Move Over Microsoft, Embracer Group Buys Square Enix's Western Studios

Microsoft did exactly the right move making the purchases they did.
The landscapes moving and you got to get in quick and build for the future.
300 million seems like a bargain, though I’m no expert on this subject.

Breaking news, Microsoft buys the embracer group …

300 million for 3 studios with tomb raider, deus ex, and guardians of the galaxy behind them? How did MS let that happen? Im sure I read somewhere that Xbox just paid 10mill to get Guardians of the Galaxy on gamepass for god knows how many months???
I wonder if the over priced activison deal prevented them from going for this. Seems like a real missed opportunity

New Deus Ex, thats what I want to see

It's not a steal they also get the debt of the Companies which could be billions for all we know

£300 million? That's a absolute steal anf I have to wonder why Sony or nintendo didn't buy them for that cheap.

On the bright side at least those devs games will remain multi platform.

But it does seem like the embracer group are building a portfolio ready for their own streaming platform similar to EA access.

Another positive is that it seems to me like square enix want to go back to fully focusing on JRPG's with no western games under their belt to do now. This means more resources on games like dragon quest, final fantasy, valkyrie profile, mana series, star ocean etc meaning faster releases

Who does the Hitman games?

I wish it had of been Sony, now it never will be.

@UltimateOtaku91 Hitman is owned and developed by IO Interactive.

@Shigurui Eidos own that Studio so this deal means embracer group also gets the Hitman IP

@themightyant so they have nothing to so with square enix anymore, I remember square enix saying they were looking for a buyer for them years ago but no one ever did buy them

@UltimateOtaku91 good shout regarding them having their own streaming service - it’s certainly possible with, what is it like 120 studios, and all those IPs?

Important to remember that a lot of extra costs come from purchasing a studio (e.g. keeping them open); but I agree with everyone regarding the IP cost seeming low; especially Tomb Raider as it’s one of those names that even non-gamers are well aware of.

I think it’s a missed opportunity for Microsoft to get the rights to Tomb Raider, seeing as they are lacking a decent first party third-person action adventure IP. £300 million for multiple IPs, including Tomb Raider, is pocket change to MS.

I don’t see this acquisition affecting Crystal Dynamics working on the Perfect Dark reboot as there will be contract obligations to honour.

As some have mentioned regarding Hitman, that would be a great IP for MS to go after but seeing as IO Interactive went independent in 2017, they may want to stay independent.

More Deus Ex, please!

Maybe the studios will get some creative freedom away from SEs unreasonably high expectations. Crystal Dynamics can drop The Avengers live service bs and make a completely stand alone SP experience.

More Deus Ex, I'd love a remaster of the first or even just a console port, give Thief another shot. Tomb Raider, all top IPs that require the limelight again.

@Martsmall Would they though? Square enix is still a thing by the sounds of it…so I’d assume they still carry whatever debts they’ve gathered.

I guess the bigger question outside of why didn’t Microsoft/Sony buy them is…why did they sell them? There’s been loads of rumours of Sony acquiring Square recently too…

@Bleachedsmiles it does say the 300 mill Is debt free and embracer has taken out 4 billion SEK of loans to cover them.for the next few years

Square Enix is slowly turning into crap while selling this and with their recent games.

@Xiovanni OH GOOOOOD.

@Xiovanni that's one of the parts I don't like about this deal and also embracers website basically says it will break even over the next few year unless they do deals with a single/multiple platforms so highest bidder time for games on Thier ips

@Kooky_Daisuke

I think Sony might get WB because of the rumors. Evo with MK makes so much sense. Rocksteady could be their DC's Insomniac.

To be fair. If Sony had to choose and chose SE I'll be dissapointed. I only care about FF.

Can't believe MSFT wasn't in the race, is the ABK merger that crippling for them atm, because if that's including all IP, this is a steal at 300m

70 billion for Activison seems a rip off now

Some of you guys will get bamboozled when you find out that studios that are purchased won't revive all of their dead IPs and they will still make what makes money.

