Sony Group Portal - Corporate Strategy Meeting 2023
We will finally see Hiroki Totoki in action. Let’s see if Sony really has learned from its mistakes.
Sony: Corporate Strategy Meeting 2024.5.23 | Business Segment Meeting
- Thread starter Puff
- Start date
We will finally see Hiroki Totoki in action. Let’s see if Sony really has learned from its mistakes.
Yeah, I wouldn't expect much in changing the strategy.
What mistakes?
Sony Group Portal - Corporate Strategy Meeting 2023
www.sony.com
We will finally see Hiroki Totoki in action. Let’s see if Sony really has learned from its mistakes.
I think we should see Sony acquisition plan last shareholder meeting they’ve said that we would know there acquisition plans from the medium to long term mentioning consolidation in the gaming industry. I mean if they didn’t have any plans to atleast buy 1 single gaming publisher or acquire single studios that have great synergy with PS & EVO I would be worried Saudis bought a gaming publisher w SNK & they’ve reported to there shareholder they want to buy another one like 1-2 years ago. At the minimum we should see some sort explanation regarding acquisition in gaming even acquisition of a mobile publisher shouldn’t be to surprising Activision bought King, Take 2 bought Zynga, EA bought Glu mobile all of these top gaming publisher bought a mobile publisher to expand ip using mobile expertise & or get grown from existing mobile games like Activision getting the massive candy crush ip.
Capcom
Square Enix
Hoyoverse
Are my top gaming publisher that brings great ip & synergies w PS, cross media, VR & EVO. Or more mobile centric ip & expertise like SE ip or Hoyoverse ip & expertise in mobile.
So May 14th for Q4 report and than a week later we've got the outlook for FY2024.
None of those corporations are going to be acquisition targets for Sony.
None of those corporations are going to be acquisition targets for Sony.
i'm sure sony would love to own hoyo as they are extremely profitable, but they would have to spend probably $30b to acquire and that's if hoyo is willing to sell. I just don't see it (also idk if the chinese govt would allow it)
That would be sad since others like MS, Saudis continue to buy publisher Sony missing out just means PS isn’t the platform to invest if you want to play games. More & more PC & Nintendo looks to be the platform to fully invest.
Sony spend 5 billion in gaming since 2020 & all acquisitions outside Insomniac where duds what a poor acquisition team.
We already saw him many times, I think he'll continue the same strategy he and the rest already had before and won't make any meaningful changes already planned years ago. Specially when his interim CEO position will be something temporary during a short period of time, until the next permanent CEO starts.
Sony said last year in the FY report that the budget they had for acquisitions during FY23 was going to be moved instead to servers, semicomponents and other stuff and that they didn't plan to make big acquisitions in the short to mid term, but that they'd resume them in the mid to long term.
In the most recent report Totoki said that they were still paying costs related to the acquisitions made in the recent years, and they were one of the key reasons of why their profitability decreased in the last couple of years. He said that such costs will ease out starting the current FY24 and that they'll aggresively try to increase their profitability (meaning, don't expect big acquisitions this FY24 because they'd negatively affect it).
What they will announce in the report of next month will be their mid term plan (next 3 FY, starting with the current one) regarading investments, acquisitions and company stock repurchases. That plan won't be (or at least wasn't in the previous ones) a list of companies they plan to acquire. It will be a budget mentioning how/from where they are going to relocate the money from somewhere else to that budget, and how much are they going to put on it. Maximum they'd explain in which specific areas they'd want to invest or maybe (doubt it) to make a rough estimate of how they plan to split the budget between investments, acquisitions and stock repurchases.
Around fall 2025 they plan to sell their banks division and will get a ton of cash that they plan to spend on acquisitions for entertainment, so a sizable part of it should be for gaming.
So I'd expect them to say that will spend a ton of money in this 3 years period but won't start spending on big acquisitions until aprox. late 2025 or 2026. I think they'll say again that plan to spend most of that on entertainement, maybe highlinghting game and movies. And won't specify more, if something they may mention than inside gaming after having heavily expanded to GaaS and PC now (in addition to continue growing in console and PC) will start focusing their growth on expanding to mobile. And maybe eSports, too.
