usual in many other slides- highly biased estimates.

Let's see the amount of people credited in the games in professional roles according to Moby Games, and let's also add MH World and Wilds thaty they cherrypicked to leave out:

• FF XVI: 3,947
• FFVII Rebirth: 3,711
• MH Wilds: 2,567
• FFVII Remake: 2,315
• Dragon's Dogma 2: 1,500
• Monster Hunter World: 1,176
• Monster Hunter Rise: 1,108
• Forspoken: 387 (must be more, because in outsourcing studios they only credit the companies and not the staff)

Let's see the development time spent on them according to (mostly) wikipedia:

• FF XVI: 8 years (since they started concept / very early preproduction)
• MH Wilds: "at least 5 to 6 years" (in "development")
• Dragon's Dogma 2: "around/roughly 5 years" (development)
• FF VII Rebirth: 4 years and 3 months (since started active development in november 2019)
• FFVII Remake: 4 and a half (since "entered full production")
• MH World: almost 4 + 1 (almost 4 of development + 1 of 'brainstorming'/preproduction)
• Forspoken: between 4-5 years (Luminous was founded in March 2018, writer was first contacted late 2017)
• MH Rise: 4 years (pre-planning development started after completing Generations and Generations Ultimate)

So the highest budget by far should be for FFXVI, then MH Wilds amd FF VII Rebirth and way under them, at a pretty likely similar scale, FF VII Remake, DD2, MH World, MH Rise, Forspoken

These companies haven't disclosed the marketing budget for these games, and without that data you can't calculate the CPI. In adition to this, Sony paid marketing for all these games except Rise, who got the marketing support from Nintendo.

 

[Astray]

Do you realize I also posted this?
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/activist-investor-square-enix-sale-in-2026.1691277/post-271083437

And that despite being from half a year ago it's what they continue having TODAY in their website?

You are very deluded.

Your link literally says the disclosure is only correct until March 31st 2025 (went to the link on Square's site to verify this for myself because it's even on your own screenshot!).

6-7 months of stock movement can easily change the entire map.

These disclosures tend to only be required every couple of quarters.

Also why on earth would an activist investor outfit publish a report before getting their share holdings together? That's activist investing 101!

 

[Badlucktroll]

Microsoft should buy them.

 

[E-Cat]

There is a no sale option. There's no scenario 3DIP leaves Square Enix without something drastic happening to the company.

Still sounds like a prior to me that it's a foregone conclusion S-E gets broken up for parts in a no-sale scenario.

 

[Fess]

A 1200 $ box with unoptimized games sounds like highway robbery.

That's just how PC gaming is. Your hardware is important.
But we don't know how powerful the Xbox will be yet, and lots of people play on laptops, and like it, so it doesn't have to be a big problem. We'll see.
Either way, Steam Machine is the first one to walk through the fire on this newish product segment. I suspect we'll see more widespread attempts to optimize there and use of preset settings ala "Steam Machine Verified".

 

[deriks]

If was a early 2000 I would say Sony, but nowadays it's a very weird scenario with a lot of different people. Maybe just for the sake of internal culture, a japanese company will buy. Maybe

 

[Raven117]

Sony is the natural choice. Whether they do, who knows.

 

[CentralScrutinizer]

Sorry to burst bubble, but they would have flopped 10x more on the Switch. Assuming the Switch wasn't dogshit hardware and actually capable of running the games to begin with.

SE would love to get more free money from Sony. But it's more likely they don't see any value in paying for an exclusivity period for this dying franchise, especially with Xbox out of the picture. So now FF will continue flopping but without Sony footing the bill.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Hopefully Sony

Nintendo will just patent RPG so no one can do anything else anymore and Microsoft... it will just kill it, like they always do.

Chine will transform 3/4 of its IP into GaaS free2play mobile games while Saudi Arabia will put Ronaldo on Final Fantasy

 

[Witchilich]

That's just how PC gaming is. Your hardware is important.
But we don't know how powerful the Xbox will be yet, and lots of people play on laptops, and like it, so it doesn't have to be a big problem. We'll see.
Either way, Steam Machine is the first one to walk through the fire on this newish product segment. I suspect we'll see more widespread attempts to optimize there and use of preset settings ala "Steam Machine Verified".

