Sony Gaming Unit Adds Uber Antitrust Lawyer Amid Expansion Plans

[Dabaus]

Heres my thoughts on various companies and publishers and kind of where things stand IMO:

Square enix: (Most Likely IMO)
-Long, close history with sony
-Recently downsized by selling crystal dynamics
-At least 5 AAA exclusives with playstation which seems absurd
-Not outrageously expensive for what youre getting
-Most popular GAAS currently and also has a sizeable mobile division and some manga.
-Has had some hits but also some misses recently

Capcom: (Good relationship but doubtful)
-Has had a rocky history with sony in the past. Once made resident evil nintendo exclusive for the gamecube despite ps2 dominance. Pulled monster hunter off sony handhelds effectively killing the vita in japan before it launched.
-Was close with Microsoft during the 360 heydays
-Outside of street fighter 5, hasnt made a playstation exclusive for some time now
-Has close relations with nintendo and apparently porting resident evil games to apple platforms now too
-Theyre doing better than they ever have and get deals from all platfrom holders

Take 2: (Possible but really expensive)
-Huge acquisition that would shake up the industry but i think sony would leave games multiplat
-GTA and Red dead are the big games. Borderlands and Bioshock are the other big gets IP wise.
-Recently acquired zynga so maybe theres something there for a motive for a mobile division?
-Seems to be doing well financially

Ubisoft: (Possible because the value is low for how many IPs you would be getting)
-Huge, Bloated, and seemingly incompetent with all the recent cancellations, mess of a company
-String of toxic work culture allegations
-Workforce of 20,000 employees in various countries would be a legal nightmare in court with antitrust regulators
-Seems to be losing key staff based on who Haven is hiring.


EA: (Expensive but not impossible?)
-Was recently looking for a merger not that long ago
-Has a slew of IP including FPS, RPG, and GAAS service games
-Has kind of lost its mojo in terms of single player game success and battlefield was a flop
-Recently lost the licensing to Fifa
-Probably a legal nightmare in court with antitrust because of all the studios across the world and licensing agreements

Epic Games: (doubt it)
-Would be shocking in terms of "howd they do it" but wouldnt be surprising that sony would want them.
-Tencent holds like 40 percent i doubt theyd ever give that up
-Unreal engine being owned by a platform holder would probably raise alot of concerns legally
-Fortnite is a juggernaut and sony wants to lean in on GAAS
-Would be very expensive
-Has little reason to sell

CD Proect Red: (Entirely Possible)
-Value has collapsed
-Has the rights to one of the best selling western rpgs
-Has a pc storefront which is something sony probably would want
-Probably wouldnt raise too many concerns about antitrsut though?
-Sony pulled cyber punk off psn store so there may be some bad blood on cdprs end?

I dont think Bandai Namco, Sega, or level 5 would be a consideration.

Of all the companies listed i could see Square enix, CDPR, Ea, and take 2 in that order of most likely possibilities.

 

[Midn1ght]

The main point of aquiring Valve would be to let Steam be integrated and pretty much replace the PlayStation store over.

Gabe selling to MS would be a huge stab in the back to the PC comunity making them even more ependent of MS. Tencent should be out of the question.

Yeah Valve selling to MS will never happen. I don't even know where the idea of Valve being up for sale is coming from. Valve staying private has been one of their priority for a very long time.

Old article but relevant:

Valve Explains Choice To Remain A Private Company

Not a lot of developers choose to remain private companies nowadays, but Valve's Erik Johnson and Gabe Newell have no problem detailing the reasons they're not looking to go public anytime soon.

www.gameinformer.com

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

You have no counter. Take Two is a singular, Sony is not, they can't afford a merger on that level as they would have to steal capital from their numerous other business ventures.

It's simple, ya dig?

Take-Two purchased Zygna who were only valued at $3 billion less than Take-Two. Disney purchased Fox for half their market cap valuation. Microsoft is purchasing ABK by "stealing" assumed profit from all of their combined divisions to recoup the costs since Xbox division on its own would take over three decades to recover those costs (in profit) alone.

Don't see why it's impossible for Sony to buy Take-Two or that them leveraging capital from other divisions to do it is looked at with a negative connotation. Not that I think they're ever going to buy Take-Two mind you (I don't think there's any reason for them to, personally), but it's something they could theoretically do and have the capital to do so, and that shouldn't suddenly be looked at dismissively or negatively just because it's not solely PlayStation's money that'd be used to buy them.

