Little known fact: until today Sony Computer Entertainment actually owned 8.25% of Square Enix. But now, Sony has sold all of its holdings, a total of 9,520,000 shares, in a transfer that is expected to yield US$47 million.
As reported by Siliconera, Sony has come to an agreement with SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. for the shares.
The official value of the sale will be announced tomorrow.
At this stage, no reason has been given as to why Sony would dump this investment.
Sony Sells Off All Of Its Shares In Square Enix [Siliconera]
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7 responses to “Sony Just Sold All Of Its Shares In Square Enix”
Hasn’t Sony been doing pretty bad financially lately, at least in their products outside of playstation.
They sold a couple of their offices/headquarters in the last year or two- it seems like they’re having a rough time in a game of Command & Conquer!
Hmmm. I hope this doesn’t mean any console exclusivity
It would mean the opposite if anything, Sony no longer has shares. I’m going to go ahead and assume that neither Microsoft nor Nintendo own any Square Enix shares.
am I the only one thinking Sony could have facilitated a FFVII re-master with their 8% ownership, made heaps of money and also win the internets in the process? Didn’t some head honcho at square say he was surprised at how well Bravely Default sold, and that people like JPRGs?
????
Profit!
Or am I thinking through fan-boy-coloured glasses?
Sony are haemorrhaging* money and have been selling off anything and everything that will reclaim some money – particularly capital assets (such as their old Tokyo headquarters) and anything from the divisions that aren’t making money (such as Playstation division).
Consider also that Square-Enix have had poor return on investment in recent history with their games – Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, Deus Ex and Tomb Raider were all considered to have fallen far short of their expected sales targets.
This does seem like a short-term solution for a long-term problem, but this was a long-term problem a long time ago and the only thing done back then was to make the PS3 and sell it at a loss for ~3 years.
*I’m exaggerating, but they’re not in a good way.
If they dropped the bloody price of their consoles I’d be all over a PS3 and a stack of games lol. But I guess if they are already selling it at a loss there’s not much chance of that
I’d assume it’s to improve cash flow — they made something like 450-500mil in 2012 and they are losing money away from their Playstation division, so an extra 50mil on top of that might be appreciated.
It’s not magical ‘n new profit, they’re just liquidating an asset, but Square hasn’t been console exclusive since PS1/PS2 so Sony’s interest in keeping them afloat is probably a lesser priority than looking after themselves.
They should sell off their bloody, bloated, good-for-nothing TV division, but they are too proud for that. Sony’s gaming division is one of the only things that is making money for that company, and for good reason – they actually made a good gaming console that people wanted, for a reasonable price. Their TV division makes ludicrously over-priced TVs that don’t do anything a Samsung or an LG or a Panasonic TV does and usually for a cheaper price! Their Phone Division is bleeding them dry. No one is buying their Laptops. They’ve got to put their pride behind them and start realizing that they can’t compete adequately in every market under the sun.