Sony Buys 19% of Squaresoft

Suffering under the heavy burden of the financially draining Final Fantasy movie, Squaresoft of Japan is now in the final stages of selling 11.2 million shares of stock to Sony at a cost of 14.9 billion yen ($124 million), making Sony’s stake in the company second only that owned by Squaresoft’s founder. How this merger will affect Squaresoft and the video game industry isn’t yet clear, but this will certainly help insure that Square’s biggest franchises remain PS2 releases and may also affect Square’s plans for their PlayOnLine service, which they had planned to make a multi-platform, multimedia internet community and service.

Source: The Gaming Intelligence Agency