A few days after selling a handful of studios and licenses, including Tomb Raider, Square Enix is already looking to the future. And that will go through the purchase of new foals and the creation of new studios.
Barely rid of its Western studios, Square Enix wants to expand its family. A week after selling Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and other licenses to Embracer Group, the Japanese publisher wants to reshape its video game portfolio.
Square Enix will create and buy new studios
A medium-term strategy that the Japanese firm wishes to accelerate through the creation of new studios, the acquisition of others and mergers. The objective would then be to create new solid licenses and boost its development capacities. Why did you resell strong licenses then? Unofficially, the failure of Marvel’s Avengers and the disappointing sales of Marvel’s Guardians of Galaxy have a lot to do with it.
For its part, Square Enix had announced that its decision was motivated by its desire to invest in AI, the Cloud and the blockchain (NFT, crypto etc.). However, the speech is not the same in its document intended for the investors. The publisher claims that:
The objective behind the sale of a selection of Western studios and their licenses is to achieve sustainable growth by selecting and better concentrating the company’s resources. This will make it possible to better organize the publishing of foreign games with the Tokyo headquarters and to transform the group’s business portfolio.
The end of the rumors of the takeover by Sony?
Although Square Enix has sold more than 50 licenses for 300 million dollars, the publisher has kept its hands on a few Western franchises: Life is Strange, Just Cause and Outriders. However, it will be the Square Enix External Studios and Square Enix Collective branches that will take care of Western games.
With such declarations, the Japanese firm has more or less silenced the rumors of a takeover by Sony which have been surfing the net for long weeks. A strengthened partnership between the two Japanese giants nevertheless still seems likely. Remember that it was originally a question of a closer relationship, with PS5 exclusives on Final Fantasy games at stake. The license will also soon be in the spotlight with announcements around its 35and anniversary. Maybe we will finally get news of FF7 Remake 2 in addition to Final Fantasy 16?