People who play from the couch on their TV want an out of the box experience that just works. Xbox will provide an inferior PC gaming experience because you can't upgrade it. Ultimately for those playing in the couch, $600 PS6 will offer more optimized games than $1200 Xbox.

 

[justiceiro]

Outdated way of thinking. Square will probably be sold to a mobile giant that will cancel all console release and only focus on mobile games from now on.

 

[yurinka]

You are very deluded.

Your link literally says the disclosure is only correct until March 31st 2025 (went to the link on Square's site to verify this for myself because it's even on your own screenshot!).

6-7 months of stock movement can easily change the entire map.

These disclosures tend to only be required every couple of quarters.

You must be seriously retarded or have some reading comprehension issues.

I posted the oficial data that the Square Enix website as of two days ago, which is updated until the start of the current fiscal year. Back then these folks had nothing at Nintendo, and I wrongly asssumed that there weren't big changes since then because normally there aren't bing changes. Then the other user pointed that these people bought their stocks more recently, after that March 31 point, showing receipts from April or June. I accepted them and rectified. That's all.

Also why on earth would an activist investor outfit publish a report before getting their share holdings together? That's activist investing 101!

People is free to say whatever they want.

In this case, being one of the top shareholders of a company it's normal that they may share their opinion (having a lot of money doesn't mean they are right, there's people saying crazy shit everywhere) and particularly to do it publicly if what they are looking for is to influence the market and particularly the stock value of that company, or the votes of the other main shareholders.

Particularly if there's a shareholder meeting soon, to let the others know their point of view and to put some context on something they may say or ask for there later.

But separate from this specific case, in many companies there's from time to time some 'crazy folk' who has just a few stocks and makes some dumb claims, or are hitmen hired by bigger dogs (often big hedge funds, and these activist happen to be former employees of such company) who try to make some noise to try to negatively affect the company stock value to bring it down letting the big dogs buy cheaper (in gaming see Ubisoft as example, happened a couple times). Normally that dumb folk claim's have no effect, but when it's a hitmen stunt these claims are shared by the hitmen media owned by these big dogs (see Bloomberg as example).

Their idea is to manipulate the stock value of a company to negatively affect their stock price with headlines of "shareholders of X company are very angry and made X claim!" to later buy stocks of that company cheaper.

You often can double check it by looking where the CEO did work previously, to see if there's a hedge fund or big bank there. And if such hedge fund or back bought shares of that company shortly after the company stocks went down shortly after these claims.

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

SEGA just can't, they're sub (level 3). CAPCOM is at the same level (2 if i remermber), and SONY 1 (same for Nintendo i guess). So you have your answer.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Nintendo has the money, but have never shown the appetite for big acquisitions or investments. Can't see them spending $8B (1.1T yen) on this.

Nintendo doesn't have to spend big money to get the studios of SE they'd want. AFAIK, they've already been investing in specific units of SE; they could just buy those units outright and other companies could buy one or multiple of the remaining.

We already have precedent of Nintendo doing this now with them purchasing that Bandai-Namco Singapore studio, so I'd expect more of that in the near future. Sony would likely acquire the Final Fantasy unit. As for the others, they'd probably get acquired by various other publishers, maybe specific IP are also up for acquisition too. And I can see most of SE staff going over to whatever companies acquired the respective units in particular.

 

[Baki]

Nintendo doesn't have to spend big money to get the studios of SE they'd want. AFAIK, they've already been investing in specific units of SE; they could just buy those units outright and other companies could buy one or multiple of the remaining.

We already have precedent of Nintendo doing this now with them purchasing that Bandai-Namco Singapore studio, so I'd expect more of that in the near future. Sony would likely acquire the Final Fantasy unit. As for the others, they'd probably get acquired by various other publishers, maybe specific IP are also up for acquisition too. And I can see most of SE staff going over to whatever companies acquired the respective units in particular.

All depends on how Square Enix chooses to act in face of activist pressure. If they do sell parts of the company, it will be the parts the activist has highlighted, such as the arcades and manga publishing. Gaming probably stays in tact.

 

[dgrdsv]

I doubt that Sony would be interested. If a sale will happen it is more likely to be some Chinese gaming company (lol at SE being a "national treasure") or someone from a different industry.

