OP
OP
Sony now own 14.1% of From Software (May be buying more)
- Thread starter Bryank75
- Start date
In the Jim Ryan era (since 2019) Sony bought more gamedev studios than they ever did, and at the same time they expanded their previously existing studios to the point that many of them who were only working on a single big project at the same time now are or will soon working on multiple ones at the same time.
They have more games under development, more devs and more game teams than they ever had before. Regarding IPs, they don't need more: they already have a lot of super successful ones, even some of them underdeveloped because they don't have enough people to develop everything and because they also invest a lot in new IP. So if something, they need more talent to develop them (plus to create new ones), not to get more IPs (unless it's for genres/game types where 1st party Sony doesn't shine and need to grow or to secure them from being bought by someone who could keep them away from PS).
Sony is the market leader of consoles, console exclusive games and console game subs, not MS/TC/Apple/Saudi money. Sony isn't the one who needs to buy to -unsuccessfully- catch the market leader because they already are. But still they make acquisitions to continue growing and budgeted $30B for acquisitions, investments and stock repurchases.
Their investments are smarter than the ones from MS: instead of buying names that were big in the past (Sony already has big names that are now) and the company that did them in the past and lost an important part of the talent that made them big, Sony invest instead on the new studios of that talent. Sony invest less money and gets fresh quality games instead of spending a shit ton of money on declining or basically dead former legend IPs and devs.
Sony also strategically invested/will continue investing on improving secondary areas where they can grow and improve and will be important for the future and will help them grow their fanbase and revenue of the current traditional console games like GaaS, cloud gaming, VR, game subs, MP experience/tournament/eSports, PC, mobile, or movies/tv shows.
Mobile makes over half of gaming revenue and has over half of the players, plus it's the platform with biggest growth since like 20 years ago. GaaS also make over half of the game revenue and is also the gaming business model with the highest growth. Over 90% of PS users don't buy Call of Duty, which generated up to $3B/year (in the covid spike) while the total game revenue is around $200B.
It's smarter to invest a handful Billions on buying the best selling new IP ever, which is GaaS and one of the most successful ones, to share their GaaS knowledge and tools to the other internal teams who may need it and a few mobile studios than to spend $70B on a declining CoD to keep it multiplatform to compensate the lost interest on their former stars Halo or Gears.
If something, the hare is MS and the tortoise is Sony. With the difference that the tortoise here already won 3 races and in the current 4th one even if the Chinese chips is stopping it already is winning the current race by over 50% distance ran than the one ran by the hare.
Last edited:
Well when you don't have roughly $70 billion in annual profit to play around with, you have to be more measured in how you spend the cash.
But, MS buying some of those studios was to simply try catching up with Sony. Them buying Mojang is what tipped their focus towards service game content and what would eventually become GamePass. Buying Zenimax & ABK is them hoping to make services-based gaming the primary way to pay, play and access content, and also to rope in game developers as Azure clients so that cloud-based development becomes the primary form of game development (and more importantly for MS, one that they could overwhelmingly dominate).
That's the intent, anyway. They have so far to go before any of this really starts to manifest as reality (if it ever does) it's not even funny.
The way I look at it, Sony & PlayStation management at that time weren't as interested in acquiring massive developers or publishers partly because they had no need to, and partly because I think they understand the disruption doing that brings to the open market of 3P developer/publisher communities. Plus, you're potentially taking in a lot of extra overhead you have to at least shift through and decide what's redundant to cut, let alone the extra salaries and insurance plans, health & dental packages, 401Ks etc. your company now has to provide for all these additional employees.
On Sony buying Capcom back some years ago, I don't think that would've done much for PS Vita. It was already basically dead commercially by 2014/2015, I don't even remember the launch being particularly great. The 3DS actually struggled a bit upon its launch, too, but after Nintendo cut the price, sales improved and the software finally began to show up. This never happened with Vita in a reasonable time frame, by the time Sony could have bought Capcom, got the deal to go through and finally start bringing some stuff like Monster Hunter to Vita it'd of probably been 3 years after the Vita launched and 3DS was doing very good by that point. Too much momentum for Vita to go up against.