@Bleachedsmiles I'm betting that MS couldn't bid on this while the AB deal is being scrutinized by the FTC. I do expect this to make the AB deal a whole lot easier to pass. The price does seem very low but I'm wondering how much debt embracer is taking over with the purchase. Remember that all these studios launched "disappointing" titles recently.

It is true that square didnt make money out of most of the games releases by these studios despite how good the actual games were

"In its note to press, Embracer said it "sees an opportunity to invest in these franchises" (Tomb Raider and Deus Ex), "as well as the additional acquired IPs such as Legacy of Kain, Thief and other original franchises".

And people still think that MS buying Activision could constitute a Monopoly - Yet TenCent, Embracer, Ubisoft, EA, Sony, Warner Bros, Square Enix, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Sony, Nintendo etc all are Competing with MS - as this deal proves.

I am surprised that Square would be split off those as to me, they were their way to deliver more games to the Western Market. I wouldn't be Surprised though if they were to sell out the rest to Sony...

As for the A/B price, it may seem a LOT, but I think its a 'fair' price to buy out a Company for $95 per share, but from 18 Dec 20, to 23July 21 - the share price was over $90 and peaked at $103.81 per share on the 12th Feb 21. That was only a year ago and with inflation, the value of $90 back then was obviously higher (you could buy more for your $90 back then than you can a year later).

$70bn is a LOT and considering the price of these and Insomniac to Sony which cost ~$230m for a Single Studio, Embracer has got one hell of a deal. However, MS is Purchasing 5 businesses essentially - Activision Studio's, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming and Activision Publishing. King cost Activision $5.9Bn in 2016 and Activision wasn't 'just' making games with their own Studio's, they are Publishers too. MLG cost Activision $46m. There IP's are also worth a LOT too - even if in recent years they haven't really done a lot with most of them and relied heavily on CoD, Candy Crush & Overwatch. Having the Publishing Rights is also a valuable asset - owning an IP doesn't instantly mean they have 'publishing' rights on older titles. That is probably why Bethesda and A/B are more expensive and quite important if you want to Publish their 'back catalogue' on Game Pass for example...

Having heard stories about SE, hopefully these Studio's will be better off. I can't imagine Embracer impacting on the work Crystal Dynamics are doing with the Initiative as there would be a Contractual obligation to uphold - and unless they are 'willing' to negotiate a deal with MS to release them from that contract, It makes more sense to let them continue...

Seems like they got a good deal..

Why are people still wishing for MS to have bought them or to buy everything? You get the games either way. This is a better scenario then everybody wins.
Wishing for a platform holder to buy this and that is nothing more than bragging rights to 'the other' platforms when you were already getting the game.

On Reddit yesterday there was a post wishing/begging for MS to buy WB as Batman would be 'our answer to Spider-Man'. As I said to him, Batman is already on Xbox so what do you gain?

It's stupid. Embrace buying CD means it's not tied to Xbox or PlayStation, and that's a good thing.

@GADG3Tx87 it isn't tied to anyone till one company bids highest to make a game of a IP ,I wouldn't put money on any of the games staying multiplatform depending on the money offered

Taken from Thier own website about thier finances and the purchase afte saying they will break even on the company's they purchased over the next few years ...

This could change positively if the company decides to enter a deeper strategic relationship with one or more platforms around the upcoming pipeline.

Note the with one so they are very open so one company paying for the IP

In other words shoowww me the money lol

It looks quite cheap compared to all the other recent big acquisitions. I guess Square Enix wanted to get rid of them. I always say that Crystal Dynamics and Eidos make better games than Naughty Dog excluding one part, the questionable script of the latest Tomb Raider games. Recent news have me thinking that The Initiative is a dream team of artists with no proper direction and leadership and, as I have said many times and was later suggested by someone from The Initiative in an interview, leadership and hierarchy are needed in important development teams and that's something that doesn't seem to be a priority for Microsoft. This explains why some Xbox Game Studios seem to be fragmented and stuck. I wonder if it's something that Microsoft is aware of and will change. It's not normal how much external assistance 343 Industries needed to polish Halo Infinite and improve the campaign and how Crystal Dynamics is basically rebooting the Perfect Dark reboot.

