Why not? Market cap of 3.5 billion.
Sony were interested in 50 billion Fox years ago.
How many of us can afford a house? We get mortgages if we can’t.
Companies can also get loans for purchases. Not a big deal.
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Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions
- Thread starter Eternal_Wings
- Start date
Why not? Market cap of 3.5 billion.
Sony were interested in 50 billion Fox years ago.
How many of us can afford a house? We get mortgages if we can’t.
Companies can also get loans for purchases. Not a big deal.
Press F to doubt.
You don't think myself and others who have contrary opinions to yours, are looking at this from realistic POV and probabilities? The idea that you're the only one looking at things reasonably is kind of foolish at the very least. The fact you feel anyone in disagreement is just a PlayStation fanboy says a lot you'd likely rather not want to admit is being implicated or said on your end.
You point to fiscal results of the very short term and immediate market to validate your ideas which fall pretty much lockstep in line with the other bean counters and corporate suits at Sony. So of course you would not see an issue in your assessments. But they are all short-term based. You fail to see that Microsoft's end goal is to amass control, production & distribution of as much of the biggest content in the industry as possible, and leverage monies through their other divisions for a gaming division that means absolutely nothing to their bottom line. And, that they actively leverage loss-leading subsidization strategies in part hoping to outlast competitors more reliant on gaming revenue and profits to do so.
And again you're hiding behind ideas that are false, like Sony's position in the market preventing them from making certain gaming acquisitions, when that would only matter if they gained that position through monopolistic practices and anticompetitive behaviors (yet somehow went over two decades without being investigated on those suspicions). Which is not the case with Sony.
And, if regulators want to argue otherwise, it's not like Sony can't bring up what I just mentioned in the above paragraph, or point out other things that might draw the consideration of exceptions such as the actual corporate size of them compared to direct competitors who are leveraging their full corporate size and valuation to purchase up gaming publishers, assets, and production pipelines.
Press F to doubt.
Did not dispute this. However, it doesn't rebuke what I mentioned in that, potentially waiting up to 3 years to finally make a big gaming-related acquisition, might be too late. Because that target of interest might be purchased by some other platform holder or company, or some other company buying majority shares in it, etc.
Or, they could enter a merger, and the new board of directors and heads running the merged entity come from the one company in that merger that was not interested in being acquired, so now the other one is off the table due to being part of a new merged entity.
You're saying Sony couldn't provide any technical performance or development boosts to bring back IP like Onimusha, Dino Crisis, Rival Schools, Cyberbots/Tech Romancer, Darkstalkers (a fighting game, where Sony co-owns EVO btw) etc? C'mon, you aren't even trying here.
Also funny you bring up the movie thing again while conveniently sidestepping you took the wrong read from the Street Fighter/Legendary Pictures announcement, when you COULD have just been neutral and not try tying it to an acquisition happening or not happening, whatsoever. That was your choice, and you did it for a reason that wasn't tied to just "looking at the facts". It was emotionally driven.
I never paid attention to that drivel as signs of anything. The only reason I'm paying attention to Tom Henderson is because he basically sticks to hardware and was actually correct about Project Q, so chances are he's correct about the PS5 Pro.
Jeff Grubb has nowhere near as solid a track record. He's like only somewhat better than XboxERA Nick, who is horrendously wrong most of the time (on top of being an Xbox fanboy).
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Of course they could. They could afford Square Enix, Konami and Capcom and would still have money left. Do you know how big of corporation Sony are?
Sony should sell PlayStation to a company that values it more. Sony clearly doesn't see consoles as the future and they have no chance of being relevant on cloud/mobile/PC. They can keep Bungie.
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Rejecting reality as usual.
A different thing is to reject and deny reality and facts.
Facts: Sony says that they will spend the budget they had to spend in acquisition this year in something else because they won't make acquisitions in the short term and will leave it for the mid to long term. And that they'll sell a big portion of their banks division to get cash for acquisitions, a process that they estimate will take in 2-3 years.
People who deny reality and facts: Wow, Sony may and must buy 320942 big publishers tomorrow!
Me: I would like to see Sony buying Capcom or From, but here's a list of facts that show Sony saying they don't plan to make acquisitions this fiscal year and more facts that indicate that it would be super difficult to see these specific companies wanting to sell specifically now.
