https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-02-10-sony-paid-usd229-million-for-insomniac

"According to a filing made today with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the acquisition of the studio cost Sony ¥ 24,895 million ($229 million), paid out mainly in cash.

Sony announced the deal last August, following up on the success of Insomniac's PlayStation 4-exclusive Spider-Man game. At the time of the studio's sale, the game had sold more than 13.2 million copies.

Prior to the sale, Insomniac Games had worked closely with Sony for decades. Founded in 1994, it only released games on Sony platforms for the first 18 years of its existence, creating franchises like Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, and Resistance. It branched out in 2012 with the Facebook game Outernauts, and has since explored development for mobile, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, Oculus Rift, and Magic Leap One."

An obscene amount of money for a studio that has not made an original system-seller-kind-of-IP since forever. Spider-man isn't theirs, once Marvel chooses to give it to another developer, you'll be left with forgotten IPs.

Moderated for baiting - axumblade

I think I heard that Sony owns Spiderman as in they don't simply have a license to use it but downright own it. Not sure how that works but that's what I heard.

Depending on Insomniac's talent, 230 million dollars is not that much. A single semi successful AAA game makes way more money than that. And that's just a single game selling 4 million copies (4 million x 60 dollars each is 240 million dollars). Just one game selling 10+ million units totally crushes those figures.

Last Spider man was quality from what I hear so it seems they know what they are doing. They just need to do one more and they are paid for or so it seems to me.

Mostly in cash?

It isnt that much tho, is it? I think EA paid over 400m for Respawn back when the only game they had was Titanfall. Whereas Insomniac has been consistently doing great games for decades (as far as im concerned they're yet to make a bad game) and their latest game sold well over 13m copies. 

You might be thinking about the movie rights. Marvel is tagging all their IP's; Marvel's Spiderman, Marvel's Advengers. Im sure that is being done to make it known these are not just licensed out products and have heavy involvement from Marvel themselves. Sony just has the license currently.

Im gonna choose to believe it was exactly like that, but in the back of a parking lot, right in the middle of the night and with some sinister conversation with evil undertones going on. 

...and was also paid in Yen :D

 The Spiderman film rights are owned by Sony, they bought ownership from Marvel, it's why the latest agreement between Sony and Disney made headlines Disney wanted to co finance the next Spiderman movie and split the profit 50/50, Sony said no, but it meant no Spiderman in MCU and no Marvel characters in Spiderman and that didn't suit either party and definitely not the fans, so a new agreement was done where Disney invests 25% of the cost for the same 25% return and Spidey gets to spend time with his MCU friends. its that ownership that made it feasible for Sony to invest in Insomniac for the purpose of supporting the Spiderman franchise.

That's not how it works.  There are a lot of steps along the way to getting that game into a retail sale.  Each step takes a cut of the money.  The developer just gets a small fraction of the sale price of a game.  They'd be very lucky to get $40m back from a game selling 4 million copies.     

Here's a decent explanation: https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-a-60-dollar-game-goes-back-to-a-developer-publisher-on-PC-compared-to-console

Ignorance is Bliss.

On another note, the money sony made from spiderman game alone pays for this acquisition and then some. Ratchet PS4 is in the top or top two best selling Ratchet games in the franchise history. Sony owns the rights to spiderman. 

So what were you saying again?

Let's not forget that another company spent $2.5B for a studio with one major IP.....