Xbox Was Thinking About Acquiring Square Enix Back In 2019

But but Xbox can't buy a Japanese company
😂

Nintendo would of joined sony in blocking that deal.

Meh, I'm glad they didn't. They're a shell of their former selves. I love me some FF but SE know one thing above all; how to mistreat a fanbase.

Bummer. Coulda had FF16, Triangle strategy and Octopath 2 on Xbox. In 4k.

They probably considered all the options. Zenimax made more sense because Microsoft and they had a good relationship and Zenimax was looking for buyers. ABK was also looking for buyers because they were in a difficult situation at the moment. Like someone said on another thread, since video games started most companies have been bought/sold and most of the time the people working for them are still doing what they like to do. Bethesda was happy to be under Microsoft's umbrella and ABK workers are positive about the acquisition.

Not to be cheeky, but at this point it’d be easier to make an article on which companies Xbox DIDN’T think about buying.

What makes Microsoft even think that Square Enix wants to sell? Even if Square Enix wanted to sell, I believe that Square Enix themselves would want to be purchased by Sony. It makes sense as Sony and Square Enix have a great partnership and have been there from day 1 of PlayStation.

@Snake_V5 Money?

Honestly them trying to buy a Japanese company would be a bigger hassle then them buying Activision due to how Japan are. Wouldn't be shocked if the reason they passed on Sega was due to them knowing it would be too difficult so instead worked with them with partnerships and such.

Here’s hoping that Sony buys them for absolutely nothing to change.

Lol. There’s really no benefit for Sony to buy a company that releases exclusive stuff for them anyhow. Every game they release disappoints them sales wise lol.

Is there not any actual gaming news that needs covering at the moment? Or game announcements? Reviews? Previews? Opinion pieces? Literally anything else other than every conceivable little bit of t*t for tat that comes out of this Activision Blizzard acquisition?

I like the myth of Japanese companies being hard to buy. Tell that to Zenimax who bought Tango Gameworks, the people who made HiFi Rush. Tell that to Saudi Arabia, who owns 96% of SNK. They also own… what 10% of the Big N? Tell that to China who owns shares of From and a bunch of other companies in Japan.

Keep telling yourself what you need to.

Nah Sony can have them because Square Enix games do nothing for me. Xbox has Japanese devloper Tango Gameworks that in my opinion all their games are good. I know I sound like an Xbox fanboy but I'm not trying to be, I personally dislike JRPGs so Final Fantasy will never appeal to me, even if Xbox made their own JRPG I'd play it for about 5 mintues before already getting sick of it.

The wording on the Push Square version of this article... I'm dying.

Not a fan of SE so this wouldn't have affected me.
Would have been cool if it stopped the exclusivity though.

Is it really a surprise that a trillion dollar company that bought Bethesda for 8 billion and is trying to buy ABK for 70 billion has a list of pros and cons for buying pretty much every major delevoper in the world?

Biggest bullet dodge of all time. I think 2019 and onward SE is the industry standard of horrible, no talent developers.

There was more under Square Enix then. They’ve sold studios since. If Xbox made a list of possible studios to buy today, I don’t know if Square Enix would make their list.

Square Enix hasn't put out a good RPG since XII Zodiac Age. They're needlessly hard on their western developers, constantly calling games that are doing great, failures.

I wonder whether they'll ever unearth a Microsoft email where a Director suggests investing in and growing their own existing studios? Wouldn't that be something.

@EvenStephen7

Breaking MS looks to purchase every video game studio except for Tiny Build!

Well if they were serious then they had the opportunity to get the western studios they sold to embracer.

It's not surprising that they would toss around a bunch of names and even have discussions with some of them about an acquisition but these deals rarely actually come together.

I imagine Sony has a lengthy list of potential candidates that they have discussed internally and even externally as well.

Anyone can think or consider anything. I don’t find anything stunning about considering options. It is what actually takes places that matters. This articles are kind of boring to me.

@Snake_V5 @K1LLEGAL Square Enix could have had all the money in the world to fund NFTs and the blockchain

@KaijuKaiser MS is the devil you know. Sony is the snake in the garden. No one is pretending that anyone is the "good guy" but in saying that, MS is coming out of this a lot better than Sony right now.