Regarding specific acquisitions, consider that not only the acquirer decides it: the other part also must want to be acquired and by them. Plus in case of the big ones, regulators have to approve it.
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If Sony continues this route they’ll get slaughtered by Nintendo. Xbox & PC will be better platforms to play PS games w more option & cheaper prices.
Sony better hope Xbox doesn’t makes an open console & Nintendo Switch 2 isn’t at the power of PS4.
Not to mention Xbox pushing more 3rd party wouldn’t be surprised if MS position itself to further consolidation & acquired Sega, Capcom or Square Enix atleast one of them all 3 where targets & MS was serious in acquiring Capcom when they almost when bankrupt. Saudis will buy another gaming publisher likely Japanese like they stated in shareholder meeting & Chinese companies like Tencent/Netease will acquire Ubisoft leaving Sony with nothing lmao PS6 looking spooky & other platforms looking better to play games at.
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This narrative seemed awfully familiar and of course this had to be the author of this thread.
Dude Nintendo doesn't compete with Playstation. Their strategy of not competing with Sony hasn't changed in 18 years, and it has done them well.
They aren't going to suddenly get all the 3rd party support that would make it compete with the Playstation. The Switch 2 isn't getting GTA 6, nor Elder Scrolls 6 or whatever. It's just not powerful enough.
I get that you really want these delusional dreams of Sony being afraid of everyone, from the Saudis to Nintendo and Microsoft to become true, but they're preposterous.
Sony doesn't need to buy studios. Microsoft is becoming a 3rd party to Sony because their xbox install base is flatlining and now they have thousands of dev mouths to feed so they need to sell games somewhere.
"Leaving Sony with nothing"? It's like you live in a parallel reality.
What nonsense are you writing all the time? Sony and Nintendo are not direct competitors. Nobody buys a Nintendo console to play GTA6, Far Cry 7, EA FC 25 or CoD, but primarily to play Nintendo games. The PS5 serves players who are fed up with PC but still don't want to miss out on good graphics. PS5 and Switch complement each other perfectly as both release games that the competition doesn't have.
And how the hell is the Xbox supposed to offer PS games better and cheaper? There is currently 1 Sony game on the Xbox, MLB. Are you confusing something? Xbox ports games to PS5, and 3 out of 4 run better there than on Xbox, and not the other way around. I don't understand how the PC is supposed to be better than the PS5. A PC is more expensive to buy than the PS5, and how is it supposed to be better when games like GoW Ragnarök or Spider-Man 2 weren't even released there? Everything you're saying makes no sense.
It doesn't matter what MS releases in the future, in Europe and Japan Xbox is irrelevant. What is an "open console" anyway? If their next Xbox is "open" then it's not a console but a PC. Consoles are always closed systems, that's the definition of consoles. But it doesn't make sense to buy an "open Xbox" anyway because Steam games are certainly not optimized for such a machine. Even Xbox titles are hardly optimized for their own platform, otherwise Redfall, Starfield or now Hellblade 2 wouldn't run at 30 FPS at launch. So why should anyone buy an "open" system when there are PCs and MS is obviously porting everything for PS5 and certainly for PS6 too.
The rest is also absolute nonsense. MS has invested around 100 billion and now has to port games for Switch and PS5 because they have to recoup the investment. Their own platform is a massive flop and Gamepass also seems to be a long way from the hoped-for Netflix for games. And then you advise Sony, who are currently wiping the floor with Xbox in terms of condolence sales and market share, to buy up random publishers like SE, even though Sony just fired hundreds of employees and closed a studio? What's wrong with you?
Nah, Sony is increasing their market share. This is what I think will happen:
Switch 2 won't be as successful as Switch 1 first because PC handhelds (maybe including MS and Sony ones) will eat their 3rd party and indies part and because in home consoles PS5/PS6 will continue increasing their market share because they'll continue making their brands more popular via PC, mobile and tv shows/movies, plus will earn more money and engage more their players via very successful GaaS.
MS will continue moving their gaming focus outside Xbox, porting all their main 1st and 2nd party games of this and the previous generation to PS and Nintendo, and their market share will continue decreasing, which will mean 3rd parties will continue dropping Xbox support. Eventually MS will stop making Xbox consoles, but in a Steam Machines fashion will allow other companies to make their own "Xbox certified" home and portable consoles shaped Pcs if they achieve certain hardware specs. A few companies like Asus or Lenovo will make them but quickly will discontinue them due to low sales, which will mean the death of the Xbox consoles. MS will continue as a third party player in consoles, focusing their brand on Windows as main platform and with mobile being their main revenue source for gaming.
