Sony Dumps Square Enix
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: May 4, 2014 08:47 JST
- Tags: Announcements, Business, Final Fantasy, Social Games, Sony, Square Enix
Sony has announced it is dumping its entire 8.2% stake in Square Enix, although Sony maintains it is merely because it is strapped for cash and has nothing to do with Square Enix’s outstanding performance in recent years.
Sony Computer Entertainment’s 8.2% stake in Square Enix Holdings, totalling 9.52 million shares, is being liquidated for 4.8 billion yen.
Sony’s holdings originate from 2001 when difficulties experienced by the original Square led to it obtaining a substantial stake, which it maintained in the years to follow for “investment” and “management support” purposes.
Sony says the sale will not have any bearing on Square Enix software appearing on its platforms, not that non-social platforms seem to be of much interest to Square Enix of late.
It also maintains the sale is due to its own ongoing restructuring and not the performance of Square Enix – which has barely escaped rock bottom after the promising its own massive restructuring effort of continuing its reinvention as a mobile phone developer.
Square Enix’s latest RPG masterpiece – for the iPhone, of course:
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Sankakucomplex.... you're really slow these days O_o
Fapping to much hentai lately?
It is all about page views, noting matter.
Pretty much all news related media nowadays.
Square Enix's problems seem to come from the fact they tend to over develop some of their final fantasy titles which lead to long and costly development times. Look at how much material they admitted they had cut from FF13, some of which was used for further games in the series. They seem unable to have a smooth development planned out for recently FF titles, they always seem to hit a wall. Look at how long FF15 has been in development for lol.
I love Final Fantasy games as much as the next person but jesus Christ they need some planning in place during the development process, to keep costs down.
Doesn't matter how long they take, all the recent ones have just been terribad. The fact that a 13-year-old remaster outsold lightning returns speaks volumes.
True to an though cranking out shovelware social games is not going to save them either.
They seem to be keen on making bad decissions.
They should just make a proper re-make of FF7. That's all it'll take to bring back the profits...
>remake westerner's first JRPG
>that'll save the [Japanese] company
Right, because JPRGs are created and sold with westerners in mind. Listen kid, just because you discovered the JRPG genre on PS1 and have fond memories on it does not mean everyone else has. Especially when JRPG titles are created for JAPANESE. And accepted by the JAPANESE people long before you plebeians knew of their existence.
Well that's too bad. What a big market they're missing!
Maybe you wouldn't sound retarded if those games popular with westerners weren't also successful in Japan while the one unsuccessful in the west were unsuccessful in Japan.
You overestimate the market for this. Most of the oldfags/fans are perfectly fine with FFVII and don't want Squeenix as it is now to ruin it. Or their good memories of it. And the newfags/fans just don't care.
They shouldn't do that with their present workforce that is clearly not very talented... I mean even their new iphone game covered in the article just looks like a phantasy star ripoff.
NO! None of that! Shame one you!
Square Enix shouldn't even be called a video game company any more. They're doing crap like publishing manga and making cellphone software, they're just another generic mass media company now.
I wish they could just go bankrupt and disappear so they can't continue to sully the names that so much of my childhood was built around.
Nah, even if they games isnt really top teir these days they are decent enough. Sure lightning returns wasnt my cup of tea AT ALL but I quite liked FF13 but I wish they went back more old school.
Still they made Bravery Default and that is quite good and similar to old school FF games.
Wasn't this exactly what oldfags/fans of SquareSoft said back in the days about FFVII? But somehow a new generation of retards/fans loved the shit out of it and everything was fine. Even though they called a glorified version of a novel a game, which I still find very odd.
Turns out that the retards/fans from then are the oldfags/fans from now. History repeats itself.
Someone doesn't know how large japanese companies work here.
I dont, please explain? Seriously im not being witty or anything, how does Japanese business work.
A lot of the big companies are basically conglomerates. Meaning they have dozens of companies under 1 parent company and these companies are not related in terms of types of business they perform.
Example: mitsui - makes cars under Mitsubishi, does banking under sumotomo-mitsui, does shipping under Mitsu-Osaka lines (MOL). They also build ships and plastics and have all sorts of other companies doing unrelated business under the mitsui name.
The American equivalent would be warren buffet's Berkshire Hathaway.
Can we just get back to masturbating to animated children so we don't go off on our nieces again?
Or our imoutos.
more importantly, someone isn't aware that Square (note, i didn't even mention Enix) has been a "generic mass media company" for a long time...
its hardly something they've become "now".
just goes to show how little people understand about the idols of their childhood.
Nobody gives a toss about your childhood.