@ShadowofTwilight22 I'm glad it was Embracer rather than Microsoft, Sony, or Tencent tbh

I’d only rather have this than activision. The more I think of the activision deal the more I think it’s games like wow and cod staying multi platform and printing money which will fund other studios games as well I guess. Embracer and recent are much more of a monopoly than anything Microsoft has done.

A pity that SE never knew how to manage their western studios properly. And now that I see that SE themselves are also in a heap of financial troubles, they should also fire their bigwigs over low performance.

Holy feck..... On one hand I'm sick of the industry consolidation into a handful of ultra mega studios. On the other hand, Square was squandering and abusing these studios and they were producing next to nothing for a decade or more as a result. And they're amazingly top tier studios. Half their IPs have been dormant for a generation. And at least it's not Tencent. Though Embracer is getting too big for comfort.

On the other hand this makes "Sony should buy Square" a lot more possible. OTOH, I doubt Sony would actually want to since Square is just a Japanese studio again, now, and Sony hates anything Japanese centric. The western studios are what they really probably cared about anyway.

@themightyant "where doing the right thing is valued in addition to just hard numbers, though that is changing with a larger western capitalist view."

That's depressing. Japan was the last place on Earth doing things right. I'm far, far, far, from a commie, but the new 80's breed of greed-is-good capitalism is a crippling disease, destroying even free market economics. Japan was the last safe harbor.

@ShadowofTwilight22 Correction, PlayStation, meaning Ryan and company, hates anything Japanese-centric. The anime thing is Sonycorp/Sony Media, a totally different managerial outfit. Based in Japan...

It's weird to have an anti-Japan arm of a Japanese company, run out of the US, but that's where PS is. Ryan's a "new media" guy. He sees Japan's domestic video game market rapidly shrinking (and he's right), he sees the massive profits from the Western online gaming market (and he's right), and he's connected it to mean that Japanese content is no longer where the profits are and the broader market with more money isn't interested in that. And while he's partially right, he's missing the forest through the trees and doing what Nintendo did with Wii, chasing a blue ocean of fly by night customers with big but flighty pockets at the expense of a reliable and predictable market he discards because he sees a lower market cap on it. Ironically, it's also the same mistake Square-Enix made in the PS360 era that saw their Japanese IPs collapse and the purchase of all these Western studios they no longer want..

@ShadowofTwilight22 I was correcting that when I said "Sony" I meant "PlayStation", and it sounds like you agree

Square Enix has been doing a terrible work lately at managing anything that is not Final Fantasy XIV, so this might be good news for IPs like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider.

Im a bit shocked that it sold for so little, relatively speaking, and that it wasn’t Microsoft that pulled the trigger. But who knows, MS might eventually buy the Embracer Group itself….

@themightyant Yeah the purpose of the buyout, in the case of Double Fine and Obsidian being perennially cash strapped needed a bigger organization. And in Obsidian's case, they fell out from a bigger organization (Interplay/Black Isle) and floundered without the larger structure for years. Bethesda was falling apart, etc, so the mergers can be good. In Square's case they've been a disaster, especially their Western studios (and who are we kidding, we remember FFXV's release cycle), for years. I actually do think it'll be good for fans of the IPs of the studios (I never asked for....wait, nevermind, s'all good, Give Me Deus Ex.)

But I still don't like seeing the consolidation to the same few companies. The individual studios may beneft, and fans of the franchises may benefit. But long term he colossal consolidation to just a few companies definitely won't be good. Still, Embracer and MS seem to be the most adept at handling studios for now.

But Embracer is also taking on colossal debt across the board, and I wonder how they plan to actually stay solvent and not break up. And then there's another feeding frenzy on THQ IP.

