TBF, Sony could also take out loans.
@Savant mentioned MS taking out a loan from Goldman Sacs that seemingly is towards the ABK purchase. Disney took out loans for Fox. Netflix takes out loans all the time (or at least they did until recently).
Considering what financial asset leverage Sony has, particularly with Japanese banks (I'd imagine), they could definitely take out a loan for Take-Two if they really wanted it. But I doubt they really want Take-Two in the first place.
Yes, if wanted to spend more in acquisitions, Sony has access to loans: even some of their main share holders are big banks both Japanese and from USA. Plus are in a great finantial position and growth pattern so banks would get them a loan to help them grow with no problem. In fact, outside the money of the budget they have for acquisitions Sony has cash. If their budget for acquisitions isn't bigger the reason isn't the lack of money. Sony can afford to spend more than 30B in acquisitions with no problem. I never said that if Sony won't spend more in acquisitions the reason would be that Sony doesn't have enough money but instead is the process they follow, or that simply they don't want to spend more than they set as budget for this period:
They made a special budget for investments, acquisitions and stocks repurchases with the money they think they'll spend in the next 3 years or so (using money I think coming from their cash/revenue from previous years or maybe even from loans). And then they make acquisitions and investments or buy Sony stocks using money from that budget. At the end of each fiscal year, if due to the opportunities they saw spent more than expected and they see they need to expand that budget because they plan to spend more of what they originally thought for the next fiscal year (pretty likely they are in talks and plan to acquire people for a value of X billions the next year), they increase that budget whatever is needed and notify it to their investors in the fiscal year report announcement, in around May, as they did this year.
The thing is, the creation/enlargement of this budget is made and announced at the end of the fiscal year. This May they announced they increased the budget to 30B. In the future they can make it bigger, but would be in May 2023 or May 2024. They have this process, and Japanese guys always really like to follow plans, rules and processes, they rarely improvise. These $30B is what they plan to spend as of now for a handful of years (not only for the first one) not in SIE only, but in the whole Sony, and not in acquisitions only, but also in stocks repurchases and investments but they can revise it every year when making the FY report in May.
I think it's pretty likely they'll spend most of these $30B this fiscal year in acquisitions, repurchases and investment this fiscal year. In multiple ones for the whole Sony, and that maybe around half of it, maybe a bit more (remember they spent around 40% of it in SIE previously), will be for SIE/gaming. Let's say SIE gets aorund $15B and spends around $12B of it this FY. I expect that SIE will make some acquisitions and some investments this FY, most of them small like the eSports they recently did and they spend around maybe a couple of billions on them. Then SIE would have maybe up to around 10-11B to spend in big acquisitions for this FY, maybe from 1 to 3 of around the same price of Bungie or bigger.
So following the Sony methodology, I think that bein realistic we can see SIE spending 10, 11, maybe even 12B this FY on big acquisitions. They could even spent it in a single one. To buy a company they don't need to buy the 100%, to control it 51% is enough, but we saw SIE acquiring the 100% of them on their acquisitions, like with Bungie. So I doubt this year they'll buy someone more expensive than Konami, Square or Capcom, companies that would cost them under 12B.
Take 2 would cost them slightly over 30B, maybe even more. And only SIE would benefit from it. So if Sony ever get Take 2, I think it would be other FY. I think that if they do an extra effort to go way beyond 12B in this FY for a SIE acquisition would be for someone else who would also benefit other Sony divisions: Bandai Namco.
In addition to have their gaming side, they are the top 2 toy maker in the world (top 1 a few years ago), only behind Lego. Sony recently did open a division where they had that toy robot dog and something else, and SIE did a partnership with a toy maker company to make some toys and figurines of PS IPs.
They could turn the toys and figurines part of Bandai into the toys division of Sony, put there their dog robot and use it to make toys and statues of not only the big amount of anime IPs they already do, but the Sony anime IPs, the Sony game IPs, the Sony movie & tv shows IPs and even of their musicians at Sony music to handle themselves. Imagine the potential of toy robots but instead of being shaped as a dog, shaped as popular anime robots like Gundam or any other IP that Bandai handles.
