Venerable Japanese game companies, Square Co. Ltd. and Enix Corp. announced merge plans to take effect in April 1, 2003 in a bid to better strengthen their profitability amid stiff competition.
The deal would be worth about 88.79 billion yen ($727 million) at current share prices. Under the accord, 0.81 Enix share will be exchanged for one Square share, with Enix emerging as Square Enix. However, Yoichi Wada, current president of Square, will head up the new company. Square and Enix, makers of the wildly popular Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series respectively, have had difficulties competing with Western software companies like EA, Activision and Infogrames. Square, which lost 16.6 billion yen in an unprofitable attempt at filmmaking a year ago has recently returned to profitiability while Enix has yet to produce a best seller outside of its Dragon Quest series.
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