 

[Hudo]

I doubt that Sony would be interested. If a sale will happen it is more likely to be some Chinese gaming company (lol at SE being a "national treasure") or someone from a different industry.

I think the "national treasure" argument is largely based on Dragon Quest. And as far as I know, Dragon Quest is not really a Square Enix property anyway. They "only" have publishing rights but not really rights on the IP itself because those are still being held by Armor Project. But maybe that has changed after the deaths of Sugiyama (RIP) and Toriyama (RIP).

 

[Fabieter]

All depends on how Square Enix chooses to act in face of activist pressure. If they do sell parts of the company, it will be the parts the activist has highlighted, such as the arcades and manga publishing. Gaming probably stays in tact.

Yeah it doesnt make alot of sense to sell the main part of the company.

 

[mdkirby]

Where's the options for "Saudis and Jared kushner"

 

[VectorVictor]

Seriously this. Sony's track record isn't great and only just recently has Square committed to releasing their games multiplatform. The FF7 exclusivity deal didn't work in Squares favor, I don't see how this would help.

True…and Sony has shown a willingness to publish on other platforms (PC, Xbox). I wager we'll see delayed exclusives from SquEnix if Sony buys them up…

…which is probably a best case scenario if it's down to Nintendo and Sony as suitors.

 

[Fabieter]

Seriously this. Sony's track record isn't great and only just recently has Square committed to releasing their games multiplatform. The FF7 exclusivity deal didn't work in Squares favor, I don't see how this would help.

Forspoken bombed horribly with a pc release. Besides FF 16, 7R and rebirth basically every game was at least on pc.

It definitely was a factor but to narrow down all of SE problems to exclusives is just bullshit.

 

[kazuyamishima]

It definitely was a factor but to narrow down all of SE problems to exclusives is just bullshit.

I've never seen timed exclusive as a problem if the quality of the game is there, there are many examples already with games like Stellar Blade, one year after on Steam and it did excellent numbers alongside the PS5 version.

 

[pulicat]

Forspoken bombed horribly with a pc release. Besides FF 16, 7R and rebirth basically every game was at least on pc.

It definitely was a factor but to narrow down all of SE problems to exclusives is just bullshit.

In XVI and rebirth case, they stated that SQE was foolish enough to release AAA budgets games on a low user base platform instead of adopting the industry standard of releasing simultaneously on many platforms as possible.

 

[Fabieter]

In XVI and rebirth case, they stated that SQE was foolish enough to release AAA budgets games on a low user base platform instead of adopting the industry standard of releasing simultaneously on many platforms as possible.

Like i said its definitely a factor but its not like the main factor.

Quality
Loosing mindshare because of shitty games is another

I also think they aint the best in actually manage those projects.

Its simple minded to think its just eXclUsiveS1!!11

 

[Astray]

They increased their holdings btw.. Now exceeding %15. The only person or entity with bigger share % is the Enix founder.

Looks like Kiryu vs 3D Investments is afoot..

Their idea is to manipulate the stock value of a company to negatively affect their stock price with headlines of "shareholders of X company are very angry and made X claim!" to later buy stocks of that company cheaper.

Again, you have zero idea what you are talking about, activist investors don't buy up shares wanting the stock to plummet, they would lose their shirts.

They do that when they're shorting the stock (Ackman vs Herbalife a few years back was a very high profile example of this, he failed miserably).

3D investments want Kiryu to implement specific things (like selling off Taito and Gangan) so they can get the stock UP, which means they can sell it on for a good profit.

 

[yurinka]

Again, you have zero idea what you are talking about, activist investors don't buy up shares wanting the stock to plummet, they would lose their shirts.

They do that when they're shorting the stock (Ackman vs Herbalife a few years back was a very high profile example of this, he failed miserably).

3D investments want Kiryu to implement specific things (like selling off Taito and Gangan) so they can get the stock UP, which means they can sell it on for a good profit.

What these hitmen do is to buy stock of a company, to throw shit at it damaging its value artificially lowering its price to later them or somebody else (the one moving that puppet, who paid them to do so) come and buy later at a cheaper price. And then over time the stocks recover its normal value, or gets sold at a higher price than they bought if the damaged company gets acquired totally or partially.

Sometimes the ones moving the puppet, who often also are the other ones shortning stocks, also have or use hitmen media like Bloomberg to help them to spread shit and lower the value.

