Update: Square Enix has dismissed Bloomberg’s report that several firms are looking into buying the Japanese publisher.
“Bloomberg has reported today that there is interest from several buyers to acquire Square Enix,” reads a statement from the company.
“However, this report is not based on any announcement by Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. We do not consider selling off the company or any part of its businesses, nor have we received any offer from any third party to acquire the company or any part of its businesses.”
Original Story: Multiple companies are reportedly interested in purchasing Final Fantasy maker Square Enix.
News of a potential acquisition began surfacing from Bloomberg Japan, with two bankers quoted as being familiar with the matter.
Little information was shared outside of this and no firms (game-related or otherwise) were named as the party considering a move for the Japanese company.
A Square Enix deal is not outside the realms of possibility, however, as the rate of mergers and acquisitions taking place in the industry has accelerated dramatically.
ByteDance purchased Chinese developer C4games for $4 billion only this week, while the most recent big-name acquisition came from Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda for $7.5 billion in September 2020.
Ongoing conversations
As pointed out by Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmed (via Twitter), it’s entirely possible this could lead to nothing and “game companies often have discussions” of purchases, something that commonly can happen behind the scenes.
NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella similarly commented that big publishers are constantly having discussions about potential M&A deals.
Just about every big publisher is continuously running evaluations on potential acquisitions, mergers or partnerships. I would do dozens of slate and revenue scenarios every year. Sometimes something happens, almost always it doesn’t. Shrug.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) April 16, 2021
Meanwhile, Square Enix continues to move more into mobile, having partnered with Emerald Games to soft-launch Tomb Raider Reloaded, a new action-arcade adventure starring Lara Croft.
Not to mention that two new Final Fantasy mobile games are on the way to the platform as well.
