I agree COD is bigger but it won't be exclusive to xbox. Bungie aren't even close to square enix in terms of console games. They don't even own there most successful series, All they have is destiny.

What do you guys think of the crazy possibility of Sony buying Valve?

It's the one purchase I could see Sony going all out for but its also one of the few deals that would get blocked lol. But when I think about it, aside from Take Two or EA, its one of the few acquisitions that could "counter" Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard.

I think you're overestimating the size of Square Enix. Their market cap is $5.8 billion, which would translate to like $8.2 billion for an acquisition.  Basically double what Bungie cost, and an 1/8th of what Activision costs. They're substantially smaller than Take Two or EA or even Bandai Namco. I don't see any reason that deal would get blocked from a console standpoint. The bigger issue would be that Square also publishes Manga, which might be a conflict with Sony's anime, since Sony controls a large chunk of that market. 

Square Enix pretty much has 3 big franchises (Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts). They don't own DQ, and KH is tied into Disney. 

Final Fantasy isn't a monster franchise. It's sold well consistently for decades. But the bigger games sell less than God of War even does. It is a huge franchise, but it's not some monster money maker in the same category as GTA or CoD.  

I don't see why Valve would sell, I think Gabe is pretty happy to do his thing.

And I don't see why Sony would go all out for it. The vast majority of the value that Valve has is tied into their store. Which is absolutely valuable, but it doesn't help their console, it doesn't help their mobile push. 

I would say its for the PC storefront that generates billions of revenue as the primary factor. I think Valve would be able to fill that multiplayer void if Microsoft were to pull Call of Duty/Overwatch/Crash from PlayStation platforms. 

If they were to put all their resources together for a major buy, I could see Sony favoring Valve over Take Two, Bandai Namco, or EA, since Steam would recoup the cost of the acquisition over time, but PlayStation would still get some major IP and development capabilities.

I feel like we're misunderstanding eachother a bit here. I'm not saying that square Enix is on the level of EA or anything like that, just that they are way bigger than bungie. But considering sonys market position it may be more difficult for them to buy even a medium sized publisher like square. Now in future if Microsoft were to start matching sony more that could change.

Again I don't consider FF anywhere near cod in terms of popularity but compared to most other activision series it's pretty big. 

We can't compare Microsoft and Sony to closely because the market positions they're in arecompletely different. If Microsoft were in sony's position that deal likely would not have went through.

Definitely not gonna happen for several major reasons. Gabe is already a billionaire, so Sony doesn’t have anything to offer that would give him reason to sell. 


Steam is a monopoly on PC gaming. The closest contender is Epic Games Store and it pales in comparison by a substantial margin. GOG is DRM free games only and EA has abandoned their Origin store in favor of Steam. So Sony would contend with regulators on being a monopoly in PC gaming all of a sudden.

Valve’s work culture is do whatever you want, flat organization, and would not work within Sony’s business in the traditional way. 

And idk if this matters since the PS3 era, but Gabe does not care for PlayStation. Publicly so. But that could be very outdated info lol. 

Anyone that's playing RE4R on PS5 suffering from weird camera controls where it moves by itself?

Either I got stick drift, or its a weird technical issue with the game, and as much as I hate the latter, its not nearly as bad as having to buy another controller lol.

Yeah, I can't imagine Sony acquiring Valve without major regulatory scrutiny, if its not outright blocked, but that anti trust lawyer from Uber specializing in M&A, that's working for Sony now, is earning the big bucks to figure it out lol. 

On a more serious note, I think this is an unlikely deal to ever happen, but what happened during the PlayStation 3 era would not matter right now. Completely different leadership within PlayStation and Sony as a whole. 

The issue is here that publishers get blocked based off how they affect the market. Either in a vertical sense or a horizontal sense.

In a vertical sense, Epic Games would likely get blocked because as the big AAA game engine, MS and other 3rd parties are extremely reliant on them. That would probably be viewed as more anti-competitive than Activision Blizzard despite the fact that they're worth half as much; regardless of who bought them. Valve would probably be in the same category. 

In a horizontal sense, Take Two would be extremely difficult to buy, because GTA is absurdly huge. Making GTA exclusive for some reason, would be massively anti-competitive against MS. This is a big reason why the Activision deal is under so much scrutiny; because CoD by itself makes up a huge fraction of the industry.  

Square Enix is nowhere near that big to be viewed as anti-competitive, particularly since most of their big things only come to PlayStation anyways.  

I would rather have they working more and polishing the game to have its quality improved, they may choose to release as is and take the hit. I don't think we should just say if you can release more sure put shovelware together to buff the count. And in the end there isn't anything much relevant gained by "winning the publisher of the year" prize.