Dallinor said:
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. |
I agree, my statement was incredibly stupid, I concede this can't be a freak-out acquisition and it's dumb to state otherwise. However, I do believe the other things I mentioned about talents are usually fleeting and buying a studio with no legacy IPs mean you need to do everything you can to keep the talent in-house which can be very hard especially with competitors lurking around to poach talents for much higher salaries. In fact, reading through the thread, it seems SONY thought about this as well and they think they have a plan in place to hopefully keep Bungie's talent by their side:
Bungie is a private company, the majority of whose shares are owned by its employees. So the payment of the consideration is structured to incentivize the shareholders and other creative talent to continue working at Bungie after the acquisition closes. Approximately one-third of the $3.6 billion consideration for acquisition consists primarily of deferred payment to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment and other retention incentives.
I also believe SONY's focus on partnerships stems from the fear that buying a studio will result in extra fat that they'll need to get rid of later, hence, the (excellent) choice of focusing on partnerships.
In addition, I also still believe studios with ever-green IPs and strong fan-bases are "safer bets" than new "promising" studios. Obviously, reading through the thread it does seem like SONY still intends to acquire more studios, we'll see how it goes. It's a shame we're having this discussion to begin with and consolidation is inevitable. My only consolation is that glad Nintendo is on a league of their own, a beautiful example of innovation-based business that has a clue how to succeed with different products.
