Remember when there was a lot of talk about acquiring Sony, specifically industry veterans Jeff Grubb and Greg Miller? They both talked about Square Enix. “When I talked about the three rumors that I had heard, and one was an acquisition, this is the one that I heard,” Miller finally revealed in an episode of his ps I love you podcast. “I heard that PlayStation was acquiring Square and I heard about it from multiple different sources.”
So how come this rumor was going around but we never heard anything about Embracer Group buying Crystal Dynamics et al? Miller hypothesizes that some wires may have been crossed: “Was Square trying to sell off their Western studios and that was the rumour? Take everything with a grain of salt. That’s what I heard though, that PlayStation was trying to buy Square.”
As Miller aptly points out later in the podcast, anything is possible in this era where publishers like Activision Blizzard are being bought out for nearly $70 billion. But here’s the thing: when an acquisition actually happens in this industry, it only ever learn about it when the ink is dry. That’s because businesses of this size are mired in so many nondisclosure agreements that it’s almost unthinkable for a social media “insider” to find out about them.
In other words, the next time you see a major rumor about a big corporate buyout, we recommend approaching it with a healthy dose of skepticism.