It sold more on PS4 (343k, it's in the link I posted), but that won't keep selling games forever, the biggest issues it that the PS5 is not replacing the PS4, which keeps shrinking. That's why we can see entire weeks where the Switch sweeps the top 30/30, with no PS4 or PS5 game selling over 1,500 in those. I think FF can sell 300k or 350k in Japan once it's released, that'd be "fine" enough, but a far cry from previous entries. That is the issue Sony faces in Japan and that is doing nothing to fix and has done nothing to fix since it launched while the PS4 slowly wastes away. That's how we can know that, even if Sony cares for the AAA games they can get from Japan, they don't care much for it's market.
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Eidos Montreal founder: "I heard rumours that Sony said they're really interested in [acquiring] Square Enix Tokyo, but not the rest."
- Thread starter brokenswiftie
- Start date
That's my point. In the past they only bought studios who worked for them for over a decade on a few big projects.
Now they buy studios like Haven, Firesprite, Nixxes or Bungie. Times and strategies change.
An acquisition like this wouldn't even be about Japan's console market.
It would be for I.P. Not just in games but anime or potential anime licenses as Sony expands their anime distribution and creation capabilities.
Then there is shows and movies that can be spun from said I.Ps like Final Fantasy. Toys, Merchandise. FF14's GAAS capabilities. Mobile AA games for PS Mobile. AA games for to fill the sub model. PC expansion plans, etc...
Tons of reason to acquire and grow Square Enix. Way more reasons then "Sony wants a footprint in Japan's console market".
It would be for I.P. Not just in games but anime or potential anime licenses as Sony expands their anime distribution and creation capabilities.
Then there is shows and movies that can be spun from said I.Ps like Final Fantasy. Toys, Merchandise. FF14's GAAS capabilities. Mobile AA games for PS Mobile. AA games for to fill the sub model. PC expansion plans, etc...
Tons of reason to acquire and grow Square Enix. Way more reasons then "Sony wants a footprint in Japan's console market".
They probably dont "need to be bought". Same with Bethesda. They've got typical looking AAA games as well. That doesn't mean that they aren't seeing additional stability within MS that they value.
Ok but that still isn't Bethesda/Activsion-levels of third party disruptions.
Sony will literally own Fullmetal Alchemist which js a big deal.
DragonQuest would be exclusive...
To CrunchyRoll as an anime like Adventure of Dai.
Yeah full circle for FMA from having the anime publishing licenses with AniPlex to actually owning the I.P.
I was talking about acquiring big studios / developers. Not only about huge publishers like Activisions-Blizzard.
And how strategies change. Something that worked last gen might not be enough for current gen or later.
Although I can never imagine Square Enix Tokyo ever even slightly abandoning Sony, you have to look at the amount of SE games on Game Pass and games coming to Xbox
You have to imagine there is a lot of money going from Xbox to SE and that would make Sony nervous
You have to imagine there is a lot of money going from Xbox to SE and that would make Sony nervous
If anything if there is some truth to this then it wouldn't be only SIE but Sony Music and Sony Pictures eyeing them as well and likely restructuring some non gaming things under their divisions.
Cause it wouldn't have been just the IPs but the huge amount of overhead from getting Eidos (people + infrastructure). Sony might not want all that. It could also be because Sony would rather deal with the Japan studios side of things and not Western studios (since it has those already). Then also Sony might not see value in those IPs.
Also if post Square (if that even happens) Sony wants to acquire another pub like Capcom, would it be easier if Sony had not only Square Japan but also Square's western studios?
I don't think so, it leaves space for growth if you just go for what you want specifically.
Of course they're interested, like many other companies, I'm sure. SquareEnix has numerous successful IPs. But would Sony do it? I'd say not in the foreseeable future. Bungie just blew a 3.7 billion hole out of their acquisition funds.
For sure. Square would be extremely useful across all their divisions. It would further increase their stranglehold on anime as well. So yes, if this was to happen, it wouldn't be just from a game perspective but everything, which is why one of the reasons why I think it is likely. Sony as a whole is more likely to fork over billions upon billions of dollars if it benefits multiple divisions.
Actually they still do report the breakdown for Digital Entertainment, into HD games, MMO and Mobile games. At least back in Feb 2022.
https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/pdf/22q3outline.pdf
Square Enix raises forecasts thanks to increased MMO revenues
At a glance:In its latest financial results, Square Enix has reported increases in sales across all divisions, with par…
www.gamesindustry.biz
Unless you are talking about even more detailed breakdowns?
Well you're right it is there in the last few, I remember reading one of the reports a year or two ago where they didn't separate it out anymore. Not sure if that was a one off or a different document or if they brought it back.
Happening or not that would be obvious either way. Also as rumors go he might even have seen it appearing in here on Twitter.
They might have brought it back. Or that they don't always present the data separately in every report.
Oh wait I figured it out!
They used to give charts like this:
Where they showed not just total revenue for HD Games (which they didn't stop showing) but they also separated operating income for HD games. Since about 2020 (I forget which quarter was the final detailed one) they only show the operating income / net income for the combined Digital Entertainment segment as a whole (which includes MMOs and mobile and other).
So you now see revenue for HD games, but not profits. You used to get both.
The terms can be confusing so I hope that's not too hard to follow what I mean.
Huh? Not really Fullmetal Alchemist copyright is under both Hiromu Arakawa and Square Enix, Sony would just own the share that Square Enix has, and the manga's been over for over a decade, and its already got an anime that was accurate to the manga.
User Banned (1 Day): Platform Warring
This would be bad news for all gamers as games would be tied to Sony consoles. At least when Microsoft buys them we still get PC games.
