Square Enix Sold Their European Branch, Time To Rejoice
Man, I haven't had good news in a while, this one is actual good news. It's great news. Square Enix did the right thing by selling their Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, and Square Enix's new Montreal Divisions. This just means that the former will fully focus on their Japanese projects along with their divisions from now on, and the grubby hands of their board of directors no longer hold control, wasting any good incentive for the talented European publisher to try anything new or create great sequels for THEIR beloved IPs.
Ever since their purchase(Eidos) in 2010, things have gone downwards from here. They were never happy with the sales of their games, including the Tomb Raider reboot. The biggest thing that saved Square Enix since then was Naoki Yoshida who revived the Final Fantasy games through the FFXIV Realm Reborn reboot, and has been carrying the publisher's major IPs ever since. But Eidos Montreal was being poorly mismanaged, and IO Interactive was kicked out of their studio roster along with Hitman.
It seems some conglomerates are either partially or entirely disassociating from the gaming business by selling off their subsidiaries. Warner Bros Discovery wants to sell off gaming divisions entirely, meaning no more Suicide Squad and Gotham Knights games, though so far this is reportedly claimed. If true, this would be an indication that video games companies might be becoming much more consolidated in the near future.
Square Enix's New Blockchain Love
At first, it was a laughingstock that this year, that Square Enix made a public announcement with full documentation to reveal that they're moving forward into blockchain embedding inside their upcoming games. Could be a Konami pachinko type situation, could be a lot worse. But it seems now, after selling it to Embracer Group, they're going to use the money they got from the sold assets to further their investment plans into the blockchain business. As well as A.I., and cloud service.
As a company, they are actually holding really well. This is attributed to the success of their most popular MMO, Final Fantasy XIV. Yoshida, also known as Yoshi-P, has been holding the fort, not letting Square's business executive change the monetization scheme that would disrupt the already perfect experience of playing the game.
Square Enix as a company can be pretty obtuse at times, resulting in their greedy antics to degrade a gaming IP the likes of Deus Ex, which the 3rd sequel of the prequel trilogy has been put on hold in favor of doing games for Marvel instead. Kind of insulting too, that they've sold all the European assets for a measly 300 Million US dollar bid.
Embracer Group Holding Them Might Be The Next Best Thing
If you don't know who Embracer Group is, that's fine. They're not the kind of company that wants people to boast about or make memes, they're overall a conglomerate of a few selections of indie publishers and major European game developers. Like THQ Nordic, the revived THQ, Koch Media who owns Deep Silver, and Coffee Stain, Goat Simulator's publisher.
Embracer has a lot of money, but you know what else they can give? Leniency, they let game developers do mostly what they want. Since the major purchase of each game studios, we've gotten major reboots like the Kill All Humans games to the Darksider sequel we thought was doomed.
I wouldn't exactly call them the best at quality maintaining, but they don't have to do anything as long as Eidos is in charge with the IPs. You know what else this means? They have the full control to make anything new or reboot lost games out there, like maybe a good Thief game finally, or that Deus Ex sequel I've been badly waiting for.
To be clear about how big this group is, they own even Gearbox and Dark Horse Comics. Like, you could call them the consolidated cool cats of the industry, and wouldn't be far off. Still, I have my eyes on them, I hope they don't mess this one up.
Budget is another issue, they've never been the kind that would hand over a large budget to any studio to make games. That could probably change since they now have some rights to the Marvel games. But they need to process this further out with Marvel now, maybe renewing the contract details.
Only A Matter Of Time Before Square Enix Succumbs
Ah yes, Babylon Fall. A game that made meaningless use of one of their most respected third party developer, Platinum Games. They've false marketed this game at first to be another true single-player experience before the air started to become different. Different artstyle, visual showcase, gameplay, and co-op with live-service elements added, immediately drew the ire of many players.
Needless to say, this game flopped hard, but they got their data's worth all right. Now we got one bigger problem to worry about, and that's Yoshi-P holding the fort as long as he can. This man has been the bread and butter of the gaming industry as of late, he doesn't surrender his ideals in the namesake of crappy business decisions.
But he can only hold on for so long, maybe when Square Enix finally gets a replacement when the opportunity comes, it could be a reckoning to come. But I doubt that'll happen, Yoshi-P is the game's creative center and without him, the staff working would riot. Right now, Squeenix can be easily persistent with new games coming like Kingdom Hearts 4, Diofield Chronicle, Forspoken, new Star Ocean, and so on, on the way. Only time will tell when things start to heat up.
Oh man, what a day it has been. Big shake up in the gaming industry this year, and it doesn't seem to stop. Keep your eyes peeled, I'll do the same.
Also, Eid Mubarak to my fellow muslim Hive members. Enjoy the holidays.
Acquisitions everywhere. I am still hopeful about the upcoming final fantasy game but SE have been missing that spark for a long while now.