Earlier this year, Square Enix sold off a huge chunk of its to the Embracer Group in a bid to consolidate in what the company calls “One Square Enix”. Through the sale of its assets, the company claims it earned $7.2 million. However, since the surprising fire sale, rumors have been swirling that Square Enix is preparing for a Sony buyout. This makes plenty of sense as Square Enix has worked closely with Sony for decades. Not to mention, most of the JRPGs it has released, specifically Final Fantasy, are released first (and sometimes exclusively) on PlayStation platforms. Sony has a knack for acquiring the studios it has collaborated with. For example, the company acquired Insomniac Games in 2019 after the success of Marvel’s Spider-Man while Sucker Punch was acquired in 2011 after publishing Infamous 2. Insomniac, Sucker Punch, Guerilla Games, Naughty Dog, and Santa Monica Studio form the core of Sony’s first-party game development. Sony also recently purchased a bigger stake in FromSoftware, the developers of Elden Ring. In addition to this, Sony bought Bungie to beef up its live-service offerings. However, Square Enix said that the divestment will help in the “medium to long term” as it will help accelerate the studio’s effort “to strengthen our internal development capabilities by further expanding our internal talent pool, while also more quickly concentrating our resources on the development of titles that are competitive globally.” This statement does not sound like a company preparing for a takeover. Square Enix may have just wanted to streamline its operation and concentrate its assets on profitable titles. The additional capital will help the studio to finance its future IPs and AAA titles. There is no concrete evidence that Sony is on the verge of snapping up Square Enix in the near future. With Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard facing stiff opposition, it would be hard to imagine that Sony would make a similar move. Sony will be facing off against Nintendo and Microsoft if it plans to acquire Square Enix. But, weirder things have happened in the recent years, and as Square Enix wants to focus on the global market going forward, working more closely with Sony is a good way to do it. Speaking of Sony, Microsoft is accusing its rival of blocking non-first-party titles from being released on Xbox platforms. Specifically, Microsoft names Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake as some of the games that will never come to Xbox because Sony is putting a lot of pressure on third-party developers.
