And fucking SEGA Soccer Slam...I know this is not a popular IP but I want another one so damn much.
Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions
- Thread starter Eternal_Wings
- Start date
OP
OP
One picture which demonstrates Sony’s potential acquisitions.
To whoever made this - go outside.One picture which demonstrates Sony’s potential acquisitions.
OP
OP
It was an analyst, I think it was Dr. Serkan Toto. This graphic just shows possibilities which are not to far fetched. Don’t understand why someone needs to react so harshly, relax man.
Top tier indie studios are the best target for acquisition for any publisher. Way too many AAA studios are having problems putting out games, there are very few good option left, (and pretty much no good option as far as publishers).
Since PS+ I've been playing two Annapurna Interactive games, Outer Wilds and Stray, high quality stuff, this is the way to complement the AAA games that Sony pretty much already has in abundance.
Since PS+ I've been playing two Annapurna Interactive games, Outer Wilds and Stray, high quality stuff, this is the way to complement the AAA games that Sony pretty much already has in abundance.
Last edited:
i was about to say the same thing lol.
That is some serious fanboy dedication.
@proud of you @Bernd Lauert
This graph got me thinking, how crazy would it be if in 5 years Sony owns Sega and Take Two? future Sonic/Shenmue/Super Monkey ball/ House of The Dead/Yakuza games on PS5/PS6 and PC only and GTA 6 being PS5/6 and PC only! what a wild timeline that would be.One picture which demonstrates Sony’s potential acquisitions.
Almost everything in the picture is wrong: acquisitions budget for Sony, price estimation of each acquisition, some of reasons for acquiring studios, companies included in each group.One picture which demonstrates Sony’s potential acquisitions.
Both are very unlikely acquisitions: Take 2 is too expensive, Zynga's mobile expertise wouldn't help to adapt Sony's IPs to mobile (they want to stick to PS Studio values), don't excel in genres where doesn't have presence.
Sega's financials and sales aren't great and have a ton of different business outside gaming that don't fit with the Sony ones, has many cool classic IPs and their current main/"big" ones aren't that big (Persona and Yakuza) plus Toshihiro Nagoshi and others left Sega to join Netease so who knows if future Yakuza games will continue doing a great job without them.
Last edited:
Yeah, Sega is completely useless -- outside of Persona which itself isn't a big selling franchise.
None of their IPs are currently top super sellers but in addition to Persona+spinoff series they have Yakuza, Total War, Football Manager, Streets of Rage (SoR4 sold 2.5M in almost a year) or Sonic to name some of many b tier series that perform well and are key in their niches/genres.
It's in the top 10-15 3rd party console publishers in revenue and has a ton of legacy IPs with potential to be resurrected with games like Sonic Mania, Streets of Rage 4 or Virtua Fighter (seems VF6 is in the works) and even in VR (many 3D arcades like Sega Rally, House of the Dead, Afterburner, Crazy Taxi, Daytona USA, etc) or even movies, tv shows and anime.
In terms of financials during the last decade or so the profits went down and are pretty low compared to before and the revenue of the corporation is pretty much flat for the last couple of decades (when for the other publishers had a growing trend). Their home entertainment division slightly improved during years but their profits went down and overal revenue keeps mostly flat due to the decline in arcade, pachinko and pachislo.
Like many other Japanese publishers has many business areas where Sony isn't interested at all. I think it isn't one of the best options, but with a lot of work is one where I see a lot of potential.
They could do as they did with Delightworks: Sony only wanted their gaming division, so they moved their game division to a new company and sold it to Sony. In this case they could rename the company to Sammy Holdings and keep there all the stuff that Sony doesn't want, and create a new company called Sega with all their gaming dev teams and IPs that Sony would buy. Then Sony would highly grow these teams and create new ones and would help them everywhere it's needed: from studio and team management, to workflow to marketing to help them reach their potential in all areas.
I think that with Sony's help in some years they'd double or triple their revenue and would highly increase way beyond that their profitability.
Last edited:
I don’t think Capcom is selling. Or Namco. And Remedy was already bought recently.
Seriously Sony need to hurry and buy one of the medium sized publishers ( Square, Konami IP, Sega, Warner ) before someone else does.
Embar Labs, Stray Team are also great buys as studios before they move up in price
I keep seeing people say that someone would buy Konami's IP but would they even be willing too? maybe Sony can cut a deal where Konami keeps the IP but Sony develops the games for them!
we've been hearing abut a possible Metal gear game since 2020 so I wonder if there is any truth to that!
OP
OP
I would die for a new AAA Castlevania. Some dark and gothic style Castlevania like Bloodborne. I would literally ascend!
Based on recent premium paid for the acquisitions of Activision Blizzard King and Zynga (around 50%), I added $50 to the current market cap of many public game companies to get a rough idea of the money that would cost to acquire them completely, even if it isn't needed to buy their 100% to control them:
So I assume that Sony would only spend this FY maximum around $10B on gaming acquisitions, maybe $15B being optimistic. When time ago they did set a $18B budget for investments, acquisitions and stock repurchases and spent over 10B of it, around 40% of it was for gaming.
Regarding companies not publicly traded like Valve, Epic or ARC System Works, people can make estimations of their value or cost but this means nothing because their major stakeholders freely decide the selling price.
