Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions

[Dabaus]

You lose cod and you take their psn+ revenue, you take the cod casuals that potentially buy 1st party games because they already on the platform for cod, you lose GTA players that play gta with their cod friends then you lose gta psn+ revenue. There is a huge knock on effect. There is no ok after this, its too many major ip lost to the platform that are tied to their bottom line.

Losing cod will be a huge blow yes, i agree with you.

 

[Gediminas]

Losing cod will be a huge blow yes, i agree with you.

in 2022 looks like it. how it will be in 2026? no one knows, nor what sony cooking, nor in what kind of shape would the COD be under m$.

 

[Hezekiah]

Do we know who bidded for CDPR - the Saudis flashing their cash?

 

[Mobile Suit Gooch]

Sony invested in Devolver Digital. Don't know why they didn't just go for them.

 

[peter42O]

Do we know who bidded for CDPR - the Saudis flashing their cash?

?????

 

[Bryank75]

Do we know who bidded for CDPR - the Saudis flashing their cash?

That was one of the rumored targets.

 

[Bryank75]

Also.... for anyone wanting to see where Sony are in terms of 'cash on hand'

Sony Cash on Hand 2010-2023 | SONY

Sony cash on hand from 2010 to 2023. Cash on hand can be defined as cash deposits at financial institutions that can immediately be withdrawn at any time, and investments maturing in one year or less that are highly liquid and therefore regarded as cash equivalents and reported with or near cash...

www.macrotrends.net

So for last quarter there was a balance of 13.1 Billion Dollars

Now we have to add on the cash for this past quarter, which we should find out on November 1st.

2021 Q2 made about 1.4 billion net profit...... so we could be looking at about 14.5 billion or so after this quarter is added.

 

[Dabaus]

Also.... for anyone wanting to see where Sony are in terms of 'cash on hand'

Sony Cash on Hand 2010-2023 | SONY

Sony cash on hand from 2010 to 2023. Cash on hand can be defined as cash deposits at financial institutions that can immediately be withdrawn at any time, and investments maturing in one year or less that are highly liquid and therefore regarded as cash equivalents and reported with or near cash...

www.macrotrends.net

So for last quarter there was a balance of 13.1 Billion Dollars

Now we have to add on the cash for this past quarter, which we should find out on November 1st.

2021 Q2 made about 1.4 billion net profit...... so we could be looking at about 14.5 billion or so after this quarter is added.

Would the dollar being strong against the yen boost profits for them? And would other currency’s against the yen drag profits down? For example the euro has almost become equal to the dollar.

 

[Bryank75]

Would the dollar being strong against the yen boost profits for them? And would other currency’s against the yen drag profits down? For example the euro has almost become equal to the dollar.

It really depends on a multitude of things.... Yoshida is an accountant, so I am guessing / hoping he has things organised optimally.

From what I hear they pay for components in dollar, so that will not help. They may also keep profits in dollars, which should keep it from devaluing...which is the main concern both against the dollar and with high inflation.

It will be interesting to see the report on the 1st.

 

[Yurinka]

Losing cod will be a huge blow yes, i agree with you.

No, it won't. The CoD revenue that Sony gets is a tiny % of the total revenue they get from games. And the yearly CoD are a very small fraction of the total PS active userbase.

If PS loses part of these players will ignore CoD and will move to other PS games. Other part of these players also have Xbox and/or PC, so will play CoD elsewhere but will continue with PS. Only a portion of the small fraction of the total PS active userbase that buys CoD would leave PS because of having to play CoD elsewhere.

In addition to this we also have to remember CoD has active their deal for Sony during who knows how many years and that MS offered to continue releasing CoD on PS for 3 years more after that. So during this time Sony may have released the multiple new IPs Bungie has in the works plus the new IP from Deviation (new studio by ex-CoD devs) and the new IP from Firewalk (new studio by ex-Bungie devs).

