Final Fantasy Buys Lara Croft and Hitman

Square Enix is getting ever closer to its stated aim of acquiring the publisher Eidos. It seems that the offer of shares of the videogame company is going well and that Square Enix is set to achieve its goal of expanding into the Western games market.

Insight Investment Management and Pioneer Investment Management are said to have sold no less than 11.13% of the shares they hold to Square Enix. The price for each share was 32 cents. Pioneer, Warner Bros. and Legal & General Investment Manager gave their approval for the merger so things should move smoothly from now on.

Square Enix says that it has taken “irrevocable undertakings to vote in favour of the resolutions to be proposed at the Court Meeting and the EGM in respect of, in aggregate 84,947,489 Eidos Shares representing 32.23 per cent of the existing share capital of Eidos.”

If the acquisition goes through, Square Enix, which already has a working arrangement with Eidos related to distribution of its titles in North America and in Europe, would acquire a strong distribution arm world wide and would also get its hands on some pretty valuable intellectual properties, like Tomb Raider, Hitman and Kane & Lynch.

Eidos has faced significant financial problems in the run up to the current development and the company signaled that it was open to take over offers. Initially, most analysts thought that Warner Bros., which is interested in developing more videogames based on the movies it puts out, would jump in to acquire Eidos but Square Enix emerged as the main contender last week, when it publicly stated its objective to acquire Eidos.

Eidos has just released the first piece of DLC for the latest Tomb Raider game, called Beneath the Ashes, where players can explore the basement of the burned down Croft Manor. Another piece of downloadable content, called Lara's Shadow, is set to arrive in mid-March.