Remember that in 2019 Square Enix was beleaguered by heavy debt and their failing Western Subsidiaries. They were looking to sell, and eventually did sell a massive chunk of the company to Embracer. Also remember that MS had an agreement to purchase Square Enix once before, but the deal was called off by Square raising their asking price part-way through.

There's nothing particularly odd about all this. It didn't work out. It doesn't seem like MS ever even made an offer on this, it was just internal strategic brainstorming that didn't really go anywhere. But the reality is in 2019 it's very possible S-E would have been eager to agree given where they were at the time, and ultimately, jettisoned a lot of their company after all.

Just because they talked about how buying a thing could fit their strategy doesn't mean they actually took any action into doing so.

@Markatron84 Considering out of the trial we've gotten an exclusivity announcement out of Indiana Jones, found out Todd's producing it, and found out that it, and Perfect Dark are like 5+ YEARS away. What gaming news were you hoping for? Updates on Skull & Bones? More hours of movies from FFXVI? lol

@mousieone If you think articles about "company x has an email where someone suggested doing a thing they never actually followed up on" on a fansite news blog is boring, imagine if were were reading that as key evidence in a hearing!

If I were sitting in that hearing I'd be requesting to be moved to homicides next week. Or just moving onto homicides this week....

Square was willing to lose hundreds of millions if not billions of profits because they didn't want to be called traitors for partnering with North American companies which weren't Sony. It's a widely known fact. They had no obligation to sign the exclusivity deal with Sony and it absolutely blocked them from doubling their bottom line globally. Y'all Sony fanboys can say otherwise, but you can never believe a Sony fanboy on an Xbox site....why do you even come here? Are you lonely or something? What a bunch of weirdos

Thank God Xbox got Bethesda instead! ABK will be interesting for Diablo 4 and maybe some Overwatch benefits, I don't play CoDd but hopefully there is a new Hexen in the works.. . After that I will be interested in the next big publisher acquisition, just forget about SE and resume negotiations with SEGA!

Thanks Microsoft! For having so much money and spend it in my benefit 😎😎

This just proves they were actively looking to buy out companies that didn't even advertise the need or desire to be bought just to take games away from a rival platform forever. Again, it makes Sony's timed deals look justifiable when Microsoft are clearly looking to buy the industry piece by piece.

Funny really. Everyone thought this ordeal would bring out Sony's 'dirty laundry ' so to speak but behind the scenes Microsoft have been hiding much more nefarious plans to slowly take over.

Whilst you are absolutely right to say that Square Enix may not want to be sold, @Snake_V5, and that Sony would, historically, be a better fit, there is no reason to prevent Microsoft expressing an interest in, or indeed end up buying, the company. That's just business. It would purely be a way of getting a foothold in a market in which Microsoft have traditionally struggled. It really wouldn't have been personal. It would quite literally have been about growing the Xbox brand in Asia. Simple as that. Also, these are just ideas being discussed. We, at the moment, have absolutely no idea of the outcome, or even if Square Enix were actually approached. What we do know, is that apparently, relationships with SE need work, and that the bond between SE and Sony remains very strong. Outside that, these are just floated ideas...

These were ideas being bandied about, @GADG3Tx87. We do not know whether Square Enix were approached. We certainly do not know whether the games would have been taken away from the PlayStation. And the fact remains, that a game that has never been on a platform, and is developed by a company (Xbox in this instance) does not have to be put on it's rivals console. However, the audience for Final Fantasy, in particular, is so big on the PlayStation that there is a strong argument for keeping it multiplatform, and therefore, not withholding it from the PlayStation (as Sony is doing to the Xbox)...

Out of curiosity, @FraserG, is there anywhere where we can see the full transcript of what was said? Your article has a very different spin on things to the one on Push Square, where apparently, Microsoft was looking to 'conquer Japan'. Is that a direct quote? Is there more to these comments that I can read for myself?

@GADG3Tx87 "t just to take games away from a rival platform forever"

No, the Sega email gave us a very clear statement in Phil's own words, precisely what they're targeting and why, and almost none of it has anything to do with taking games away from Sony, or really much to do with console gaming at all:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23774482/microsoft-sega-bungie-acquisition-targets-internal-email-xbox

Phil's statement (to Nadella and Hood) is specifically that their acquisition priorities are/were:
PC in North America and Europe
Mobile in North America and Europe
Console and PC in APAC.

