Microsoft Was Interested In Acquiring Square Enix

gameranx.com:

There is no shortage of interesting facts and tidbits of history behind some of the leading video game industry companies right now. Thanks to Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision Blizzard, the company has been shedding some behind-the-scenes details through the court battles. Regulators are going through this purchase offer, and one of the battles Microsoft is currently undergoing is through the FTC. But now we’re finding out that there were other companies Microsoft was keen on picking up besides Activision Blizzard. One of which was Square Enix.

Court documents are hitting the web and one of which details Microsoft’s initial interest in offering a bid for Square Enix. This comes from Axios Gaming Stephen Totilo, who shared a document online. This was a consideration within Microsoft back in 2019, where Phil Spencer offered his feedback on the proposal. We’re not sure just how far into this proposal got before Microsoft decided to move on. 

However, the documents show that Microsoft was toying with the idea of keeping the recently announced games coming to the already planned platforms. What would be different is that Square Enix games would land on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service at launch. That would, however, hurt some of the portions of base game sales, according to the document. But at the very least, it does look like there were other additional companies that Microsoft was looking into.

Strategy proposal was for existing SquareEnix games to launch on announced platforms. Future games would ship day/date on Game Pass (which they note would cannibalize sales)Team wanted to explore trade-offs of selling SquareEnix content exclusively on Xbox vs. competing consoles pic.twitter.com/I85xvR7AKU

But of course,