An insider has confirmed a rumor that suggested Sony will be buying Square Enix and Final Fantasy. Here's everything we know about it.
Greg Miller is a former IGN writer, turned gaming-journalism-supernova, and he just corroborated a huge rumor that's been making the rounds on the internet: Sony is planning to buy Square Enix, which will effectively turn the upcoming Final Fantasy 16 into a PlayStation exclusive.
Makes sense, because, after all, this is the age of acquisitions, Microsoft is buying developers, Sony is buying developers, and Nintendo is working on 4K gaming.
Sony Is Making Final Fantasy Exclusive
The news was first broken by Jeff Grubb, and then picked up by Greg Miller. In fact, first reports of this emerged a while back, but there were no specifics. Now the specifics are out the bag: Square Enix sold off all of its wester teams (including those responsible for the Marvel games), and is holding on to their Japanese talent. It is that very Japanese side of Square Enix that Sony is now acquiring. Why would Sony only want the Japanese side? Well... why do you really know Square Enix in the first place? It's because of Final Fantasy.
After all, Final Fantasy is running as high and mighty as ever:
- Final Fantasy 9 is getting a remake
- Final Fantasy 7 is getting a bunch of spin-offs
- Final Fantasy 16 is close to being released
The interesting thing to me is that this doesn't feel all that wrong: Square Enix games have always been most at home on PlayStation systems. Somehow, Final Fantasy 16 possibly becoming a PS5 exclusive, doesn't sound all that alienating.
The acquisition hasn't been made public yet, but, unless something unexpected happens, that will soon change. Of course, it will likely be a while until the fate of Final Fantasy's exclusivity won't be revealed off the bat, but at least we already know Final Fantasy 16 is definitely happening.