The thing is Sony may be market leader in different markets and since they plan to grow in basically all of them they may start to have antitrust issues. Examples of markets where Sony is or may be market leader:

• Consoles, with almost half of the market share
• Particularly its digital console games store compared to the other ones
• Game subscriptions
• Cloud gaming? (we don't have numbers of their competitors)
• VR gaming? (we don't have numbers of their competitors)

I don't think Sony has to worry about antitrust issues WRT VR; Meta/Facebook are the market leaders there (at this point in time) in terms of install base, they sold 10 million Quest 2 headsets last year and will probably sell that many this year as well.

Sony will have to put up a much bigger effort in promoting and pushing PSVR2 in order to reach those numbers. Tho I'm sure they'd love to replicate (if not beat) them.

 

[DynamiteCop]

By that logic MS Games can't afford it either, but that's simply not true is it? Disney should not have been able to afford Fox, seeing as they had to leverage debt to do it. Conglomerates frequently feed into large scale investments in a single sector of their business

Um, Microsoft has a 25x valuation over Sony which would mean that to equal Sony's measly $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie Microsoft would have to spend $90 billion doing the same.

Apples to oranges, these companies are on different planes of existence. Not a well thought out post.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Heres my thoughts on various companies and publishers and kind of where things stand IMO:

Square enix: (Most Likely IMO)
-Long, close history with sony
-Recently downsized by selling crystal dynamics
-At least 5 AAA exclusives with playstation which seems absurd
-Not outrageously expensive for what youre getting
-Most popular GAAS currently and also has a sizeable mobile division and some manga.
-Has had some hits but also some misses recently

Capcom: (Good relationship but doubtful)
-Has had a rocky history with sony in the past. Once made resident evil nintendo exclusive for the gamecube despite ps2 dominance. Pulled monster hunter off sony handhelds effectively killing the vita in japan before it launched.
-Was close with Microsoft during the 360 heydays
-Outside of street fighter 5, hasnt made a playstation exclusive for some time now
-Has close relations with nintendo and apparently porting resident evil games to apple platforms now too
-Theyre doing better than they ever have and get deals from all platfrom holders

Take 2: (Possible but really expensive)
-Huge acquisition that would shake up the industry but i think sony would leave games multiplat
-GTA and Red dead are the big games. Borderlands and Bioshock are the other big gets IP wise.
-Recently acquired zynga so maybe theres something there for a motive for a mobile division?
-Seems to be doing well financially

Ubisoft: (Possible because the value is low for how many IPs you would be getting)
-Huge, Bloated, and seemingly incompetent with all the recent cancellations, mess of a company
-String of toxic work culture allegations
-Workforce of 20,000 employees in various countries would be a legal nightmare in court with antitrust regulators
-Seems to be losing key staff based on who Haven is hiring.


EA: (Expensive but not impossible?)
-Was recently looking for a merger not that long ago
-Has a slew of IP including FPS, RPG, and GAAS service games
-Has kind of lost its mojo in terms of single player game success and battlefield was a flop
-Recently lost the licensing to Fifa
-Probably a legal nightmare in court with antitrust because of all the studios across the world and licensing agreements

Epic Games: (doubt it)
-Would be shocking in terms of "howd they do it" but wouldnt be surprising that sony would want them.
-Tencent holds like 40 percent i doubt theyd ever give that up
-Unreal engine being owned by a platform holder would probably raise alot of concerns legally
-Fortnite is a juggernaut and sony wants to lean in on GAAS
-Would be very expensive
-Has little reason to sell

CD Proect Red: (Entirely Possible)
-Value has collapsed
-Has the rights to one of the best selling western rpgs
-Has a pc storefront which is something sony probably would want
-Probably wouldnt raise too many concerns about antitrsut though?
-Sony pulled cyber punk off psn store so there may be some bad blood on cdprs end?

I dont think Bandai Namco, Sega, or level 5 would be a consideration.

Of all the companies listed i could see Square enix, CDPR, Ea, and take 2 in that order of most likely possibilities.

Funny how no one is mentioning warner bros games….maybe even including their licensing of gaming IP.

