Sony's future and possible studio/publisher acquisitions

[IntentionalPun]

First what’s wrong with your tone?
I never claimed to be an insider. It’s all my speculation and November is not over yet. Squaresoft and Enix merger was announced on 27th November 2002.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss about potential acquisitions. If you can’t handle it then then feel free to leave this discussion. No need to become rude.

You said you had a source over and over again..

I have source but I won’t tell and I can’t.
Read my comment again: I said it will happen in 2023.

No one reported or talked about Unseen. I was the first one who talked about it. My source is legit.

@Bryank75 you run your forum how you want.. but what competent forum lets people babble about sources w/o any sort of verification?

Makes the discussion here just total nonsense.

 

[Eternal_Wings]

You said you had a source over and over again..



@Bryank75 you run your forum how you want.. but what competent forum lets people babble about sources w/o any sort of verification?

Makes the discussion here just total nonsense.

Your getting things mixed. I wasn’t talking about a publisher. I said studios: JPGAMES, Mutan Insight, Bokeh and Unseen. All small and new founded studios in Japan. Sony is working with to join PS studios. That’s what I have said.

To my source: he is working at SIE. I don’t want to lose him sharing infos with me, seeing me spreading his infos. I am not a clout chaser or anything in this direction. Just excited to talk about it.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Your getting things mixed. I wasn’t talking about a publisher. I said studios: JPGAMES, Mutan Insight, Bokeh and Unseen. All small and new founded studios in Japan. Sony is working with to join PS studios. That’s what I have said.

To my source: he is working at SIE. I don’t want to lose him sharing infos with me, seeing me spreading his infos. I am not a clout chaser or anything in this direction. Just excited to talk about it.

Well it's hard to tell that apart from your endless speculation on Square. You've been saying it WILL happen in November, and then brought up sources for other alleged acquisitons.

But I apologize if I mixed that up.

I still think mystery sources are lame... it's not 2005 anymore nobody believes you have an uncle at Nintendo w/o proof lol

 

[Yurinka]

Folks, seems that in the second half of this fiscal year Sony may have big acquisitions: I didn't see the small note in the bottom of the first image.

For this quarter, Sony included 17.4B yen as acquisition expenses for the acquisitions closed during H1 like Bungie and others (like Haven) but included in their forecast 61B yen for the whole FY. Meaning they saved 43.6B yen, like 2.5x times the money they spent on acquisition costs for closing Bungie+Haven+whatever SIE bought recently.

Seems that the total amount may change because obviously aren't sure about when they could complete these upcoming potential acquisitions. We don't know the cost of the Haven and other acquisitions closed during H1. The Bungie acquisition cost was $2.4B, and multiplying that by 2.5x gives the around $6B that this folk talked about.

But, this H1 in addition to Bungie Sony also closed the acquisition of Haven and I'd bet that SIE also bought something else. Meaning that the money saved isn't to spend around $6B in acquisitions during H2 FY2022 but for more. If we assume that if the non-Bungie acquisitions that Sony closed during H1 (Haven and can't remember now if more SIE acquisitions) did cost around $1B, then we're talking they saved money for acquisitions valued on up to at least $7B-$8.5B.

It would be understandable that Sony would save some budget just in case, but saving 43.6B yen are over $287M. So make sure that they have at least one or more big acquisitions in the works probably to be announced in the coming few months.

 

[Bryank75]

Well it's hard to tell that apart from your endless speculation on Square. You've been saying it WILL happen in November, and then brought up sources for other alleged acquisitons.

But I apologize if I mixed that up.

I still think mystery sources are lame... it's not 2005 anymore nobody believes you have an uncle at Nintendo w/o proof lol

@IntentionalPun @Eternal_Wings I was told not to say anything but one of the studios that was mentioned there is definitely working on an important horror / action exclusive.

