The Japanese gaming firm behind Last Fantasy is promoting off three studios, together with the rights to hit franchises together with Tomb Raider, in a $300m (£240m) deal.
Tokyo-based Sq. Enix has bought US-headquartered Crystal Dynamics and Canada-based Eidos Montreal and Sq. Enix Montreal to the Nasdaq-listed Swedish gaming group Embracer.
The deal contains the mental property (IP) rights to video games corresponding to Tomb Raider, which has bought greater than 88m models, Deus Ex, Thief and Legacy of Kain. It additionally contains 50 again catalogue video games and can add 1,100 employees to Embracer, taking its international headcount to greater than 14,000.
“We're thrilled to welcome these studios into the Embracer household,” mentioned Lars Wingefors, co-founder and group chief government at Embracer. “We recognise the unbelievable IP, world class inventive expertise, and observe document of excellence which were demonstrated again and again over the previous many years.”
Sq. Enix additionally has a multi-year cope with Disney to make Marvel video games – so far it has made solely two titles, Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy – which is prone to be a part of the deal however was not talked about within the announcement.
Embracer, which has a market worth of $7.2bn, has spent greater than $8bn making over 60 acquisitions since 2020. The most important was the €2.75bn (£2.3bn) acquisition of French board sport firm Asmodee Video games in December.
“Embracer is the perfect stored secret in gaming: an enormous, decentralized assortment of entrepreneurs whom we're thrilled to grow to be part of right this moment,” mentioned Phil Rogers, chief government of Sq. Enix America and Europe. “It's the excellent match for our ambitions: make high-quality video games, with nice folks, sustainably, and develop our present franchises to their greatest variations ever.”
The $300m price ticket displays “restricted competitors for acquisition of the property, maybe suggesting some post-pandemic softness in valuations for explicit segments”, mentioned Piers Harding-Rolls, head of video games analysis at Ampere Evaluation.
“Curiosity can be curtailed by the shortage of dwell service experience,” Harding-Rolls added, a reference to video games that provide steady, up to date play. Titles corresponding to Tomb Raider are primarily single participant and high video games in recent times can require funding similar to large funds film productions.
“In several timing and circumstances that would have been a unique quantity however now we're the place we're and I’m standing right here, so I’m tremendous happy with that,” Wingefors advised a briefing.
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