Square Enix To Buy Eidos, Midway Files For Bankruptcy

arcticstoat writes to tell us that Square Enix has been revealed as the potential buyer to Eidos, developer of the Tomb Raider franchise. Eidos had been shedding workers and studios in an attempt for financial stability. This comes alongside news that Midway Games is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to stave off creditors while they sort out what's left of their resources. World of Goo publisher Brighter Minds Media also filed for bankruptcy last month. Free Radical, a UK studio recently put in a similar position was snapped up by Crytek, and we discussed news of Sega's financial turmoil as well. It seems that claims from late last year suggesting the games industry may be "recession proof" are quickly being proven wrong, though Kotaku suggests that most of the blame falls on the developers.

Comments

Chrono Trigger??

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this bring us closer to Chrono Trigger's sequel...or further away? That's all I care about with Square-Enix at this point...

Personally I don't see why buying a failing game company is going to help out the parent company at all. Sumner Redstone bought 80% stake in Midway games when it was faltering and then sold the shares once the company collapsed putting the nail in the coffin basically.

Why is Square-Enix prying open the nails on the coffins of Midway and Eidos?

Re:Chrono Trigger??

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrono Cross is an average PS1-era JRPG which is hardly similar to Chrono Trigger. It's a "spiritual sequel" in name only.

Re:Chrono Trigger??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a "spiritual sequel" in name only.

It's not even a "spiritual" sequel -- it's a sequel, period.

That's what you call a game like Chrono Cross that uses many of the same game mechanics, is explicitly set in the same world, and is packed with references to the previous game, including appearances by several of the main characters. (Did you miss that Kid was brought up by Lucca, or that the end boss was Schala merged with Lavos?)

Re:Chrono Trigger??

[Rycross]

I kinda liked Chrono Cross as its own game, but as a sequel to Chrono Trigger? No. I have to agree with the posters above.

Dual and Triple techs were so sparse you could play the entire game and never use one. They threw in FOURTY characters, which means you had a lot of characters that were worthless to the plot, and a lot of characters with trivial backstories that diluted the plot. To deal with the over-abundance of playable characters, they watered down the magic system so that everyone shared the same spells, bar 3 unique abilities per character. This is in stark contrast to Trigger.

For the most part, Chrono Trigger doesn't come into play, until the end of the game where they throw in "oh, and the bosses you're fighting are related to Trigger!" The plot was needlessly convoluted. The whole dragon thing was just... meh; it was trying too hard.

Overall, it felt like they took an average jRPG, tacked on some Chrono Trigger backstory, and then called it a sequel. Most Chrono Trigger fans that I've talked to agree on this point.

Great rhetoric from the game industry

[moderatorrater]

"I think all of the smart publishers are looking at ways to add-on to existing games," Kramer said. "It stems the flood of used game sales and every used game sale is money out of the pockets of the developer and publisher."

What fucktards. Either they believe the rhetoric that they spew or they expect us to believe it, and either way it makes them look like assholes.

Re:Great rhetoric from the game industry

[N1AK]

What fucktards. Either they believe the rhetoric that they spew or they expect us to believe it, and either way it makes them look like assholes.

Of course they believe what they are saying, do you think they'd be trying to kill the used market if they thought it actually made them more money? Regardless of whether it does, asking whether they think it is a redundant question.

Outright assuming that the used market does make them more money also limits the value of the opinion. Most of the time when people make the case for second hand games benefiting the market they base the arguement on so many assumptions that it means nothing:
1/ Some proportion of money raised from the sale of used games is used to buy new games. This proportion, along with the related figures on how much is spent on other things and how much is spent on other used games does not appear to be known, and is vital to understanding whether the used market is beneficial.
2/ Systems like Steam and subscription based games seem to do very well among more technical users who are the most likely to care about companies restricting re-sale, if that is the case then do none technical users really care.
3/ Used sales provide another form of competition against new game sales. Figures on how much effect this has in bringing down prices of new games is something that would effect whether used games sales are more profitable for games distributors. Certainly looking at controlled channels like Xbox arcade, Steam and the Wiis equivalent it seems prices stay higher for longer due to lack of competition from re-sale.

I don't like the idea of used games sales being blocked, but I know better than to think that choosing to blindly believe that it is a bad idea for the games producers to do it will somehow stop it happening.

Sweeping statements

[Shrike82]

From the summary:

It seems that claims from late last year suggesting the games industry may be "recession proof" are quickly being proven wrong

Labelling an entire industry "recession proof" seems a bit excessive. Any games company with a solid fanbase, probably through years of making good quality games and having good customer support, are unlikely to be affected too badly by the global economy problems. Sure, things are a bit tighter for me money-wise now, but I'm sure as hell not going to stop buying games. A good business model and high quality products, for a receptive market sounds like a winner to me. But a bad games company, making bad games and treating their customers like idiots, criminals, or flat out ignoring them, is going to go under no matter what. Recession just speeds things up, and being in an industry considered "safe" from economic problems isn't going to save you one little bit.

Another approach to riding out a recession is to create games that are mind-bendingly addictive, and provide income month-after-month. Anyone for WoW?

Chrono Cross

[jgtg32a]

Chrono Cross was good it just couldn't match CT.

Re:Developer Ego

[7Prime]

That's because all of the developers only put their C and D teams on Wii/DS, and save their AAA teams for the 360/PS3. Then everyone's surprised, or angry at Nintendo when those games aren't good and don't sell very well. NO SHIT! If they were smart and spread their investments, giving equal time and creative resources to the Wii as they do for the 360/PS3, they'd be raking in the doah. If investment bankers used the same formula that these companies do, they'd be out of a job. Look where the money is. The Wii has about 1.5x as many users as both the 360 and PS3 COMBINED. When programming for 360/PS3, you have to hire extra programmers to port, and the PS3 is not very friendly to program on, especially when a game is already programmed for the 360. There are literally dozens of titles that do not use all the latest graphics that the 360 or PS3 offer, that would work perfectly fine on the Wii, but devs choose to release on the more troublesome duel-platform 360/PS3 option.

This is simple arrogance mixed with a Bush-esque "stay the course" type attitude. There's no good excuse for leaving the Wii in the dust