(P.S. OOF, those puns! )

Sony and Japan..... I do think there's a chicken and egg situation. Sony flipped off Japan with the late launch of PS4 which Japan didn't take kindly, and then they had an all western games focus since then which hasn't helped them pick up Japanese fans. And then there's the western censorship which has sent developers in Japan toward PC and Nintendo more than ever. And finally, they got out of the handheld business which is basically the entire games business in Japan, so.....

But at the same time, in Japan, the Nintendo market really does buy only Nintendo games, and all of Japan is the Nintendo market. Beyond that they've gone so deep into mobile as the primary gaming that I somewhat "get" it.

But it all misses a big theme. Even if Japan's domestic games market has shrank at least as far as traditional consoles go, Japanese developers games have a strong market outside Japan. It may not be CoD/Forgnite/TLoU numbers, but it's a strong market. And Sony's disconnect from Japanese development seems at odds with what a lucrative portion of their coveted Western market associates with their brand.

They partially "get" it. They focus on Golden Week sales (now), and they buy their time limited big western Japanese game exclusives from Square, mostly. But their interaction with Japanese content and it's solid market in the West, feels like a "hello, fellow kids" moment, where they seem to think games made in Japan that resemble western games is what Japanese games fans in the West really want. Like when Capcom thought Ninja Theory's DmC is what the world really wanted from Japan.

@GADG3Tx87 Life doesn’t work like that. Sony MS and Nintendo aren’t all holding hands singing songs together. There’s a reason why since MS acquired Zenimax Bethesda games have only released on PlayStation so far…

The main reason why Those that game on Xbox would prefer MS own square enix is probably more to do with it ensuring these games come to gamepass day 1 adding increasing value to their subs rather than it the games not coming to other platforms (which isn’t a guarantee even if MS do own them).

@Widey85 They have been constantly announcing their releases as failures for as long as I remember. Not a sound strategy when you are bargaining prices 😂

@Bleachedsmiles
Except it doesn't have to be. Microsoft can secure deals to get games on GamePass with third parties so their customers get to play games day one or either way for a low cost £10.99 per month. While PlayStation customers still get those same games but have to pay £70 a go.

Everybody plays, everybody wins. A line Phil Spencer once used.

People wanting Sony or Microsoft to lock games down to their platform are just point scoring at the end of the day.

Microsoft have secured several third party games to GamePass day one while PlayStation also got them. They don't have to be exclusive for everyone to benefit in one way or another.

The one question I have based on this news: Gex when?

Also, I really would hate for Sony to follow this up by buying the core of Square Enix, as I need them to retain a presence on Nintendo consoles, or the gaming world just won't feel right to me anymore.

@SplooshDmg A Wild Sploosh Appeared!

Seriously, selling off a billion dollars in assets for 300m to fund NFT programs is the most Squeenix thing Squeenix could have ever done.

I'm still assuming the depressed value of the sale is related to the bundling of a debt mountain into the sale. All those "failed to meet sales expectations" blockbusters had to be filling some sinkhole, and I'm sure the sinkhole came with the sale. $300m for the companies, and 2.8bn for the debts..... Wonder if Embracer knows that part yet or if they squirreled it into page 3842 under "overseas merchandising licensing costs."?

Oh, yeah, Trials of Mana is fantastic. It's so short, but it's such a gem! But the question is, will you still like it on iOS with cooldown timers and potions sold at "real world inspired" prices?

Thq are kings of low effort remasters and ports. Dark siders 3, Elex 2 (such a janky game), I think spiders rpgs like technomancer. They are doing the Gothic remake though so I really hope they don't screw that one up.

@GADG3Tx87 That’s business. And we’ve already seen that just because a game is multi platform it doesn’t mean it comes out on those platforms at the same time. Had MS not bought Bethesda Xbox players would probably be looking at a years extra wait for starfield…just as they are with deathloop and ghost wire Tokyo.
And just because a publisher is multi platform it doesn’t mean they don’t still do exclusive deals…just as we’re seeing with most FF games.

You want to win as a gamer? Get all platforms.

