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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What Studio Acquisitions have really paid off for a publisher so far?

Barozi on 27 March 2022
Qwark said:
Barozi said:

Very hard disagree.

Insomniac was basically a 2nd party studio for Sony anyway, so the acquisition had 0 impact on software or hardware sales. Sony's not gaining a single new customer from Insomniac as those games would've been developed by them anyway or do you seriously think that Insomniac wouldn't have been interested in a Spider-Man sequel after those sales??

The only good result from the acquisition is that Sony can now reap all the profits from their games and not just part of it.

Insomniac has released an exclusive game for Xbox and they tried there luck at multiplats with bulletstorm. Not that those ventures where worth it. Anyway Insomniac was a good buy, because now all games Insomniac produces are Sony exclusive and Sony could expand the size of Insomniac much quicker than they could do themselves, since for Insomniac the pockets of PlayStation are very deep. Also Insomniac could have pulled a Quantic Dream.

Bulletstorm? That was People Can Fly/Epic.

I know they tried something else here and there but it's not like they weren't contracted by Sony any longer as Spider-Man proves the opposite.

I'm not saying that it wasn't a good buy financially but other than that there's nothing that couldn't have been achieved by just continuing to contract them. After all Spider-Man already moved Playstation consoles before Sony bought Insomniac.

Insomniac's pockets would've been very deep either way thanks to Spider-Man. If Insomniac pulled a Quantic Dream, they wouldn't get the chance to work on Spider-Man 2 which would make no sense for them financially.



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Barozi on 27 March 2022
PotentHerbs said:
Barozi said:

Very hard disagree.

Insomniac was basically a 2nd party studio for Sony anyway, so the acquisition had 0 impact on software or hardware sales. Sony's not gaining a single new customer from Insomniac as those games would've been developed by them anyway or do you seriously think that Insomniac wouldn't have been interested in a Spider-Man sequel after those sales??

The only good result from the acquisition is that Sony can now reap all the profits from their games and not just part of it.

Sony buying Insomniac takes the possibility of them being acquired by someone else off the table. What happens if Insomniac was looking to sell but Sony wasn't interested? You think they remain as a second party studio in that scenario?

Also, having them in house means Sony gets a lot more content to supplement their platform. VR games like Stormland, Edge of Nowhere, Feral Rites, The Unspoken were Oculus exclusive and didn't even make their way to PSVR as late ports.

Why do you assume that they were looking to sell? Also I can only repeat myself, they wouldn't be able to work on a Spider-Man sequel which was their biggest success by far (very very far). If someone else bought them they would need to start at zero again as they don't own any strong IPs so they just weren't very attractive for the other publishers.

As for the Oculus games, that's Sony's fault because they apparently never tried to contract them to make VR games for PSVR. You don't have to acquire them to do that.



PotentHerbs on 27 March 2022
Barozi said:

Why do you assume that they were looking to sell? Also I can only repeat myself, they wouldn't be able to work on a Spider-Man sequel which was their biggest success by far (very very far). If someone else bought them they would need to start at zero again as they don't own any strong IPs so they just weren't very attractive for the other publishers.

As for the Oculus games, that's Sony's fault because they apparently never tried to contract them to make VR games for PSVR. You don't have to acquire them to do that.

Sony bought Insomniac because they were looking to finally sell. Prior to the acquisition Insomniac maintained their intention to remain independent. They even refused Sony's previous attempts to acquire them. What exactly is stopping Insomniac from working on SpiderMan? Marvel owns the IP outside of the film rights. You think Marvel wouldn't want to continue the SpiderMan video game franchise? 

Despite not owning any IP, Insomniac is a massive studio with a rich history in the industry, they would be an attractive buy for Microsoft or Tencent. Also, with how hard Meta is pursuing VR with Oculus Quest, who is to say they wouldn't pick up a massive studio like Insomniac to bolster their content? We're in the age of consolidation for the video game industry after all.