Following the announcement of the Embracer Group purchasing Square Enix Montreal, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal for $300 million, Square Enix has revealed its reasons for the sale. Yosuke Matsuda, President and Representative Director, said in a recent press release that the transaction would help the company in “adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain.”
It also allows Square Enix to launch new businesses and move forward with “investments in fields including blockchain, AI, and the cloud. The move is based on the policy of business structure optimization that the Company set forth under the medium-term business strategy unveiled on May 13, 2021.” This lines up with the company ramping up its plans for NFTs this year.
Square Enix can also “better align” its Tokyo organization with its overseas publishing along with revisiting “the current governance structure and associated reporting lines, and advance integrated group management with the goal of maximizing the worldwide revenue generated from future titles launched by the group’s studios in Japan and abroad.”
The company’s developers will consist of Square Enix External Studios, the Square Enix Collective and its Japan studios. It will also continue to publish franchises like Life is Strange, People Can Fly’s Outriders and Avalanche Studios’ Just Cause.
As such, the Embracer Group’s acquisition is expected to be finalized by Q2 of its 2022/2023 financial year. Along with IPs like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, Thief and so on, it will also own a back-catalogue of over 50 titles. In the meantime, companies like Perfect Dark developer The Initiative will continue working with Crystal Dynamics even after the deal.