Now that Square has given away their western studios, Square might as well be a Sony exclusive publisher. I don’t understand why Sony would really be interested in acquiring them other than to make sure no one else does. And Square seems kind of like an internal dumpster fire outside of their ocasional good FF game and FF14. Anyways, good luck to them.
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Square being sold to Sony would be awful for Nintendo. Also it could hurt Japanese market alot since Square AA titles on Nintendo sell well
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I guess that’s their primary objective in buying Square, taking Japan back.
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How? Japan love Portable systems. Nintendo will still reign but it would take away a huge chunk of support and sales away from them
And I agree with most people on here. MS won’t be effected too much though I suspect games like Kingdom Hearts would have a hard time being PS5 exclusive.
Sony might have to release most SE games on PC day 1 if they want to make back money or there could be contracts in place they still make Nintendo games.
If MS bought out SE…you can bet your ass they’d still support Nintendo when they make tons of money in Japan.
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It wouldn’t help, Square Enix games on switch are a modest draw in Japan. The ratio that Switch is outselling PS5 is enormous and SE already has a whole host of “effectively” PS exclusive content (technically on Xbox for some but thats irrelevant to the Japanese market). Going from 80% effectively PS exclusive to 100% is not going to move the needle.
If they bought Square the Japanese market impacts would be a secondary or ternary concern - they would be doing so as part of an overall profit and global impact move.
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Eh, if there’s money to be made, they still might let SE release Switch games.
That’s if any of these rumors are true.
Team Asano games literally will not survive as PS exclusives so I hope they can retain platform freedom. Triangle Strategy would not have sold even close to over a million units as a PS exclusive. Probably more like 500k, so Sony would axe them, so I hope they could get out of there somehow. At least Dragon Quest will retain that freedom because of the unique circumstances of it’s IP ownership.
Besides those I don’t care. So much better JRPGs out there than Final Fantasy nowadays.
Not that these journalists and “insiders” actually know anything anyway.
I mean they’re a big publisher for Nintendo and have lots of partnerships that have grown the popularity of their main IP.
Square also doesn’t have full say over where the second largest IP they own goes with Dragon Quest. There are three separate parties that all have a say in what platforms the game goes to and the others are huge Nintendo supporters. To be honest it could lead to Sony deciding to shelve that IP.
As I’ve mentioned a couple other times, Sony just spurned the Japanese market and this would be a big admission they screwed up and they may not get the support from Japan that they’d hope for.
I just have a hard time seeing where Sony would feel they’re worth acquiring for their business.
They were burning bridges there and completely neglecting the market over the last 5 years and now they suddenly want it back? That sounds like horrendously piss poor management to me.
Also it will not work.
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I know several Nintendo players that would abandon Sony if they bought SE and went full exclusive. The thing is, SE games on Switch are HUGE, more so than PS4/5. So to give up that would be a totally brain dead move by Square. As in, totally possible because they don’t know what they are doing.
Losing SE to Sony a year ago would have been horrible for xbox players. Now? Well, all the actual good stuff has already gone with the previous deal. All that’s left are a few JRPGs, and while it would hurt losing final fantasy, lets be honest, Sony cocked that up for everybody already so its not exactly a huge surprise.
This is one of those deals that wouldn’t hurt me, but would be a poor one “overall”. It wouldn’t make sense for Nintendo fans, but it doesn’t actually matter to xbox ones, IMO.
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I see a lot of hand waving over Sony potentially buying SE. I think it’s a big deal, regardless of current output and your opinion of the state of SE. Any time a major publisher is purchased and there’s a large chance more games become exclusive to specific platforms, the worse it is for gamers.
It was a bigger deal a few weeks ago than it is now. NOW, you lose FF (already pretty much exclusive), Dragon Quest (Big on nintendo), Forspoken (Lets not go there), Babylon’s Fall (lol), The mana series (already pretty dead) and Kingdom Hearts (Very niche).
But before the last deal? You would lose Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Guardians etc, all bigger hitters that have huge advantage being multi already.
Is it shit? Yes. But it could have been MORE shit.
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Apparently DQ and KH aren’t exactly Square’s property and they can remain multiplatform even if Sony owned SE and wanted full exclusivity.
In that case, its a daft deal. SE pretty much ride the Sony train anyway so Sony would be paying for… Nothing? No real change? I mean sure they would get the extra money from sales, but I dont see it as worth while to them. Such a weird position.
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Well those mentioned factods it really looks like a weird acquisition. Aside FF14 revenue and FF, Square Enix really won’t bring much to Sony. But having a solid FF14 MMO under you control maybe worth it. Also if Sony commits to release Nintendo Switch games too…Also Square Enix might provide a good back catalog.
Again they’d get the Team Asano games, that would flop as PlayStation exclusives.
Those all launch as Switch exclusives for a reason… It’s by far where they would sell best. Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default 2, Triangle Strategy, Live a Live Remake… All of these would bomb as PS exclusives
Those get made because they’re pretty low budget but get over a million sales every time (will not happen on PS. Not even close.) Square even recently said they are going to ramp up production of these.
And to show how little Sony cares for them, Octopath Traveler is exclusively not on Playstation.
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I do understand it wouldn’t help them, but it doesn’t mean they’d think otherwise.
They bought Bungie after all… I can see them getting Square thinking it’ll help them in Japan.
I only hand wave it because if they are shopping for publishers, if it’s not SE then it’s someone else. I’d much rather lose SE than anyone else because they already provide negligible support to Xbox.
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But they bought Bungie for certain reasons. They arguably had no choice at that moment.
Well Sony’s acquisitions are in general worse for gamers but whatever. Considering how “many” games Square Enix releases on Xbox, I am not sure if Xbox won’t really lose much (it will of course make some damage - losing JRPGS altogether - but not lethal).
No choice about what?
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