Does anyone know for sure that Sony still owns any of Square-Enix? Was their stock listed on Sony's balance sheet in their last financial statement?
I'm not saying that they don't own Square-Enix stock anymore, but I just don't see the point in them holding it any longer. Back in the day, Squaresoft was in serious financial trouble after they released Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and lost a fortune on it; this was somewhat unfortunate because the movie was fairly good, and probably would have been more successful had it not had the "Final Fantasy" name associated with it. This financial trouble meant that Squaresoft was at risk to be bought by a larger company like Nintendo or Microsoft; Sony bought Squaresoft's stock (from Squaresoft directly if I remember correctly) in order to increase the value of Squaresoft's stock and to protect against an attempt from Nintendo/Microsoft to buy Squaresoft.
Today, after dozens of remakes and rereleases of games, Square-Enix's bottom line is healthy and they're beyond the size of a company that Nintendo/Microsoft would want to buy; and Sony's expenses from UMD, PSP, Blu-Ray and the PS3 means that Sony would probably want to liquidate the stock.