Well, there's still talk that Arc System Works could be on the table for them. Considering the vast majority of that company's fanbase (on console) is on PlayStation, Sony acquiring them would bring a lot of excitement among the core crowd and FGC and not rock the boat in terms of upsetting any large number of Xbox or Nintendo primary owners considering how insanely small ArcSys's customer base is on those platforms.
It would be a much cheaper option than Capcom or NRS for fighting purposes, and personally I think ArcSys's fighters are more appealing in terms of character designs, visuals, animation, game mechanics etc. than NRS's games. In some instances even more than Capcom's fighters, but that gets highly subjective and depends on what specific games are actually being compared. Plus, someone from ArcSys recently said they'd like to work with more established IP; I could see a Marvel fighter from them for example since Capcom probably has ruined that chance for a while due to MvC: I failing
A new Marvel fighter, or Marvel vs Guilty Gear (or hell, Marvel vs DBZ) type of crossover from ArcSys would get LOTS of people hungry, and Sony could help a lot in making that happen. Probably even more so if they went and acquired them. I'd view such similar to them acquiring Insomniac, where it's basically been a long-form relationship between the two spanning decades and making it official would just seem natural.
Reading the thread... people seem to have no clue how a minority interest in a company works, when 1 party controls a majority.
Sony has no control over From after this, nor does Tencent. Tencent also has no control over Epic, even though they own 49%.
A minority owner just makes money if they can sell their stake for higher than they bought it.
Sony has no control over From after this, nor does Tencent. Tencent also has no control over Epic, even though they own 49%.
A minority owner just makes money if they can sell their stake for higher than they bought it.
Ohh I shouldn't post this. I'm too stoned and annoyed. Even trying to read it back I can see it meandering back and forth. Fuck it, maybe someone will get overall what I am trying to say better than me and help me out. Probably some jibberish for the haha reaction for most others. No one's allowed to ban me, at least today.
Don't get me wrong, I know some of my complaints about Sony come from before Jim's time. But I felt like back then we got more wins, somewhere along the way. These days it certainly feels like more misses and missed oppotunities, more of a lack of a cohesive vision overall. For example: Back on PS4 you had the Until Dawn IP spread across PS4 and PSVR with Rush Of Blood and The Inpatient. They just felt more committed. I mean ffs they'd supported Until Dawn's development from humble beginnings as a PS3 Move only game. Just as you think it's gonna blow-up and Sony will put a ring on it, and we'll get annual games out of it, it didn't happen. These were later half-realised as the Dark Pictures Anthology, but never to the standard of polish Sony helped provide such as actor likenesses or I'm assuming financially. Any thoughts of "it's so perfect they can't miss out, for gameplay audience on Sony's machines and IP potential in further media", like if it does well we could get a Netflix show, a Sony-verse version of American Horror Story; where renewed interest comes as new parts release, like Stranger Things' recent season; always pushing people back-towards the game series on PS... which again has it's frequent new story drops, mirroring the conversation up-keep. Simillar with Quantic Dream. Yes I know, David Cage/Crunch, but the team itself was still worth retaining and building-up. I don't know how all the dates line-up admittedly, but where's all the big vision gone? Why are we taking all the worst lessons from MS and Nintendo and playing in their sandboxes, instead of supporting/highlighting what they can uniquely do better? One hand of Sony helping the other? Why do we only now have the flicker of hope they're starting with scraps to embrace what was already kinda there to begin with but never fully realised?
I say all that to say this, at least back then when they were blundering the multiplatform losses of QD, SM, and RAD was worse because now they just don't contribute towards PS platforms; they were at least visibly doing some business stuff over here to get Disney and LucasArts to bring some old games forward onto modern consoles, or they were funding Street Fighter 5 when Capcom were not prepared to and said without it we'd have been waiting a long time for SF5. By contrast these days I feel almost lucky we at least got a ring on HouseMarquee's finger, and I believe they had other potential investors lined-up. The degrees have shifted. Their communication sucks. I don't even play Sly Cooper and I was disappointed for Sly fans when it was recently said that they're not working on it and no other team is. I was genuinely under the impression that was previously an unspoken confirmation the mysterious fabled hidden 2nd team from all the Sony re-investment - like Demons Souls Remake had been for so long. I liked the developer transparency, finally, but why let rumors grow in the first place or establish a false narrative? That doesn't help when you don't communicate what you are working on, for one, and are fighting a proven astroturfing/FUD war on top. But if you're not working on that, can we see what your teams 'are' working on? I'd like to know why there's not a Vita 2 in the face of Switch's success. Switch Lite doesn't even 'Switch' to TV for god's sake. It just feels like Sony are slow to react, but when they do they don't take the right lessons from competitors. And whilst we don't know what they are working on, we do see the misses/missed opportunities.