There's console, dead last, only in Asia, and bundled with PC. The one thing this whole thing has made very clear is Microsoft's real lack of focus on consoles at all. It's all about PC and mobile. Everything is all about PC and mobile. That doesn't mean they're not competing with Sony but their priorities and especially goals for acquisitions seem to barely even register with relating to western console gaming.

People keep reading the wrong things into this and framing it into the MS/PS console war when their own documents pretty clearly keep stating that PC and mobile is the game for them, console is secondary.

Heck we had the judge at one point question the FTC as to why people wouldn't just move to PC gaming, lol. You know we're down in the depths when a federal judge goes PC Master Race from the bench.

Would have killed the publisher and all of its franchises.

Microsoft should buy Capcom or Fromsoftware after Activision. Even after buying activision, Microsoft can buy one of the two and still be under Sony in marketshare.

@MSX : Contrary to popular opinion (on gaming forums anyhow), foreigners can buy Japanese companies, eg: Sharp Corporation was bought by Taiwan’s Foxconn in 2016 for $6.2 billion.

I rather Xbox getting sega but the dream is capcom

@TheSimulator maybe they will, they have a shopping list after all!

I don't understand why some people are so desperate, hoping Xbox won't be able to buy ABK as if their lives deppen on this, if Xbox is blocked from ABK they will be going after SOME, not just one but multiple "smaller" publishers like SEGA, SE, Capcom, etc.. They lack plenty of marketshare room to justify that.

But if ABK is acquired it's more than likely Xbox won't be chasing another multiplatform publisher and will double down it's efforts on mobile. It's a trillion dollar company invested into growing it's gaming division, random Fanboys outraging on video-game sites won't stop their business target.

So Xbox cant get creative, they gotta buy the competition. With that $69 billion, they cant make 20+ AAA?

@Snake_V5. Investors want paid.

If Xbox is smart, they’d look at Tango and throw a huge bag of money their way and make them into a powerhouse of a studio. Make them into a studio that rivals the size of a small publisher. Have multiple teams within that studio.

But you know. That’s if theyre smart.

Also, write some love letters (laced in gold of course) to your old flame Mistwalker.

@NEStalgia literally anything that doesn't pertain to or come from the f**king Activision Blizzard acquisition.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it'd be nice if PX took all that time and effort they put into covering every little thing said, email sent and fart squeezed out during this entire acquisition fiasco and put that time and effort into covering, y'know, games.

@MSX : My apologies, I've seen it (incorrectly) said so often that foreigners can't buy Japanese companies I guess I fell head-first into Poe's Law.

@Markatron84 Yeah, but Phil's said over and over this week that Xbox doesn't have any games, and nobody owns an Xbox, and nobody plays games on the cloud, and did you know Xbox is in last place because Xbox is in last place and nobody wants to make games for them, and Xbox has no games, and Xbox lost the console war, and cloud is really an add-on feature people use to play Mario ROMs while they wait for CoD patches to download (did you know CoD was popular?)

So there's really just no games to talk about on an Xbox site.....

@NEStalgia I’m sure she’s a bit confused why this is even happening. No matter how she rules, I’m sure she’ll be glad when it’s all over.

Shew money saved ! Well I do like the 2d-hd games

@mousieone She may be confused but I'm pretty sure she's buying a 4090 with her bonus now 😂

@NEStalgia that’s your dream. She’s going to Cancun for a week after this

The thing is, @FakeSunkist, that it seems that to make a AAA game now takes 5 to 7 years. Xbox is a distant third at just 16% of the market share when it comes to the three consoles. Even though some games will already be into that 5 to 7 year process, Xbox cannot wait for content. They need it now. Right now! That is why they are buying huge libraries of games from publishers. An influx of games will bring in new consoles owners, and probably more importantly, new Game Pass subscribers.

@NEStalgia No, you're absolutely right. No games have been released at all this week. Not one. Not a single game. At all.

@NEStalgia I really love your fact-driven writing style. You should work for Pure Xbox instead of just commenting. Thank you.