PotentHerbs said:
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. |
There's a ton of value in Sony's gaming business. And there is a 100% chance that many of the tech megacorps would be interested in buying it, if Sony decided to sell it. Some of them would likely be interested in the other entertainment businesses as well. What the tech megacorps (probably) don't want to buy is the consumer electronics, finance, and the rest of the non-entertainment businesses. And, because the company is in those businesses, they are of less interest as a takeover target.
Regardless of any of that, the gaming industry is likely going to be dominated by those tech megacorps within a decade or so. It is going to be very difficult for Sony and Nintendo to continue to exist in their current forms against that backdrop. So, consolidation seems fairly likely in both cases over the next decade.