Square is now Sony\'s "Female Dog!" (Must Read)

Check out this link:  http://www.video-senki.com/

It\'s only 20 minutes (PST) into October 9th and there\'s some news: Square will be receiving shares from Sony, about 11.2 million of them, for a total investment of 14.9 billion yen (about $124 million) from SCE. This does neatly bail Square out of the deep losses from the movie they\'ve tacked on to this quarter, but thanks to this Square is, for the time being, slave to SCEI. I imagine you can forget about things like GBA support or PlayOnline on multiple consoles now, eh?

If this is true, then Sony pretty much owns Square for now.  I can\'t see Square going multi console if Sony gives them that much money.  They wouldn\'t have a need to now anyways.

Sony knows how important Square is to their success, and it looks like they really don\'t want to lose them.

Here is some more info: http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?T=marketsquote99_news.ht&s=AO8KmRhIlU29ueSB0

Tokyo, Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp. will pay 14.9 billion yen ($124 million) for 19 percent of Square Co., the creator of its best-selling `Final Fantasy\' video game, which is reeling from losses because a movie spin-off flopped.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., the company\'s game unit, will pay 1,330 yen a share for 11.2 million shares, making Sony the second-largest shareholder after the company\'s founder, Square said in a statement to the Tokyo State Exchange. The price, almost 18 percent below today\'s last trade, is the average for the three weeks ended Oct. 5.

The purchase might extend Sony\'s hold on the Final Fantasy franchise, helping it fend off rivals Nintendo Co. and Microsoft Corp. The 10 versions of Final Fantasy have racked up 33 million in global sales, among the most of any console-based game.

Square said last week it will write off 10.7 billion yen, or about 75 percent of its investment in ``Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.\'\' The computer-animated space adventure, which was released in July, took in about $32 million at the U.S. box office, far below its estimated $135 million budget.

To coincide with the release of the movie, Square and Sony released a new version of the video game for the PlayStation 2 console. Since the movie\'s debut in Canada and the U.S., Square\'s shares have lost about half their value.

The joint release signaled growing cooperation between the $20-billion-a-year video-game industry and the movie business. Square built animation studies in Hawaii and was planning at least one follow-up to its ``Final Fantasy\'\' movie.

Square took four years to make the film and spent more than $45 million to construct a digital studio in Honolulu. More than 200 graphic artists and animators from 22 countries worked on developing the movie, a science-fiction film with realistic- looking human characters about an alien invasion of Earth.

If Square did have games in development for other consoles, those games are probably being scrapped right now...

Thoughts?

sweet meat =)



btw, I just have this to say on the FF movie.

1: it should never of been released in the summer espeacially within a week of Rush Hour 2 and 2 weeks from American Pie 2 and even Jay and Silent Bob strike back was close by when the FF movie was released.

2: I believe a Japanese man directed it? and it was basically made by the Japanese? If so I think they should of got a North American crew to make a movie for North America. I know if I lived in Japan I wouldn\'t give millions of dollars to some American to make a sequel to an Anime like Akira or Ninga Scroll, or any anime for that matter.

Great for Square I guess...

Hmm... If it werent for SCEI, Square would be a little pet shop by now

I dont think its far from Sony buying Square completley now..

This news is from here: http://members.aol.com/mips36/

Update: Sony Invests in Square / Square Not Exclusive To Sony  

Sony Corp it will invest 14.9 billion yen in capital to Square Co Ltd. The investment will give Sony an 18% stake in Square. Sony does not intend to prevent Square from contributing games to rival game makers such as Nintendo Co Ltd or Microsoft Corp, a SONY spokeswoman said. - Source Reuters.

"We are not exclusive to Sony, because of this deal." said Hisashi Suzuki, Square\'s president.

According to several (unconfirmed) reports Square will announce support for Nintendo GameCube on October 12th, the first day of the Tokyo Game Show. Square is expected to reveal support for Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy Advance. Enhanced versions of Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 are expected tob be released on GameCube. These remakes will take full advantage of the GameCube\'s capabilities. After the huge loss Square took from the Final Fantasy movie, they will need more than PS2 games alone to appease their stock holders. Square would like to bring every Super Famicom Final Fantasy game to the Game Boy Advance.

