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Square Enix reveals £83.4m bid for Eidos

Implications for mobile licences?

Square Enix reveals £83.4m bid for Eidos
Japanese console publisher Square Enix has revealed an £83.4 million acquisition offer for UK publisher Eidos, which the latter's board of directors have agreed to recommend to shareholders.

The offer was actually made in mid-January, and represents a hefty premium over Eidos' share price at the time.

"Eidos is a talented developer and publisher of interactive entertainment products with abroad portfolio of highly successful mass market franchises, led by Tomb Raider, one of the most successful videogame franchises of all time," says Square Enix president Yoichi Wada.

"Eidos' products are highly complementary to our business and will accelerate our aggressive expansion into western markets."

This may be the interesting point, from a PocketGamer.biz standpoint. Eidos pulled out of the mobile games market last year, after struggling to get operator deck space for its games.

In September, Eidos signed a licensing deal with EA Mobile for the latter to publish Tomb Raider: Underworld, as well as three other Eidos mobile titles, with a future option for mobile distribution of other Eidos brands on mobile.

It's unclear what the implications will be for this deal if Square Enix buys Eidos. Square Enix has been very active in the Japanese mobile games market, but has been relatively quiet in Europe, other than a licensing deal with Macrospace a few years back.

Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)