Sony will continue being the king of the console market, and will consistently pass Tencent as the top grossing gaming company, and after becoming the top 20 publisher in Steam during FY22 and maybe top 10 publisher during FY23, will continue growing in PC to eventually also become the top publisher. They'll open a PC and mobile PSN store to move their PC focus there, and then will continue their growth focusing this time to expand in mobile, partnering with both big top mobile players (mostly from Asia) and select small buotique devs to let them bring Sony IPs to mobile and grow in that market.
Regarding these MS potential acquisitions you mentioned, some of them already said MS they don't want to sell, or at least not to them. Probably said the same to Sony. In the case of Square, they will branch out some of their studios as a subsidiary companies to allow external investors get a part of them. I think one of them could be Sony.
Regarding Tencent, they have a partnership with Sony. Many Tencent companies make games for PS, or -like Sumo Digital- even make Sony 2nd party games or work as support studios for internally developed Sony 1st party games. They also have a deal for mobile gaming.
Regarding Ubisoft, Ubi and Tencent signed a deal where Tencent wasn't going to try to acquire more and that Ubi wasn't going to sell more in a certain amount of years, plus made crossed deals. Part of them, Tencent gave enough money to the Guillemots to buy enough stocks of Ubisoft to fully control directly or indirectly the majority of the company, protecting it from unwanted acquisitions. The Guillemots don't want to sell the company, and the workers want to continue being independent and not selling it to someone else. I was one of the Ubisoft employees who organized a workers (not from a company/corporate/higher ups level) campaign to collect some thousands of signatures from Ubisoft workers to block the Vivendi deal, telling them that we'd leave the company if they acquired it. So we stopped Vivendi from acquiring Ubisoft.
So Tencent won't buy Ubisoft, at least during several years because Ubisoft won't want to sell, and can't do it because signed a deal blocking them from doing it.
If Ubisoft ever sells, maybe after the Guillemots retire, it would be to someone who gives them total creative freedom, doesn't force them to do anything in a specific way, and doesn't block them from continue supporting every single gaming platform available. So wouldn't sell to MS, Nintendo or Sony. Tencent would be more likely because they give total creative freedoms and allow their partners to work in any platform and market. Regarding Saudis, Ubisoft is too woke to do something with them.
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Nintendo (and PC) do compete with PlayStation; do you guys think most people in a multi-platform ecosystem partition their budget and time specifically for every device in said ecosystem? No. They have a certain amount of money and time and it goes to whatever device happens to appeal to them within that device family at a given point in time. Someone can have a PS5 and PC, but do 70% of their game spending and time playing on the PC.
That's how platforms like PC and Nintendo still compete with systems like PlayStation, they just do not literally try mimicking the PlayStation brand with small twists here and there, or outright act as a rival to PlayStation, the way Xbox does. That means they are indirect competitors, rather than direct competitors. But, a competitor all the same. And as time goes on, it's actually the indirect competitors SIE should be more concerned about, rather than the direct competition of Xbox consoles.
Because, if even those are likely to go away, but their once-direct competitor now becomes an indirect competitor, that will just be an even stronger line of indirect competitors for PlayStation to contend with.
...also the idea Switch 2 is going to collapse in sales or have a sharp decline is so misreading-the-room hilarious it's not worth discussing. Especially if you're hitching that hopium on the back of PC handheld devices. Last I checked, Nintendo still prioritizes actual exclusives and they're seemingly gearing up for more 3P partnerships. Also if devices like Steam Deck 2 & other PC handhelds are still primarily using AMD, knowing those companies won't likely develop custom upscaling of their own i.e their own 'PSSR', their performance targets won't be that much ahead of Switch 2's in practice.
