Earlier this week Square Enixone of the best-known video game developers in Japan, surprised us with the surprise announcement of the sale of three of its main studios in the West (Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal) and the reinvestment in the development of Blockchain and technologies on the cloud.
However, beyond a possible exit from the gaming market in the West or a major restructuring of its main franchises, rumors and speculation have begun to accumulate around the possibility that this movement is more focused on the search for an increase. of value at the company level, looking to be acquired by another larger company or group. Among many others, comments such as those of Jeff Grubb (the journalist from Venture Beat, not his homonymous writer from Drangonlance) stand out, who once again puts the focus on one of the great unknowns of this course, noting that Sony could be the one to ultimately acquire the studio.
Anyway, now you know as much as I do. I do believe that Square Enix is trying to best position itself for acquisition. But that doesn’t mean anything. These deals can fall through or get completely flipped on their head. That happens all the time.
— Jeff Grubb (@JeffGrubb) May 3, 2022
In fact, a job posting recently published by the Japanese tech giant suggests that the company is currently looking for «inorganic growth opportunities through acquisitions, investments or temporary strategic partnerships«.
Something we can’t help but relate to the strategy of PlayStation Studios in recent monthswhich in addition to greatly reinforcing its strategy towards the development of free-to-play games or titles under the service model, has been carrying out a lot of studio acquisitionswith many of these being some companies that they have already been working closely with for years, such as Bluepoint, Housemarque or Bungie.
And it is that although the departure of franchises such as Lara Croft may represent a significant loss for Square Enix, it is worth resting that they still have other licenses like Final Fantasy, which enjoys tremendous popularity thanks to the MMO Final Fantasy XIV and is already preparing the exclusive arrival on PS5 of Final Fantasy XVI; in addition to new IPs like Forspoken, or the recently announced Kingdom Hearts IV. A combination of AAA franchises that, together with the new addition of products and services such as NFTs or cloud services, continue to make the developer a really interesting ally.
