Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions

Zzero

Major Tom
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I'm curious as to what Sony's response to that senator will be. It's clear MS are attacking Sony on two fronts now through acquisitions taking away their access to key 3rd party franchises and by attempting to use their government lobbying to prevent Sony from being able to respond to their moves in any way, whether through more timed deals or acquisitions of their own. My hope is that they call MS out for these tactics.
Form letter defending their policies as fair competition, drafted by the legal department.

These companies want to appeal as widely as possible, which means avoiding politics.
 
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Eternal_Wings

Eternal_Wings

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Today Sega bought Rovio for nearly $700k. Mobile Gaming is a big revenue stream, especially popular in Japan/Asia. I think Sony will do something big here.



I think Sony could also aside from a publisher go after a big mobile gaming company or at least one which profiles experience and success. I think Cygames could also be of interest to Sony. Their mobile game Granblue Fantasy is doing big numbers for a decade now. Also all their consoles games are exclusive to PlayStation, besides PC. I could imagine that Sony would try to buy them out from their parent company + the Granblue Fantasy IP.
 

Dabaus

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Sega spent almost 1/3 of their total value on that acquistion. If sony wanted they could clearly buy any japanese publisher they wanted if they were to go to such extreme ends. It is frustrating as a PS fan the radio silence from sony since like, late last summer after the bungie deal closed.
 

Bryank75

I don't get ulcers, I give 'em!
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If they got Square and made some vertical integration (Not marketing & PR please) ... then it would boost Sony GNS revenue up by 3-4 billion and profits up by 300-500 million.

Which is nice.

I think Sony should be looking to make GNS hit 40 billion in the next few years in revenue.

2 mid sized publishers or a large publisher would help them reach that nicely but then they could go even higher if Bungies games and the other GAAS games hit and cultivate a good following.
 
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Eternal_Wings

Eternal_Wings

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The nice thing about square is that they pay for themselves within a few years if that.
Sony needs to move on and stop fighting a fight they will very likely not win. ABK will be approved (with or without concessions doesn’t matter). Announce Square Enix and get things rollin.

Square Enix is a no brainer, it even bested Zelda in Japan, for most wanted games.
1EBDDC9D-040A-4881-890E-1E83A38F7FB4.jpeg
 

AshHunter216

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Sony needs to move on and stop fighting a fight they will very likely not win. ABK will be approved (with or without concessions doesn’t matter). Announce Square Enix and get things rollin.

Square Enix is a no brainer, it even bested Zelda in Japan, for most wanted games.
View attachment 1039
Any acquisition of Square would take a while to finalize, plus they're not going to announce anything while the ABK fight is still happening.
 
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Eternal_Wings

Eternal_Wings

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Any acquisition of Square would take a while to finalize, plus they're not going to announce anything while the ABK fight is still happening.
Yeah just meant Sony needs to get stuff done after ABK cooled down. Sony doesn’t need to forget that not only M$ also Tencent, Netease are a potential threat to their business. Even Sega spend close to a billion for a mobile gaming company. We are now in the era of consolidation after M$ opened the box of pandora.
 
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Eternal_Wings

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I could see it being stuff like Deviation and maybe Shift up if Stellar Blade ends up doing well. If they were getting Square within the next fiscal year the percentage would be much higher.
Dude 20% is a lot. This could very well include a publisher like Square Enix.
 

Dabaus

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Modiz from restera posted this:


This is the full part on their cash flow and the reduced M&A target, as far as I can tell, they are saying they increased the "working capital" for SIE as well as "server investment" for the gaming business, does the first term basically mean how much money does the company get the work with effectively? When I listened to the webcast it sounded like that money was basically to have no issues affording all the orders and shipment of PS5 console manufacturing, but im trying to make sure I got it right.
And like I said they clarify that they will be more careful on strategic investments in the meanwhile due to the market environment.
• Regarding capital allocation, we have lowered our forecast for operating cash flow for the cumulative three years, the primary source of capital, to 2.5 trillion yen from the original plan of 3.1 trillion yen mainly to reflect an increase in working capital in the G&NS and I&SS segments.
• Capital expenditure is expected to increase from the initial plan to 1.9 trillion yen with 0.4 trillion yen mainly allocated to image sensor capital expenditure and server investments in Corporate R&D and G&NS.
• In terms of strategic investment, since we decided to increase working capital and capital expenditures, and in consideration of the current M&A market environment, we decided to reduce the amount from the initial plan of 2 trillion yen to 1.8 trillion yen.
• To grow over the mid to long term, we will continue to invest. However, in the short term, we aim to carefully assess even more than before the valuations and timing of investments given the recent changes in the market environment.
• We plan to compensate for the decrease in operating cash flow due to the increase in working capital mainly through short-term borrowing and to maintain a total allocation of 4 trillion yen”
 

Darth Vader

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Seems to me like they are thinking of setting up their own in house cloud service for PlayStation. It could make sense, they would control their cloud offering, not have to pay Amazon or Microsoft billions, and if successful it would open the door for a company wide offering.
 
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Bryank75

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Seems to me like they are thinking of setting up their own in house cloud service for PlayStation. It could make sense, they would control their cloud offering, not have to pay Amazon or Microsoft billions, and if successful it would open the door for a company wide offering.

If they are, they should be offering general cloud services first and gaming just as a sub-section, although the ruling is useful for us now... I don't think cloud gaming will ever be anywhere near the size of console gaming.
 

Darth Vader

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If they are, they should be offering general cloud services first and gaming just as a sub-section, although the ruling is useful for us now... I don't think cloud gaming will ever be anywhere near the size of console gaming.

I'd suggest the other way around simply because it's "easier". They can build their infra from the ground up and deploy it on a per market basis, relying on Azure/AWS on other markets as needed, as they grow. If they want to get in the enterprise cloud solution, they would need to provide a service with 99.95% reliability globally, which involves shitloads of redundancy, etc. By narrowing it to gaming first, it would allow them to build infrastructure at a slower pace and track back if needed.
 
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Bryank75

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I'd suggest the other way around simply because it's "easier". They can build their infra from the ground up and deploy it on a per market basis, relying on Azure/AWS on other markets as needed, as they grow. If they want to get in the enterprise cloud solution, they would need to provide a service with 99.95% reliability globally, which involves shitloads of redundancy, etc. By narrowing it to gaming first, it would allow them to build infrastructure at a slower pace and track back if needed.

Well, you have far more experience and knowledge of the area...it sounds like a great approach.

Even though I still don't think cloud gaming is going to be big. I just love my consoles... and I think most core gamers do.
 
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Eternal_Wings

Eternal_Wings

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Now the probability given that the ABK deal will fall completely through with the decision of the EUC in 22th May, how possible do you think is that Sony will acquire at later date the IP rights of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro?
Sony needs definitely more family friendly franchises. Astrobot is not enough imo.
 
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AshHunter216

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Now the probability given that the ABK deal will fall completely through with the decision of the EUC in 22th May, how possible do you think is that Sony will acquire at later date the IP rights of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro?
Sony needs definitely more family friendly franchises. Astrobot is not enough imo.

I still think the EU are on MS side, but the cma and ftc being against the deal probably makes that irrelevant. As for family friendly franchises, Sony just need to bring back some of their old stuff like Jak or Sly Cooper.