"[W]e need to go beyond traditional Square Enix" says Yoichi Wada

Reuters recently interviewed Square Enix president, Yoichi Wada, who seems to think that now is the time to follow the footprints of other developers (read “EA”) and start buying out other companies.

He says that their company has about 9.20 billion dollars of buying power (from what I can understand of the stock market jargon), but “[he's] not suggesting [they] are going to use up all that. But [they] have a capacity to do that.”

Ok, here are the highlights:

“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,” Square Enix President Yoichi Wada told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo on Tuesday.

“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,” he said…

…Wada said Square Enix has no fixed budget for investing in other companies, but he pointed out that management is allowed to issue about 290 million additional shares without approval at a general shareholders’ meeting.

“I’m not suggesting we are going to use up all that. But we have a capacity to do that,” he said….

…Following his comments, shares in Square Enix were up 0.9 percent at 3,300 yen in early afternoon, outperforming the Nikkei average (.N225), which fell 0.8 percent…

Random Trivia: If you say Yoichi Wada’s name fast enough, it sounds like “Oy Chihuahua”. Sorry, I had to say it.

Via Reuters

Around The Net: