Forum - View topicNEWS: Embracer Group to Acquire Eidos-Montéal, Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montéal from Square Eni
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DamianSalazar
Posts: 776 |
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I've known for a while that Square Enix has been horrible in their management of their Western studios (remember how they botched Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's release), but I'm not a fan of this sale.
The Embracer Group has a large share of the entire game industry. The studios involved have been transferred from Japanese EA to the spiritual successor to EA. The Embracer Group own Gearbox, Deep Silver, the former THQ's intellectual properties, Saber Interactive and much more. Edit: I have to ask, what will happen to the Tomb Raider "anime" that was announced a while back. Last edited by DamianSalazar on Mon May 02, 2022 3:38 am; edited 1 time in total |
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varmintx
 Posts: 1240 Location: Covington, KY |
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...not that I really know or anything, but $300 mil for all that seems dirt cheap.
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Ryuji-Dono
 Posts: 1242 |
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Netflix is producing that. |
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Emerje
 Posts: 7424 Location: Maine |
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The title says Edios instead of Eidos.
Anyway, this is probably for the best. SE has been sitting on a lot of old Eidos properties that in the right hands could find new life. Emerje |
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RockSplash
Posts: 502 |
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As someone who has seen SE completely mismanage their western porperties, I have hopes for this. Legacy of Kain and soul reaver would be great to see again. Also, thief would do so much better today in the era of old school fps games with rpg elements. The ps4 game really suffered from that "consoleitis" that hitman absolution had. Also, apparently they own gex now? At the very least, embracer focuses on remasters. The legacy of Kaine games desperately need a remaster due to their age. The same with the thief series.
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MrTerrorist
Posts: 1348 |
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I wonder if the upcoming Fear Effect remake will continue or cancelled.
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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Maybe, but it also depends how much the IPs are worth. The most valuable ones listed are probably Tomb Raider and Deus Ex and the last entries of those franchises underperformed and didn't do well. They're both iconic names in the history of gaming but their recent forrays haven't been good. Was never a fan of the modern Tomb Raider games and only Human Revolution was what I'd call a good Deus Ex game. I wonder if this relates to the comment Yosuke Matsuda made a bit ago: "If Japanese developers try to imitate Western games, they cannot make good ones." And they're now dumping their western IPs off. If the Marvel/Avengers IP is included in this then it shows just how off the mark that game ended up being. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1253 |
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Don't know if I understand this correctly, it seems like SE had a lot of difficulties managing all those western studios, they always commented that games like Tomb Raider and Avengers failed to meet their expectations, they probably thought that it was not worth the trouble in keeping them.
I don't know if Square-Enix is having some troubles lately, Final Fantasy XIV is still their biggest success, as well as the FFVII Remake and some smaller titles like Octopath Traveller and Triangle Strategy, but games like Babylon's Fall, Stranger of Paradise and the new Chocobo Racing seemed to have underperformed. All of this have me reconsider Yuji Naka's recent words about SE not caring about their players. |
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Aresef
Posts: 918 Location: MD |
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These major studios plus all these IPs for $300 million? They may as well have left them out by their driveway with a sign saying they were free to a good home. Sony paid $229 million for Insomniac and they didn't come with this kind of IP. You'd expect the studios and IP to fetch more in the neighborhood of what Microsoft paid for Rare (inflation-adjusted $575 million).
Also, the headline misspells Eidos. |
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RockSplash
Posts: 502 |
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Square Enix never truly cared for these games. A previous poster mentioned the games did not sell well, but tomb raider 1 for example sold 3.1 million copies. That 8s a success for most game publishers. However, somehow SE wanted tomb raider to be as profitable as FF13. Despite tomb raider being older, changing developers, and being a reboot that could alienate some. However, while rise and shadow both did well, ff13 infamously failed in both of its sequels according to SE. The fact is, these games sold well, but not to SE's standards. |
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Weird Guy
 Posts: 139 |
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SE japan will keep outriders, Life is strange and Just cause IP due contractual obligations
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GNPixie
Posts: 322 |
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It's worth pointing out that Eidos, when Square purchased them, was doing piss poor. When they purchased them originally, it was only 120/160 adjusted. They nearly tripled their investment on them and managed to make their IPs more valuable since Deus Ex had the infamous failure that was Invisible War before Human Revolution.
As for why its possibly so cheap, they might be taking on the studio debt and their might have been negotations about that as well. Neither Eidos or CD have made a big plus in SE's profits the last few years. If anything, its been the opposite and they've been a money sink so getting rid of them makes quite a bit of sense. They could have canned them instead but didn't so its arguably a net positive for both. Embracer is largely hands off with their studios outside of funding so the studios get to make what they're best at and Square gets money to make up for the sunk cost. Last edited by GNPixie on Mon May 02, 2022 12:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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vampiyan
 Posts: 64 |
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Sony no doubt snatched up Insomniac because Spider-Man sold almost 14 million copies and they saw their potential there and since put them on making a Wolverine game along with a new Spider-Man game. Eidos titles on the other hand never did as well and Embracer have been going after more mid-sized sudios to fill out their catalog. Sad to say but these IPs are not worth much. I don't recall the exact timeline of the Rare buyout but they were also huge back in the SNES and N64 days with Donkey Kong Country and Banjo Kazooie and Conker. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4660 |
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It's probably for the best, or at the very least, won't be any worse for these studios. It's no secret at this point that Square Enix has not managed these studios very well to the point where some games were practically set up to fail. For a while there, it seemed like the problem was that they handled the western studios differently than the Japanese ones, but they've had some blunders there recently, too. Now, it seems like SE's overall problem is it wants to cram recurring spending where it either doesn't fit or was implemented so late that what was probably a decent game on its own became a live service too late for it to work.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6358 |
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Aiddon already covered the reasons regarding the purchase price. All that fluff aside I hope this leads to us getting a 3rd game in the Reboot trilogy (which hopefully they don’t screw up).
Naka worked with Sega for years he’s in zero position to talk about a video game company not caring about it’s consumers considering some of the janky stuff Sega did during his tenure there and what they still occasionally do.
Insomniac was kinda of in the same position that CD is, in the sense that while they have an extensive catalog the only franchises they have are ones that have been in the public conscience consistently or recently in Insomniac’s case that would be Ratchet & Clank and The Spider-Man games. I also guess they didn’t want to have a Rare or Bungie thing happen where a developer that’s been a key player on their platforms jumps ship to another publisher. Whereas with CD you have Tomb Raider & Gex (I actually forgot they still have LoK & Soul Reaver going back to my previous point about how often certain titles are in the public conscience) so with all that in mind though the sale numbers are low it’s more or less in line with how few valuable IPs these companies have. |
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