MS crossed the line with this one. Heck, they leaped over it, Olympic record style.

MS isn't buying non Western devs/pubs for whatever reason, so it's kinda unlikely that SNY has to worry too much about losing those types of franchises to MS.

The way I'd solve this at SNY, is to buy Take Two. That alone is the only purchase they'd need, assuming MS doesn't later start acquiring big non Western devs/pubs.

Acti/Bliz had a 64B market cap, which is why MS paid somewhere between 64B-70B for them. You typically have to pay a bit of a premium over the market cap.

Take Two has a 17B market cap. SNY should be able to acquire them for $20B, but it would pretty much take everything they could throw at the deal to make it happen.

It would be worth it for GTA alone. The income, but more importantly, the mind share. GTA 6 (timed) exclusivity on PS5 would squash everything MS has done so far.

MS could go out and buy EA and UBI after this and it wouldn't change the market mind share. SNY would have it locked down for this gen.

SNY wouldn't even have to make it totally exclusive. Just timed exclusive to some degree, and a few free in game multiplayer perks for buying it on PS. Problem solved.

Imagine GTA 6, PSVR first person exclusivity.

Fun fantasy but would actually happen is Take 2 (or any big publisher) would immediately take any offer from Sony and go to Microsoft and see if MS will beat it. Which they would in Take 2's case. 

So that "only pay a little more than market cap" number becomes meaningless very quickly. If MS has spent this much money they might as well go the full distance and bury anyone's chances of competing against Game Pass. They're not screwing around any more. 

So MS spends $10ish billion on Zenimax, then jumps to $70ish billion on Acti/Bliz? TT can be had for around $20B. Why didn't MS buy them already?

Mind share goes both ways. It can be good, and it can be really bad, depending on the situation. Some moves will have negative consequences.

Which is why SNY needs to make this move sooner than later. That way if SNY doesn't acquire them, maybe someone other than MS will.

Even if MS were to outbid, SNY should make another big move asap that MS would wish to counter.

Force MS to gobble things up much too quickly, and watch MS become the new Activision, ironically.

I think Take 2 will be property of MS in about 2 years time. If Sony even tries to table an offer, Take 2 will do what any smart business would do and take that offer to MS and see if they can get more money. 

They moved on Acti-Blizzard now because likely they got them at a bit of a lower price due to some of their internal issues going on with leadership. 

Take 2 is probably next on their list. Like any business, if I'm Take 2 I'm not taking any offer from Sony until I give MS a chance to counter. It's no secret MS has way, way, way more money so why sell to the lower end buyer. 

If TT ends up tied to MS, some type of merger/partnership or owned by, SNY might as well pack up and head back to Japan, while designing PS6 to be a hybrid. It would only get worse from there.

The sooner SNY makes a move, the more likely they'll be successful, or at least push TT to sell to someone else other than MS, which would be better than letting MS have them.

Also, how many of the devs themselves will stay put vs how many will go elsewhere or start a new studio? Will all these franchises remain the same, get better, or get filled with MTX under MS?

Typically when you've got some mega corp, you've already got issue's. When you've got one who's clearly determined to become a monopoly, you've likely got major issues. How many and what kind of devs would really enjoy what's likely to become of that?

I wonder how long before MS buys Bungie?..

Money can't buy everything, and it can sure ruin some great things.

Nintendo managed when Sony took away Squaresoft, Enix, and most of Capcom and Konami's support. I guess this is kind of a funny irony. 

I think Take 2 will be property of MS in about 2 years time. If Sony even tries to table an offer, Take 2 will do what any smart business would do and take that offer to MS and see if they can get more money. 

They moved on Acti-Blizzard now because likely they got them at a bit of a lower price due to some of their internal issues going on with leadership. 

Take 2 is probably next on their list. Like any business, if I'm Take 2 I'm not taking any offer from Sony until I give MS a chance to counter. It's no secret MS has way, way, way more money so why sell to the lower end buyer. 

Losing Activision Blizzard will impact Playstation's bottom line and Sony knows that. There is a very real chance Microsoft retains market dominance in NA/UK having an exclusive Call of Duty game every year. 

It might be a tough pill to swallow for some, but if Sony doesn't make any big moves, they're going to end up as a third party publisher.