Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions

[Eternal_Wings]

Bro, ms is going to put cod on everything + PS, the cma dropped the console concern because they discovered that ms would lose a shit tonn of money if they pulled cod from PS. If merger now gets approval and ms turns around and drop PS what you think cma and ec gonna do to xb in those regions?

Your are forming your opinion with uninformed and flawed logic. You not discovering something that the regulators missed bro, lay off it, sony is safe, jim and sie did a good job making regulators understand how the industry works and forced ms to give up concessions so they can get apporval.

Microsoft cannot be trusted. It’s nit the first time they broke their promises. Like Bethesda games for example to be available to more players and now it’s Xbox exclusive.

Microsoft is known for its ambitious efforts to become a monopoly in every segment of industry they try to enter. FTC wanted to shatter them in the early 2000s, because of the many lawsuits they received.

 

[Loy310]

Microsoft cannot be trusted. It’s nit the first time they broke their promises. Like Bethesda games for example to be available to more players and now it’s Xbox exclusive.

Microsoft is known for its ambitious efforts to become a monopoly in every segment of industry they try to enter. FTC wanted to shatter them in the early 2000s, because of the many lawsuits they received.

well if it comes to that its on regulators, not sony. So again dont know how you blaming sony for doing a better job than regulators.

 

[Eternal_Wings]

Square said that they plan to sell stakes of their studios, meaning they'll allow different investors to invest on specific studios. If they would plan to sell the whole company to a single company they wouldn't do that.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...ed-its-looking-to-sell-stakes-in-its-studios/

In addition to this, SE's market cap is almost $6B. Recent big gaming acquisitions were paid at a premium of 40-60%. So pretty likely the acquisition price to acquire SE would be 40-60% higher than these almost $6B.

Sony (not their gaming division only) has a budget for acquisitions+investments+stock repurchases (not only acquisitions) until April 2024 of somewhere between $5-$7B. So probably Sony wouldn't be able to acquire them during this coming fiscal year even if both sides would agree.

Plus Square Enix hase several business where Sony isn't interested, being some of them the main SE investments, NFT.

So yes, I'm pretty sure Sony won't buy SE. I think Sony will invest in some of their studios, or maximum maybe may even acquire one or some of them.

You think Square Enix would openly admit they are for sale? This would just wake up Tencent, Netease, Saudi if they did so. Of course they would be able to afford even if they would have to pay $9B for Square Enix. There is no explanation what happened with the missing billions. Sony didn’t buy anything big since Bungie in 2022!

How can approximately 14 billion disappear???
This depends on their mid-term plan and how they planing to distribute it. Sony said last year they would spent 4 trillion yen. This is to be found in the fiscal year report of last years. The $5.1B Hiroki Totoki talked about are not the limit, they can always extend it. Purchases can also be done with a share split or additional loan. You should read more news: Sony is very interested in Metaverse. They spend money on Elipfor this. Pushing PSVR2 for their their Metaverse ambitions and also registered recently a lot of NFT Patents.

Sony Files Patent for NFTs to Allow Transfers Between Games and Consoles

The move by the gaming giant aims to make assets more interoperable, not only between different games but also hardware like VR headsets, computers and different consoles.

www.coindesk.com

Square Enix is perfect suited for this. Sony will acquire Square Enix in full. I will bet a $100 PSN gift card with you. Bookmark this tweet.

 

[Eternal_Wings]

Here look for evidence yourself. Sony didn’t spend big bucks since acquiring Bungie. Even if you summarise all recent acquisitions, you don’t reach billions.

Sony Pictures Entertainment Company Profile: Acquisition & Investors | PitchBook

Information on acquisition, funding, investors, and executives for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Use the PitchBook Platform to explore the full profile.

pitchbook.com

 

[Yurinka]

You think Square Enix would openly admit they are for sale?

No, but that movement I highlighted leads to think that they want to open their company to allow them to have more investors, instead of reduce them to one.

Sony didn’t buy anything big since Bungie in 2022!

They are doing a great job, don't need big acquisitions. In addition to this, with the ABK acquisition being reviewed by regulators wouldn't be a good moment to announce big acquisitions.

How can approximately 14 billion disappear???

They didn't dissapear, they made many acquisitions, investments and stock repurchases. In addition to acquisitions they invested in stuff like Epic, FromSoft or Devolver, and also acquired and invested in many non-gaming things like Crunchyroll.