@Bleachedsmiles
So you're insinuating you don't like it when Xbox is left out of something but you also insinuate in your previous post that you're ok with Microsoft buying everything just for your 'value?' Hypocrite much? you don't like timed exclusives but want Microsoft to secure permanent exclusives for you? there is just no reasoning with fanboys.

So since it's 'just business' if Sony does buy Square Enix, which is rumoured to be happening, and locks down Final Fantasy, taking more games permanently away from other people, you're absolutely fine by that morally since it's ok for Microsoft to secure Zenimax and Activision for permeant exclusivity?

I’m sure MS would have made an offer on these studios had it not been for the acquisition they are in the middle of now. That’s the only downside to this whole Activision blizzard buyout. They are in a place with negotiation have been put on hold for more studios.

My gut tells me that Embrace Group begins splitting up the different properties and Microsoft ends up buying Crystal Dynamics. Much like how they bought Bethesda from Koch Media. It’d make sense to go this route since MS could continue developing features and functions in whatever Perfect Dark ends up being.

300m seems like an absolute steal, but then apparently for 2021, the SE western division only made 200m revenue and only 8m of that was actual profit. So you can sort of see why they've gone so cheap.
Still, some crazy IPs that have been sold here and nice they will at least remain multiformat.

@GADG3Tx87 Adds more value to gamepass which in turn benefits me as a gamepass subscriber. Yes, shocker…I only care about deals that benefit ME as a gamer. I don’t care about those that only have a ps5 not getting a game if it means im saving £70 to play that game. Why would I?
And if Sony locks down final fantasy (which they have/are) I’ll just play it on my ps5 and life goes on.

Like I said, you want to win as a gamer you get all platforms. Stop misguided loyalty. How this makes me a fanboy only you know.

@themightyant That's just operating expenses. Embracer's been buying a mountain of raw debt with a lot of these acquisitions on TOP of those operating expenses. Not just the purchase price, but obligations inherited with the acquired businesses which can be much more than the acquisition price.

It was a little controversial before as to how they were going to manage that. Their revenues don't add up to the rate of debt increase. We don't know what Square bundled with this yet, but all those brands and divisions going for $300m? I'd be shocked if they didn't move a ton of debt into those divisions before selling it to offload it all, Bain Capital-style. The real cost has to to be a lot higher than $300m. Tomb Raider, alone, should have gone for more than that, without C-D included.

Nobody, including (especially?) investors knows exactly how Embracer's going to pay for it all. I kind of like them. They've been pretty faithful to their brands and pretty old-school in what they offer. There's a concern with them that they're being mismanaged, themselves, though, and taking on far more debt than they can repay and will end up collapsing (like the OG THQ), or being poached later on (Tencent? MS? Elon Musk's impulse buy on a rainy Thursday?)

Japan and Sony: Yeah, that's the thing, the really Japanese niche market that Sony had a viable reason to leave really did vanish. But those are mostly games we're entirely unfamiliar with in the west at all, and more than half of that is licensed anime for animes we don't really know about in the west. But they got rid of, with it, a ton of content and support that did have a market in the west, just because they filed it all under the "Japan" umbrella. I still take exception with the handling of Gravity Rush, for example. That was a solid franchise, maybe "too Japanese" (as one of the writers herself put it) in certain regards, but with proper marketing that could really have become a niche anchor game here. But they buried it. Even at that E3, they covered "The other zombie game" (Days), not once, not twice, but thrice. GR2 got a passing mention and that was that. And in the end, "the other zombie game" barely did better than GR which was a sales failure. But Sony also stopped being interested in having many niche games covering various genres. Everything had to be a top seller or it wasn't
t worth making. (Someone will argue Returnal isn't that, but Returnal wasn't a Sony game until they bought the dev after the game launched, they just helped with funding and expertise as publisher and/or a "special partnership" situation. But, Returnal also had abysmal sales figures. Maybe that's reversed recently, but GR2 never even had that chance, they killed the servers and declared it dead.) It's partly chicken and egg, but also a wholesale decision of the content they wanted to focus on at the expense of other content.

