So here is the actual PDF detailing the acquisition but the long and short of it is that they were acquired by Nepro Japan a mobile developer. They were looking to expand their stable of developers and acquired Tri-Ace via a Cash Buyout of stocks.

Well...that sucks. Resonance of Fate was pretty baller and I guess we'll always have that. R.I.P

I never liked tri-Ace a whole lot. Except for Infinite Undiscovery, for some reason I really loved that mediocre thing.

Man... I really enjoyed their Star Ocean series, particularly the second one on PS1, so that's a bummer. I had heard they weren't doing all that well financially but I didn't realize it was this bad.

Well, hopefully they'll be allowed to try some new things in the mobile space to freshen that up? A guy can dream...

I loved Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Never completed it, but loved playing it as a kid.

Tri-Ace was good people, they didn't deserve to go out like that.

Well, shit. What a bummer. Valkyrie Profile is maybe my favorite game of all time. I was still holding out hope they'd make a third one, whatever that would be.

That is sad. I loved Star Ocean the Second Story on PS1. I liked SO3 and 4 too but not as much. I still hold SO2 as one of my favorite games of all time. It is just under FF7 on PS1. I played the PSP remake of the SNES game and I did play the original on SNES with a translation. Enix should still own the IP no? I remember Enix released the PS1 game. So maybe we will see another Star Ocean by Squareenix?

I want to add F the mobile developers with their dirty money buying real video game companies. This is what makes me dislike any kind of phone game or facebook game company.

Awww men this means that the first Valkyrie Profile will be harder to get /play etc.

Well that sucks. They had a ton of great JRPG's under their name and now we will get mediocre crappy pay to win phone games. Well at least the people working for them keep their jobs.

I fucking loved Infinite Undiscovery so much and I have no idea why. It was super generic and average in every way but somehow it worked for me. Bummed to hear that. Did people like Resonance of Fate? I always kind of wanted to check that out but never got around to it.

If Atlus goes this way instead of getting pickup by another gaming company, after sega inevitable miss manage them. I will quit gaming. Also, FUCK this earth, no more Valkyrie Profile.

Can't say I'm really surprised. Saddened, obviously, but not surprised. Even amongst an arguably niche genre, they put out some arguably niche titles...some of which were meant with pretty mediocre reactions.

@dougonomics: I get the impression that most people who bought it, seem to like it to some degree. I know I did. I don't think it was great, but I would still say it's worth picking up especially at $10-20 or whatever the price is now.

Tri-Ace made a ton of great B-Tier games during the PS1 and PS2 era. I'm not sure why the quality dipped last gen. Wasn't Star Ocean 4 awful? That said, I should get around to playing Resonance of Fate, which I hear is one of their better games last gen. Maybe this isn't all bad though, perhaps they will make great mobile games?

This is a real shame, but I hope in some cosmic way it leads to Valkyrie Profile being released on PSN, because it's a fucking travesty that that game isn't available anywhere except eBay for $70+.

Resonance of Fate was amazing, I never played anything else by them but whatever

RIP in peace

Not to be the one positive thinker or anything, but this could mean some of there older games will come out on mobile, which would be nice since star ocean 2 is stupid hard to find, just look at the android market that things lousy with older jrpgs

I was kind of okay with Star Ocean Til The End of Time until faceless angels from beyond man's sanity showed up and judged us all into non-existence. I went from beating mobs without taking damage to not being able to survive your basic random encounter. That's how that story ended for me.

With Tri-Ace snatched up, I wonder if Square Enix would ever consider putting one of its internal teams or an external developer on a new 'Star Ocean' game, or will it just let the IP rot away in its vault alongside Mana and Ogre Battle.

I really liked Star Ocean, and Resonance of Fate.

Sad day.

@thunderslash: Star Ocean 4's story and characters are pretty terrible but the gameplay is extremely good, probably second best in the generation for JRPGs. Obviously Star Ocean's gameplay has always been good so that shouldn't be much of a surprise. The ending was mildly interesting. It's also one of the hardest platinums to get.

RIP Star Ocean, maybe Valkyrie Profile. VP2 is of course one of the best games ever made. Star Ocean 2 is a top 15 JRPG and Tri-Ace was the third or fourth most consistently good developer for JRPGs. That said they've been dead for a while.

I still haven't played Resonance of Fate, might eventually. If it was Valkyrie Profile 3 I'd be all over it but nothing about it really grabbed me. The Last Remnant is most likely better and came out around the same time.

Star Ocean was good, but, that was some time ago.

VP is the shit though. Well, was the shit.

This is a huge bummer. I'm going to go ahead and blame it on Compile Heart, just like I do every time something bad happens in the JRPG genre.

Well this is the most depressing thing I've heard all week. I loved Vakyrie Profile...

Infinite Undiscovery

...What does that even mean!?

Well shit I guess now is a good time to try out Valkyrie Profile for the first time :/

Oh no, what does this mean for Valkyrie Profile?

and our fears about how they plan to use Tri-Ace appear confirmed

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2015/02/20/tri-ace-bought-mobile-company-nepro-japan/#280l9TFzvmRQGPCe.99

Along with tri-Ace and their other subsidiary, Mobile & Game Studio, Nepro Japan aim to have the best group of game creators in terms of scale and quality, and hope that their recent acquisition will take them towards the right direction.

Again, using the two subsidiary companies, they aim to develop more smartphone titles. With Mobile & Game Studio’s experience in having worked on arcade titles, and tri-Ace’s expertise in console games, Nepro Japan consider it a low-risk and high-reward situation, and believe that the two groups will provide good synergy working together.

I guess that officially puts the nail in the coffin of Valkyrie Profile: Hrist ever happenning. Fuck.

Thanks, hadn't heard this news, pretty disappointing. And I'm with you, Resonance of Fate was really great and unique, both in its storytelling and gameplay mechanics. I'll never forget the Christmas chapter of that game, good stuff.

They did make a third one. It was on the DS. Don't remember the name although I feel like I might own it.

@raven10: Covenant of the Plume. It was really more of a spin-off than a true sequel.

SO2 seemed really ambitious to me at the time and I really enjoyed it. SO3 I thought was a pretty decent game as well. Resonance of Fate was actually pretty great as well, but kinda started to get a little stale at a certain point. Primarily because I thought there would be WAY more gun variations than there actually was. I hear good things about Valkyrie Profile, but I think it's definitely a like-it-or-hate-it type of game.

I can't say as I was a huge fan of their work. Radiata Stories was probably the only game of theirs that didn't make me want to dump their characters in a shallow grave. But they were a prominent JRPG developer and in a time when those are desperately lacking, this sucks.

What a bummer. Resonance Of Fate is one of my absolute favorites.

A lot of their games were pretty like it or hate it, but I feel like the original Valkyrie Profile is hard to hate. It's a great game.

Well, it was a prequel as far as in world Chronology went.

It's funny, I kept waiting for that to happen with me and it didn't. Not even when I decided to do literally all of the arena challenges at once.

Maybe it was the music?

@sparky_buzzsaw: Radiata Stories is an interesting predecessor to "social" sorts of games since you basically just follow characters around in their daily routine if you want to recruit them. Of course the combat is atrocious/non existent.

All this talk of Tri-Ace makes me want to play Resonance of Fate again though.

So good news guys!

Tri-Ace may not be as dead as we initially feared

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/03/09/dont-worry-tri-ace-will-keep-making-games-consoles/

Better than nothing I guess.