Also.... for anyone wanting to see where Sony are in terms of 'cash on hand'

Sony Cash on Hand 2010-2023 | SONY

Sony cash on hand from 2010 to 2023. Cash on hand can be defined as cash deposits at financial institutions that can immediately be withdrawn at any time, and investments maturing in one year or less that are highly liquid and therefore regarded as cash equivalents and reported with or near cash...

www.macrotrends.net

So for last quarter there was a balance of 13.1 Billion Dollars

Now we have to add on the cash for this past quarter, which we should find out on November 1st.

2021 Q2 made about 1.4 billion net profit...... so we could be looking at about 14.5 billion or so after this quarter is added.

We have to remember that they took apart a bunch of billions from their cash on hand to create that special budget for acquisitions, investments and Sony stock repurchases.

The creation of that $18B budget was the main reason of why it went down from 44B to 19B. A year later they expanded it because already spent most of it, so I assume it's also a reason of why it decreased from 21B to 13B.

We also have to remember that if needed they also can pay with cash equivalents, sell some of the many actives they have, can pay with Sony shares, get debt etc.

Would the dollar being strong against the yen boost profits for them? And would other currency’s against the yen drag profits down? For example the euro has almost become equal to the dollar.

As a Japanese company, Sony has their money in yens but in the worldwide market almost everything is paid in dollars. This means that a very strong dollar vs yen hurts Sony, because the Sony money (in yens) has less value when paying with dollars.

 

[LightBolt]

I like this

 

[Muddasar]

How big a blow is COD considering each iteration sells around 20-30 million on all platforms?

Let’s say even half of that are on Playstation, that’s 15 million gamers.

15 million gamers aren’t gonna jump ship and even if they did it is a blip on Sonys 100+ million userbase.

Another publisher will just take advantage of this situation and make their FPS shooter exclusive on Playstation to fill the gap.

EA are probably licking their lips as we speak.

 

[peter42O]

EA are probably licking their lips as we speak.

Yep. If COD were to become exclusive to Xbox, EA would have a massive opportunity to make Battlefield huge on PlayStation.

 

[Loy310]

How big a blow is COD considering each iteration sells around 20-30 million on all platforms?

Let’s say even half of that are on Playstation, that’s 15 million gamers.

15 million gamers aren’t gonna jump ship and even if they did it is a blip on Sonys 100+ million userbase.

Another publisher will just take advantage of this situation and make their FPS shooter exclusive on Playstation to fill the gap.

EA are probably licking their lips as we speak.

No, it won't. The CoD revenue that Sony gets is a tiny % of the total revenue they get from games. And the yearly CoD are a very small fraction of the total PS active userbase.

If PS loses part of these players will ignore CoD and will move to other PS games. Other part of these players also have Xbox and/or PC, so will play CoD elsewhere but will continue with PS. Only a portion of the small fraction of the total PS active userbase that buys CoD would leave PS because of having to play CoD elsewhere.

In addition to this we also have to remember CoD has active their deal for Sony during who knows how many years and that MS offered to continue releasing CoD on PS for 3 years more after that. So during this time Sony may have released the multiple new IPs Bungie has in the works plus the new IP from Deviation (new studio by ex-CoD devs) and the new IP from Firewalk (new studio by ex-Bungie devs).


We have to remember that they took apart a bunch of billions from their cash on hand to create that special budget for acquisitions, investments and Sony stock repurchases.

The creation of that $18B budget was the main reason of why it went down from 44B to 19B. A year later they expanded it because already spent most of it, so I assume it's also a reason of why it decreased from 21B to 13B.

We also have to remember that if needed they also can pay with cash equivalents, sell some of the many actives they have, can pay with Sony shares, get debt etc.


As a Japanese company, Sony has their money in yens but in the worldwide market almost everything is paid in dollars. This means that a very strong dollar vs yen hurts Sony, because the Sony money (in yens) has less value when paying with dollars.