People who deny reality and facts: *gets angry and attacks me not being able to politely debate providing some fact that proves me wrong*
One thing is to have a different opinion or to make speculations considering the facts we have, this is normal and ok. A different thing is what many people in this forum like you do: to reject reality and deny facts and attack the ones who provides or remembers them.
I would like to see Capcom announcing Final Fight 4 and Mega Man 12 but instead they announce Exoprimal and some hackers leak their projects roadmap. So I say they announced Exoprimal and mention the games listed in the leak.
If someone else say that they may announce Final Fight 4 tomorrow, I tell them that we have some fact, their leaked roadmap, that indicates that it won't happen and that it shows instead Exoprimal, which is what they announced. That doesn't mean that I don't want to see Final Fight 4 being announced.
I point to available facts. When companies post long term plans I post them and did it a gazillion times in this thread, particularly with Sony. Including screenthots of the related documents and graphs. These are not my ideas, these are facts and I show them to explain them.
All big corporations like Sony or MS want to get a market share as big as possible in the markets they are, yes. Because they are companies and are in a capitalist world.
And yes, I said a ton of times in this forums that I believe that MS has a toxic strategy that if becomes successful (something I think won't happen) would kill many publishers and devs, particularly the other platform holders.
I say that a market regulator would be more likely to stop the acquisition of a company with a 4% market share when, in a submarket with 2 competitors with a 80% vs 20% market share, the one trying to buy it would be the 80% one. And that pretty likely instead -as happened with ABK- the regulator would allow the one with 20% to acquire it.
Because the one with 80% market share has a lot of market power and that acquisition pretty likely would be considered a monopolistic action because it could make others, like that other one with a 20% almost impossible to compete against them.
While when the one who buys is the smaller one, and that acquisition only means a very small portion of the market, it's helping to get a stronger competition against the market leader.
Seems pretty likely that Sony won't make any big acquisition in 2-3 years but they mentioned that yes, in the mid to long term they'll continue making acquisitions, and selling their banks stuff will give them a lot of money for acquisitions.
So yes, pretty likely in maybe 3 or who knows if 4 years we'll see Sony spending a lot of money on acquisitions and investments (which could be joint ventures, buy a minority stake of other companies, or create new studios), specially in entertainment, and a good percentage of it in gaming.
Is it going to be too late? I personally think that no. Because I think Xbox/GP won't dominate the market in 3 years after acquiring ABK, specially when they'll continue releasing CoD on PS and In fact I think PS/PS Plus will be more dominant than now.
And also because if Sony thought it isn't time for acquisitions I believe is because -in addition to other reasons- they already asked to the ones they thought would be a great fit and could afford to acquire or to invest in more (Square, Capcom, From, some Asian dev big in mobile/PC, etc) and saw they aren't selling, or at least need some time to do some stuff before (as would be the Square thing of branching out studios as separate subsidiary companies).
And maybe also saw that other key companies that could be acquired by MS and somewhat hurt a bit Sony (EA, Take 2, Bandai Namco, Epic, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft... ) don't want to sell and/or Sony can't afford them due to their price or because estimate that regulators wouldn't afford them to do so.
I assume that people at Sony aren't dumb and did their homework before deciding that now it wasn't the time to acquire, and that it was better for them to wait a some time.
I say Sony already provides technical support, libraries, tools, etc to 3rd parties and specially provide extra support to important partners like Capcom. Or like ABK until they sold to MS.
And I also say Capcom already is in EVO, they don't need Sony for that.
Capcom could have signed with Sony for that movie as they did in other adaptations. But no, they did sign instead with Legendary (subsidiary of the Chinese Wanda Group).
If they were in talks to sell Capcom to Sony it would have made more sense to sign with Sony, but they didn't. So this lead to think they weren't selling Capcom to Sony. It's called common sense, not something 'emotionally'.
And guess what, Sony didn't buy Capcom and said they don't plan to acquire during years. I was right, I wasn't the one believing fantasy narratives.
Later Sony signed a multi-year deal where Sony would market, co-finance and distribute some Legendary owned films outside China. This doesn't include all upcoming Legendary movies released these years, some other ones will be distributed by other ones like Warner Bros or Paramount.