I know what I'm talking about because I worked in a company that suffered them both.

I doubt that Sony would be interested. If a sale will happen it is more likely to be some Chinese gaming company (lol at SE being a "national treasure") or someone from a different industry.

Let's see:

• Sony is expanding their first party games to have an important position in the main game genres they don't master. Getting Square Enix would make them market leaders of JRPG
• Sony is expanding in MP/GaaS getting at least a GaaS of each genre. They still don't have a MMORPG, and Square Enix has the one that outperformed World of Warcraft and became market leader, FF XIV
• Sony is adapting game IPs to movies, tv shows and in the near future will start releasing adaptations to anime and manga. Square Enix has several ones with a lot of potential here
• Sony is expanding in PC and mobile particularly to grow in Asia. Square Enix publishes in both and has potential to perform way better in both
• Sony is expanding Crunchyroll to include digital manga, and Square has manga content
• Being a large Japanese company with cultural icons, the goverment wouldn't like to sell SE to a foreign company like Chinese or Saudis. They would only allow to sell it to a Japanese company like Sony, regarding foreigners they'd only sell to their key UK/US hedge fund overlords (like the ones where this 'activist investor' did work).
• Sony has a top tier game studio management, plus internal engines, teams and tools who would make them more efficient and successful. On top of this being a key platform holder they have extra channels to better market them
• Sony is starting to sell their finances division, and after it they plan to go back to acquire stuff for their entertainment divisions

So there are many points, plus more that I may forget, that lead to think that a SE acquisition by Sony would help both sides creating multiple synergies.

But there are other things that may be a blocker for the acquisition:

• SE board of directors not wanting to sell
• Square having non-gaming business that as of today wouldn't be of their interest, like arcades/pachinkos/etc or book/magazine publishing
• Square having many small scale project that don't fit them well (current Taito stuf, which could be way more successful in handled correctly)

In case Sony would also acquire Kadokawa, they could merge both SE and Kadokawa book/magazine/manga publishing part maybe into a new Sony Books division and let the Kadokawa folks better manage that SE part too. Could also move the small SE gaming teams to Kadokawa, which would be Sony's 'small Japanese games' label since they'd move FromSoftware to PS Studios. And could sell their arcades/pachinko/pashislo stuff to some partner like Capcom.

So all SE parts would be benefited and would be in better hands, and going forward Square Enix would be focused on big games (mainly FF, DQ, KH, Chrono Trigger, Nier and from time to time reviving in a big way older IPs like Seiken Densetsu or Front Mission, etc).

Chinese or Saudis, even if allowed, they couldn't provide SE all these synergies to help them grow and get more value from them, and in their current form SE isn't a particularly profitable company that let's say would be appealing just to get profits.

 

[Hero_Select]

Forspoken bombed horribly with a pc release. Besides FF 16, 7R and rebirth basically every game was at least on pc.

It definitely was a factor but to narrow down all of SE problems to exclusives is just bullshit.

Forspoken bombed everywhere. Staggering releases on PC after over a year of exclusivity doesn't help. If FF16 and 7 was released day and date on PC as well it would have sold better than it did.

Would they have sold MUCH better? I don't know but I'd like to think so, there's a lot of excitement and FOMO when a game comes out. FF7 and Rebirth deserve to have sold far better than they did - they're excellent and the budget for those games clearly isn't cheap.

 

[Fabieter]

Forspoken bombed everywhere. Staggering releases on PC after over a year of exclusivity doesn't help. If FF16 and 7 was released day and date on PC as well it would have sold better than it did.

Would they have sold MUCH better? I don't know but I'd like to think so, there's a lot of excitement and FOMO when a game comes out. FF7 and Rebirth deserve to have sold far better than they did - they're excellent and the budget for those games clearly isn't cheap.

Forspoken was day one on pc. Ofc final fantasy would sold a bit better but the problem lies way deeper within sqaure enix.

This isnt ablut exclusives games.

 

[Hero_Select]

Forspoken was day one on pc. Ofc final fantasy would sold a bit better but the problem lies way deeper within sqaure enix.

This isnt ablut exclusives games.

Using Forspoken as an example here doesn't work. That game didn't sell well because it sucked - everyone was making fun of it long before it released.