Isnt this about 3-4 WEEKS old? Whats happening sankaku? and, just so you know, the whole sale made Sony about 150 million USD. the 4.8 billion yen was proffit alone....3 weeks old info and wrong info about...something is going crazy sankaku
You're looking for news here... that's the issue. This is a propaganda machine of headline generation and research that even makes wikipedia look like it's a good one-stop source.
But what about the boobs!?! Think of the boobs!!!
Doesn't matter, we all know they are doom anyway...
They are? Fuck, call the avengers! Doom is in there!! No wonder they've been failing...
I only know that square enix makes the whole FinalFantasies series, but isn't that also one of their biggest downfalls? I mean, to me it feels like they literally milked everything there was to milk (or they lacked the creativity to expand the world of FF) and they didn't have any decent backup projects.
tl;dr the management of Square Enix relied too much on the succes the FF series generated and failed to look for alternative series they could have developped.
No no no, they're looked for alternatives... They just failed to invest the same amount of resources into them.
About damn time.
Why don't they just start rehashing our favorite old games like Chrono and make bajillions? I'd flip my shit for a Chrono sequel.
Sony? Strapped for cash? Oooookaaaaay. And they just won a huge settlement against Samsung too.
Maybe this will be the wake up call for them (SE). Heads should fucking roll and I am looking at the shit stain who kept pushing Lightning. Get rid of them, cut them out, they are fucking cancer.
Then drop your terrible idea of going to social media games. There is no saving the company if you continue on this path.
Seems like the Japanese model of business is completely reliant on mindless droning consumerism. No wonder they are so concerned with declining birth rates...
Sony are doing alright, their loss's if we use the 2013 stats. Literally have been covered in their profits. (Profit before taxes covers it and profit after taxes cover the latest 200 million loss). So unless they had huge loss in the last fiscal year, they fine. They need 25 billion $ for operating expenses. So they need like a huge catastrophic size loss.
FF7 pretty much turned PS into gold when it was a shittier system compare to Saturn. Guess the marriage is finally over after 17 years.
So much for Sony saving their bacon it seems Square Enix will soon join the ranks of defunct companies.
Funny thing is Char, Dragon Quest costs significantly less to make, and sells more than Final Fantasy in Japan, on average at least 3-5 million per game(Except the flop online game). They could in theory drop Final Fantasy and save a shit ton in dev costs but the overseas fans would rage.
gamer business logic
they wouldn't MAKE any money either.
ignoring whether the XIII trilogy specifically made money or not, you have to release products to sell products.
and you need to sell products to make any revenue.
if you release nothing, yes you save the money you would have spent producing that product, but you also sell nothing and make no money.
"but if they didn't spend any money to make the game they don't need to make as much anyway!"
once again, fine case of gamer business knowledge = the idea that making games is the only thing that money is spent on.
they'd still have to pay salaries, pay costs associated with facilities, etc etc etc.
the world doesn't stop costing money just because you stopped doing anything.
I blame the Final Fantasy XIII series 100%
The series made money. So that has not basis in logic.
sony are strapped for cash? or is really because of this?
"Square Enix has announced its new focus will be social games"
Sony is down something like 200m usd this quarter thanks to it's computer products doing poorly.
One of you is talking about Square and the other about Sony... At least try to stay on the same page.
Are you naturally this retarded? He explained why Sony sold off some of their investments, which is because they were financially in the red and needed to recover their losses.
Stop making mobile games, Square Enix. You should create the Remaster of Chrono Cross already, for pete's sake.
Cross was a GREAT game.
Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross HD remake... I'd buy that in a heartbeat.
So SE, in total, is worth about $570 million in US Dollars.
That's pathetic. I wonder who's in worse shape, SE or Capcom?
not really, what's pathetic is how many people make comments like yours without any real knowledge of the market.
news flash = Square-Enix was NEVER as big as i suspect a lot of foreign fans think they were/are. i can pretty much guarantee they were never as big as i suspect you think they were.
S-E was NEVER the biggest dog in the yard in Japan, or even a serious rival for being one of the big dogs.
they are a large 3rd party developer that's done a little publishing and merchandising on the side. and that's all there have ever been.
they're Naughty Dog, or any big successful developer now.
but like Naughty DOg or any big developer, their success and size is nothing compared to the big publishers.
S-E was never one of the big publishers.
they published their own shit. they published a couple RPGs from smaller devs. but thats about it.
they were never anything close to the likes of Nintendo or Namco or (to answer your question) Capcom.
those guys do a lot more publishing, a lot more merchandising, and in general just a lot more business than Square-Enix ever did.
so its not that pathetic or surprising. its just a reality that a lot of people are seemingly completely ignorant about.
SE is juste a small part of a bigger company.
They make most of their money inside japan anyway, through domestic game market, publishing, and game centers (through both Taito and their custom collection game machines).