OP
OP
I would like them to go further with this From investment...
Other than that my top 2 most anticipated / wanted acquisitions are Square Enix and Arc System Works.
That would really rejuvenate the enthusiasm for PlayStation in Japan and among the part of the base that really miss the heritage of the brand.
They both have massive potential too if managed well.
Other than that my top 2 most anticipated / wanted acquisitions are Square Enix and Arc System Works.
That would really rejuvenate the enthusiasm for PlayStation in Japan and among the part of the base that really miss the heritage of the brand.
They both have massive potential too if managed well.
Me too. Seeing them selling a portion now, who knows. Maybe they're open to sell the rest in the future. But I think that if Kadokawa would have wanted to get rid of From they'd have sold them to Sony or Tencent instead of selling them a portion.
ArcSys over Capcom? Do you like more ArcSys over Capcom or it's because you see it more realistic?
If Kadokawa wanted to sell a controlling stake, they would.. and surely Tencent and/or Sony would have bitten.
It is what it is.. these conversations often seem to miss the part where the company who is in control, is clearly not wanting to give it up lol
It is what it is.. these conversations often seem to miss the part where the company who is in control, is clearly not wanting to give it up lol
OP
OP
Yeah, seems more realistic..... plus Sony own 50% of Dimps who make all the Capcom fighting games anyway.
It's certainly an in to future discussions if Kadokawa actually wants to sell a controlling stake.
For Kadokawa / Fromsoft it's a good way to make sure Sony wants to help them as much as possible, because Sony now has a greater vested interest in making them more valuable, without having to do something like promise exclusivity or give up marketing rights. Sony will want to help Fromsoft market their games for instance, w/o any extra contract.
There is also the outside chance the purchase came along w/ some sort of contract for Sony to "get something else" out of the deal than shares though. I doubt we'll ever know. If there ever is anything exclusive to PS again from them, or something like exclusive marketing rights/timed exclusivity/PS+ exclusivity we probably won't know if that's from a contract born out of the purchase, or another contract Sony signs with Kadokawa after the fact (paying them essentially.)
But outside of those sorts of contingency deals, this gives Fromsoft a bit of 'leverage' over Sony and not the other way around.
As you mention Until Dawn had a long development and changed a lot since it was originally a PS3 Move game. I loved that game, but I assume that maybe they spent way more originally considered for it (a humble Move game) so probably in exchange of getting extra budget/delay they asked to make a couple of small VR games where they could reuse canned Until Dawn stuff they already had developed for Move.
Reviews were ok, and I assume sales weren't stellar. I saw a lot of potential on them with Until Dawn that I didn't saw in the games they did before them. I'd have bought them, but maybe the studio had bigger ambitions to become multiplatform, or Sony did consider it wasn't worth it. Maybe sales were terrible or their accuracy making budget and time estimations was way worse than it usually is.
Yes, I think they had potential to continue improving with Sony, and also to adapt to videogames horror movie IPs that Sony may have. They got stuck in quality or didn't live to the Until Dawn standards and finally sold to someone else.
But it's nice to see part of the talent founded another studio who is now working for Sony.
Quantic Dream left because they wanted to grow and become a multi studio multiplatform publisher.
Stray is great game made by a new French studio that mostly has former Ubisoft and Quantic Dream talent. Maybe Sony can buy them and help them grow getting top French talent from top French studios from places like Quantic Dream and Ubisoft.
And well, when Quantic Dream left said that they were going to focus on being a multiplatform publisher, but that they didn't close the door to work for/with Sony again in the future.
Remember that in recent years they don't only did put the ring to Housemarque, but also to Insomniac, Bungie or Bluepoint, plus other ones that may not sound exciting now but I'm pretty sure they'll do amazing stuff: Firesprite (or what is the same, to revive Evolution, Liverpool Studio and Bizarre Creations in a single studio) or Haven.
