Sony was trying to get exclusivity on all games that were associated with Xbox as to destroy the Xbox brand worldwide, something imo that has been somewhat successful looking at the current consoles sales trajectory of both Xbox Series and PS5.
I think MS should look at the big publishers associated to Sony, like Square Enix, and just go ahead and buy them all out! Blood for blood as they say!
Even Bungie when you think about it could somewhat be perceived as a move against Xbox, although looking at the deal Bungie made it seems like we should be getting all of their games on all platforms for the foreseeable future. Itâs still a surprising deal as Sony seems to be the one wanting to own all IP and everything it invests in since they have started with Playstation back in the 90s.
I somehow have doubts we will see them make any more big moves to be honest at the scale of the Bungie deal. Theyâll keep buying small studios and their userbase will eat it up like it just did with Firewalk Studios and theyâll all be super excited any time they announced a new game because Playstation StudiosâŚ
AFAIK, the Fiscal Years depend on the individual company.
But, companies can choose their fiscal year according to their business needs, but they should inform the same to regulators at the time of incorporation.
However, if they opt for a fiscal year, they need to stick to that reporting period. In other words, they cannot change their fiscal year every year.
The key reason for companies choosing different fiscal year-ends is the seasonal fluctuations of the businesses they operate and the availability of supplies. By choosing their fiscal year, they can limit the negative seasonal impact that happen within their specific industries.
Then attempt to go for a more meaningful acquisition. Owning SE wonât do anything for Sony. This is a publisher that got ripped off selling their western studios and canât make a profit for their games to save their lives. FF14 is the only thing keeping them in business and That game is heavily PC centric so its not like Sony can come in and be like hurr hurr next expansion is PS5 exclusive lol.
If Sony wanted to Acquire SEâŚtheyâd have done it years ago.
Sony has a bit different needs at the moment, which is driving their aquisitions.
They want to push into GAAS, and as such they have bought Bungie, Haven etc, and they are releasing their games on PC, which means they have had to buy PC porting studios, as their first party studios lack that expertise. This was evidenced by the disaster of TLOU on PC.
This has kind of held them back from a games output point of view, as half of the new studios will either be doing PC ports or releasing a GAAS game which most likely bomb.
It also has to be said that Sony really over paid for Bungie, and infact Bungie is as big a purchase for Sony as ABK would be for Microsoft, releative to company values.
I think Sony need to buy individual studios that have good games that arnt GAAS, and will increase the output of new games.
Her claim is because of that article in the ft. Basically Sony is considering spinning off their financial services business and investing it in their image sensor and entertainment businesses.
The thing is this is something that could happen but is still a year or two away
Bungie was a purchase that reflected about 3% of Sonys market cap, which is about the same as ABK reflected of Microsofts market cap. You wouldnât expect them to make too many new purchases of that size.
Sure, but its still a purchase thats big as a percentage of their company value.
We all were blown away by MS paying 69B for ABK, yet Bungie was a big a purchase for Sony relative to the company value. In no world would i think NS would shell out that much money again for purchase.
The biggest issue for Sony is that alot of their purchases have been to just play catch up.
Because Sonys first parties only had to work on PS games, they lacked any abilities to work on PC, and just were not set up for it, not had the skills in house to do it.
This meant that alot of their purchases were of PC porting studios.
Then as they had no real games that were live service orientated, and their studios were again soley skilled at creating single player games, this meant that Sony has had to aquire studios that have this ability and to to build up their first party studios to include more of these types of games. As such, we got studios like Haven and Bungie amongst others.
Very little of their purchases are going to increase their single player games output, which is telling.
Sony is going to have to aquire more studios if they want to compete.
You would think they want to match the output of Xbox, which means maybe four first party games a year.
Currently with all their studios they are looking at two games a year. If the average amount of time to make a game is five years, and you want two extra games a year, you are looking at 10 extra studios.
This is what the EC said about SONYâs marketshare in Europe:
Finally, the Commission notes that Sonyâs market position is even more significant in distribution of console games when considering only the competitionbetween two closely competing consoles, Microsoftâs Xbox and Sonyâs PlayStation , and excluding Nintendoâs activities from the competitive landscape. For example, when considering the sale of console hardware excluding Nintendo, Sony is a leading player worldwide and particularly in the EEA with more than 60% and around [80- 90]% share, respectively. Sonyâs worldwide a share of console hardware in 2021 is [70-80]% by revenue, [60-70]% by volume and [60-70]% by installed base. Sonyâs EEA share in 2021 is even higher: [80-90]% by revenue, [70-80]% by volume and [80-90]% by installed base . By comparison, Microsoftâs share is [âŚ] smaller based on all metrics (value, volume, installed base).
So yeah, I didnât expect them to do big movements and even less now when regulators know their antics. The EC literally canât allow them to âgo bigâ
yeah Iâm not saying they canât go out and get someone but i do think regulators would take a closer look.
Especially as Iâve heard a lot of pundents in the media and fans say Jim Ryan did what he needed to do as Playstation CEO. I donât fully agree but sure i;ll give that point. However, what Jimâs antics also did was expose Playstation to these regulators. As you are seeing politicians and regulators saying look at Sonyâs market share. Sony has a privileged position in Japan to do what it wants.
Where before Jim Ryan started flapping his gums they werenât. So I definitely think whoever they acquire next will be looked at differently. As I think if they tried to acquire someone like a bungie now. It would be viewed very differently then it was 18 months ago.
Agree with you. I think this deal not only will completely change the gaming landscape and this is not me or any people in the industry being hyperbolic, experts and annalists around the world have express their opinions in the last 18 months about how much it will/could impact the gaming industry (for better or worse remains to be seen) but it also opened the gaming industry to regulators around the world who now understand how it works.
