starcraft said: I remember when they bought the shares and everyone was talking about impending Sony SE exclusivity

How did you remember that if they bought Squaresoft shares and not Square Enix? :P

Anyways, this makes sense as Sony needs cash and having those shares wasn't giving it any upper hand with SE (no DQ on PS for the last decade, for example). Furthermore SE has made it clear that it wants to go multiplat, including future iterations of DQ, and that they want to focus on mobiles as well. The only thing Sony was getting out of those shares were some dividends.

I can honestly see Sony Pictures (including all subsidiaries) and Sony Music (including all subsidiaries) being spun off and/or sold off  in the next few years if Sony doesn't start making some huge profits.

Nintendo should buy these shares and as Sony nears bankruptcy, the Playstation division also. Sony is in big trouble as everything but the games division is in a financial desaster and near commercial failure.

This should not make a difference to Square as the shares have already been bought seeing as they were sold to a different company.
I dont know what Sony has made or lost on this but seeing as they bought these shares years ago it should all show as profit on their current financials.

It was just before the merger Square was in dire strights for money after the big movie project bombed hard for good reasons and FFX was taking longer the expected to release, they were in dire strights for money.

Back on topic so it sounds like they sold the share to the market which means they are just sitting there for a buyer. (Since Nikkei securities is Japan's securities exchange.) So if they just sit there it would mean that SE's shares are about to dip. As said that is how I understand it and I'm by no means a market player.

If I remember correctly (it's been 13 years... wow) Sony bought non-voting shares of Squaresoft. This means that they were the second biggest shareholder of Square, but they had no say in the company. They only got dividends.

Still, after bailing Squaresoft out with their Spirits Withing fiasco, it wasn't nice of them to abandon Sony so strong during the previous generation with their 360 exclusives.

And SE used to be my favorite company :'(

Edit: SE hasn't been in a financially healthy situation, right? So I guess Sony hasn't really been enjoying large dividends.

SMBC = Super Mario Bros. Capital? ;)

I honestly think the reason for the sell is that Square-Enix may be about to be taken over by another company. This could be the acquisition that Iwata talked about.

Either that or Sony sees SE as going really through the pooper in value.

Nintendo has never been "more doomed" than Sony at any point.

not really big a news ! cause square makes games for anybody now

It's not big news in and of itself, but it could be the precursor to a bigger move.  Not unlike when MS was about to buy 51% of Rare, Nintendo sold their 49% since, well, they had to.  S-E has had some financial challenges, but still holds some very valuable brands.  It could very well be that either MS or Nintendo are in the process of buying a controlling stake in the company.

Why?