We also have to consider that Sony should see them as a good fit and that their major stakeholders would have to want or need to sell and see Sony as a good fit. And the acquired company isn't of the same country than PlayStation/Sony (Japan) then the government of the acquired company could block the acquisition if it's a key strategical tech company for their country, something I could see it happening if trying to buy the most valued companies from China, USA or Korean companies but Sony can't afford at least most of them.
This budget doesn't mean Sony can't afford to spend more in acquisitions: it means they told their investors that plan to spend aprox. that money on a certain range or time. To spend more than this budget, but to do it right Sony could review it and informing their investors before making such acquisitions. And when they review these budgets and announce it is when announcing their fiscal year report in around May. With that I mean that if they review this budget to increase it would be in May 2023 or May 2024. So I wouldn't expect Sony to spend above $10B or being optimistic $15B in gaming acquisitions this FY.
- Tencent $604.11B
- Netease $94.8B
- Nintendo $77.88B
- Sea (Garena) $63.2B
- EA $54.57B
- Roblox $34.8B
- Take 2 $31.7B
- Nexon $29B
- Bandai Namco $24.8B
- Unity $16.25B
- Embracer $13.14B
- Konami $11.28B
- Capcom $8.9B
- NC Soft $8.6B
- Koei Tecmo $8.46B
- Square Enix $8.25B
- Ubisoft $7.8B
- CyberAgent $7.53B
- Netmarble $6.74B
- Perfect World Entertainment (Chinese film + PC and mobile games) $6.12B
- Sega Sammy $5.52B
- CD Project $3B (its market cap is $1.99B, was $7.42B in 2020 due to Cyberpunk hype before release. Its current price is still way overvalued)
- Paradox Interactive $2.82B
- DeNA $2.5B
- Mixi (mostly mobile games for Asia) $1.82B
- GungHo $1.8B
- Gree (Japanese mobile games for Asia + anime) $1.58B
- Huya (China's Stadia) $1.2B
- Team 17 $1.14B
- Frontier Developments (devs of Elite series) $1B
- Remedy $0.51B
- People Can Fly $0.48B
- Marvelous $0.45B
- Focus Home Interactive $0.39B
- Devolver Digital $0.41B
- 11 bit studios $0.36B
- Starbreeze $0.06B
- Atari $0.06B
So I assume that Sony would only spend this FY maximum around $10B on gaming acquisitions, maybe $15B being optimistic. When time ago they did set a $18B budget for investments, acquisitions and stock repurchases and spent over 10B of it, around 40% of it was for gaming.
Regarding companies not publicly traded like Valve, Epic or ARC System Works, people can make estimations of their value or cost but this means nothing because their major stakeholders freely decide the selling price.
We also have to consider that Sony should see them as a good fit and that their major stakeholders would have to want or need to sell and see Sony as a good fit. And the acquired company isn't of the same country than PlayStation/Sony (Japan) then the government of the acquired company could block the acquisition if it's a key strategical tech company for their country, something I could see it happening if trying to buy the most valued companies from China, USA or Korean companies but Sony can't afford at least most of them.
This budget doesn't mean Sony can't afford to spend more in acquisitions: it means they told their investors that plan to spend aprox. that money on a certain range or time. To spend more than this budget, but to do it right Sony could review it and informing their investors before making such acquisitions. And when they review these budgets and announce it is when announcing their fiscal year report in around May. With that I mean that if they review this budget to increase it would be in May 2023 or May 2024. So I wouldn't expect Sony to spend above $10B or being optimistic $15B in gaming acquisitions this FY.
Last edited:
Who cares about MGS without Kojima? Unless it's a remake I don't see the point, if Sony attempted to make a new MGS it would most likely suck because the idea itself of continuing it without Kojima would be a big tell that they don't get it.
When did Capcom's market cap surpass Squares? I never thought I would see the day after the money troubles Capcom got into in 2014 and 2017!
Capcom revenue/sales and profit (other things like assets or debt not included here):
Square revenue/sales and (operating, not net) profit:
I have no idea. I assume it's because Capcom profits are growing in a faster curve and also because since they they turned MH into their top selling IP with MHW and MHR, plus dominating horror genre with RE which is selling better than ever (VII, Village and the remakes), plus SFV soon becoming their best selling ever fighting game SKU/project and also leads eSports on its genre, plus Devil May Cry selling better with V (meaning they are also the best seller hack & slash dev only after GoW) plus also making smaller profitable compilations or sequels of legacy IPs, and also growing a lot in PC and in the movies/tv shows area.
Meanwhile, Square Enix continues being very successful in JRPG and mobile and financially have a good growth too but seems their western studios weren't profitable at all so got rid of them. So they excel basically in a single genre.
OP
OP
I don’t SQEX will cost this much. The extra amount paid for a buyout of public-traded companies, differs from case to case.
Square Enix current market cap is $5.49B and you can be assured that after the Embracer deal, SQE value will drop down below. Two big studios (Eidos Interactive & Crystal Dynamics) and a middle sized with SQEX Montreal, with a plenty of franchises will be enough for a down value of SQEX as a whole. I say Sony will pay like $6.5B for them.
Source