Square Enix’s New Idea
In a recent investor call we learned something interesting about the developer’s plans for the future. Square Enix is looking to sell stakes not in the developer as a whole but specific studios under its banner. As an example, suppose some company was looking to invest in the video games sector and was particularly impressed with the soon to release Valkyrie Profile: Elysium, then perhaps they would like to invest in developer and Square Enix studio tri-Ace directly.
How this might affect Square Enix in the future is hard to say especially since this is such a novel approach to investment, but if a company wanted to ensure output from a particular studio remained exclusive (and possibly influence the form of that output) this might just be a way to do it.
