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Square Enix Says It's Not For Sale Amid Acquisition Reports

The company also said it has not received any offers.

By Gabe Gurwin on April 16, 2021 at 5:45AM PDT

Despite a recent Bloomberg Japan report that claims companies are interested in acquiring Square Enix, the publisher is not pursuing such a deal. That's according to Square Enix itself, which has responded to the report to say it has not received any acquisition offers.

"Bloomberg has reported today that there is interest from several buyers to acquire Square Enix," the company said. "However, this report is not based on any announcement by Square Enix Holdings Co. Ltd. We do not consider selling off the company or any of its businesses, nor have we received any offer from any third party to acquire the company or any part of its business."

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The Bloomberg story didn't mention which companies were interested in purchasing Square Enix. And although Square Enix's statement states that no offers have been made, it doesn't rule out the possibility that companies are indeed interested in buying the company.

Buying such a large company would require a significant investment, which certainly limits any potential buyers if Square Enix did show interest. In addition to its well-known role-playing games like Final Fantasy, Square Enix also owns Tomb Raider, Drakengard and Nier, Life is Strange, and classic shooter series from its subsidiary company Taito. Previously, it also owned Hitman, but IO Interactive spun off to become independent several years ago and took the rights with it.

Square Enix's next game, Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139.., is due to release on April 23 for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. Nier Automata, which released back in 2017, was a surprise commercial hit for the company and also helped save developer Platinum Games.

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Something is wrong at SE. They released 2 failed live-service games in less than 1 year: Avengers & Outriders. Maybe they should stick to single player games.

Upvote • 4 years ago

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@lazycomplife:

I don’t think Outrider’s is dead yet. Destiny has managed to turn their ship around and launch Destiny (and even launch Destiny 2) were in far worse shape than Outriders is right now.

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Edited By lazycomplife

@comments123: Destiny had the advantage of being one of the first live service games of the modern era and therefore had a lot of people playing it regardless of the quality. The live service bandwagon has created an oversaturation of live service games and most of them fail and people go back to the ones they've already been playing a long time (such as destiny/fortnite).

The live service bandwagon reminds me of the mmorpg bandwagon from around 15 years ago. Everyone was trying to release mmorpgs to replicate WoW's success but almost all of those mmorpgs failed quickly and people went back to playing WoW. Seems to be a similar trend with live-service games.

2 • 4 years ago

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deactivated-64efdf49333c4

@lazycomplife: It had nothing to do with being "live service". It was the first non-Halo game from a storied developer in Bungie, and they hyped the game into the stratosphere. We didn't even realize it would be GaaS'y for the longest time.

Modern live-service is different from the old MMOs which usually survived on subs and that's it. Modern games charge for EVERYTHING. It's a far more viable model than just subs, so it's a far more resilient one than straight subs. It's why so many MMOs went F2P and managed to survive.

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Edited By lazycomplife

@Barighm: I didn't say Destiny succeeded BECAUSE it was a live service, I said it succeeded AS a live service. Yes it being created by bungie and the astronomical hype helped it a lot. Pretend for a minute that destiny didn't exist. If destiny was released with a different name today by EA with the exact same code, it would fail like all the other live-service games being churned out. That's what anthem was, that's what avengers was, and that's what outriders is.

I also didn't say mmorpgs and live service games are the same thing. I said that the trends in AAA gaming companies are similar for both styles of games. In the past, they saw the success of WoW and tried to copy it, and now they see the success of Fortnite and try to copy it.

I don't think every live-service game released today is doomed to fail, but for one to succeed they need to do significant bug testing and make sure the game is polished and the microtransactions are fairly priced. Apex succeeded because it was received well when it launched. Games that are received poorly at launch rarely fix their reputation.

Upvote • 4 years ago

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@lazycomplife: Outriders is definitely not a "failed" live-service game. Not yet at least. When it can climb the ranks in active players on Steam alone (beating out Borderlands 2 and 3's all-time highs), it is a successful game. Have the first two weeks numbers lowered since then? Sure, just like every other game that releases.