Bandai Namco has the exclusive usage for games and toys of many top non-Sony anime IPs. If Sony gets Bandai Namco, Sony could offer these anime makers an upsell offering to put their animes on Sony's anime platform and also make real action movie/tv shows adaptations of them and access to their Sony Music artist to make them songs.
Interesting, so the hire of this Uber lawyer could be them seeing a future fight for walled gardens and pushing against it?
Honestly I don't have a problem with walled gardens. They allow for a degree of full vertical integration that the alternative can't supply. If regulators want to make sure companies aren't taking advantage of their customers, the answer isn't to force them to open their ecosystem up to competitors IMO. It should be to just...increase the fines they receive if found guilty of manipulating their customers and abusing them in a walled garden ecosystem.
Because it's not just Sony who could end up hit really hard if suddenly walled gardens for gaming consoles are banned; it'll pretty much ruin Nintendo's whole business model and have a net negative across the board. And while they've been especially egregious in taking advantage of their customers in some ways (namely in BS pricing models for their games to where they never drop in price even after 5+ years), I don't think getting rid of walled gardens is a necessary step to cut down on that type of stuff.
Walled gardens benefit Sony and Nintendo in consoles, and Google and Apple in phones & tablets.
Epic and Nintendo want to break them to get benefited by putting their own store on Google, Apple, Sony and Nintendo hardware to sell games and services there without paying anything to the hardware makers. By doing that they'd heavily expand their userbase, which now is limited because in PC is Steam who has most of the market share and in consoles Xbox has a too small market share.
Sony's gaming revenue comes in a big part from the PSN store. So getting forced to allow other stores in PS hardware would hurt them. So pretty likely an important part of the job of this guy would be to fight against it. But if regulators force Sony to do it, pretty likely will mean that they will be also forcing Nintendo, Xbox, Google and Apple to do it, meaning Sony would be able to put their PSN store (and PS+) in all these platforms without having to pay anything to their hardware makers, which in the short term would be a pain in the ass, in the long term would mean good news for Sony because the PSN store would be reaching a way, way bigger audience.
From a player standpoint, it would mean to have more games and subscriptions in all consoles. In PS you'd end in the long term having at least PSN, Nintendo's eShop, Steam, XBL and the Epic Store (plus I assume EA and Ubi stores). And pretty likely in the long term this competition would also mean also having crossbuy between them all like with the Steamdeck: the games you bought in a platform, if available on the store of other platform you could also play them there at no extra cost.
No seriously tho, they aren't a bad team. They have former Evolution and Liverpool devs for a reason. They just need some better guidance and funding. Plenty of potential with them, Sony could even give them the Motorstorm IP because who else do they really have to work on it? And they do need a more arcade-style racer in their lineup tbh, just look at the success of stuff like Forza Horizon. That could've been Sony with Motorstorm or even Driveclub if they stuck with them.
In fact they could marry some of the PS All-Stars concept into a Motorstorm reboot, throw some legacy IP characters in there as drivers with special enhanced vehicles, even add some Twisted Metal flavor to the mix. So much potential.
I think with Lucid they should do like with Fabrik: to absorb them into Firesprite, where they have plenty of former Liverpool Studio, Evolution and Bizarre Creations staff, like in (a way smaller scale) Lucid.
Then Firesprite would deliver the brand new Motorstorm and Wipeout games I want. With a great and complete single player campaign, full VR support for the whole game, friendly+casual MP modes (maybe even team based one, and where you get points for everything making to end first not the only way to win) but also competitive eSports friendly ranked and tournament modes.
They could also be GaaS, meaning they'd have seasons adding free for everyone new game modes, new circuits, new teams, new music tracks, plus purchasable in a season pass -or unlockable by playing during that season- new vehicles, and not-gameplay-affecting/not-pay-to-win customizables for your vehicles.
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