Now Legendary will have that movie, not Sony. It will be marketed and distributed in some markets by Sony in case it is one of the movies included in the multi-year deal.
There you go again, assuming you're the only one looking at info & facts to form a read on things.
And the 'Press F to doubt' was just a joke regarding your claim. The funny part is, I don't even particularly "want" to see Sony or anybody acquiring these publishers.
What reality am I rejecting? Didn't I just say I understand what Sony's publicly stated about mid-to-long term plans regarding acquisitions? Understanding that, while still disagreeing with that approach as lots of things can change in the span of 2-3 years, isn't rejecting what Sony's stated as their current plan.
It's my way of saying that current plan could bite them in the ass and be too slow for a rapidly changing market.
And I didn't say this was false. I said it sounds like a potentially bad plan. Those are two different things.
In 2-3 years companies they might be considering acquiring, could end up purchased by other competitors, or other companies, or merge with each other. All of which can throw Sony's plans off-balance. They may be at "really good stages of acquisition talk" with a publisher today, but that publisher may not wait three years from now to be acquired if they have an opportunity presented where it makes better sense to be picked up by someone else offering to buy.
I'm not one of the people saying that, lol.
The problem is you lack any individual critical assessment of Sony's stated plans. That's where we differ. I'm not afraid to look at certain aspects of their plans and go "Hmm...I question that, or doubt the effectiveness of this or that". Just because they may have certain fiscal numbers that show strength, that isn't the only thing I'm basing my opinions on.
I'm not just looking at it from the POV of being a bean counter for Sony; I'm also looking at it from the POV of being a gamer and someone who enjoys the brand historically, as well as other console brands/platforms, and having an understanding of past events in the industry & how they can be used in ways to speculate on the future.
I don't think I was attacking you, but I am disagreeing with you on these things. And, that disagreement isn't because I'm denying facts.
I'm just saying some of Sony's plans as publicly stated, might be carrying risks they either haven't accounted for (less likely), or have undersold in terms of being a sticking point of future complications (more likely).
Again, show me what facts regarding Sony I am rejecting or refusing to acknowledge. I haven't rejected any of them. I just question the potential effectiveness of some of their plans going forward, or timeline for certain plans.
Because I feel some of them assume a static industry, or a more static industry than what actually looks to be the case. In other cases I feel they are being reactive instead of proactive, and yet are reacting too slowly.
Cool, we know about that roadmap. But it's funny you bring up FF4 and MM12 and then still said you think there's nothing Sony can bring to the table in acquiring them. As if that is a requirement for Sony to make an acquisition, but not Microsoft, because it can be strongly argued Microsoft brings nothing to the table for ABK outside of a lot of money.
Okay, but if that person then says why they think Capcom prioritizing Exoprimal over Final Fight 4 is a mistake, and supplement that argument well, then you can't say they're "wrong" for having a well-substantiated opinion. That opinion may be based on facts and data from the past, or related things in the market today, or both.
As long as they tie things together, they can be aware of the fact that, yes, Exooprimal is coming instead of Final Fight 4, but can likely easily discuss why that is a mistake on Capcom's part. This is basically similar to what I'm doing with Sony, regarding some of their disclosed plans & timetables.
What worth is there just pointing to available facts if you're ultimately just reasserting an opinion that aligns lockstep with what a given company has already stated they want to do? To remind folks? Yeah okay to some extent, but what if those people didn't forget that information?
And, they just disagree with it anyway while substantiating their POV on the matter with relevant data and information? Not everyone needs reminding, especially if they are aware of the things you're reminding them of.
Microsoft already had well more than 4% of the market when they purchased Zenimax, let alone went for ABK. Sony has way less of the market than 80%. The "high-end console market" does not factually exist; it's a definition the FTC tried and failed to use to support a case against Microsoft, that they lost a PI hearing over, and then withdrew their case in regards to.
Regulators did not allow MS to acquire ABK because they hold a smaller share of the market. It can even be argued if they allowed it because no anticompetitive practices were done (this would assume the merits prior to self-imposed remedies during the investigation period were enough to get the deal passed, and they weren't). I would argue there is enough stated intent in leaked documents and emails to show potential anticompetitive practices on Microsoft' end with leveraging Zenimax and ABK content against direct competitors, and regulators were either too greedy or too stupid to understand any of that.