You cant just think about cod in a vacuum, its the knock on effect that Sony and the cma are worried about when it comes to PS. You lose cod casuals you lose their PSN+ revenue, you also lose at least 20-30 million players that would have also bought Sony 1st party titles on PS because they are already on the platform.
It will be a massive blow to PS, anyway you slice it. Then you throw in the Bethesda titles and its a shit show for them. I keep saying, but Sony will not be ok after losing that many ip and so many that are attached to ps+ online requirement.

 

[Loy310]

Yep. If COD were to become exclusive to Xbox, EA would have a massive opportunity to make Battlefield huge on PlayStation.

EA having less fps competition on PS will make them try even less harder to make a killer fps. With no comp EA will do the bare minimum because ps5 owners dont have a choice.

 

[peter42O]

EA having less fps competition on PS will make try even less to make a kill fps. With no comp EA will do the bare minimum because ps5 owners dont have a choice.

With Battlefield being now overseen by Vince Zampella, I think it would go the opposite way because he knows what he's doing and would want to take advantage of the situation plus it increases his own personal value to EA even more than it already is.

 

[Loy310]

With Battlefield being now overseen by Vince Zampella, I think it would go the opposite way because he knows what he's doing and would want to take advantage of the situation plus it increases his own personal value to EA even more than it already is.

Even then, ea cant make a bf every year nor can they make up for all the other shooters sony will be losing between acti and Bethesda.

 

[peter42O]

Even then, ea cant make a bf every year nor can they make up for all the other shooters sony will be losing between acti and Bethesda.

True. They can't make it every year but if they can make it a successful platform and just add to it, could still be huge if the content is there.

 

[Loy310]

True. They can't make it every year but if they can make it a successful platform and just add to it, could still be huge if the content is there.

I think some of us are sticking our heads in the sand, reality is going to hit some of you folks hard if this passes.
And this is coming from someone that want the deal to fail.

 

[Yurinka]

You cant just think about cod in a vacuum, its the knock on effect that Sony and the cma are worried about when it comes to PS. You lose cod casuals you lose their PSN+ revenue, you also lose at least 20-30 million players that would have also bought Sony 1st party titles on PS because they are already on the platform.
It will be a massive blow to PS, anyway you slice it. Then you throw in the Bethesda titles and its a shit show for them. I keep saying, but Sony will not be ok after losing that many ip and so many that are attached to ps+ online requirement.

CoD sells around 15-30M (depending on the game, many of them are closer to 20M than to 30M) in all platforms, not only PS. Around half of that or maybe less is on PlayStation. Let's say 8-15M PS users buy they yearly CoD. PlayStation has over 100M monthly active users, plus the ones who don't play every month. Barely 10% or less of the PS userbase buy the yearly CoD games. Regarding the CoD revenue generated in PS I remember I calculated it when it was shared and was under 5% (I think it was around 3%) of the revenue generated for Sony from all PS games.

A big portion of the PS userbase also have Xbox or a gaming PC, so if PS lo they'd continue with PS but simply would play CoD in other platform they already have. Other PS users would continue on PS and the money spent on CoD now would be spent in other games. Only a very small portion of the less than 10% PS users would leave PS because of CoD. So basically wouldn't affect Sony, specially considering they are in a growith pattern and is higher than that.

CoD is big, but not as big as you think.

Zenimax is no longer console agnostic.

Of course ESO, Doom, etc will continue to be supported on Playstation, and Deathloop and Ghostwrite Tokyo was an honouring of existing deals. But that's it.

Starfield, next Doom/ Quake, ES6 etc will be Xbox/PC exclusive.

MS said Starfield will be exclusive. They never announced next Doom, Quake, ES6 as exclusive. The most similar thing we have to that is an interview with Spencer he doesn't say directly but if you look at the interview in a certain way he seems to be saying that but if you look at the interview in other way he can be saying another thing.

In fact, the next Quake they released after the acquisition was released on PlayStation too.