Mortal Kombat biggest fighter on the planet, consistently included in Sony’s services. They had an entire state of play for a third party game, which is unheard of. Sony likes big licensed IP’s. Etc

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Um, Microsoft has a 25x valuation over Sony which would mean that to equal Sony's measly $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie Microsoft would have to spend $90 billion doing the same.

Apples to oranges, these companies are on different planes of existence. Not a well thought out post.

Market valuation fluctuates over time. In the past half a year or so, MS's lost $500 billion in market valuation.

Also MS made the ABK purchase leveraging the entire company's projected annual net profits; Sony made the Bungie purchase (of which $1.2 billion was for retainment of talent) leveraging only PS division's projected annual net profit, not all of Sony's.

Additionally in terms of immediate cash reserves Sony and Microsoft are not that far apart, if you want to talk about what each company can buy using only the money they actually have, and not their valuations.

But really, this is kind of a weird discussion because getting a kick out of how much money a company can spend or what they can buy, when none of that is money going into MY pocket, is just fruitless.

Funny how no one is mentioning warner bros games….maybe even including their licensing of gaming IP.

Mortal Kombat biggest fighter on the planet, consistently included in Sony’s services. They had an entire state of play for a third party game, which is unheard of. Sony likes big licensed IP’s. Etc

I think part of the reason is just because Sony already have a strong relationship with Marvel and can leverage Marvel characters i.e Spiderman and Wolverine, so outside of a few DC characters like Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn etc. who has the draw power of many of the MCU characters? Not to mention the MCU as a film franchise has been more consistent than the DC movies, going over the years.

Then there'd be the thing of Sony now taking out licensing costs for both Marvel and DC characters, and studios like Rocksteady are great at making DC stuff but haven't necessarily proven if they can do well with an original IP. Part of that is WB's fault for never giving them the chance, though (assuming Rocksteady wanted the chance in the past).

As big as superhero stuff is right now there's always a chance in the future that it starts waning, and you'd want studios versatile in doing great with not just licensed IP but original IP as well. Insomniac have proven they can do such a thing, hence that acquisition.

 

[DynamiteCop]

Market valuation fluctuates over time. In the past half a year or so, MS's lost $500 billion in market valuation.

Also MS made the ABK purchase leveraging the entire company's projected annual net profits; Sony made the Bungie purchase (of which $1.2 billion was for retainment of talent) leveraging only PS division's projected annual net profit, not all of Sony's.

Additionally in terms of immediate cash reserves Sony and Microsoft are not that far apart, if you want to talk about what each company can buy using only the money they actually have, and not their valuations.

But really, this is kind of a weird discussion because getting a kick out of how much money a company can spend or what they can buy, when none of that is money going into MY pocket, is just fruitless.



I think part of the reason is just because Sony already have a strong relationship with Marvel and can leverage Marvel characters i.e Spiderman and Wolverine, so outside of a few DC characters like Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn etc. who has the draw power of many of the MCU characters? Not to mention the MCU as a film franchise has been more consistent than the DC movies, going over the years.

Then there'd be the thing of Sony now taking out licensing costs for both Marvel and DC characters, and studios like Rocksteady are great at making DC stuff but haven't necessarily proven if they can do well with an original IP. Part of that is WB's fault for never giving them the chance, though (assuming Rocksteady wanted the chance in the past).

As big as superhero stuff is right now there's always a chance in the future that it starts waning, and you'd want studios versatile in doing great with not just licensed IP but original IP as well. Insomniac have proven they can do such a thing, hence that acquisition.

Not that far apart? There's a $100 billion dollar gap between Microsoft and Sony for liquid money...

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Not that far apart? There's a $100 billion dollar gap between Microsoft and Sony for liquid money...

Just looked it up: $21 billion vs $104 billion cash on hand for Sony and Microsoft, respectively.

However, I don't know if MS's amount has the ABK purchase deducted; looking at the trends shows it hasn't been deducted from their amounts yet so of that $104 billion you can argue $69 billion is reserved and essentially spent. Sony's will drop some too now that the Bungie deal's cleared (unless they are not paying 100% in cash the way MS is with the ABK purchase), but by nowhere near that amount obviously.

 

[DynamiteCop]

Just looked it up: $21 billion vs $104 billion cash on hand for Sony and Microsoft, respectively.

