Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions
- Thread starter Eternal_Wings
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That would be smart.
Some how gaming has turned us into football fans talking about certain players being purchased for our teams lol.
CDPR even though not my favourite studio would sort the WRPG issue out.
Also surprised Sony didnt go for the Dues Ex or Soul Reaver IP’s. Dues Ex makes a great WRPG if done like the classic, too similar to Cyberpunk in some ways but would of been worth it to reboot with a good studio
Lol this is on the money. Ever since MS started acquisitions in 2018 its turned gaming discussion for the worst.
Never posted on GAF, don't own a modern day Xbox.Are you the MS superfan that was just banned on Gaf
Yep. Also another thing to blame on MS lol.
I mean its fun talking about IP’s going under better management or coming back. But its sad publishers and IP’s getting eaten up and thats the future of the industry, its whats gonna keep the Platforms alive I guess at some point
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Eh i dont think sonys stock rallying has any connection to an incoming acqustion. I dont think they announce anything until this activision deal is resolved one way or another.
Agreed, whether or not they buy something depends entirely on what happens with the ABK situation imo and they won't announce anything while it's ongoing.
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Nope if Sony buys something big then this will be an answer to Bethesda. You can’t counter ABK. There is no bigger publisher than ABK. Sony expressed already their concerns, there is nothing what they could say further in this matter.
I wasn't suggesting that it would be a direct response to ABK, just that they wouldn't be announcing anything that would undermine their case while arguments against the deal are still being made. Also I feel like ABK going through would be the final blow against any internal hesitation they may have against making larger purchases. Sony seem very conservative as a company and probably thought that they could manage things like they always have if it was just Zenimax being taken.
I think the best Sony could hope for with the ABK situation is a series of concessions on the deal that would limit the amount of power MS could wield in the industry post buyout.
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Something is cooking.
Bungie was announced on 31th January last year.
Sony stocks are +11.95% up year to date but we're only in mid January. If we look the 1 year change they are -13.36% down.
The first week of February they'll show fiscal report of the previous quarter, so maybe if there are movements probably are anticipating them. Also, if they have an exciting acquisition to announce would be a good moment to do it.
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About that...
CDPR would be a good fit for Sony and visa versa. CDPR needs a good management team to back up the dev team and Sony are the people to do it. Plus, witcher 4 is on Unreal 5 now and unreal 5 was designed first and foremost with PS5 in mind. The WWS and Xdev teams at Sony could sure make Witcher 4 look pretty bloody good
Sony needs to hurry up and buy Square Enix or From Software. Either of the two will be great for them. It's obvious FF 7 will never come to Xbox st this point or any newly released FF game for the foreseeable future (if ever).
FF X was the game that introduced me to PS2. Square is a match made in heaven.
Also, I know Ubisoft has been looking to get acquired due to their internal issues. I think Ubisoft will be good for them too. I always felt like Assassin's Creed belonged to the Sony
FF X was the game that introduced me to PS2. Square is a match made in heaven.
Also, I know Ubisoft has been looking to get acquired due to their internal issues. I think Ubisoft will be good for them too. I always felt like Assassin's Creed belonged to the Sony
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Nah something like Ubisoft will Sony never buy. Ubisoft is too big with 20k employees and their organisation is a whole mess to clean up. I could see Microsoft go after them if the ABK deal gets blocked. Sony will buy a Japanese publisher imo.
MS could be interested because Ubi is one of the top 3rd party publishers and they have a ton of IPs and the studios who develop them, which is what MS has been chasing recently. In fact I'd bet they already tried it and Ubi rejected them.
Sony doesn't chase that, with acquisitions they seem to look for teams who excel in areas or genres where their first party teams don't have presence, and that are also very successful with new IPs, or in support teams. Sony has the open world and action adventures genres well covered, and now are working with a lot of talented shooter devs. In fact, Sony acquired or hired a good chunk of the key talent behind the creation of top new IPs like Assassin's Creed or Watchdogs, or other top Ubi games like Rainbow Six Siege. So Sony already has what they could want from Ubisoft, no reason to buy it.
In any case, more importantly MS and Sony won't buy Ubi because Ubi doesn't want and doesn't need to sell.
No, it was the total opposite. They never wanted to sell or get bought, and instead were working for investors to support them to keep full control of the company to block potential hostile takeovers. Tencent became this supporter and did help them achieve that.
