SQUARE ENIX HOLDINGS CO. … Market Cap , 6.971B
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Real talk, Square Enix should sell Eidos to Microsoft. It’ll be a good deal for both sides. Microsoft gets more talented studios that it can be a better steward for than Square Enix has been. Square Enix can get rid of a division that has provided them with very few financial successes due to questionable management.
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With that in mind, taking account the premium paid, the number of studios and the fact Square Enix has tons of holdings including in Manga, I’d say Square Europe goes for 1-1.5 billion.
If they sell, Sony could go for it and so could MS which could bid the price up to 2 lets say. Again, this is potentially an optimistic estimate, as Eidos went for $200 million give or take, but was nowhere near as staffed up. They also merged into SE whole. IO woulda made the package sweeter.
With this in mind, this acquisition comes with two major studios, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal. CD has 2 teams, Eidos 4. Additionally, this deal comes with 3 support studios (SE Montreal, SE London and Eidos Shanghai). It also comes with the IP Rights to Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Gex, Thief, Legacy of Kain, Life is Strange and Just Cause.
Is this worth the investment? Let’s break that down. Assuming a $2 billion dollar price point, I will assess this as 3 studios, Eidos, CD and the culmination of support. That is approximately 666,666,666.666 (talk about a cursed number) per studio. In contrast, Bethesda came in at 1,071,428,571.4285 per studio.
Taking into account the value of the IP offered by Bethesda over this deal (sorry folks. Tomb Raider is top shelf. Deus Ex is Dishonored tier. Life is Strange is decent. Just Cause ok. The rest is mostly MIA, but could be great under the right hands), and I think this is a fair price to pay for Square Enix Europe.
Will they sell? That’s another matter. They likely need approval from the shareholders. If Avengers is as big a flop as indicated and GOTG fairs no better (if it even sees the light of day) then probably no issues there.
Will MS want to buy? Eidos and Crystal Dynamics offer what only Ninja Theory, Coalition and Intiative do: PlayStation Studios rivaling third person games. This would be good for diversifying the portfolio, and they probably wouldn’t even have to take on publishing like with Bethesda. However, the IP is not earthshattering besides Tomb Raider, and it remains to be seen if they are worth the investment. Bethesda proper was struggling but the IP, acclaim and sales success/audience interest spoke for itself. Will Tomb Raider and Deus Ex drive enough people to Game Pass? I think so, but I aint the one making the final call or the one with 15,000 pages of analytics.
Yeah, Crystal dynamics and eidos would be managed much better by ms, I feel. Especially bid they come with their ips. I feel MS would let devs make “classic” feeling thief and deus ex games. And tomb raider would probably be rebooted. also, would be a great grab for the support studios. Imagine the initiative with the help of studios like we Montreal, aw london, and eidos shanghai.
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Just like Sega, Square Enix has the issues of “Japanese law”, “Public company” and “unwanted side businesses”. Taito is an Arcade company squeenix owns. 4600 employees is a lot, too.
Selling their European/American operations would signal a large retreat from gaming, I don’t think they want to get out even with one flop. They did allow the management buyout of IO interactive, but idk if that means they want to dump their larger and more important stuff too.
I mean, none of their endeavors with their western studios have been successful. They’ve literally never been happy with tomb raider sales.
I don’t think Sega would be a problem… Afterall, Sega was first an American company bought by the Japanese!
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Getting Deus Ex and giving it to Arkane is a fucking no brainer, some of the core members of Arkane have worked on the original Deus ex games and pioneered the immersive sim genre.
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People also forget, that for the longest time there were more than one Sega. If you look up the history of sega, it has been one big mess of mergers and splits heh. Just I am no legal expert and thus leave that to others here. They assure me that a purchase is possible, and it would help MS with their hole on their portfolio for family friendly and arcade like games.
I know one third person lover would call it “crap” around here, but MS has enough of such studios that could do amazing third person action adventure games where you sit down and have a story told to you.
Heck if you check how pretty Gears 5 is, anybody saying that studio is less talented than naughty dog is either a fanboy or has bad eyesight.
Although he indefinite delay of Yakuza in Japan, does seem like a dick move, and makes me question this possibility of a purchase. Although other era was allowed to be fanboys about it though, going on about “lol I understand with those 10 xboxes sold there”. No bans of course. Sorry I’m just really salty towards that place and how certain fanboys s are able to play their mods for fools.
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It is their whole worth? Then I would suggest Square Enix & Capcom for a total of less than 15bn. Good deal for such a wide catalog a great IPs.
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On top of that, there’s evidence Microsoft is seeking to make acquisitions in the country, though it hasn’t yet landed a deal with a big name there. Several Japan-based game developers, from small to big, said it had approached them about buying their businesses. They asked not to be identified as the talks were private, and declined to give details on how the discussions went.
When asked about potential purchases of Japanese companies, Jeremy Hinton, head of Xbox operations in Asia, said Microsoft is always open to discussions with creators that are a good fit. He said acquisitions are a possibility but there are no announcements to share at this time.
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But american companies can’t buy japanese companies 
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Oh, you got that memo too? 
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Love it
Talks being private would imply Microsoft looked at privately-owned companies. Come on Level 5!
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People love to misunderstand that law. The intention of that law was to keep China away from Japanese companies.
Square enix or bust
I’m down with SE Europe being sold, but Sega just seems like it’s in the perfect position to be acquired. I’m curious which private Japanese studios are being courted too of course. Also, love the fact that people on here understand that Japanese acquisitions by foreign entities happen more often than it’s implied elsewhere.
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Nothing so narrow, but everything that is an obstacles decreases liklelihood. Private companies are easier to buy than Public. Smaller companies are easier to buy than larger. Japanese companies are harder to buy than American or (most) European companies. None of this makes it impossible, but if you’re trying to predict who might be picked up you don’t just automatically go to the long shots.
Huge public Japanese companies are less likely than, say, small private Japanese companies. But look at the acquisition list up to this point - Bethesda was huge but American and Private, all others were small-to-medium and private. Clearly, small private American/Canadian/British companies have been their preferential targets. That does not obviously mean nothing from Japan is possible, but just keep it in mind when thinking about targets. Even a large Japanese company is ‘possible’, it’s just less likely.
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