If this rumor is true, Square will still be multi console.  But Sony will still gain a lot from this deal.  They will have a say on a lot of things that Square does whether Square likes it or not.  With Sony owning 20% of Square, they have a lot of weight to throw around.  And even better, Sony will be making a profit on everything that Square sells.  If the NGC gets the FF remakes, Sony will be making money from it too.

There is no word yet on if the Xbox is getting games from Square.

LOL.. Nice site.. :rolleyes:

Sony just fu(ked themselfs if SQUARE still goes multi-console..

I read this on a dutch site

good news for sony, bad news for the gamers

remember when sony bought psygonis?, They used to make really good games, ever since the buyout the quality has gone down

but its good news for us ps2 owners

Fastson, even if Square does go multi platform, Sony will still make a huge profit from it.  I don\'t think it would matter.  And that link I posted about Square on the NGC is still just a rumor.  It\'s a Nintendo site that is probably trying to find anything good out of this situation for Nintendo.

Metal_Gear_Ray, the only games I know of is the Wipeout series.  The first one was great, the second one was better, but the third fell a little short.  Wipeout Fusion will make up for that though.

This is from The GIA: http://www.thegia.com/news/0110/n09b.html

A bigger question may be what effect this will have on Square\'s burgeoning PlayOnline service. The ambitious online network was ultimately meant to offer games, music, chat, and other entertainment across a wide variety of platforms -- Square\'s business plan for it required it. But with Sony\'s support and the company\'s new interest in Square, PlayOnline could possibly become a PlayStation exclusive. This move could in turn have further repercussions for the industry; Enix and Namco had recently partnered with Square to develop games for the service.

I knew that Playonline would be effected (I would be shocked if Sony didn\'t team up with Square and have just one online network), but I completely forgot about the deal with Enix and Namco.  Could this lead to more exclusive titles for the PS2?

Originally posted by IronFist
Metal_Gear_Ray, the only games I know of is the Wipeout series.  The first one was great, the second one was better, but the third fell a little short.  Wipeout Fusion will make up for that though.

Yes very true, wipeout 2097 was clearly the best in the series (no.3 was okay though), however their other great game series went down the drain. The formula one series was once one of the greatest F1 Sims, its sequels (or upgrades if you ask me) were not the best I have seen. And I remeber some other ill fated game releases back in the old days

I\'m not saying its a bad thing, I\'m just saying that it might have effect on their quality (ie, sony forcing them to rush out a game  for their own advantage, like they did with GT2)

I personally think that they will go multiplatform once the whole playonline thing launches. Expect their FF series to debut first on sony\'s console, then on the others

Sony is the second largest invester in Square. They own 18% of the company. Thats not enough to "tell them what to do". Final Fantasy XI is still going to other platforms. Play Online will not be afected. If square releases anyhting on another consoule it would be thier massive Multiplayer because they need as many people as possible to sign up for the service.

Here is an interview with Sony and Square executives.  This was originally on Famitsu.

Note - I make no guarantees about the accuracy of my translation; maybe you should check for yourself... I put ? by parts I\'m particularly unsure about, but that doesn\'t mean there necessarily aren\'t any mistakes in the rest of it either...

- Isn\'t this 149 million yen to make up for the loss from the FF movie?

Square president Hisashi Suzuki:
It\'s not really the movie\'s fault, but it\'s true that we didn\'t think things through enough. (? there\'s an idiom or something here that I don\'t understand) Its development ended up costing more than twice the originally planned budget. This spring the responsible person took responsibility and left his position (former chairman Tomoyuki Takechi) Although I was personally opposed to this expansion of the movie project\'s scale, I cannot escape responsibility. It\'s just that there wouldn\'t be any point in my resigning. (?) I think we need to try hard to return to the time when Square shined.