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Ubi will likely take Tencent funding for a decent chunk of the business. Hopefully Ubi get out of the slump and return to making great different games (no bloated shit). Child of Light, Black Flag, Sands of Time, Mario Rabbids. Not the same 2 or 3 bloated games on repeat. Capcom were in a similar position a decade ago and look at the cunts now.
Ubi has many promising projects under development, but nowadays the ambitious AAA games take a fuck ton of time, and covid didn't help adding extra delays. Plus a few key games underperforming made them focus on fewer projects and give them extra time for polishing them before release. It will need patience but they'll be back on track once they start releasing key stuff like AC Mirage and Red, Skull & Bones, The Division Heartland, Avatar, BGE2, Star Wars, Splinter Cell Remake, etc.Ubi will likely take Tencent funding for a decent chunk of the business. Hopefully Ubi get out of the slump and return to making great different games (no bloated shit). Child of Light, Black Flag, Sands of Time, Mario Rabbids. Not the same 2 or 3 bloated games on repeat. Capcom were in a similar position a decade ago and look at the cunts now.
From time to time they also try new and fresh stuff, like Roller Champions. But these smaller and more unique projects even if get some fanse rarely are pretty successful in sales. Now, until they are back on track in terms of profitability and stocks pricing they'll focus on greenlighting less and safer projects. So unless they had some unannounced ones under development really close to being released, forget to see relatively small and experimental/unique projects during the next few years.
Regarding bloated stuff, with Mirage they'll test making a more streamlined, shorter AC like the first ones in the series. If it works well and they see it performs almost like the big ones but costing less time and money, I assume they'll start betting on shorter/less bloated AAA games for the next ones to be greenlighted. If not, they'll stick to the formula that works for them.
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Perhaps I misunderstood it then when I read it. They probably meant others went around wanting to buy them and nothing came out of it. But it seems like Ubisoft is now scrambling. If they don't pick up their act they'll most likely will get bought sooner or later. What is their worth right now?
MS will most likely buy them if ABK doesn't go through, but I am pretty confident that ABK will go through.
I thought Haven was essentially a skunkworks Ubisoft for Sony, given that until more recently Ubi weren't interested in selling?
MS can't buy them because they don't want or need to sell.
Yes, even before the consolidation craze started, years ago they had people who tried to acquire them, being Vivendi the popular and public case because they wanted to acquire via hostile takeover. They got rid of Vivendi since the majority of investors and workers supported the Guillemots and didn't want to sell.
Ubisoft is not scrambling at all, they have an over two decades long yearly revenue growth pattern with most years being profitable. They have a fuck ton of assets like a big amount of popular IPs and over 40 studios with over 20000 workers, plus also have a huge chunk of cash and equivalents, plus a giant like Tencent backing Ubisoft and having secured that the Guillemots will be on charge of it.
Like many other companies got impacted by the post covid: several projects delayed and revenue drop not being able to continue the covid bump, which in their case had the bad luck of also having a few key games underperformed and also had the accusations controversies before that. All together resulted on their stocks dropping and pretty likely will announce a good drop in this fiscal year revenue plus posting hundreds of millions of loses instead of the expected profits. They are having a bad year.
But they have the resources to handle it and continue, plus many big titles coming that as usual pretty likely most of them will perform super well, so they'll recover. And obviously they'll also have to take some actions to become more profitable and earn the confidence of their investors, so they're cut the fat so canned a few unannounced games and pretty likely will reduce hirings to reduce a bit the manpower and costs.
Also, beyond management the workers (who also have a big chunk of the company stocks) didn't want to sell to Vivendi because they were happy with the Guillemots management and didn't like what Vivendi had make with Activision before, and also because didn't want to have anyone outisde Ubisoft telling them what to do. They wanted to continue to do the games they wanted. Same would apply for MS, who is a total mess managing their teams so workers would also stop an acquisition from MS even if the Guillemots would want to do it.
Ubisoft continues not wanting to sell, and very recently secured it for many years thanks to Tencent.
Haven have a good chunk of the key talent behind record breaking new IPs like AC and Watchdogs and other top hits like Rainbow Six Siege. Other Sony studios also hired many key current or forme staff from Ubisoft, like the Rainbow Six Siege director, who went back to Guerrilla (where he was the director of the Killzone 2 multiplayer before).
They can't buy Ubi now, and Sony seems that already acquired or hired what they could have wanted from them: some of their key active talent creating top AAA new IPs and the main people behind their most successful GaaS.
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