TBH Japanese zany games that don't take themselves too seriously, or best of all, mix serious with lighthearted is the whole reason I ever got glued to gaming to begin with. If it all goes hollywood serious, I probably lose much interest in it at all. I hear "a more adult" Dragon Quest and my heart sinks.

@themightyant Yeah. Realistically even the beleaguered Deus Ex IP is probably worth more than 300M. Plus the fact that, in theory the sale includes a paid for Disney Marvel license (Paid for? Good question...) That alone is probably worth a chunk of the sale price.

Embracer in general has definitely absorbed a lot of debt. They've mostly been buying struggling companies, and they've been leveraging a lot of the transaction values. That's iffy enough. But Square being Square.... one can only imagine the gotchas (as offset by gatchas) included in that bundle.

"Beautiful 50 acre vista estate, 300,000sqft manor home, with indoor heated swimming pool, separate residencies for on-site staff on the beautiful ocean vistas of Costa Rica, only $1.2m. (Meth lab disposal, toxic waste removal/HAZMAT fees, geological fault line risk, 45 years of back taxes at buyers expense. Includes 1 year free Disney Marvel use subscription and Lara Croft blow-up doll."

Embracer is interesting. It's a very "organic" company, started by a young entrepreneur and focusing really on games and comics from the start. He's still the CEO, though it's public now. So as a gamer, they're as likable as a now giant corporation can be, since it's been a gaming & comics company more or less from the start. OTOH, he's had a history of poor business, went bankrupt more than once, revived his own failed companies more than once, sold out to VC capital then still went under, then restarted again ,etc. Of course he keeps coming back bigger, and they're a public company with lots of business people...but an amassing of debut that would make all but MS blush, and a history of going under.... it does make one worry how they're propping it up. And it seems too similar to OG THQ (which did not involve Embracer or it's original versions) in terms of operations. Hopefully they can stabilize from all that debt.

I still insist GR is one of the best games of the past 15 years. They're fightin' words, I know. So underappreciated. Bad marketing, bad presentation. Bad localized name. The writing of 2 was warned as "too Japanese" because Westerners hate stories about every-day trivial life while Japan thrives on it, and the west doesn't "get" it. IDK, I prefer those kinds of stories. It's most interesting. "Save the world in peril" starts to all feel like the same story after a while. Kat's story is uniquely Kat, the world can wait. I know the west doesn't love anime visuals, but if the public doesn't love the gameplay and world in that game, the public doesn't love video games. Which is probably why video games are just becoming movies. (Except the Soulsborne crows that just loves to suffer )

IDK about "adult FF". Though, to me IX is the pinnacle of the series, VII is a nonsensical emo self-important mess, X is teen-angst: The Game, but more depressing (and also a nonsensical mess), XV....Honestly, XV wouldn't be bad if it weren't a mess at figuring out its gameplay and narrative pacing. And if the engine didn't suck. The vibe was probably right what an FF should be. Serious, and also playful. XIII.....

You know what? Strike it all. IX was the pinnacle of the series, the rest of a series is a disastrous production mess loaded with potential and no direction, and I won't take no for an answer. "Adult" won't save it. Every time they try to go "Adult" they just make it emo, angsty, self-important, and overly dramatic. Leave adult out of it. Grimdark and blood spray won't fix what's wrong.

@themightyant No argument about VI! I still generally love IX most, but, yeah, VI is "the other good one", lol

Yeah, I don't even remember anything about IX's "true villain" except that it was randomly introduced near the end of the game, never made sense with the rest of the game, and seemed to be a drop-in deus ex machina that was put in because reasons. I just tend to think of the game ending prior to that point. The "real" villains were dealt with. The "post-game random evil entity villain" is a DLC in my head-canon. I do remember that being bad and a disappointment. But the rest of the game is just so magical, it isn't destroyed by it.

