Sony acquires Bungie for $3.6 billion - staying multiplatform

[kirby007]

Dallinor said:

LurkerJ said:

To me, it sounds like SONY made a freak-out acquisition. The reality is acquisitions are getting expensive and SONY could've bought more for less last year and definitely during the PS4 era, someone is a little late to the party...

I truly believed SONY's partnerships is one way to work with successful developers and make new SONY-owned IP without the burden of expanding your studios or the risk of making the wrong acquisition. I think these partnerships are a much better response to what MS has been doing, although I acknowledge it isn't nearly enough. To be fair, MS brought nuclear weapons to a gunfight, I don't know if SONY can ever respond appropriately to the massive blows MS has delivered. 

Of course it does...through the lens of a video game enthusiast commenting on websites.

Initially we had people saying the Bethesda deal was a reaction to Sony 'buying up exclusive content'. Not a strategic move by MS to position content for their streaming service. No a $7.5 billion dollar knee jerk reaction. They certainly time their news to impact the markets, make no mistake about that, but this notion that Sony and MS exist in a vacuum- watching what each other are doing and just reacting is absurd. They aren't even the only players in this game- Sony and MS are watching Tencent, EA, Embracer, Amazon and Google. Basically all of big tech.

Now, this is a 'freak out' acquisition. Nothing to do with the fact Sony have been shopping around for a Gaas/multiplayer developer for over 2 years now. They bid $1 billion for Leyou in 2020 (Warframe developer) and were outbid by Tencent. The market doesn't even have many independents in that genre left (Bungie was the last big one), and we know Sony have multiple exclusive Gaas games now in development. 

Read their press release- they literally tell you they have an aggressive live service road map and why this purchase makes sense, it's part of a much bigger strategy that sees them trying to reach 100's of millions of players.

But no, the more likely scenario is everyone as Sony HQ went crazy, ran around the room like headless chickens, and pulled out a $3.6 billion dollar cheque.

Lastly I will say one thing though, couple the fact that the tech sharks are circling, massive inflation, and Sony with $14 billion on hand they essentially need to spend over the next year on investments, their likelyhood to pull the trigger on a major gaming acquisition under the current climate has never been higher. I would expect we will see them spend in the range of another few billion dollars on gaming acquisitions before the year is out. In fact there may already be another big deal in place.

100% this, liquid assets now vs additional revenue and profit in the future is a no brainer ( more so when there is no need to have mandatory ratios like financial institutions need to have )