I think the tricky part for Sony when it comes to these acquisitions isn’t so much the expansion to other platforms - it’s how they’d handle console exclusivity. Microsoft at least has an advantage here, they have game pass - they can balance out the loss of sales that comes with console exclusivity. Sony doesn’t have this advantage - they’d need a publisher that would still be profitable even if they took a chunk of their revenue away (even accounting for how it might draw people to Playstation).
Am I missing something? Didn’t Sony reportedly have like 8 billion or less for investments? And pretty sure that was across the whole company. How are they supposed to come up with 50 billion? Even if that number is double, they are still tens of billions short.
And it’s my opinion that if they could have, they would have, that goes for any studio or publisher not talking about t2 in particular.
I don’t think there’s any chance Sony is going to rush out and buy a 30 billion dollar publisher, but the reports of how much Sony has to invest is just the money they’ve set aside internally with the intent to invest in the near future and doesn’t necessarily represent their actual buying power IF a strong opportunity appeared before them. Take Two for example was worth about 18 billion when they acquired Zanga for 12 billion recently. I imagine as a 100 billion dollar company Sony could stretch beyond 8 billion if needed.
But like I said, I’m not saying that cause I think it’s actually gonna happen in the case of Take Two. That just sounds like the usual twitter nonsense to me.
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True, they’ve got to be very careful about who they buy for console. If they buy say Ubisoft they have to start paying 20K new employees and somehow push Ubisoft games to be more successful on just PS rather than PS/Xbox/Switch/PC . To me that move is way to risky and could cause you to bleed more pretty quick.
If they do by more for console i think it’s going to be much smaller studios to reduce the risk. I know alot of people me included think Square makes sense but even then i think it’s a big risk.
Yeah I think Ubisoft is an excellent example - they have such thin profit margins as is, there is no room for any company to buy them and make them exclusive to their platform without a serious plan to overhaul the company.
On the otherhand - I also don’t think it’d be impossible for Sony to acquire a publisher and keep them multiplatform. They’d bypass these issues, gain more revenue as well as additional perks for their platform (akin to Bungie) and prevent anyone else from locking them out of that publisher. With Microsoft potentially on the lookout for additional acquisitions it wouldn’t be the worst tactic for them to take.
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There is a Sony Acquisition thread around here somewhere, for those who want to discuss Sony’s moves and plans instead of the very brief tangential discussion of how it may impact Xbox.
Its over there @ Sony Acquisitions | OT | Organic Sellers Market
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they aint acquiring Ubi
Everything is on the table after the announcement of ABK.
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nowadays thats how much studios cost tho
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Yeah… ABK taught me to stop writing off things…
Signed,
The guy who never though ABK would have been on the table… ever lol.
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i remember the times where people used to sign off activision because of allegations nd controversy
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True, plus Sony has been consistently reducing their workload over the past decade, I think they are currently at 113K which is quite high for a organisation of their size (for context Microsoft is only around 221K).
I may be wrong but I think Bungie was Sony’s biggest monetary acquisition to date, I would never rule anything out but anything over $8B is unlikely. That still leaves a lot of potential publishers and studios on the table, I just don’t think Ubisoft is likely (I hope not either!).
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Personally I could still see Ubisoft for Netflix. Netflix is pushing into games and looking more at acquisitions, a games publisher would give them both expand their media into games while taking advantage of major games IP for movies/tv. Ubisoft has a good range of IP they could take advantage of, and has worked with Netflix on a fantastic Stranger Things crossover for Far Cry 6. Seems a decent enough fit.
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Yeah me too… I was one of them lol.
not to wave away the allegations but those things are probably why Kotick want to sell even though MS will be taking on the major headache that comes with it
Good shout, Ubisoft gives a lot of output at their price point too! In addition to Stranger Things we have previously had Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed films too!
The Division would be a great film/show.
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Plus, @Cairnst hit the nail on the head with licensed IP and the fact that Ubisoft has plenty of experience, and a department dedicated just to external partnerships these days.
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now let’s talk about those individual studio MS has been in talks with that jez said was on hold because of the Activision deal list of guess of who they might be from the consideration list
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