However, I don't know if MS's amount has the ABK purchase deducted; looking at the trends shows it hasn't been deducted from their amounts yet so of that $104 billion you can argue $69 billion is reserved and essentially spent. Sony's will drop some too now that the Bungie deal's cleared (unless they are not paying 100% in cash the way MS is with the ABK purchase), but by nowhere near that amount obviously.

We don't know how that breakdown happened, for all we know a portion of the sale was in stocks.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

We don't know how that breakdown happened, for all we know a portion of the sale was in stocks.

Well the prevailing idea is majority is in cash since according to most speculators, MS had a lot of cash sitting around they wanted to get rid of. That way they could maximize its value (before inflation kicked in, something already happening because of recession concerns) and also avoid paying taxes on it.

So it's likely most of the cost is being covered with upfront cash.

 

[nominedomine]

You only need a big time lawyer like that if it's Nintendo.

Here comes the Nintendo Vita.

 

[Yobo]

Um, Microsoft has a 25x valuation over Sony which would mean that to equal Sony's measly $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie Microsoft would have to spend $90 billion doing the same.

Apples to oranges, these companies are on different planes of existence. Not a well thought out post.

Are you drunk? Or do you just try and move the argument to something else when you lose the previous point

 

[Muddasar]

Are you drunk? Or do you just try and move the argument to something else when you lose the previous point

That’s his MO.

Read the rest of this thread.

 

[DynamiteCop]

Are you drunk? Or do you just try and move the argument to something else when you lose the previous point

It's not a moved argument, the point is you would have to be drunk to think Sony as a divisional company would make a $40 billion gaming purchase.

As YOU brought up Microsoft that would be the equivilent of them making an $800 billion acquisition in gaming, the entire prospect is asinine.

 

[Savant]

I think they would be appealing for many different reasons, but I think there are 3 main reasons of why I Sony won't buy them:

1. EA and Take 2 have a market cap of 20-30B, maybe too expensive for Sony

This isnt about you directly, this is just me speaking in general, because there seems to be a common theme running in this thread, and it's way off the mark, so piggy backing off of your post, im going to adress it

Cough @DynamiteCop

"Market cap" is 1 of the least important factors

All market cap means is the "VALUE" of all outstanding shares, if all shares were calculated

In other words, it means nothing and there's nothing concrete behind it or anything significant to it

Companies have sold for much less then their "assigned" caps, and companies have sold for much more.

It doesn't really mean anything. It's about the deal and terms which 2 parties negotiate and come to an agreement on

They can also reach a deal with shares, or trades. Companies which "cant afford it" can easily raise capital, loans, leverage debt etc. In another example of a way smaller company purchasing a massive company. Nividia bought ARMS chips and was real close to finalizing before it got blocked. Insanely enough, it was microsoft lobbying the anti trust agencies to block that deal, meanwhile microsoft is allowed to consolidate and monopolize at will and get away with murder. America is such a scummy corrupt morally bankrupt country, and microsoft is 1 of the grimey serpent heads of that larger serpent.

It has nothing to do with market cap or "market valuation"

Theres nothing Sony can't afford. Trust me.

Another thing people under look is that Sony has a shit ton of major assets which are worth billions and billions, which Sony could liquidate etc

Sony has more assets than microsoft, and Sony's assets are worth far more

Sony is a very valuable company. They arent that "small" in comparison to microsoft at all, certainly not like clueless xbots keep pretending

Market cap literally means nothing. All the US tech companies are insanely over valued and over rated with their "market valuations." The US tech giants/tech industry=bubble waiting to burst

For example Sony brings in WAYYYY more profit than Tesla yet Tesla is "valued" at 1 trillion while Sony only at 200billion. So figure that one out.

Smaller companies can be assigned way higher valuations for no reason other than hype. The US stock market is all manipulated bullshit

If Sony were valued properly they would easily be a trillion dollar company. Show me a bigger conglomerate with more assets which has a greater brand than the Playstation brand which dominates and controls pop culture?

Sony is insanely under valued and disrespected by the biased american stock market. And to be frank with you, I'm going to speak from experiences which I saw, the US stock market is insanely racist against Japanese companies.

What ever the case, don't be fooled by "market caps," and what "they" try to tell you. When it comes to assets, brands, brand power, influence, work force etc - Sony is way bigger than microsoft (microsoft makes their profits because they are still living off of their illegal windows monopoly and goverment contracts with uncle sam)

Sony had 30billion in a trust alone. Sony has way more cash on hand than what that site claims. It's not accurate at all. And Sony has access to - can leverage, much much more. Believe me, Sony isn't beholden to a set number. They have - and can raise, as much as they need or want.

