Studio with no real track record and only backed due to being founded by ex Bungie devs. Honestly it’s a coin toss at this point. Just like that Heaven studio, don’t know if all the new studios Sony partners with are all so great that they need to be bought as even Jade Raymond hasn’t been hitting home runs for quite a long time.
They must be super cheap in the end which is why Sony is just buying them up as their budget probably doesn’t let them afford anything bigger right now, so better get them while you can in case they become big!
Likely the amount of money the studios required to keep afloat also required substantial ownership to be handed out. Thats usually how these startup sort of companies function. They get to a point where new money is required to keep going, so those putting the money in require something for their investment.
The same thing that happened to Japan Studio, Evolution and Zipper. Sony abandons their live service flops quickly and doesn’t attempt to revive them so if the studio was acquired based on a live service game expect many closures over the years. Jim Ryan even said he hopes for 1-2 of these games to succeed so you can imagine what will happen to the rest
One would think and it could be their COD, if Sony was to invest in it. I have no problems admitting I personally preferred SOCOM over COD and it wasn’t until Modern Warfare that COD became the hit, that it is today.
Had Sony invested more in online and that IP, it easily could have been the big online game back in the day and today still.
Heck it still could be big and it would be different than COD, because it is third person.
Instead of Sony going after what is popular, they should want to do something that is different and makes people want to play that game instead.
I still see online people saying they want a new SOCOM. I also see people wanting a real Star Wars Battlefront and not the reskin EA a few years ago brought out.
So there is a market for tactical third person shooters and whoever finds that out will have the next big hit. It just is crazy to think that companies that have the IP to do it are just sitting on it.
They don’t have the devs to make Socom. The original maker close down. They would need to start from scratch again. PlayStation would need to buy a expert 3rd person shooter maker for that.
Sony can afford to buy smaller studios and build them up. They already have established big studios making games that sell well and are well recieved. The only issue is the allocation of resources seems strange as a lot of the newly acquired studios are working on games as a service, something that tends to need bigger staff counts to not only make the game but to keep up with the steady content demand from the players.
I look at something like Fortnite which imo is the best example of a live service game done correctly, and I can’t even imagine how much ressources Epic Games has to be putting on that game for it to work the way it does.
Live service ganes aren’t just one and done like you said, you need gigantic teams to support them with content for years to come.
They already have most of their AAA games exclusive
Nintendo would absolutely do everything to Block that move. They arent competing with ms with an merge like this
SE dont even fully own or control half their fucking big IPs like Kingdom Hearts and DQ. Hell SE dont even fully own games like FF6 or Chrono Trigger.
Theres a reason why sony has never tried to acquire SE. Probably too much money for what gain? They already lock down their big FF games. Why waste 5 billion for the FF franchise and a bunch of studios who dont do anything.
Because Xbox is at publisher #2 (actually 4 if you count ABK seperately) and probably mulling over who #3 and #4 will be. Sony purchases have been nobodies. Sony fans want some retribution.
It’s nice to have the acquisition mill turning again.
Sega, sony, SE (web3). It’s as if the new financial year has started and they’ve all got a set budget.
Where I am the FY starts in April but I’m 100% it’s different around the world.
Purely as a defensive move. Microsoft or a third party(Saudi’s/tencent) picking them up could see the exclusively disappear or in Microsoft’s case completely leaving the console.