No, regulators let ABK go through for a variety of reasons, such as the (bogus) 10-year deals, public pressure campaigns, (potential) backroom deals, compromised judges/officials (Judge Corley w/ the son who works directly at Microsoft), flimsy promises of content availability, etc. None of them approved ABK because 3rd Place Microsoft is 3rd Place Microsoft. That is a silly notion.
You do not "get" stronger competition by buying your way to being a larger part of the market. See, right here you are literally regurgitating an idea Satya Nadella floated out months ago, where he insinuated buying ABK was to be more competitive. "Let us have competition.".
Microsoft, simply by existing as a platform holder, has already been providing competition in the market. But it's only been good enough for them to generally place 3rd, and that is all due to their own mistakes. That doesn't mean they are owed or entitled to acquire 1/25th of the market's valuation. Which, you can say is small, but that's 1/25th in addition to what Zenimax was, and in addition to whatever other publisher Microsoft looks to purchased down the line.
The fact their gaming revenue actually went down this past fiscal year, post-Zenimax, could even be grounds to be looked into as to whether the ABK or other acquisitions should be allowed to go through. Because as a result, it can be argued the total revenue of the gaming market was negatively impacted with lower growth than would have been the case if Zenimax remained an independent publisher. But regulators being regulators, I doubt they think of the gaming market at such levels to actually see things at this type of level.
Microsoft are rather lucky, in that sense.
You keep bringing this up, while forgetting my point is that in 2-3 years certain targets they may've wanted to acquire could no longer be available on the market for purchase, because someone else, like a direct competitor, could acquire them.
Or, they could merge with other companies, and the new board of said company may not be interested, or demand a higher purchasing price out of Sony's comfort zone & budget allocation for acquisitions.
Remains to be seen if it'll be a case of too little, too late by then. If of course, the idea is they don't even START some of these initiatives until 2-3 or even 4 years from now.
I understand the strategy has to be measured but they also need to be considerate that the market is non-static, and so they may have to adjust timetables to bring certain plans into the execution phase earlier than initially set.
You realize that MS don't have to wait another 3 years to acquire more developers and publishers, correct? And again, MS aren't even doing these acquisitions for THIS generation anymore; they're trying to set up their chess pieces for the NEXT generation of consoles. This gen, it would seem they have more or less written off in terms of winning.
Hell, they could undersell XBO for all we know. But they aren't taking 2-3 or 4 years to start making moves for their position in the market 8-10 years from now; they're making those moves today. And stuff like COD still being on PS, is more a net gain for MS than Sony, because going forward Sony won't have the marketing deals, or the exclusive DLC content, or early beta access perks, or the COD system bundles (that contribute significantly to the holiday sales in America, BTW). Plus in the meantime, owning ABK gives Microsoft a gateway to other 3P publishers and developers, either for things related to Game Pass, or Azure backend partnerships, etc.
This idea that things will stay the same for Sony & PlayStation for the next 10 years just because they got a COD agreement, is laughable.
Okay, that is fair enough. It's also something I've considered.
For the last part, that is on Sony and it's up to them to make a convincing enough case for regulators to believe otherwise.
Or do what I'm sure Microsoft has done in some instances and just throw in some backdoor perks, to conveniently have eyes turn the other way.
Obviously I know they are very skilled at what they do. But there could be hundreds of reasons why they arrived at that conclusion, and some may not have much weight to them, but could have been erroneously considered more than they should have.
Also FWIW I haven't just been talking about acquisitions, but also things like making strategic financial investments and purchasing shares in companies. The point being, they don't need to wait 2-3 to begin doing ALL of these things. That particular notion is ridiculous.
They do, but they could provide even more, particularly in terms of transmedia expansions, through strategic partnerships or even acquisition.
You jumped at the chance to make that conclusion, when in that thread, no one else mentioned acquisitions until you did
And, it was still an incredibly silly point to use, to try saying Sony weren't acquiring Capcom. Different parts of companies can often make deals or do things independently in ways that aren't completely congruent with a 100% synergized strategy. Sony spread out deals with their TV shows with HBO, Netflix and others for example, when they likely could get a generally better deal going bulk with just one streaming service.
The fact is, you still left out the fact that Sony and Legendary entered a distribution deal when you said that. It's okay to admit when you overlooked something
.Dates bolded for emphasis by me. As you can see, one of these clearly happened before the other, can you guess which?
