Hopefully, would be kind of a self own to make Fromsoft’s Souls games exclusive given how popular they are on every platform.
I think the media is feeding some benevolent narrative to paint Sony as a saviour when this purchase faces any public backblash. They all gotta protect Papa Sony
Yup. Those polls on IGN really emphasizing that point to go along with it too. Maybe these places should evaluate why they’re not making the metrics for views that they need to in order to survive… who am I kidding though.
On topic, I’d be concerned if I was anyone Sony was courting at this point, closing studios in 18 months post-purchase on multiple occasions now and closing revered studios like Japan Studio would make me very skeptical about selling (if the owner cared about legacy and all that).
With what money?
A combo of a lil cash and mostly stock.
According to HoegLaw, Sony have around $15B in cash right now and this acquisition would likely be valued somewhere between $4-5B.
The cancelled Zee acquisition was $10B.
Either way it wouldn’t leave them much cash as security.
They had that much earlier in the year, but most recent accounts at June 2024 have them down to $12bn - it’s possible he knows something that’s happened since but it appears they’ve got even less than $15bn
I’m talking about money I can’t even fathom here, but for such a large company in the Tech sector, that seems much lower than I thought.
I agree, I would have expected them to be valued much higher.
Even if you just look at their market cap it’s just under $3B (it was around $2.6 before the Sony news).
It’s going to take a long time to recover, especially during heated competition in their playing field (anime streaming, gaming) and media output. Venom 3 was fortunate to have international to save them. Kraven, hard to say. I think electronic is safe, though I have no knowledge on that front.
The Sony Cinematic Universe is really damaging Marvel IMO.
Many people still don’t seem to understand the difference, I would imagine there is a clause in the contract where the rights revert if they are damaging the IP. The sooner the rights revert back to Marvel the better.
It’s because, despite the picture the media would like to paint, Sony has made an enormous amount of blunders over the last two decades, beginning with the PS3 and extending to nearly every division, to the point that the company has lost an enormous amount of capital and company valuation. Sony went from a 100 billion dollar company to a 10 billion dollar one in only a matter of a couple years during the PS3 days and despite the PS4’s success, it hasn’t been enough to subsidize the losses from other divisions by and large, nor has their astronomic dev cost increases over the last decade (hence an inarguably weak profit margin).
The amount they make has seriously reduced too - I really liked their stuff back in the day and still only buy Xperia phones (apparently the only person who does!) as they’ve got the fingerprint reader in the unlock button which I find common sense rather than one in the screen.
I had and loved their TVs, but now they make few of the panels themselves - they mostly use Samsung and LG ones.
I loved their VAIO laptops as they had the shiny screens with deep blacks like phones now have, back when laptops all had matte boring screens, and they made PCs too - now neither.
Their phones unfortunately seem to be dying out slowly, and overall their width and depth of products has reduced so much and the film / music divisions haven’t changed much.
PlayStation has gone from one small division in a huge company, to being a huge division in a medium sized company (I’d say small if it wasn’t for the film and music)
Hmd / Nokia, has it in the power button too (and so did my old Razer gaming phone), it absolutely makes more sense there.
Nice they may be my next purchase as I keep hearing rumours of Sony quitting the market - and while I do love the Xperia line they don’t exactly support them much anymore.
And yep it’s a killer feature I just can’t live without - sod AI or better cameras etc, the speed of easily unlocking my phone with a single press (and without smearing my screen) is by far the most important one to me lol
The Xiaomi, Oppo and Redmi phones also put the fingerprint sensor on the unlock button too .
Nice, Oppo has caught my eye before as my mate has one, he never uses fingerprints so I didn’t actually know it had that Cheers
Yep the Oppo’s are really nice, they typically focus more on their camera tech which is brilliant. My Brother in Law (a photographer) swears by them.
I must admit the fingerprint sensor placement is something I really miss (I recently moved my family all back to Samsung’s). My wife also really dislikes using her thumb or index fingerprint so it’s painful watching her unlock her phone (she says it’s fine).
On all of the phones I mentioned above your index finger naturally rests right near the sensor (on the button) which was far more practical.
Given the use of Lego and that brand’s appeal to a young audience I would imagine the Lego corporation wanted the game to come out on a Nintendo platform given Nintendo’s appeal and reach to the children’s market
Death Stranding appears to just be a case for SONY buying exclusive console rights to a IP for 5 years a bit like SONY did for Tomb Raider console rights in the mid-90s after the 1st Tomb Raider game.
I would imagine SONY would have Fromsoftware make games only for the PlayStation and PC going forward if the buyout is confirmed
I love From’s games and I think that they are one of the very best developers today but even their games becoming PS exclusives from now on won’t make me buy a PS5, the days when 1-2 games were system sellers for me are long gone.
In the next 3-4 years I will have access in two consoles/ecosystems (Xbox and Switch 2) if that is not enough and a developer/publisher won’t release their games on those two systems then I won’t give a F about their games too (are you listening Konami?), release your game on more platforms so I can buy it…it’s simple as that.