COO (dunno first name) Wada:
In addition, I don\'t think we can make a total summary about the movie project at present. There will still be sales of videos, DVDs, character goods and so on. Also, even though we\'re leaving the movie business itself, we got many by-products from it. The biggest one is the Playstation 2 software "Final Fantasy X" released in July. The techniques we cultivated in the movie project can be seen in this game\'s realistic characters, their expressions and so on. In terms of the development of CG technology, I think we achieved our goals.

- Just what do you mean by "when you shined"?

Suzuki: The core members of our development teams still remain. I\'d like to place a lot of importance on finding out just what it is they want to make. Recently when it was time to divide people, resources and money, we\'d been pushing them on only FF projects, with the result that we were exhausting the image of the FF series. So starting a year or two from now, we hope to release a number of games that sell over a million copies, to return to the time when we could release lots of million sellers even outside of the FF series.

- What about support for hardware other than PS and PS2?

Suzuki: It\'s certainly not that there aren\'t any possibilities in that regard, but I can\'t see us reducing our focus on Playstation development anytime soon. Basically we release software on the hardware we can sell the most games on. At present, that\'s Playstation and Playstation 2.

SCE President Ken Kutaragi:
Thanks to your support (Square\'s? the players?) the PS and PS2 are being played by amazingly many people around the world. Furthermore, from now on many games that can be played through a network will appear. The Playstation isn\'t the only hardware that can be connected to the network, there are also portable phones and PCs. At that time the online environment will be shared across each hardware platform. It\'s no longer the world of only packaged software that was prevalent in the 20th centure. This is important.

- Is there a possibility that SCE will increase its share?

Kutaragi: At present, we have no plans to increase it. We\'ll proceed naturally.

- What influence will this have on the three-company collaboration of Square, Enix and Namco? And will this mean any changes to your plans for Play Online?

Suzuki: It won\'t have any particular influence on our collaboration. As for Play Online, we\'re continuing to re-examine the balance between our on-line business and packaged software business. What\'s decided at present is that we\'ll gradually acquire subscribers focusing on Final Fantasy XI. (?)

Wada: The concept of Play Online hasn\'t changed, but for the time being it\'s become a service specialized in Final Fantasy XI.

- What are the merits of SCE\'s acquiring newly allocated shares of Square as a third party? (?)

Kutaragi: Software production is creative work. It\'s not a matter of which company has the shares or anything like that. Since we entered the game industry with the Playstation, I think the industry\'s range has definitely expanded beyond what it was when Nintendo and Sega dominated. So as for the people at Square, more than asking them to make software for only Playstation and Playstation 2, we\'re hoping and asking that they make good, interesting software that anyone can enjoy. Hypothetically, if a more creative machine than Playstation 2 were to come out, SCE would probably support it (laugh) Also, once the network is ready, the divisions between hardware will become still less important.

Suzuki: There is no downside to the SCE staff\'s support. SCE has a very open policy. (sorry, can\'t understand next couple sentences, but it\'s nothing too substantial)

- You\'ve been having talks with Nintendo about participating in Game Boy Advance software development, but will this have an effect on that?

Suzuki: We\'ll still proceed with our discussions in trying to find a way to support it. We don\'t think handheld game machines and home consoles are in competition. (?) If SCE were to put out a handheld machine things might be different, but for now our stance of wanting to support Game Boy Advance and Wonderswan Color hasn\'t changed. After that it\'s all up to the hardware makers.

Seems GBA might get some titles.. (Sonys gonna make money on them..)

So the big 10billion dollar question is..
Will NINTENDO allow this? Considering SONY will make money on their console?

If SCE were to put out a handheld machine things might be different

 :eyemouth: :fro:

Originally posted by fastson
So the big 10billion dollar question is..
Will NINTENDO allow this? Considering SONY will make money on their console?

It will help Nintendo a lot more than it will help Sony.  A FF game on the GBA is exactly what the Japanese want.

The presedent of Nintendo has siad that he would never let a square game on any of thier platforms. This was immediatly corrected with an official announcement that Nintendo request consoule support also. Basicly if square wants to put games on the GBA they need to put games on the GameCube.

Sony and square are going to be together a long time.:thepimp: :thepimp: :thepimp: