| Soundwave said: By integrate you mean they have a bunch of crap baggage that other companies wouldn't care for. I think potential suitors like an Apple also know they're a bit of a mirage with their gaming division because it basically really is driven by 3rd party content and that doesn't come with the Playstation brand per se. If you were to get into a war with like Microsoft or Amazon, that 3rd party support can crumble and fall apart because those developers can be acquired as Microsoft just did with Activision-Blizzard. How much value does the Playstation brand really have when its divorced from the traditional gaming market and we're into a new kind of streaming war business? Can't really money hat a publisher that's owned by your competition. The interesting thing is, Sony might actually have an "in" with a partner one wouldn't expect. That being Nintendo. The reason why is two-fold basically, one if we are headed towards some kind of industry "consolidation" of some kind, it's pretty clear Microsoft is going to be on one side of it, and probably another massive conglomerate on the other side (Apple?). So where does that leave Sony and Nintendo? Well in that scenario if they were to team up, as unthinkable as it seems in a traditional gaming market, they are also the two companies that most benefit from the industry staying (well) traditional. Microsoft is not as successful so they have no qualms about just burning the whole thing down and making it something else. The other reasons is Nintendo is a bit of a diva and is likely going to be very hard for anyone to court into a relationship. Sony is the only one of these companies that is Japanese, and I think for Nintendo that is important. And maybe more than that, Sony isn't big enough to buy Nintendo. If Nintendo were to get into a relationship with a Microsoft or Apple, they could eventually just turn around and try to buy them. But Sony can't really do that, they are barely 2x the market cap that Nintendo is. And past that Sony has experience working in partnerships like this before, the Blu-Ray format, DVD format, etc. etc. Also past that pretty much everyone that was involved in the 90s Playstation-SNES fall out is retired from both companies outside of Miyamoto, so it becomes a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of thing. |
Like I said, there would be a lot of suitors if Sony were to sell, despite being a "bloated" company as you put it.
Hearing no rumors about a potential Sony buyout doesn't mean anything. If anything, based on past sentiment, its a good thing for the state of Sony's business that we hear no rumblings about them needing to sell. MGM went for 8.5B and you think Sony Pictures would fetch no interest in the open market? Sony is considering spinning off their financial arm, in order to make larger M&A moves, but that shouldn't be possible according to you.
And I'm sorry, thinking PlayStation has no value outside of the traditional console model is quite deluded lol. Sony had over 8M+ subscribers for PlayStation Plus Premium, with Ghost of Tsushima and SpiderMan Miles Morales leading the way for engagement metrics, while God of War and The Last of Us were the most played legacy franchises. Their IP's are still growing, in terms of units sold and mindshare, as we've seen with God of War Ragnarok selling over 10M units in a little over 2 months, on top of moving millions of units of hardware during the holiday season. Sony's first party unit sales account for 10 - 15% of overall game sales yearly, which is significant when you consider the amount of third party releases, since their first party output represents literally 1% of the platform releases for the year. Their PC approach has been successful, despite delayed releases capping unit sales potential, with Sony projecting their revenue from PC doubling/tripling in a few years. Not to mention live service stuff like MLB, a yearly sports game with MTX, and Destiny 2, with another expansion next year, plus other promising projects from Bungie.
When it comes to the future of the industry, I think Sony and Nintendo will have a lot of time to prepare for their business models shifting, that when it comes time to pivot, they'll be ready. People already overestimated the impact GamePass will have coming into the generation. Sony and Nintendo will have their walled garden business model in tact for Switch 2/PlayStation 6. That means they'll further grow their IP's, further entrench their audience into their digital ecosystem, while making billions every year in profit, for at least another decade. Depending on what they do, that just may be too much time for other giants, including Microsoft, to really shift market share away from both of them. Its similar to the impact Zenimax would of had if Microsoft bought them during the start of last generation, compared to buying them at the eve of this generation, with the variance being the tremendous growth of Sony's first party strength, as well as Nintendo further cultivating their IP to be the Disney of gaming.