There's no reason to believe Sony will limit SE games on only PS hardware. Everything Sony's done these past few years says the opposite, in fact. Sony wants to increase their revenue streams, not limit it. At worst, I can see a 1-2 year console exclusive period for big AAA titles like Final Fantasy before it gets a PC release.
Why would Sony want to release a DQ or FF game on a Nintendo system since they'll be giving more hardware and software sales to there competition. Sony would rather see console sales on there systems tie into JRPGs than Nintendo or MS. PC's, would be the only avenue that Sony would tolerate more sales
Well it wouldn't be bad for PS gamers which would probably be Sony's top priority
Look at which country and system Dragon Quest sells the most at.
I'd would hilarious if Sony Music bought them and just kept them at arms length from SIE like they do with their side of gaming😅
Why do people keep saying this when Sony has and will put their best selling exclusives on PC? What reason could they have to not do the same with SE's games? I mean they even have Nixxes who used to port SE games.
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They aren't buying a publisher to continue releasing games on Nintendo hardware. People are crazy for thinking that. This reminds me of the exact arguments people had for like Elder Scrolls. "Oh Skyrim is on everything and sells well everywhere, so Elder Scrolls 6 will be the same." Nah, if this is true, Dragon Quest will only be on playstation and PC, it is all but a guarantee. Sony isn't spending that mch money just because, they want to consolidate their position and build on what they have with their ecosystem.
I mean, I was talking about AAA SE releases like FF16 in that post. Those games are games SE hadn't released on Nintendo hardware for a long while. That's not likely to change whether Sony buys SE or not. My point is, I think Sony, if they buy SE, will have every intention of releasing AAA SE games on the PC. So I don't understand why some think Sony will do a complete 180 on their business strategy in regards to SE. Seems to just be fearmongering.
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To be fair they were technically "forced" to do it by MLB BUT this does mean that they don't have an actual problem with allowing their exclusives to be made for other platforms on a case-by-case basis. If push came to shove, I could see SIE playing ball with DQ on the Switch among other titles. At the end of the day, all the money goes to Sony 🤷♂️
Exactly. Everything Sony's done these past few years tells us they're embracing the PC platform more and more. I mean, they bought a whole development house, Nixxes, just to work on porting their titles to the PC!!! There's no reason to believe this won't continue if Sony buys SE.
You could say that about any game though. I am sure if Sony released God of War on xbox it would go buck wild sales wise. There is a number of reasons sony will be buying Square, but one of them will be to increase their presence in Japan but not only that, increase the overall perception of Japanese games worldwide. It doesn't really help them long term to continue releasing software on Switch. Dragon Quest is hugely popular in Japan; even if only say a third of fans got a playstation to play it, that is a huge surge in Japan.
I really think people are being overly optimistic about it. Which is fine. But there is nothing in Sonys history to suggest that they will give two shits about keeping it exclusive.
Are there big Sony exclusives not on PC right now? What are the next big 3 to release and what date are they releasing on PC?
Steam Publisher: PlayStation Studios™
PlayStation Studios is home to the development of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s own outstanding and immersive games, including some of the most popular and critically acclaimed titles in entertainment history.
Also Bungie, but hey, why not just keep ignoring things
Pretty much yep. SE would become a FF/KH factory and that's about it.
Any sort of new IP would be overlooked for the ease of selling another FF/KH game to the tune of 10M units
Sony Group still has ~10 billion dollars allocated for M&A up until the end of March 2024. Square Enix with a 40% premium only comes up to 7.8 billion dollars, leaving a couple billion more for Sony to sprinkle around on other M&A ventures over the next 1.5 years. And that's just a projected budget anyways, they can choose to exceed it if they really want to.
We don't know if they will pay all in cash for Square Enix. We don't know if payments in stocks are part of their acquisition fund. We don't know if the premium for Square Enix is 40%.
Yes, there's a lot we don't know. We can only look at other similar recent acquisitions to guess that 40% is a fair premium to pay over the market cap. We can say that the entire Square Enix acquisition is well within their projected budget. Beyond that we could only guess how things would play out.
Something I learned a lot of acquistion they just popped up randomly and weren't really leaked beforehand.
Yup, it's very rare for something to leak ahead of time when publicly traded companies are involved. That said, it's not entirely impossible that someone, somewhere, somehow, may have fucked up at some point in time and a tidbit of info got loose. No way for us to know until either an acquisition suddenly gets announced, or unless absolutely nothing happens.
In the meantime all we can do is speculate.
I dont think thats a fair assessment when there are still no PS5's to sell. They're still not on the shelves in Europe at least.
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Sony have yet to release games day and date on PC, so it's a valid concern. Then again, currently Square is more than willing to get moneyhatted to delay PC releases anyway, so I guess not much would change. If PC gamers want their games day one, then they should just pray MS swoops in to get them instead.
PS5 stock should improve significantly by the time FF16, and especially FF7: Rebirth release. They're planning to ship 18 million consoles this FY and if they plan to exceed the PS4 sales curve next FY they have to ship over 23 million PS5's. There should be a very healthy userbase for the PS5 by that point in time. Who knows, they could have PS5 hardware in the cloud by then for people to play PS5 games via streaming.
Final fantasy / DQ exclusive to PlayStation. Big if true.
But more importantly this would help with expanding Sony's anime/merchandise ambitions.
But more importantly this would help with expanding Sony's anime/merchandise ambitions.
I don't think it's a certainty that DQ would be PS exclusive/ It's not going to do much for PS in Japan, it's just going to lower the value of the IP to almost nothing.