Square Enix may take stakes in rivals

Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix, said that its considering taking stakes in game developers to combat rising competition from established game publishers. Square Enix is worried due to the recent news about take overs, like Electronic Arts, who wants to take over Take-Two.

"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 videogame companies but from game companies worldwide. We also see some new players from outside the videogame industry coming in."

Wada also said he aims to boost the ratio of overseas videogame software sales among its total game software revenues to 80% in three years from about 50% now.

Source: Reuters