Sony Files Patent for NFTs to Allow Transfers Between Games and Consoles

The move by the gaming giant aims to make assets more interoperable, not only between different games but also hardware like VR headsets, computers and different consoles.

www.coindesk.com

Most patents never are implemented and are filled mostly to cover their asses in potential future implementations just in case something ends being used.

 

[Loy310]

Gonna have to say something here. Wings might be a little over the top but there's still cause for concern over MS' promises.

Not only did Sony already provide a full list of all times MS lied to regulators to get acquisitions through, before doing a 180 on what they promised, the FTC themselves outright stated that these promises do not work because the only punishment is a fine. A fine MS can easily pay and move on and they've already done this several times in the past.

Then there's the entire Zenimax thing. Is MS doesn't want to lose money on these, why make their games exclusive? I understand COD is a far cry from Fallout in terms of revenue but we're talking about MS here. A company that propped up a failing department for 20 years and still decided to drop 70billion to try and make something off of it.

So these promises MS makes are meaningless, as they've shown they're willing to tank profits to try and get ahead. And so far only the FTC raised concern over this.

ok, but that's not sony fault if ms behaves this way, it's on the regulators. one would imagine if they do make cod exclusive regulators would come down hard on ms this time. cant see the cma and ec letting them off the hook if ms go back on their word at this point.
Also cma is not done with concessions, their concessions for cloud market could still require divestment.

 

[Eternal_Wings]

All this stuff you mentioned don’t explain what happened with rest. Crunchy Roll, Stock buyback happened before Sony announced in their fiscal year report to reallocate 4 trillion yen. Bungie can be counted. But they would still have left $13B left to spend. Where did this missing billions have been spent??? Like I said above, if you accumulate all deals (Bungie, CR, Epic investment, Fromsoftware shares) you will never reach 2 trillion yen. And Sony said they will spend next mid term plan the other 2 trillion yen. The world is in a recession, parking the cash there will just cause it to lose more value. Sony will spend cash, believe or not. This mindest is which have caused them to lose two big publishers to Microsoft. Sony will now need to stand up. I bet with you they will acquire Square Enix. My $100 PSN bet still stands.

 

[VillaiN]

All this stuff you mentioned don’t explain what happened with rest. Crunchy Roll, Stock buyback happened before Sony announced in their fiscal year report to reallocate 4 trillion yen. Bungie can be counted. But they would still have left $13B left to spend. Where did this missing billions have been spent??? Like I said above, if you accumulate all deals (Bungie, CR, Epic investment, Fromsoftware shares) you will never reach 2 trillion yen. And Sony said they will spend next mid term plan the other 2 trillion yen. The world is in a recession, parking the cash there will just cause it to lose more value. Sony will spend cash, believe or not. This mindest is which have caused them to lose two big publishers to Microsoft. Sony will now need to stand up. I bet with you they will acquire Square Enix. My $100 PSN bet still stands.

I dont know where disscusion started but if its about sony reserves, investing.......i remember reading back, Sony changed accounting method in 2021. At some point they showed 45B in reserves than next year like 20. Around 25B are short term assets, securities etc.which re not straight cash but can easily be sold for cash. Literally over night.
As it stand besides 12B it shows today they have aditional 25B almost cash reserves. Assets re still there under different category.

Speaking of plans th3y change all the time.
I work in a company and we have rebalans of operational plans like twice a year.
Let alone in conglomerate like sony and for medium, long term plans.

 

[Dabaus]

Besides making defensive acquisitions and investments, a thought occurred to me that ALOT of cod devs are probably going to quit activision and look for a new job, including studio heads. Sony should keep an eye out for developers that quit and try to hire them for deviation, firewalker, bungie etc or if they decide to make their own studio help them fund that too.

 

[Zzero]

Besides making defensive acquisitions and investments, a thought occurred to me that ALOT of cod devs are probably going to quit activision and look for a new job, including studio heads. Sony should keep an eye out for developers that quit and try to hire them for deviation, firewalker, bungie etc or if they decide to make their own studio help them fund that too.

Because they hate MS, or because they end up disliking the corporate culture or because MS fires them? If anything I think they'll be hoping that this frees them from the yoke of yearly CoD deadlines. Maybe VV even gets to transfer back and do Tony Hawk 6 like they wanted. Assuming the deal actually goes through, of course.