VII and "Genova" isn't much better, IMO, except the nonsense starts early in the game and goes farther off the rails as time goes on until the end has so little coherence with anything none of it matters anymore. And then Advent Children and Crisis Core went and made it worse. IX at least has a "real" ending and then the "rest of the game" feels like a bolt on expansion you can forget about. Plus IX never killed off my flipping healer mid-game forcing me to solo a tough dungeon with no healing at all. Even if VII had an impeccable story (spoiler: It doesn't), that gameplay misfire for the sake of story earns it special ire

Bet MS are kicking themselves they had to sleep on this. Till they no doubt buy embracer that is.

Let’s see how perfect dark turns out

Crystal dynamics and tomb raider would have been a great added addition to Xbox studios.
Dam shame, then again we might not have seen another game out of them had Microsoft purchased them 😂😂😂
We have to have a fun side on here.

That was May? Wow, time flies.

@Dezzy70 😂 I do like that joke.

Mate don’t go full Otaku, like you are currently over on Push, never go full Otaku.

On another note I can’t wait for the next Tomb Raider game now that Embracer owns it. It’s probably gonna be AA with similar script writers to Saints Row, cannot wait, honestly.

@Fenbops
We have to have a bit of fun, else it gets all a bit to serious.
I’m currently on Push Square posting pro price increase that’s fun as well 😂

Great news, now hurry up and get a tomb raider out, it's been too long.

@Dezzy70 you’re a bad man Dezzy 😂😂😂

@Fenbops
I’m getting mainly negative but positive from a few😂😂😂
You should try battling the Nintendo Life lot, I should be dead by now 😂

@Dezzy70 god no. Nintendo have become that irrelevant to me I don’t care what they’re doing anymore 😂

Sigh. You got me called ‘The Hypocrite’. I hate you 😂

@Dezzy70 I knew you were trolling. 🤣🤣🤣 I looked at your comment over there and said to myself, "he ain't serious....!"

@Rafie
I am serious I really don’t care about the price increase and I think as the price has not increased in the USA, wise move there.
It won’t make any difference to sales in the UK or EUROPE at all. Sony have massive game momentum at the minute.
Also currently today the price has not gone up in the UK at retail I checked this morning.

@Fenbops
Mr Switch doing nothing for me or my household much at the minute. The odd MK8 play and that’s it. Nintendo almost been dead to me for nearly two years.
Don’t get me wrong started off amazing in the first two years switch, great top AAA games.

@Dezzy70 mine’s been sitting under the tv gathering dust for 2 years with very little use and when I do fire it up it’s like smothering butter over my eyes, everything on it looks so dated.

Yeah it was a steal. Then again when was the last Deus Ex game? Tomb Raider, feels outdated, to me at least, and couldn't be bothered by another one.

Just wanted to echo some of the guys here in hoping for the conclusion to Adam Jensen's trilogy in Deus Ex or a remake of the first one.

So many people on push square saying Sony will announce they've acquired square enix but why in the world would they announce a price hike for the ps5 & then soon after announce they've spent a bunch more cash on another acquisition lol

@Would_you_kindly maybe they need some more quick cash for the acquisition? Seriously although I'd like them to purchase square I've been thinking a lot and I believe sony or microsoft buying square would just kill the reason I enjoy their games, they would likely reduce the amount of jrpgs they make and just focus on dragon quest, kingdom hearts and final fantasy, and focus on live service games from their ip's as that's the future I believe playstation and xbox is aiming for to keep their subscription numbers up and rake in the money from Microtransactions.

Thinking about it now, I think I actually want nintendo to buy square enix.

@UltimateOtaku91 just doesn't make sense to say hey we're going to increase the price of our consoles because of inflation , on another note we have a surplus of cash that needs spending so we're buying square enix for (inserts large amount of money)

I don’t agree with any of the buy outs - Microsoft and sony have always had there own exclusive, gears, fable, Halo and uncharted, god of war, ratchet and clank it was left to the other studios to release software for all the console even Nintendo. This is rapidly going stupid now. Bring back the old days please.

@UltimateOtaku91 IO Interactive. I believe Square Enix let them go a few years ago, and they were able to retain the "Hitman" IP.