I guess they didn’t want to glitch the endgame for Xbox.
I just saw a video thumbnail that says Sony is about to spend $5 billion on studio acquisitions.
lol not happening.
Sony (as an entire company) has $5 billion left of their allocated budget for acquisitions through 2024.
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So enough for both Square Enix and Take Two?
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and maybe a quarter pounder with cheese if they got a really good deal 
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Bumping this thread because the topic is coming up in a lot of other threads.
Anyways, a lot of people are suggesting Sony should buy a Japanese publisher. This doesnt make sense to me since they face so little competition there.
The move in my opinion would be to try to get a US based or European based publisher that can help keep Sonys market there.
The problem is that Sony has limited financial means to acquire meaningful publishers with only 11 billion cash on hand. They also will face stiff competition from others for any publicly listed competitors so they cant really get a cheap deal. Gaming is also only one of Sonys business areas and their other business areas need to also evolve their products through M&A. Therefore, Sony is highly budget constrained to make anything meaningful happen unless they pursue a full on merger.
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Agree. No reason for Sony to buy Japanese publishers when no one has been able to buy one and they already pretty much have a monopoly there. I expect acquisitions either in the US or the EU.
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I keep forgetting we have a Sony acquisitions thread and most discussions tend to start with Sony acquisitions in relation to Xbox acquisitions 
Yeah, I don’t see it happening either - I think Sony would much rather continue to buy individual studios rather than acquiring a publisher. I think if they DID acquire a publisher at this point it’d possibly just be a defensive move - buy them, leave them to run semi-independently as a multiplatform publisher under Sony and give themselves a few exclusive perks.
Yes, I think they will go down the individual studio routes. There’s a few already that I suspect will end up under their wing at some point, such as Deviation Games.
Seen a few mention Square Enix. I’ve always maintained I think Square is pointless, given most of their content is exclusive to them as it is now, so I’m not sure what acquiring would do, other than perhaps remove from Switch.
Sony needs to be looking for VR studios
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It will be interesting to see what their plans would look going forward if ABK goes through.
I think they went into this generation thinking they would face the same xbox one Microsoft and not an xbox with full support from Microsoft.
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The problem with all acquisition talk regarding Sony is it exists only to create exclusives out of games they already have. Literally for the sole purpose of punishing others who don’t own the system. Sony gets all of Square’s releases, Capcom’s, Namco etc. They get pretty much everything already & the PS5 is basically lead platform during development on most multiplatform titles anyway.
So what’s the point? Microsoft’s acquisition spree existed to serve 2 purposes: avoid getting strangled by Sony’s exclusivity deals & just as importantly feed Game Pass with day one releases & extra content.
What’s Sony’s pretext? They bought Bungie & could only talk about GAAS experience as the main reason for buying them. I mean from the moment Sony gets almost everything on their platform & they’re not looking to feed their subscription service (PS Extra is something they don’t want impeding 80 euro game sales up front), there’s no real reason for Sony to binge in acquisitions of their own.
That is true but it is more to it then that. Say they buy square. Right now square puts a fair amount on nintendo. If they were bought out buy Sony all games they only had on Nintendo would potentially come to playstation.
Don’t get me wrong they’ll make them exclusives but it will leave a void on other platforms and other companies will expand and fill that void.
I think looking at what’s happened since 2020, Microsoft has basically bought American to ensure its long-term future in the west. Bethesda & Activision are huge, huge losses for Sony. They were too aggressive towards Xbox & have paid a real heavy price.
But the point is how does Sony mitigate this loss? I don’t think they’ll buy Japanese because that’s not the ‘at risk’ territory. It’s in America where suddenly the situation looks a little different. Yeah sure they’ll get COD (for a while at least, insofar as they even still want it & Jim Ryan doesn’t completely burn bridges with Microsoft) but it’s everything else which IMO paints a pretty bleak picture for them: Starfield, Elder Scrolls, next Fallout, next Doom, next Wolfenstein, future Diablos after 4 etc. There’s so much now under Xbox’s umbrella that if I was Sony, I’d start negotiating on a case-by-case, i.e. trading some of their own exclusives with Microsoft’s content basically.
Like how about Final Fantasy 7 in return for Starfield next year? Something like that. Because I just don’t see Sony throwing money at big publishers to secure content. Especially in the west.
Just my opinion.
They will never do this unless the management for their game division changes.
Of course. But look at where Jim Ryan has led them? They’ve created a massively in demand product with customers who expect to be fed content because PlayStation always since forever has more content than everyone. 2023 isn’t the problem for them, they’re flying. But what happens when people who bought a PS5 realize Xbox has games they want & Game Pass is a much more affordable option?
There’s way too much emphasis placed on Sony’s own exclusive AAA blockbuster releases carrying the brand because they’re a new phenomena, i.e. what made PlayStation so successful to begin with was going cheaper with costs & bigger with content than everyone else. For example they had over 3000 more games on the PS2 than Nintendo had on the Gamecube. That’s what made the difference, i.e. something for everyone & most importantly affordable hardware & games. They reneged that principle with the PS3 & shot themselves in the foot. That’s a “warning from history” they’re ignoring right now.
If Sony thinks they’ll remain market leader whilst drip feeding PS5 owners one or two AAA exclusive blockbusters with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year, they’re delusional. PlayStation brand strength was always about every genre being catered towards with a cheaper product. The PS4 crushed the Xbox One at release precisely because it was cheaper, ran games better & had more content. In 2013 it wasn’t about AAA exclusives. In fact Xbox had a few of their own back then but it made no difference.
Sony basically needs content & they’ll need to deal with Microsoft in order to get it.
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Heh, tell Jim, not me.
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So how much of the Sony funds did this use up?
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Is crunhy roll worth it now do they have english dubs for one piece yet?