Not even to mention, Nintendo hasn't been aiming for the power crown for almost two decades now, and they still have volume of production & distribution that dwarfs Steam Deck (and Valve in general), let alone almost all of the other PC handhelds. Not to mention actual 1P & 2P exclusives, global marketing & resources, strong brand name etc. The only PC handhelds that could actually be of any real threat to Nintendo are an Xbox and PlayStation one. And since Sony making a 'PC handheld' anytime soon is both stupid and cannibalizes any future console hardware significantly in market value (vs an actual PlayStation handheld), that just leaves Microsoft.
And to them I say, well...good luck. They could probably definitely become the leading PC handheld in the space if they give it serious effort, but you are still probably looking at maybe 7 - 8 million a year max in the peak years, however many those are (depending on hardware refresh rates). Or about at pace with XBO annual sales but with actual profit margins on hardware sales (since it's more a PC business model).
That's how platforms like PC and Nintendo still compete with systems like PlayStation, they just do not literally try mimicking the PlayStation brand with small twists here and there, or outright act as a rival to PlayStation, the way Xbox does. That means they are indirect competitors, rather than direct competitors. But, a competitor all the same. And as time goes on, it's actually the indirect competitors SIE should be more concerned about, rather than the direct competition of Xbox consoles.
Because, if even those are likely to go away, but their once-direct competitor now becomes an indirect competitor, that will just be an even stronger line of indirect competitors for PlayStation to contend with.
...also the idea Switch 2 is going to collapse in sales or have a sharp decline is so misreading-the-room hilarious it's not worth discussing. Especially if you're hitching that hopium on the back of PC handheld devices. Last I checked, Nintendo still prioritizes actual exclusives and they're seemingly gearing up for more 3P partnerships. Also if devices like Steam Deck 2 & other PC handhelds are still primarily using AMD, knowing those companies won't likely develop custom upscaling of their own i.e their own 'PSSR', their performance targets won't be that much ahead of Switch 2's in practice.
Not even to mention, Nintendo hasn't been aiming for the power crown for almost two decades now, and they still have volume of production & distribution that dwarfs Steam Deck (and Valve in general), let alone almost all of the other PC handhelds. Not to mention actual 1P & 2P exclusives, global marketing & resources, strong brand name etc. The only PC handhelds that could actually be of any real threat to Nintendo are an Xbox and PlayStation one. And since Sony making a 'PC handheld' anytime soon is both stupid and cannibalizes any future console hardware significantly in market value (vs an actual PlayStation handheld), that just leaves Microsoft.
And to them I say, well...good luck. They could probably definitely become the leading PC handheld in the space if they give it serious effort, but you are still probably looking at maybe 7 - 8 million a year max in the peak years, however many those are (depending on hardware refresh rates). Or about at pace with XBO annual sales but with actual profit margins on hardware sales (since it's more a PC business model).
SIE is more than likely done with major acquisitions for now. Totoki already said he wants to make sie more profitable, and thats his focus. I see them becoming more like nintendo, more selective, very hight quality and dont spend money on shit.
“In order to expand our growth over the medium to longer term, we will need the ability to invest in image sensors and the entertainment business at a completely new level,” Totoki said. - May '23
Totoki and Sony want to grow and they know that in order to grow they need to make sizeable investments in key areas.
People confuse Totoki's comments often because they have their own agenda and belief about what Sony's strategy actually is.
“I am obsessed with growth. When growth stagnates, you fall into a negative spiral,” he said. “We have defined our company’s purpose with Yoshida’s leadership. My job is to make that a concrete project,” he added. - Feb
23
People confuse cutting costs with becoming cheap. It's actually the opposite. Sony wants to cut costs so that it can become more profitable and turn that profit into greater investment. That is how you grow.
Totoki could be a custodian for SIE for as long as a year (based on their plan). His job is going to be finding a new CEO, either internally, externally, or through a sizeable merger.
When you look at a potential acquisition of Paramount, it makes a lot of sense for the entire business, but that doesn't mean we're not going to see direct investments in SIE. So nothing is really off the table, it just has to make sense.
When you look at their rumored bid with Apollo for Paramount or their attempted merger of Sony Pictures Networks India and Zee to form a new company called Culver Max that Sony would own 51% of but lead by Zee's CEO.
There is really no telling who Sony might target for acquisition or how that acquisition would be structured, but the idea that they won't do anything, is pretty silly.
All at the same time unrealistic, but not if it's only one of them. I could definitely see Sony trying to get Square or Sega. Both have synergies in common.