14 DAY TRIAL // Square Enix has announced that the acquisition of the United Kingdom publisher Eidos is now complete and that all the assets of the former company are the property of the Japanese publisher. The company has also revealed a set of numbers related to sales of videogames, showing the strength of its various franchises.
Final Fantasy, which is the flagship series of Square Enix, has sold more than 85 million copies over the course of its lifetime, which stretches to some 20 years. Final Fantasy XIII is planned to arrive in Japan, on the PlayStation 3, in the winter of this year, while an international release on both the PS3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 is set for the spring of 2010. Dragon Quest, a series created to complement the Final Fantasy franchise, has also sold 47 million units during its lifetime, most of them on the Japanese market.
The Kingdom Hearts series, which features Disney characters to tell stories specific to the Japanese role playing genre, has also done very well, even if it only has two games released and one spin off. 12 million copies of the games have been sold until now and two new videogames based on Kingdom Hearts, one of the Nintendo DS and the other for the PlayStation Portable, should be released during 2009.
For the Eidos properties, the numbers are not that impressive. All of the Tomb Raider videogames released until now have gotten around 30 million units in sales, the two Hitman games have sold 8 million copies; other successful properties, which Square Enix is probably planning to continue developing - Kane & Lynch, which, despite bad reviews, managed to move around 1.5 million units, and Deus Ex sold more than 1 million copies for each of the two games in the series.