Actually just read elsewhere a few comments with a similar idea, but grab Respawn and the Titanfall franchise instead.

I always felt Titanfall was more COD like, besides the Mechs.

Since EA don't seem to care about Titanfall anymore, that could be something they could fairly easily let go. 

Perhaps I've underestimated how big FF14 is.

But I would sill say no, Final Fantasy is not what it was in the 90s. It's true newer games are moving more units, on 3 different platforms, with much larger development and marketing investments, in a market that is several times larger. It's "worth" more than in the 90s but it doesn't have nearly the same "weight".

I don’t understand why many want Sony to buy Square. Because it would be easy perhaps? The problem is that the vast majority of Square’s game sales are already PlayStation players, and Sony already has extensive exclusivity deals in place. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, as they say.


Wouldn’t it be wiser to go after an entity with more broad based appeal, that would stop casual user attrition as opposed to just servicing the most hardcore Sony fans?

It certainly would, assuming these companies and their franchises remain free to continue on PS consoles. Which is more likely than not, but it's not impossible that they get acquired by someone else and end up being withheld or used as bait.

MS at the moment, seems to be strengthening their position more so than hurting SNY. The question is, is that the whole plan, or is the plan to slowly turn up the heat and eventually put a ton of hurt on SNY with acquisitions?

On one hand, lock up the non western devs and pubs before it's potentially too late, since XB greatly lacks those types of games. On the other hand, you can't lose too much of the western market or your profits are going to suffer greatly. There's a reason PS has focused more on the western front over the last decade.

To me SNY should go for EA, TT, or UBI, if they're going to spend a ton of money all in one shot. EA might be too much, but TT should be doable.

SNY could also splurge, but pick and choose and pluck certain dev studios and/or franchises from anywhere, if they could make those deals happen.

All this talk about "panic buying"....sigh.
Sony is growing its developer base slowly but steadily. Only looking at developers that fit and/or complement their existing developer base. That is not going to change, no matter what crazy things MS does. Apart from the fact there is no point in even trying to compete with MS on the monetary level.

MS strategy is just "Buy boatloads front, back, left and right - and hope it sticks". As with this Gamepass thingie, they just throw mass around. Not quality. This seems to be mightily impressive to Americans, not so much in the rest of the world. Phil Spencer may be god to the American gamers, many in the rest in the world consider him a PR mouthpiece with limited grasp pf the gaming business as a whole.

⚠️ - User was warned for this post.

I don’t expect them to make any acquisitions to counter-attack the buying spree of MS.

Whilst PlayStation is one of the best profitable sectors of Sony Corp, they are getting into other ventures like the opening of Sony Mobility Inc, and they seem to be investing heavily in that.

One of the most expensive Studios they bought recently was Insomniac, and that was peanuts compared to ZeniMax o Activision/Blizzard.

I think people need to understand that not only Sony has to talk with publishers for years to make a deal, but the publisher has to be willing to sell. It doesn't matter how much Sony or Microsoft offers. If Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, EA, etc. aren't looking to sell then they cannot be acquired. The sooner people realize that the better.

If SNY could pick and choose some IP, even without the studios worst case, that would save them a lot of money and would allow them to better target (future) gaps they definitely feel need to be filled and solidified. Then just poach who they need to, like some from those same franchise studios afterwards, lol, or even better, some from Zeni, Acti, and Bliz. LOL.

Like if they could get something like Titanfall, yet couldn't get Respawn, even if they poached a few from Respawn later, then went after a bunch of Acti COD devs, etc, that should work. Create a new PS Studio for them. It would be more of a headache, but more efficient financially.

Have that new studio work on fps/shooter related games beyond Titanfall. SNY has some IP they could put to good use.

Lots of cases like this with different options. It would also be really good PR for SNY. Just taking nibbles instead of stuffing their face.

Yeah, that doesn't really explain how or why they would drop out of the hardware space. I don't follow your logic. 

I mean put it this way, even in the unlikely scenario they lost say 60% of their marketshare (which would be absolutely huge), you think they're going to stop making Playstations?

Sony have likely known about consolidation efforts across the industry since the start of this generation - I've been wondering why they've been massively pushing into multiplayer with new and existing IP. This is the answer. If they can no longer rely on 3rd parties to fill the multiplayer space, they have to do it themselves. 

Let's look at Sony's current assets.

• Investments and advances in the Financial Services segment - These are assets needed for the Financial Service sector, and they can be used for acquisitions. Any financial business is about managing liquidity and earnings, so these can't be liquidated. 
• Trade and other receivables, and contract assets - These are likely split off between multiple divisions in Sony. They likely wont be able to pledge these for an acquisition, nor would they want to. 
• Inventory - Don't think I need to explain this
• Other financial assets - This is probably the only thing that could be considered liquid. Only problem is its only 106 billion yen (2% of current assets) and could be things Sony can liquidate easily. 
• Other current assets - These are likely things like Prepaids.

As you mentioned, his comments are to make it seem they can totally make acquisitions if they wanted to. They had to say something to assure investors everything will be OK. And I'm sure, in someway, they can get to that number, but noticed that, in the time since Microsoft bought Zenimax they haven't made any kind of acquisition like that? At most, they've bought one or two smaller developers that have worked closely with Sony. But they haven't made any kind of purchase like Microsoft.

On debt, Sony has a lot of debt already which makes it difficult for them to do big purchases if they wanted to. This wont stop them from making smaller acquisitions, but something like Square would be a different story.