I can't say anymore but it lines up with @Eternal_Wings a little bit. I don't know about all those studios but I think it's enough to give the benefit of the doubt.
But we don't have to mention it all too often, so lets just chill spreading stuff we cannot verify yet.

 

[Yurinka]

Your getting things mixed. I wasn’t talking about a publisher. I said studios: JPGAMES, Mutan Insight, Bokeh and Unseen. All small and new founded studios in Japan. Sony is working with to join PS studios. That’s what I have said.

To my source: he is working at SIE. I don’t want to lose him sharing infos with me, seeing me spreading his infos. I am not a clout chaser or anything in this direction. Just excited to talk about it.

The source of the Mutan Insight could be a guess on this:
https://www.gematsu.com/2021/12/mutan-insight-hiring-staff-for-work-on-high-end-rpg-remake-for-ps5

The title is misleading, someone can think they are in charge on a high end rpg remake for PS5. But the truth is that they are a small outsourcing studio who worked on FFXV DLC, Atelier, Persona Q2 and smaller games. I don't see why Sony would be interested on buying them.

Regarding Bokeh: I'd love it to be a Sony studio, but I see strange to fire them to later buy their studio. I could see Yoshida (their former boss who fired them) helping them to market their games via PS Indies and maybe getting a -probably timed- console exclusive, but I don't see Sony buying them.

Unseen: new studio from a girl who became popular because of being funny, cheerful and cute on an E3 presentation, even if had a nice CV with some cool games but no big seller. With a new, different, unproven team that never worked together before. Again, I can see Yoshida maybe supporting them via PS Indies if their game end being cool, but they are barely in preproduction now so I don't see how Sony would buy them at this stage when they probably don't even have a vertical slice to show.

JPGames: the new studio from Tabata. Worked many not very successful games at SE including the hot mess that was the development of FFXVIII Versus/FFXV but had fans. I just noticed that his new studio released last year a mobile game about the Tokyo Olympics that wasn't a big hit, so I don't see why Sony would want to buy it:

The list seems to me like an unrealistic fan wishlist, I don't buy it as a leak.

 

[CloudStrife]

Your getting things mixed. I wasn’t talking about a publisher. I said studios: JPGAMES, Mutan Insight, Bokeh and Unseen. All small and new founded studios in Japan. Sony is working with to join PS studios. That’s what I have said.

To my source: he is working at SIE. I don’t want to lose him sharing infos with me, seeing me spreading his infos. I am not a clout chaser or anything in this direction. Just excited to talk about it.

Be cool if Sony announced them all at once ala MS 2018 when they picked up Ninja Theory), Playground Games), Undead Labs and Compulsion Games

 

[LightBolt]

 

[Bryank75]

Is that a team?

 

[CloudStrife]

Are purchases of privately owned companies government regulated?
For instance, if Sony convinced Tim Sweeney to sell them his stake in Epic Games...
Would that be allowed?

 

[DynamiteCop]

Are purchases of privately owned companies government regulated?
For instance, if Sony convinced Tim Sweeney to sell them his stake in Epic Games...
Would that be allowed?

It's all regulated.

 

[Bryank75]

Are purchases of privately owned companies government regulated?
For instance, if Sony convinced Tim Sweeney to sell them his stake in Epic Games...
Would that be allowed?

Yeah, it would still be looked at by regulators.

Steam and Epic are both privately held, although publicly traded companies have stakes in Epic for instance.

Despite the business structure, they are large enough to effect market dynamics and regulators would definitely look at whoever was buying them to make sure it didn't cause issues.

Zenimax went through regulators also...

 

[CloudStrife]

It's all regulated.

Yeah, it would still be looked at by regulators.

Steam and Epic are both privately held, although publicly traded companies have stakes in Epic for instance.

Despite the business structure, they are large enough to effect market dynamics and regulators would definitely look at whoever was buying them to make sure it didn't cause issues.

Zenimax went through regulators also...

Ah, thanks........if that's the case, then it would never be allowed....lol

 

[Bryank75]

Ah, thanks........if that's the case, then it would never be allowed....lol

Tell us.... might not be so wild!