I agree Square Enix has a lot of problems that aren't just tied to their past exclusivity deals with Sony but it sure as hell didn't help.

 

[grvg]

I got a bad feeling about this, guys...

 

[Baki]

They increased their holdings btw.. Now exceeding %15. The only person or entity with bigger share % is the Enix founder.

Looks like Kiryu vs 3D Investments is afoot..


Again, you have zero idea what you are talking about, activist investors don't buy up shares wanting the stock to plummet, they would lose their shirts.

They do that when they're shorting the stock (Ackman vs Herbalife a few years back was a very high profile example of this, he failed miserably).

3D investments want Kiryu to implement specific things (like selling off Taito and Gangan) so they can get the stock UP, which means they can sell it on for a good profit.

High likelihood Square Enix seriously considers going private through an acquisition. It's the best way for management to keep their jobs. 3DIP has run this playbook in Japan multiple times, they know how to force Japanese companies to implement radical changes. You don't spend >$1B on this kind of play unless you're really confident you'll get a good outcome.

 

[Astray]

High likelihood Square Enix seriously considers going private through an acquisition. It's the best way for management to keep their jobs. 3DIP has run this playbook in Japan multiple times, they know how to force Japanese companies to implement radical changes. You don't spend >$1B on this kind of play unless you're really confident you'll get a good outcome.

The only players that might want to buy them are a platform player tbh, basically Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo.

I don't see why a private fund would want to buy them out, EA-style, they have basically no edge on the market whatsoever. When a small 30-head studio out of France can outdo you on what's supposedly your bread and butter games then it can only be described as dire.

They completely missed out on Gachas, completely missed out on GAAS apart from FF14 and have no presence in HD Games outside of JRPGs, their mobile division us also going to shit.

They are very fucked and I genuinely don't see Kiryu surviving his medium-term plan unless major changes are made.

 

[Baki]

The only players that might want to buy them are a platform player tbh, basically Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo.

I don't see why a private fund would want to buy them out, EA-style, they have basically no edge on the market whatsoever. When a small 30-head studio out of France can outdo you on what's supposedly your bread and butter games then it can only be described as dire.

They completely missed out on Gachas, completely missed out on GAAS apart from FF14 and have no presence in HD Games outside of JRPGs, their mobile division us also going to shit.

They are very fucked and I genuinely don't see Kiryu surviving his medium-term plan unless major changes are made.

Microsoft will not spend a single extra cent on gaming. Phil needs to prove that the $80B on gaming was not a mistake, especially in light of Microsoft CEO intense focus on AI, which is expensive as fuck.

 

[mayham2199]

Microsoft will not spend a single extra cent on gaming. Phil needs to prove that the $80B on gaming was not a mistake, especially in light of Microsoft CEO intense focus on AI, which is expensive as fuck.

Yea there's no way MS even considers purchasing Square right now. Sony I doubt wants to do either. Whoever buys them will continue releasing their games on PS anyways so no point. Unless Nintendo decides to do it which I wont completely rule out.

 

[Blade2.0]

I just want these monopolies to get split up. Sony is getting too big, Microsoft was already too big, all of em. Weren't we supposed to have antitrust laws?

 

[Baki]

Yea there's no way MS even considers purchasing Square right now. Sony I doubt wants to do either. Whoever buys them will continue releasing their games on PS anyways so no point. Unless Nintendo decides to do it which I wont completely rule out.

Sony wants IPs, it's why they spun off their finance division. Square Enix would also be good value for money, as it would cost only 3x what SE makes in revenue.

 

[mayham2199]

Sony wants IPs, it's why they spun off their finance division. Square Enix would also be good value for money, as it would cost only 3x what SE makes in revenue.

True but I don't think these are the IPs they want. They don't just want any IP for the sake of having it. Otherwise they would have gone after WB also which they stated they didn't want to and IMO WB has way more valuable IPs.

In all honesty it semes they've decided to just focus on Anime which is growing and has way more room for growth if they can start releasing good Anime games instead of the current trash that is released for every anime IP.

 

[Baki]

True but I don't think these are the IPs they want. They don't just want any IP for the sake of having it. Otherwise they would have gone after WB also which they stated they didn't want to and IMO WB has way more valuable IPs.

