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Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 264 posts

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#21
post #5

I don't know anything about the debt/risk etc.. around this, but $300M seems very, very low for 3 studios with lots of IP.

They have been mismanaged badly and have lost LOTS of money on recent flops. I'll bet the new owners intend to completely write-off substantial chunks of the in-progress work and start clean.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#23
post #18

>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…

"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#24
post #18

>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…

They need to fire their loser NFT-deluded president and let YoshiP run the company.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#25
post #10

I'd be interesting to see the full list of IP they've sold. The article only gives three examples, one game I've never heard of, one recycled shooter from the 2000s and then there is Tomb raider - a series with twenty instalments, already milked to dust for pre-sequels, squeals and reboots more times then seems fair. Clearly someone thinks they can squeeze a few more dollars out of people here but personally im not s…

The three Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games sold 38 million units, so probably something like a billion in revenue. Plus whatever value in Film/TV income, plus some decent mobile games. They can probably recoup the cost with effective management of Tomb Raider, and then the other IP is where they can mine for some value and make the deal look good. They got two great AAA studios with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal. One Tomb Raider game + one Deus Ex/Thief/Legacy of Kain Reboot + 50 game back catalog remaster/re-release is a solid strategy.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#26

Are they preparing for getting acquired by Sony or what?

At current TSE prices it'd cost Sony at least 5% of their entire market cap to acquire SE so I think we'd hear a bit more about it if something like that were in the works. A trillion yen is nothing to sneeze at.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#28
post #23
post #18

>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…

"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.

I think that's just pandering. The markets expect to hear this line and will punish the stocks of tech companies that don't show some kind of investments into this kind of stuff.

They'll make some NFT-based card game with advanced self-learning AI opponents just to tick all the right boxes.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#29

Hopefully a new Deus Ex game might be a possibility again.

The thing about Deus Ex is that there's nothing particularly special about the "IP". Anybody could make a near-future cyberpunk conspiracy-oriented immersive sim, and call it whatever.

The modern Deus Ex games were really average, and (as detailed in the recent hbomberguy video) failed to grasp the key principles of level design that are required to make games like that work.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#30
post #18

>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…

In the noclip documentary on FFXIV a few years back, Yoshida mentioned that he was considering leaving Square-Enix to make his own games. FFXIV is really good, but Yoshida is the soul of that game. If he left, that would be devastating.

If you haven't seen the noclip documentary, you should. It's on YouTube.

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