 

[Yurinka]

All this stuff you mentioned don’t explain what happened with rest. Crunchy Roll, Stock buyback happened before Sony announced in their fiscal year report to reallocate 4 trillion yen. Bungie can be counted. But they would still have left $13B left to spend. Where did this missing billions have been spent??? Like I said above, if you accumulate all deals (Bungie, CR, Epic investment, Fromsoftware shares) you will never reach 2 trillion yen. And Sony said they will spend next mid term plan the other 2 trillion yen. The world is in a recession, parking the cash there will just cause it to lose more value. Sony will spend cash, believe or not. This mindest is which have caused them to lose two big publishers to Microsoft. Sony will now need to stand up. I bet with you they will acquire Square Enix. My $100 PSN bet still stands.

Here you have the list of the Sony acquisitions and investments. For many of them they didn't announce the acquisition price: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Sony

In addition to this, part of that budget also is to buy back Sony stocks. They announce that ammount in their fiscal year reports.

Sony never wanted to acquire big publishers. MS wanted to acquire them and they wanted or needed to sell to MS, that's all. And none of them released a single Xbox exclusive game, and when they do, let's wait and see if it's a temporal exclusive or not.

Because as the CMA said, it wouldn't make any sense to keep them away from PS. It's their main market and the supposed benefit of making them exclusive wouldn't compensate the business they'd lose from PS making it a highly unprofitable move, to the point they think MS won't do it. I assume they'll follow the Xbox CFO strategy mentioned about Behesda when he said that they weren't going to focus on exclusives but instead of 'beter or best or first on Xbox'.

And even if they lose them, Sony wont' give a fuck. They had released around 1.7 billion PS4 games when PS5 was released and they continued selling games for it. And only a tiny portion of them were from Zenimax or ABK. Zenimax may have sold, whay? 50M units on PS4 being very generous and optimistic? This is nothing for them.

 

[Satoru]

Sony never wanted to acquire big publishers. MS wanted to acquire them and they wanted or needed to sell to MS, that's all. And none of them released a single Xbox exclusive game, and when they do, let's wait and see if it's a temporal exclusive or not.

Bullshit.

Because as the CMA said, it wouldn't make any sense to keep them away from PS.

Yet they did with Starfield, Redfall, Hi-Fi Rush.

It's their main market and the supposed benefit of making them exclusive wouldn't compensate the business they'd lose from PS making it a highly unprofitable move, to the point they think MS won't do it.

Xbox hasn't been profitable ever, it's not like they aren't willing to keep dumping money there. But you conveniently ignore this because it suits your bullshit narrative that a trillion dollar company is somehow the small guy.

 

[Eternal_Wings]

Here you have the list of the Sony acquisitions and investments. For many of them they didn't announce the acquisition price: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Sony

In addition to this, part of that budget also is to buy back Sony stocks. They announce that ammount in their fiscal year reports.

Sony never wanted to acquire big publishers. MS wanted to acquire them and they wanted or needed to sell to MS, that's all. And none of them released a single Xbox exclusive game, and when they do, let's wait and see if it's a temporal exclusive or not.

Because as the CMA said, it wouldn't make any sense to keep them away from PS. It's their main market and the supposed benefit of making them exclusive wouldn't compensate the business they'd lose from PS making it a highly unprofitable move, to the point they think MS won't do it. I assume they'll follow the Xbox CFO strategy mentioned about Behesda when he said that they weren't going to focus on exclusives but instead of 'beter or best or first on Xbox'.

And even if they lose them, Sony wont' give a fuck. They had released around 1.7 billion PS4 games when PS5 was released and they continued selling games for it. And only a tiny portion of them were from Zenimax or ABK. Zenimax may have sold, whay? 50M units on PS4 being very generous and optimistic? This is nothing for them.

I hope you don’t eat your own words, when Sony should announce the acquisition of a publisher.

 

[Dabaus]

All this stuff you mentioned don’t explain what happened with rest. Crunchy Roll, Stock buyback happened before Sony announced in their fiscal year report to reallocate 4 trillion yen. Bungie can be counted. But they would still have left $13B left to spend. Where did this missing billions have been spent??? Like I said above, if you accumulate all deals (Bungie, CR, Epic investment, Fromsoftware shares) you will never reach 2 trillion yen. And Sony said they will spend next mid term plan the other 2 trillion yen. The world is in a recession, parking the cash there will just cause it to lose more value. Sony will spend cash, believe or not. This mindest is which have caused them to lose two big publishers to Microsoft. Sony will now need to stand up. I bet with you they will acquire Square Enix. My $100 PSN bet still stands.