If Sony really wanted to, they "could" buy T2 AND EA.

This "bu Sony is poor" FUD is some of the stupdiest shit I've ever read. It's funny how in 1 breath xbots say Sony is poor, yet in the next breath do everything they can to try and spin micorsoft as some "underdogs" of gaming lmao

Anways, having said all that Ive said, I don't believe Sony wants EA at all

But I know for a fact that Sony has had talks with Take Two. Im not an "insider" and never want to be one, and im not claming anything. So please don't misread or add anything more to that. Gaming companies are always in talks. That means nothing either. I'm just saying, you never know what can happen. SONY IS SERIOUS NOW. Microsoft fucked around poking the sleeping bear and found out. Sony ain't playing around anymore. Sony is going for the jugular!

Thoughts on everything @Bryank75 ? Especially about the stock market and Sony being criminally under valued? Would you say I'm correct in what I've said?

 

[Savant]

Just looked it up: $21 billion vs $104 billion cash on .

That's not accurate at all

Look how Sony just upped their aquistions budget to 30.7billion US dollars



Sony has way more cash on hand, and they have access to a whole lot more/can raise much more, have tons of significant assets etc.

Your original assessment that Sony and Microsoft are closer than people think was spot on

(not necessarily in pure straight up cash for cash, but Sony is 1 of the largest conglomerates in the world)

It's not about market cap, or even pure cash on hand, and very rarely does any of that even tell a fraction of the story



How many people even know that micorsoft had loans from Goldmans Sachs to buy Activision (or at least is attempting to buy pending investigations)

And check this out

 

[Savant]

Also there are some other things worth mentioning which haven't been brought up

1. Sony owning the Fortnight IP would be just as big as the Call of Duty IP, if not far more significant. The lastest Call of Duty has been under performing. All indications point to Call of Duty declining as an IP. Today's children are all playing Fortnight. Fortnight's strength is in being an accessible and kid friendly battle royale available on all platforms...so Sony would keep it multiplatform (and rake in massive amounts of revenue), but the real strength which would come from Sony owning the Fortnight IP would be in Sony gaining an incredible bargaining chip against microsoft

So if microsoft buys this publisher or that publisher, or makes that series or that series exclusive, Sony can always respond,

"Ok, Fortnight will now be exclusive to Playstation"

And that would get microsoft to change their tune and position very quickly


2. A lot of people still don't know what a monopoly is

In the resetera version of this thread, those microsoft shill dweebs are trying to say that Sony would be "more scrutinized" because of their market position...and thats just xbot bullshit from xbots desperately wanting Sony to be as scrutinized as their microsoft rightfully is "wha wha wha"

BEING FIRST PLACE OR SELLING THE MOST DOES NOT MAKE A MONOPOLY. BEING MARKET LEADER IS NOT A MONOPOLY

A monopoly is when a company uses underhanded tactics to gain "UNFAIR ADVANTAGES" and or uses unfair advantages to HARM COMPETITORS

IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING 1ST PLACE

Sony will always be able to say, "microsoft are the trillion dollar valued company"

Microsoft are the ones building the cloud uncompetitively. Microsoft are the ones with a rentalpass service and trying to force it on every platform (a monoply). Microsoft are the ones using their "war chest" NOT from gaming, TO USE IN GAMING TO UNDERCUT SONY. One can argue Microsoft has already monopolized gaming IPs

Sony can buy Take 2, and I promise Sony will NOT recieve %5 of the same scrutiny that microsoft is rightfully receiving for Activision

How dishonest are these insane xbot shills (twitter and resetera) when they try to downplay just how much of an anticompetitive monopoly move buying out Activison was. YOURE TALKING ABOUT A 70BILLION PURCASE FOR THE LARGEST PUBLISHER IN GAMING TO TAKE AWAY CALL OF DUTY FROM PLAYSTATION ("THE HOME OF PLAYSTATION") AND THATS WHY MICROSOFT HAD TO CONCEED ON CALL OF DUTY TO THE FTC AND MAKE CALL OF DUTY MULTIPLATFORM. OTHERWISE THE FTC WOULDVE BLOCKED THE DEAL

