Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today to acquire Audeze, a leading audio technology brand and pioneer of high-end gaming headphones
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Yes, but he's not in charge of Sony, the parent company. Sony CEO make all the decisions, including budgeting for the PS division.
Can't say I'm a fan but it seems Sony overall is reluctant to invest in gaming studios.
Can't say I'm a fan but it seems Sony overall is reluctant to invest in gaming studios.
Well the CEO hates Gaming. I'm too lazy to go dig up the interview he did years ago calling it very niche. Apparently Playstation was gutted during Covid and last year as well. Who knows, but the changes has been obvious.
I echo these sentiments.
Why can't Sony buy anything interesting or exciting for the PS fanbase.
Something along the lines of Insomniac, Bungie, Bluepoint etc.
Nobody knows what Audeze are... the PS brand or Sony are instantly recognizable already. Unless they were getting a famous artist to put their name to a headset. Pointless.... really pointless.
Like Deviation's wall plastered with PS controllers?
Fuck these unproven no-name mobile/GAAS studios.
There's nothing wrong with improving the quality of their product. They're putting planar magnetic drivers into the new headsets which is high end audiophile level equipment.
PS been gutted since Layden lost out. Korderas and Ryan have sucked ass since that time.
Hold up, you got mad at me last time for saying the EXACT same thing
Oh well, I'm glad to see you've caught on, I hope others here start to as well.
Ironic because I had the most faith in this studio outta all the partnerships they announced and I was so looking forward to seeing what they could do ... I'm all for them investing and buying GaaS studios... So they can leave their Single Player Studios alone.... Look what chasing GaaS has done to Naughty Dog, they've been in disarray for over 2 years.
Pray for London Studios as they won't make it out alive, this generation.
Layden should have never left but I wasn't keen on him taking over either. They should have kept a structure and made him President of the Americas... Let him and Jim report to each other ... it's clear having one King has been a disaster for them.
They need to improve the output of their games... Stop focusing on unimportant things majority of their paying customers ain't gonna financially support nor care for.
and this is why NomNom should be unbanned, and a rant board put somewhere. With successive blunders Sony makes, it's not trolling, but someone's opinion.Hold up, you got mad at me last time for saying the EXACT same thing
why do they need these no name headphone makers?
i thought Cerny had the 3D ear haptics tech, and someone produced those already made InZone (gag!) headsets. what a waste of fucking money.
I have no idea about this company, it's the first time I heard about it.
I did a quick search and saw it was a private company with 31 employees funded in 2008 with a $126K crowdfunding.
https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/109004-50#overview
Googled a bit more and seems that they are very important in the high-end headset submarket. But didn't find any info about their sales, profitability or market position.
I didn't say that.
I meant that in many cases when there is a company with good assets but has finantial issues instead of shutting down the company or firing a large portion of people they decide to sell. So sometimes bigger companies get appoached by them or viceversa.
It's something common, but I have no idea if this was the case of Sony or Audeze. But I think it may be the case because a few months ago Sony reduced to around $400M for the whole Sony their budget for acquisitions+investments+stock repurchases for this year and said they were basically pausing big their acquisitions until the mid to long term. Meaning, it must have been a small/cheap acquisition, they may be important in the high end headsets submarket but they shouldn't be an expensive giant.
The CEO said the opposite, that he wants Sony to focus on their entertainment business, particularly gaming, and that in 2-3 years will sell most of their banks business to get a lot of cash for enterntaiment related acquisitions.
Nope he said gaming is niche right around the time the PS5 hype machine was getting oiled up.... Shortly after he almost undermined Playstation when he met with Satya for Azure.
And why would I trust a word from that out of touch relic? He's been saying that same crap from last year, and we still have yet to see Playstation acquire any intellectual gaming IP properties.
He's a penny pinching accountant who needs to go.
did i read the term 'industry leading' somewhere in the blurb. Literally never heard of them, even as a cheapy brand you might see down your local Tescos. I know 'Technika' wank TV's (or whatever they were called) more than I know about this company.
You didn't have to, because what you describe afterwards is exactly what Microsoft did with Zenimax and wants to do again with ABK.
Basically what MS and Zenimax did. So, if that's the case here with Audeza & Sony, it would be taking a page out of that playbook.
For their sake it'll work out for them hopefully. But, as it's nothing related to gaming software, I honestly couldn't care less. Maybe if/when I want to go more full-tilt in music production and need some premium headphones, this sort of stuff will matter more. But that isn't the case currently.
Again the issue increasingly becomes that what they (Sony) may want in 2-3 years won't be available for them to get in 2-3 years. Or, in addition, that any meaningful content that type of gaming acquisition would bring (beyond titles that were already in development prior to the M&A) won't have any material effect on the PS5 this generation.
So in the context of what it would do for PS5, it's a moot topic. In the context of what it'd do for PS6, it really depends on what type of gaming acquisition it is, when it's made, what content is in the pipeline at time of acquisition, when it'll be ready, and whether it's prioritized for PS6 or doing some soft exclusivity thing. Or, if it turns out to be multiplat content (diminishes its impact as a driver for PS5/PS6 console sales) instead.
Source? Sounds like another anti-Sony fantasy typical from IconEra, that goes straight against reality.
Gaming is an aprox. $200B/year market with 3B players, I highly doubt any Sony exec (or any other exec from any other gaming company) may have said that gaming is niche.
If something, the more relatively similar -but totally different, basically the opposite- that he could have said is that gaming is a huge market with a few billions of players, but consoles only reach a very small subset of it (around 200-300M players during decades), and looking at PS only it represents even a smaller percentage of the giant gaming market even if they highly increase their market share inside consoles.
So that the growth working only in PS is very limited and in order to grow a lot their gaming business, in addition to continue focusing on PS investing on PS more than ever before, Sony also decided to expand to other gaming platforms, particularly mobile or PC, because a big majority of the players are there. Particularly the ones from growing regions like (non-Japan) Asia or South America, which represent a huge portion of the players, where they mostly play on mobile or PC only. PC and mobile is way more important in these markets than allso is in EU+NA+JP.
Audeze makes studio quality headsets.
If anyone is serious about headset sound... they offer the best.
The new Maxwell set is incredible with my only issue being its weight(over 1lb)
Sad to see gamers acting like football fans desperately hanging on for the next big-name signing.