What’s ironic is the yen has taken a hit since they’ve stopped spending their money so it is actually worth less now because they decided to try and block the deal and freeze their own acquisitions.

 

[avenovah]

I said this in the Microsoft acquisition thread but wanted to say this here too:

Tin foil hat: It’s obvious Microsoft made an offer that can’t be refused one way or another to the cma. So with that as the context do You guys think that senator commenting on Japan was a preemptive from Microsoft to try and prevent a Sony response acquisition in Japan?

Or is this the preemptive seeds of the narrative a year or 2 down the road when Microsoft goes after a Japanese company they already have it on record that Sony is 98 percent of the high end market?

It seems extremely random she would say this (of course Ms told her what to say) but the timing of it.

Is Microsoft signaling they’ll influence American Japanese trade deals to use the Japanese government to reign Sony in so to speak so they can’t make any retaliatory acquisitions in japan?

Maybe you're right after today's news lol

 

[Yobo]

I dunno about that

1. They will be pissing off Japanese Government and regulators with this action if they want to buy a Japanese publisher

2. Preventing a Sony acquisition could be possible but wouldn't they rather Sony waste time and money trying to.clode it? Also don't see any Japanese publisher being big enough to be considered a big concern especially compared to ABK

Nintendo objections are a much bigger concern for a Japanese publisher IMO

Buying a Japanese publisher is pointless for MS. The talent flight will be insane

 

[Yobo]

Guys it’s 1000% coming. The approval of Activision Blizzard turned things to worse for Sony. They will buy Square Enix. Sony will need to find other ways to compete. Square Enix would be a good start to set a foundation.

What’s also completely strange, how in the world is Square Enix’s share price so high???

View attachment 885
It’s higher than even’s Capcom. Nintendo too!
View attachment 883
View attachment 884

This is really suspicious. Capcom are performing by far better than Square Enix for years. Nintendo especially is very successful. So how is it possible?Eidos founder talking about Sony’s interest in Square Enix. Then Square Enix sells their western assets to outline themselves for Sony. No denial of this rumour for 2 years by Square Enix. Moving in an expensive district of Tokyo and coincidentally very close to Sony HQ in Minato…
Square Enix long member (Shinji) executive hired for a high position to Sony.
This high share price of Square Enix could be a hint for an upcoming buyout. If I would bet money who Sony is buying then it’s Square Enix.
Then we have seen many times Square Enix execs like Nomura, Yoshi-P advertising Sony products: TVs, Playstation, Smartphones etc.
And now Yoshida praising Sony in public…

Source for screenshots is: Companiesmarketcap.com

That just means they have less shares available than Capcom

Divide market cap by share price for number of available shares

 

[KnittedKnight]

Here we go again with the "buy Square" reactions - an irrational movement that originated from Sony JRPG fans and has stuck ever since like a plague due to endless repetition by folks that don't understand the Sony-MS rivalry. The move is completely moronic, and void of any strategic sense. It's the default, desperate "Do Something!!!" reaction.

What big IP does Square have that can appeal to the Western dudebro (sports, shooters and WRPG audience)? List me a single relevant IP from Square that will make any inroads in stealing away that consumer base from Xbox and PC? The answer is none.

What audience does the IP's MS acquired with Bethesda and ABK appeal to? The Western WRPG/Sports/Shooter audience.

If you establish by the competitor's moves the audience that war is being waged for it only begs to reason that all efforts from Sony acquisition wise should be made to contest for this audience so as to avoid MS acquiring a majority control hold on this audience (the biggest, most relevant and profitable audience there is in premium gaming).

The war is not for JRPG's, the Japanese audience, or weebs.

Even when Square still had Tomb Raider (and it no longer does - the only minor IP that you could make a case for as to having Western appeal for this market segment) it would have been a boneheaded move to buy Square, even then.

Also what studios of caliber does Square have that you could for example take away from an IP and repurpose them to pump out quality Western oriented IP's that appeal to western sports, shooters and WRPG fans? The very few quality teams that Square has are allocated and reside with the milking of the Final Fantasy franchise. And even these teams are not of the quality of say an Insomniac. How is Dragon Quest heroes all of the sudden gonna help or flip the switch vs. an ABK or Bethesda? It's completely idiotic to even suggest it.

