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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What should Sony do with its 8.25% stake in Square Enix?

Square Enix Holding Co. is currently trading near the lowest levels the company has seen since the merger in 2003.  I don’t know if investors believe its growth profile is weak, if its current problems with FFXIV are overshadowing other parts of the company or the general decline in console gaming revenue but whatever the reason the stock is cheap.  With Kaz and Sony's refocus back onto gaming, I think it would be a beneficial for Sony to pick up a major Japanese 3rd party company to help secure better first party titles and at the same time undercut its major competitors.  With Sony holding a 8.25% stake in Square Enix already, I think this company would best fit that profile.

Square Enix current investment structure places Sony 4th in terms of ownership with the owners of Square Co and Enix having a combined 26%.  The other 66% are owned by major foreign and domestic investment companies that I believe Sony would have no trouble getting their portion (due to its bad performance especially the past four years).  Sony would only need ~43% to get the 50.1% needed for ownership.  

There would be positives and negatives to the transactions but I feel the positives would outweigh the negatives.

A positive would be a boon to Sony’s first party profile. Adding Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Hitman, Lost Cause, Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider to its list of current offerings would put it up there with the upper elision of developers and better help stabilize its handheld business.  A majority of its titles have sold extremely well on PlayStation platforms.

The biggest negative I see would be a brain drain.  I feel that a potential takeover would result in some talented people leaving the company (along those who have already left) meaning that the soul of its games would be missing.   



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Raise its stake in SE, then over 5 6 years they'll have a majority and SE will be Sony owned.



Leave it alone, Squeenix is too much of a mess and also just acquired Eidos, it needs time to sort itself out without Sony coming in a changing things again



It could really work out well for Sony, but I am curious how much it would cost Sony to get a majority...?



I'm on Twitter @DanneSandin!

Furthermore, I think VGChartz should add a "Like"-button.

they should move in. Take in a bigger stake on them and force them to make Japanese games exclusive to the playstation brand



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DanneSandin said:
It could really work out well for Sony, but I am curious how much it would cost Sony to get a majority...?

Square Enix currently is valued at 130B Yen (not including any debt or price premium)  which is a little more than $1.4 billion dollars.



Wow. Didn't know Sony had a stake in Square Enix! When did this take place?



It sort of didnt. They had a take on squaresoft and then square merged with enix and they got an equvalent share wich went down from about 20% to 10%. So ummm its not much at all anymore.
They will probably sell it for cash to be honest, but not atm as its lost much of its value.



absolutely. 8.25 % is not neglectable a percentage at all and i have said it over and over again, Final Fantasy is the only title next to Gran Turismo that can be Sony's Mario

what's more i'm totally in favour of exclusive games as they take better advantage of the tech and they focus on the set audience of the individual console and you don't end up with watered down results (in my opinion Nier is this generation's greatest mutliplat "victim")

and Nintendo should totally buy Platinum.



Have them make a final fantasy that is 8.25% good?



Before the PS3 everyone was nice to me :(