Was it launched with a pretty severe inventory bug? Sure. But it's still a good game. It might have a difficult endgame for the average player but if you want to commit to getting gud, then you'll have no problem spending the time to leveling your world tier and expedition tiers to get that sweet sweet lvl 45 legendary gear.

2 • 4 years ago

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Edited By lazycomplife

@zerojuice: I distinctly remember people saying that about Avengers right after launch "it's not a failed game", but time proved otherwise. A heavily-advertised game like Avengers or Outriders will always sell a lot of copies at launch because gamers are easy to advertise to. Outriders has even worse reviews than Avengers did at launch on steam.

Live-service games are released with the promise of regular content updates, but most of the time they're simply AAA early access games. People are fed up with paying $60+ for early access games. If a live-service game doesn't have a good launch, playerbase is likely to abandon it quickly and the reputation of the game is almost always forever-ruined. This leads to the devs investing less money into the failed game which only guarantees that the promise of regular content updates is broken. This results in fewer players, which results in fewer updates, etc until the game is dead.

If greedy devs want to release live-service games to get recurring revenue, the game better be good and well-tested at launch, otherwise it's going to go just like Anthem, Avengers, and now Outriders.

2 • 4 years ago

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Edited By deactivated-64efdf49333c4

@lazycomplife: Outriders is not a "failed" game. The past tense implies proven fact, which, in this case, is not correct. Outriders hasn't even been out long enough to be called a success or a failure (but it's pretty safe to say it's a success). Same with Avengers, actually (it's a failing game since it's still generating losses last I heard, but it's still in operation, so it hasn't failed yet). You can say it's failing, and still be wrong, but at least you'd then be grammatically correct.

What you're actually saying is you don't like the games. You can say it's a bad game because of all of its issues, but saying it's a failure will confuse people, whether or not that claim makes sense to you. Remember, folks, "I don't like it" is not an argument.

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@Barighm: People were saying avengers was a success at launch too even though the reviews were terrible. Both avengers and outriders have sold a lot of copies, but I doubt the games will have long lifespans due to all the things I already mentioned. Games that are received poorly rarely get fixed to the point that it changes everyone's opinion of the game. FFXIV and No Man's Sky were able to do it, but that isn't normal. Most companies abandon games that are received poorly.

A "failure" is a lack of success, and neither of these games are succeeding at satisfying fans. That is obvious by the review scores and general sentiment among players. You can wait 6 months before calling outriders a failure, but I'll go ahead and call it now like I did with avengers 2 weeks after launch. It's not difficult to notice the trends because it's happened so many times already. AAA game developers make early access games for $60 then wonder why nobody is satisfied and they give up on the game. It's like they are putting their hand on a burner after they already burned their hand on the same burner. Pretty dumb.

Upvote • 4 years ago

TyrantValvatorez

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TyrantValvatorez

Maybe the vulture capitalists should speculate about dying companies(like Konami) being bought out instead of successful ones.

2 • 4 years ago

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Edited By deactivated-64efdf49333c4

@tyrantvalvatorez: Konami isn't dying. They actually posted what they claim to be their largest profit growth ever: https://gamerant.com/konami-record-profits-gaming-division/

Konami is actually worth more than Bethesda, with a net worth of $5 bil and a $8 mil market cap.

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Edited By lazycomplife

@Barighm: Konami as a decent game company is dead. Their profits are from making pachinko machines and mobile games.

The article you linked mentions the main problem with Konami: "One of the main reasons why there are many who want other companies to acquire Konami's IPs, primarily ones like Metal Gear, Silent Hill, and Castlevania, is because Konami itself isn't really doing anything with them at the moment."

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Edited By Pyrosa

Did they release that info as a series of 25 menu clicks with 14 minutes of unskippable cutscenes?

Or was it sent over by an obligatory cutesey animal/robot/hover-blob sidekick?

Upvote • 4 years ago

Use your keyboard!

ESC

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