The directors of the Street Fighter movie have done theatrical releases before, so it is very probable the Street Fighter movie will have a theatrical run. And, since Sony have theatrical rights to Legendary Pictures film in certain territories, it is a high probability that Sony will distribute the Street Fighter movie in at least some non-Chinese territories like the United States.
Considering Sony already have marketing rights to Street Fighter 6, that just substantiates the probability.
See this is the kind of stuff I mean. Even if Capcom aren't selling, Sony should be even-more up in their guts. Let's get older games onto PStore/PS+, let's revive a few IPs exclusively on Sony's platform, let's better push EVO synergies etc. Sony don't have to buy the companies, just carve out synergies and have some kind of first-refusal-of-sale or favored-nations-investment deal in place, alongside game-by-game exclusitivity deals. Put the infrastructure in place to maintain the status quo.
MS come looking to buy the company? Thanks for heads up. 'now' we'll pull money or suddenly use other methods to protect our other entwinements.
Even if it was a company just invest in, oh they want to buy that many shares? Match that, or if total main amount of company going to shares isn't changing, allow us to outbid them for that percentage (I have no idea how shares work, I just don't understand the rational of pursuing that if they're always gonna have less shares in company x than tencent or others?).
The continued focus on Japanese pubs and the obsession surrounding them here leads to nowhere.
ABK/Bethesda acquisition problems enumerated:
1: WRPG (Western RPG) audience differentiation. Deprived of content for Fallout/Elder Scrolls/Diablo/WoW (IP). Deprived of developers - Blizzard, Bethesda, Obsidian.
2. Shooters (FPS moreso than TPS) audience differentiation. Deprived of Call of Duty after 10 years. Deprived of Doom, Rage, Overwatch. Studios that go along with it.
How do you Square those audience needs with Japanese developers/publishers, their titles, and genre strengths vs. similar developers, medium or large in the Western world that are available likewise to serve those audiences.
ABK/Bethesda acquisition problems enumerated:
1: WRPG (Western RPG) audience differentiation. Deprived of content for Fallout/Elder Scrolls/Diablo/WoW (IP). Deprived of developers - Blizzard, Bethesda, Obsidian.
2. Shooters (FPS moreso than TPS) audience differentiation. Deprived of Call of Duty after 10 years. Deprived of Doom, Rage, Overwatch. Studios that go along with it.
How do you Square those audience needs with Japanese developers/publishers, their titles, and genre strengths vs. similar developers, medium or large in the Western world that are available likewise to serve those audiences.
- Enumerate developers based on the effectiveness to address those audiences, say 1-3? 1: being highest priority.
- Then enumerate those same developers along the lines of how an acquisition is likely to proceed - cost/agreement wise as well as outside scrutiny wise?
- Lastly what will be the expected reaction by competitors if those acquisitions are made (when talking about Japanese publishers, Nintendo's "feelings" matter).
Really makes you winder why Sony went out of their way to give Final fantasy its own webpage on their blog recently.
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Right. I don’t think the rumours Jeff Grubb and Greg Miller were confidently talking about were false, on top of that Eidos Montreal Interactive founder also seemingly confirmed Sony’s interest. People tend to forget that.
I stay with what I am saying. Sony will announce it either on November 2023 congeniality to Square Enix’s move into the new HQ or early with new fiscal year 2024.
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Lol it is pretty fking close lol. I don't live in Tokyo so I thought 2 different wards would be far.
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Told you. This is no coincidence and Shibuya is much more expensive than cheap Shinjuku.Lol it is pretty fking close lol. I don't live in Tokyo so I thought 2 different wards would be far.
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This is why Sony not buying big AAA studios. Playstation Brand honestly seems neglected
Why don't you just buy
Larian Studios
Remedy
Ember Lab
CD Projekt Red
Kojima Productions
Platinum Games
From Software
Sony?
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Well that’s Film industry. Sony Pictures CEO confirmed they are pretty much done with acquisitions and don’t expect any significant growing. Has in particular nothing with PlayStation to do.
Sony Pictures CEO Says We Can Expect More Video Game Growth
As an overall company, it looks like Sony may be turning to focus more on videogame studio acquisitions and growth,
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