The fact that Square has no strong, relevant IP's that appeal to the WRPG/Sports/Shooter audience says a lot about Square's competence throughout its history to appeal to this audience by breaking in and competing with the likes of Bethesda/ABK/EA/Ubisoft. It only takes a bit of critical thinking and asking the right questions to see how stupid wasting resources on a move like this is (opportunity cost being a premium).

You could flip the switch and say buy Square just for the business side alone aka cut all the fat and just make what's left of Square a Final Fantasy profit making machine. That is a more proper argument, possible and doable and help the war effort overall as a vitamin infusion but that's not what's intended with the suggestions at face value by folks in discussions everywhere. When you can get vitamin infusions + western appeal at the same time elsewhere why shop here?

Sony has a JPRG stranglehold that is unbreakable, the numbers speak for themselves generation after generation. The console splits are incredibly lopsided in Sony's favor - Xbox is literally an afterthought. Sony has never needed a Japanese publisher acquisition to do this - nor does it need one now to keep the status quo. No Japanese publisher is under threat of a Western giant acquisition nor will it be allowed on political grounds alone. There is no precedent in history for this. The only reason Sony should consider buying Square is if Square is in a financial crunch with absolutely no way out (call it a bail out) or for a profit calculus.

Capcom on the other hand... even some of Konami's dead IP's (if revived properly). FromSoftware too.... (if only for the PC crowd (ehm Microsoft Windows) tears). Souls was born on PlayStation, it should come home to its rightful place with the PlayStation family. First dibs for first class citizens. PC releases down the road, after some begging of course for the chump change (you shouldn't cut an addict off supplies completely or he'll find something else to get his fix). With FromSoftware going big, Sony has replaced their function with Team Ninja partnerships (Nioh, Rise of the Ronin).... This policy would be sufficient in a different era (pre-ABK deal). It's specially for the reason that FromSoftware got big with the WRPG audience that it should be acquired ....the war for the WRPG audience is just but starting. Crown jewels are always a nice chip to have.

Capcom main staples relevant: Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry.
Need for revival: Mega man as a AAA TPS - Vanquish by Platinum base blueprint. Marvel vs. Capcom - FGC audience segment.

Konami IP's are simple:

Main need for revival: AAA Castlevania WRPG/JRPG hybrid. Metal Gear Solid - self explanatory TPS shooter. Secondary need for revival: Silent Hill (already in the works with questionable studios), Contra (AAA TPS or FPS opposite to Gears of War). Bomberman for the casuals.

That's more or less what you can properly weaponize successfully against MS coming out of Japan. I would do something similar to SEGA but the war is not against Nintendo and it won't be.

With all of that said the only problem for Sony as far as Japanese pubs is concerned is Gamepass Day One deals for JRPGs. In this area, Sony should employ a combination of smarts and leveraging of market share power to keep the status quo....which Sony has been doing but they could still improve - specially with SEGA - say a "partnership". You can tell Sony's favorites in this industry. Sometimes you gotta cross that bridge to the non-favorites corner.

Japan topic aside.....

All efforts acquisition wise should be directed at the EU stable of development studios. Studios in the EU are cheaper to run than in the U.S and create titles all directed towards the target audience in question. Easier to poach and maintain overall. The EU is target rich for this war... the sooner Sony starts to make moves in this direction the better, before Embracer cleans shop and MS starts to bite into it as well. Gobbling up all of the UK mistifs and start ups as SIE UK HQ has being doing lately is not the sole answer. CDPR should be prime target - prime!

MS is laser focused on the most profitable audience for premium gaming. The response requires equal effort.

 

[Puff]

They could buy Ubisoft.
Take away Rayman, AC, FarCry, Rainbow, Watchdogs, GhostRecon from XBOX.

 

[Yobo]

I wouldn't complain with buying Ubisoft. I can't imagine Ubisoft selling though they must see themselves as seriously undervalued. They've dropped hard from 12 billion in 2020

Interesting EA has come down quite a bit too $32 billion. Still too high unless Sony went into all or nothing mode

EA would be huge return serve and you'd really only need to keep the sports games multiplat... but really just a fantasy