Maybe not as epic as in the previous one, but in the start of this generation with Capcom this time they had several deals: SF6 won't release in XBO but will release in PS4, RE Village VR and RE4R VR.
Regarding 2nd party, this time we they have Firewalk (key staff that comes from Destiny, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Bioshock Infinite...), Deviation (key staff that comes from CoD and practically any popular and big shooter plus many other top AAA games), seems that Arrowhead (Helldivers 2, this time as AAA), Sumo Digital (they did Sackboy, which is a great game), Kojima Productions (Death Stranding 2) and that rumored game from the former Until Dawn devs.
They must also have many fresh unannounced 2nd and 3rd party exclusives for PSVR2 since it's going to launch in early 2023 with over 20 games and we only know less than half a dozen of them.
They are market leaders and are having the best results for a console maker in gaming history, so their communication is perfectly ok. They also have insane numbers at social media or youtube, also way above than their direct competition.
Sony said they had over 25 games under development, according to some estimates could be over 30 or 40. Around half of them being new IP. So they are are working on over a dozen other sequels.
This means they are working on more games than they ever did, and isn't fair to ask them for more (but they are buying and expanding studios, so will do more). But still doing this, there are many other beloved series that aren't getting a sequel.
I assume Sucker Punch is working on Ghost of Tsushima 2, a new IP and maybe they move the sequel of GoT Legends to an standalone game similar to what ND did with TLOU. Sucker Punch reached the big boys status hitting the jackpot with GoT so they must continue with that, meaning that their previous, smaller IPs must be left behind at least until some day in the future where they get an additional (internal or external) team who would handle them.
It's similar to what happened at ND with Uncharted and TLOU, at Guerrilla with Horizon or at Insomniac with Marvel. They must focus on their new gold mine, plus from time to time to make some new IP to see if they find a new one and only if they already have 2 or 3 teams working on them, if they get to have a 3rd or 4th internal time use it for smaller projects using their older, less popular IPs (as in Insomniac with Ratchet). Or to let them to some 2nd party capable hands, as in the case of Media Molecule with LBP.
They perfectly communicate what they are working on, but they announce games when they are months away from release, maximum a year and a half from its estimated release. They do this for multiple reasons:
- They always have enough exciting stuff to be released in the next months / maximum year and a half or so and makes more sense to focus on that than in games to be released several years in the future.
- If they show games too early they'll have to announce it with a CG/logo teaser or with a vertical slice that will be different than the final game, worse maybe in a few areas so many people will moan about downgrades even using it as ammunition.
- It's very common to delay or cancel games. It's bad PR to do it when the game is already announced. So the later they announce them, more chances are that it happens when fans still don't know about them.
- They also have to promote 3rd party games with exclusivity or marketing deals
- They also have to promote their services, accesories, now eSports, etc.
- They have to spread their big hype bullets to avoid the mistake that MS does: to focus many of them and then to be years without having exciting stuff to announce. So they strategially spread their announcements across the year(s) trying to no overshadow or not being othershadowed by other announces or releases.
- For the specific case of right now, doesn't make sense to pump the hype with no consoles available at the stores, it's better to save these hype bullets for later.
Because Vita 1 sold like shit, it wouldn't make sense to split again their development efforts in another platform more and they are focused on high end visuals and VR, so can't do like Nintendo developing only for a single underpowered device.
Nintendo merged their console and handheld games, dev teams and userbase and this gen don't have competition plus their hardware this time wasn't that underpowered. It's normal that they did perform better than last gen with 3DS+Switch.
But Nintendo won't repeat this success, in a few years once tech continues evolving and prices keep decreasing, PC handhelds like Steamdeck and the chinese ones will be as powerful as a high end console will have a similar pricing. Meaning that they will have most AAA and indies running there plus all the emulators. Plus Apple (with their big ass processor and full UE5 and Unity support and a ton of 3rd parties backing them) is also coming to consoles and paid games.
They've literally worked with them as publisher on numerous circumstances. This just brings their relationship even closer
P
peter42O
Guest
If anything, Sony's investment is more of a deterrent for other publishers who may have wanted to acquire From Software as this would now require buying out Sony's shares. Smart move by Sony in this regard and they'll make a good amount of free money.