Square Enix Considering Studio Acquisitions

Speaking at a technology, media and telecoms summit in Tokyo, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada has admitted that the Japanese publisher and developer is considering acquiring a stake in external developers. As quoted by news agency Reuters, Wada commented: "Economies of scale and breadth of scope are getting important. It may be a business alliance or it may be us taking a stake in others, but we need to go beyond traditional Square Enix.” "We face competition not only from Japanese video game companies but from game companies worldwide. We also see some new players from outside the video game industry coming in," he added. In September of last year Square Enix attempted to clarify comments made by senior vice president Michihiro Sasaki, which seemed to imply that the company was looking for new partners in the U.S. and Europe to create local content. This was later downplayed and presented as a more general desire to increase the company’s business outside of Japan. Speaking this week, Wada answered a question as to whether the company was currently in talks by saying, “That's part of a CEO's job. That's part of our routine work." He also indicated that although the company has no fixed budget for investing in other companies management is allowed to issue around 290 million additional shares (worth around $9.2 billion) without shareholder approval. "I'm not suggesting we are going to use up all that. But we have a capacity to do that," said Wada.