Sony to Sell Square Enix Shares

Sony announced that its Sony Computer Entertainment (SNE) Japanese game companies have a total of 9.5 million shares of Square Enix. They are going to transfer these stocks to a global firm know as SMBC Nikko Securities. For a decade, Sony has been the Final Fantasy publisher's third-largest shareholder. The transfer will be put down at 4.8 billion yen, which is almost 47 million US dollars. The exact price for which the shares sell will be revealed on Thursday, April seventeenth

The reason behind this is because of the recent trouble Square Enix has run into that affects the relationship it has with Sony. Just recently, Square decided to make Kingdom hearts 3 and Final Fantasy XV multiplatform games. For a few years, Square has lost heavy amounts of money to weak sales of big console titles. Last year alone, they lost around 138 million dollars due to poor sales on Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs. To make up for the losses, they opted to put Kingdom hearts 3 and Final Fantasy XV on the Xbox One, even though the two titles have been long exclusive to the Sony consoles

This is simply consolidation of assets and is not a negative thing for Sony. However, Square Enix has seen better days. The company use to be on top of the gaming world