 

[ksdixon]

Feels like there's been a bit of moving and shaking lately. Some companies have committed to restructures, and have sold parts off. Others have had good financial earnings report, and essentially aren't as perilous as we might have once thought.

Whilst my want is for Capcom and WBD/NRS, it doesn't sound like Capcom need Sony, and doesn't sound like WBD is going to be loosening the stranglehold unless they themselves get Fatalitied.

Who you guys got your money riding on, currently?

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Feels like there's been a bit of moving and shaking lately. Some companies have committed to restructures, and have sold parts off. Others have had good financial earnings report, and essentially aren't as perilous as we might have once thought.

Whilst my want is for Capcom and WBD/NRS, it doesn't sound like Capcom need Sony, and doesn't sound like WBD is going to be loosening the stranglehold unless they themselves get Fatalitied.

Who you guys got your money riding on, currently?

Deviation games, arrowhead, maybe another support/mobile/pc dev studio.

Sony isn’t buying a publisher, that im certain of, especially not one in Japan. They will probably do more investments like they did with Fromsoft. Makes no sense for sony to jump into bed with these big financially unstable publishers when they already got a good pipeline of game development now that is profitable.

It makes more sense for them to invest shares into square enix like they did before. I wouldnt be surprised if they got the idea for that from sony, with the final fantasy investments.

Imagine buying a company going balls deep into NFT/Blockchain shit like square enix, sega, or ubisoft lol

 

[Yurinka]

Deviation games, arrowhead, maybe another support/mobile/pc dev studio.

Sony isn’t buying a publisher, that im certain of, especially not one in Japan. They will probably do more investments like they did with Fromsoft. Makes no sense for sony to jump into bed with these big financially unstable publishers when they already got a good pipeline of game development now that is profitable.

It makes more sense for them to invest shares into square enix like they did before. I wouldnt be surprised if they got the idea for that from sony, with the final fantasy investments.

Imagine buying a company going balls deep into NFT/Blockchain shit like square enix, sega, or ubisoft lol

Seeing that Sony recently invested on FromSoft (not Kadokawa) and Square mentioning that they'll start to sell shares their studios to get specific investments on them. I think Sony will do what they did with FromSoft: instead of buying Square Enix will invest on specific Square Enix studios.

By doing that, companies like Kadokawa or Square can continue doing the stuff that it's outside Sony's interests (like manga, real state, nft and so on), but Sony would get part of the profits generated by the studios that interest them and would have more influence over these studios, plus by going in this way they'd have less issues with regulators.

In fact, they could even invest on these studios to the point that in the future they could get a majority of their shares but still keep them inside their current companies.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Seeing that Sony recently invested on FromSoft (not Kadokawa) and Square mentioning that they'll start to sell shares their studios to get specific investments on them. I think Sony will do what they did with FromSoft: instead of buying Square Enix will invest on specific Square Enix studios.

By doing that, companies like Kadokawa or Square can continue doing the stuff that it's outside Sony's interests (like manga, real state, nft and so on), but Sony would get part of the profits generated by the studios that interest them and would have more influence over these studios, plus by going in this way they'd have less issues with regulators.

In fact, they could even invest on these studios to the point that in the future they could get a majority of their shares but still keep them inside their current companies.

Yeah, its like a la carte money hats without buying entire companies out

 

[Eternal_Wings]

It doesn’t make any sense to buy stakes again, after getting rid of all shares in 2014 they had. It will be a full acquisition. Sony won’t repeat their past mistakes again.

 

[Yurinka]

It doesn’t make any sense to buy stakes again, after getting rid of all shares in 2014 they had. It will be a full acquisition. Sony won’t repeat their past mistakes again.

They sold because needed the money. Now they have a shit ton of money because they make a shit ton of money, so it's a good idea to spend a good part of it on investments and acquisitions that make sense.