3. For Sony to be hiring 1 of the best antitrust lawyers in history it means it is AQUISITIONS OF MULTIPLE PUBLISHERS, with possibly Epic (epic store possibly raising concerns). And we already know that's the case

- Jim Ryan said they arent close to being done and to expect large aquistionS (PLURAL)

- Sony CFO said they have no limit and will spend what they need to-coinciding with Sony upping their aquistions budget to 30.7billion US dollars

Tanking Activisions stock, while pretending to condemn them, as they were bastardly buying out Activision from Sony in an attempt to take Call of Duty off Playstation (FTC made microsoft conceed on that) was 1 of the dirtiest most satanic corporate moves ever, and it made Sony realise micorsoft's dangerous volatile corporate psychopathy, where Sony finally woke up.

Microsoft kept poking the sleeping bear and now she's awake. The mother bear fiercely protects her cub until the antagonizer is eliminated. Paystation is mommy bear Sony's cub, and she is now furious and won't stop until her cubs antagonizer is eliminated

Heres a little history lesson. The American army was much larger then the Vietnam army, but the Vietnamese through fierce determination, sheer will power, and smarter tactics destroyed the American army. microsoft epitomizes America. Sony are war masters built from the art of war

microsoft is evil personified corporatism, so it will be a great day when good prevails over that corporate evil and xbox is no more a thing. Think about how microsoft with xbox brought nothing but cancer to gaming; paid online, DLC, DRM, publisher buy outs, rentalpass schemes, launching consoles with no games, no games in an entire calender year, all the FUD, flooding forums with astroturfers and shills, all the paid influencers, the entire history of xbox has literally been cancer from start to end. Gaming wouldve been much better off without xbox. PS2 and dreamcast were already doing free online well before xbox. And microsoft created and cultivated the most toxic fanbase ever which ruined gaming that needs to be done away with

 

[Savant]

ps

If Sony acquires Square and Capcom I promise their big IPs and new console IPs will be exclusive to Playstation (just like Bethesda, to compete with Bethesda)

If Sony aquire Take Two (for GTA) or Epic (Fortnight), those 2 megation IPs would more so be used as nuclear bargaining chips against microsoft to always keep microsoft in check

 

[Yurinka]

-Was close with Microsoft during the 360 heydays
-Outside of street fighter 5, hasnt made a playstation exclusive for some time now
-Has close relations with nintendo and apparently porting resident evil games to apple platforms now too
-Theyre doing better than they ever have and get deals from all platfrom holders

-In the 360 days released a couple exclusives mostly because PS3 still didn't exist when they were released
-REVII VR, RE Village VR, RE4R VR and SF6 (for the PS4 gen) are exclusives. MH World is console exclusive for Japan
-Capcom has a close relation/deals with all platforms but an acquisition could limit future ones to a single console

Take 2: (Possible but really expensive)
-Huge acquisition that would shake up the industry but i think sony would leave games multiplat
-GTA and Red dead are the big games. Borderlands and Bioshock are the other big gets IP wise.
-Recently acquired zynga so maybe theres something there for a motive for a mobile division?
-Seems to be doing well financially

-Too expensive for Sony
-Doesn't seem to want to sell, instead they are acquiring

Ubisoft: (Possible because the value is low for how many IPs you would be getting)
-Huge, Bloated, and seemingly incompetent with all the recent cancellations, mess of a company
-String of toxic work culture allegations
-Workforce of 20,000 employees in various countries would be a legal nightmare in court with antitrust regulators
-Seems to be losing key staff based on who Haven is hiring.

-All company have delays and cancellations for time to time. The difference is that Ubisoft mentions them even for unannunced games or for games without public release dats
-Their yearly revenue has been growing since forever
-The amount of assets and IPs (3 of them made over $300M last year, a weak one for them due to covid) they have could make it too expensive for Sony
-They said they don't want or need to sell
-This year is going a weak one for them due to (mostly covid related) covid delays and too long development for super big ass AAAA games but still going to release over a dozen games this year
-Toxic work culture is bullshit, there are only a few supposed/rumored cases for over 20K workers (+many thousands of workers who had been there previously), over 40 studios and almost 40 years of history
-Amount of workforce has nothing to do with antitrust
-Every year there are tons of staff who join and leave big companies, The Haven ones were a tiny portion of them and many of them left Ubi many years ago.