In all honesty it semes they've decided to just focus on Anime which is growing and has way more room for growth if they can start releasing good Anime games instead of the current trash that is released for every anime IP.

They didn't go after WBD because it was way too expensive and didn't want to compete in a regulatory environment that favors Trump's buddies, especially as a foreign company.

But the main reason was money. It would've cost $83B to win the deal, and it had to be in mostly cash. The interest rate on the debt needed to buy WB would have wiped out all of Sony's profits. They could pull out off, but it's one of those deals that could kill Sony, if it doesn't work out.

 

[DreamcastSkies]

Because of the PS1/PS2 Sony/Square legacy, if they had to be bought by someone, I'd be interested in it being Sony but that would likely pull Dragon Quest titles off Nintendo consoles which I don't think is wise. Also, even if they become a 1st party studio, I don't think S-E games will get the sales they deserve through PS only sales. Another concern about Sony buying them is I feel PlayStation became a very western brand. I wouldn't want S-E to be pulled in that kind of direction.

Edit: I'd love it if Nintendo purchased Armor Project/Enix/Dragon Quest (whatever they'd need to purchase to be the house DQ is under). I think that would be a great fit.

 

[Felessan]

All the talent Square Enix had jumped ship to Monolith Soft after Nintendo bought them and started expanding.

A lot, especially from FF11 team, moved to CyGames

Dude, they have done their research. A big title like Final Fantasy confined to a single console for a whole year with a limited user base isn't going to grow your franchise. Take a look at this slide.

Final Fantasy, a series that used to sell 10m units, was on the brink of turning into another niche JRPG from Japan, but fortunately they are changing the direction for the next FF title for simultaneous release.

This slide show nothing about selling power of franchise on particular platforms.
Like x360 had 80m installbase and JRPG still sold like shit there.

 

[Hyet]

S-E has so many issues and so badly run I don't think nobody wants to grab them based on IP alone.

Nintendo wouldn't do it, they don't fit culturally and they don't need more IP to leverage. They surely welcome them as part of their workforce but the deal is too big for them.

Sony doesn't seem interested in having any significant development allocation in Japan and would probably prefer to keep the arrangements they already have with S-E as they are much more cost efficient for them

Microsoft is bending over backwards like crazy to keep profits up and they overspent on Acti/Blizz and it isn0t exactly paying off just yet.

That leave asian conglomerates that would be more interested in poaching talent and developing copycat IP than buying. And S-E doesn't have that much talent to start with.

 

[grvg]

High likelihood Square Enix seriously considers going private through an acquisition. It's the best way for management to keep their jobs. 3DIP has run this playbook in Japan multiple times, they know how to force Japanese companies to implement radical changes. You don't spend >$1B on this kind of play unless you're really confident you'll get a good outcome.

You have no idea how hopeful I am for that timeline. Private is the way to go. If Square went private, maybe they could get away from the stonks go up syndrome that is currentl plaguing them.

 

[DreamcastSkies]

What does going private through an acquisition mean? They're no longer a publicly traded company? Isn't this risky to accomplish through acquisition? Aren't there more failures (the product taking a turn for the worse) of major acquisitions people can point to when it comes to big entertainment acquisitions? People feel like Id/Bethesda hasn't been as good since the MS acquisition. Same with Bungie under Sony. Star Wars under Disney.

I see people floating the idea of Capcom buying S-E in this thread. I'm mostly very happy with Capcom. If they could afford it, I'd prefer Capcom acquiring S-E over Sony even though Sony and S-E have great history together.

 

[Baki]

What does going private through an acquisition mean? They're no longer a publicly traded company? Isn't this risky to accomplish through acquisition? Aren't there more failures (the product taking a turn for the worse) of major acquisitions people can point to when it comes to big entertainment acquisitions? People feel like Id/Bethesda hasn't been as good since the MS acquisition. Same with Bungie under Sony. Star Wars under Disney.

I see people floating the idea of Capcom buying S-E in this thread. I'm mostly very happy with Capcom. If they could afford it, I'd prefer Capcom acquiring S-E over Sony even though Sony and S-E have great history together.

Fancy way of saying someone buys them. Either strategic buyer like Sony or private equity like KKR.

 

[Rentahamster]

What the hell, I'll buy 'em.