EA: (Expensive but not impossible?)
-Was recently looking for a merger not that long ago
-Has a slew of IP including FPS, RPG, and GAAS service games
-Has kind of lost its mojo in terms of single player game success and battlefield was a flop
-Recently lost the licensing to Fifa
-Probably a legal nightmare in court with antitrust because of all the studios across the world and licensing agreements

-Too expensive for Sony
-Top 1 company for sports and key actor for racing (they recently bought Codemasters and Need for Speed is one of their mismanaged IPs but one of the best selling IPs in gaming history)
-Licensing agreements don't change if other company buys them and don't cause any legal issue, same goes with having studios in many countries

Epic Games: (doubt it)
-Would be shocking in terms of "howd they do it" but wouldnt be surprising that sony would want them.
-Tencent holds like 40 percent i doubt theyd ever give that up
-Unreal engine being owned by a platform holder would probably raise alot of concerns legally
-Fortnite is a juggernaut and sony wants to lean in on GAAS
-Would be very expensive
-Has little reason to sell

-Very likely too expensive for Sony
-UE owned by a console maker wouldn't change anything if continues being multiplatform as it is, or as it also is the Sony multiplatform engines that they made and 3rd party companies use. As an example, all FromSoft souls games (including multiplats) use a Sony engine

CD Proect Red: (Entirely Possible)
-Value has collapsed
-Has the rights to one of the best selling western rpgs
-Has a pc storefront which is something sony probably would want
-Probably wouldnt raise too many concerns about antitrsut though?
-Sony pulled cyber punk off psn store so there may be some bad blood on cdprs end?

-They don't have any IP
-Only have two hit games and both were released with many issues
-I think Valve would the only company that could potentially rise antitrust concens because in addition to be market leader in consoles they would own the -by far- top pc games store and don't know if now in VR gaming (not in VR hardware) would be also market leader too. But like in console there is no monopoly in PC because there are many stores and revenue is split between a lot of companies.

I dont think Bandai Namco, Sega, or level 5 would be a consideration.

Regarding Bandai Namco:
-It's the biggest Japanese 3rd party gaming company in revenue and market cap
-Their revenue and net income is in a growing trend since decades ago
-It's the top 6 biggest mobile gaming publisher in the world by revenue
-Market leader in soulsborne, Japanese fighting games or anime games genres
-Far from Square Enix in JRPG but may be top 2 or top 3 player in this genre in sales
-Bandai Namco and Sony plus its CEO are the owners of Dimps, developers of Street Fighter IV, V and 6. So buying Namco pretty likely would also mean to buy Dimps
-Sony got a recent deal to make toys and statues of their games, Bandai Namco until recently was the top 1 toys company in the world (in very recent years Lego is the top 1)
-They have many classic arcade IPs that would be a great fit for VR (Ace Combat, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis...)
-They have many IPs that would be a good fit for movies, tv series or anime
-They have the exclusive rights to use many top anime IPs in videogames
-Like most big Japanese 3rd party publishers they cover business areas (some of them outside gaming) out of Sony's areas of interest
-Pretty likely too expensive for Sony (it would mean pretty likely >25B)
-Like almost all the other companies listed here, may not want or may not need to sell

 

[nominedomine]

ps

If Sony acquires Square and Capcom I promise their big IPs and new console IPs will be exclusive to Playstation (just like Bethesda, to compete with Bethesda)

If Sony aquire Take Two (for GTA) or Epic (Fortnight), those 2 megation IPs would more so be used as nuclear bargaining chips against microsoft to always keep microsoft in check

If Sony ever buys a publisher like Take Two taking GTA away from Xbox is a much smaller sacrifice than taking something like CoD away from PlayStation since games sell much more units on PlayStation console due to market share and MS teaching people to not buy games. GTA timed exclusivity has already happened multiple times in the past and R* like to hold back the PC version of their games.

I think people overestimate how much Sony should care about losing CoD years from now (specially since they'll get Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 anyway). They'll have plenty of time to prepare to fill that space with games from studios like Deviation, Guerrilla or even just partnering with EA to rehabilitate BF. Something like GTA is a lot hardware to replace because MS doesn't have the capability to compete with R* on any level when it comes to game development.

Fortnite would be just like Minecraft, no point in pulling a game like that from any platform.