It's something that goes beyond the gaming market. In the past it has been suggested that Sony is interested in buying Kadokawa entirely to strengthen its dominance in the production of anime content for streaming.

Buying Kadokawa and taking From Software is not impossible. On the other hand, it would create problems with Bandai Nanco, the current main publisher of From Software.

Publishers are generally on a per game basis. 

From Software has games published by SIE and they had Sekiro published by Activision.

I believe Sony should strengthen their position in mobile and PC. Not really sure if Sony really needs to purchase a Japanese studio since they pretty much can lock out MS in that space. Anything on the level of Nintendo or a big publisher with Sony marketshare would be a big risk for regulatory concerns. Sony current strategy works, where they secured top PS devs with a lot of success, expanded their ability to get their games on PC and secured one of the best FPS/Service games on the market which is Bungie. Sony can continue to keep relationships high with Japanese developers and 3rd party deals to lock out MS but for the bigger publishers who have a international goal, those days may be coming to an end. Sony should concentrate on the smaller more innovative titles to flesh out their bigger AAA hits.

Buying Kadokawa is more likely than either Capcom or SE, IMO. Not saying that it'll happen, though.

Depends on what the overall goal is. Mihoyo already is console exclusive so no point in purchasing them for that reason. If they just want more live service in house then yea but not even sure Mihoyo can be purchased.

Sony doesn't need to acquire a large publisher. They need more smaller developers to incorporate with PS Studios, so they have a roughly even manpower with Xbox. Although that will take a lot of studios considering just Blizzard alone has more employees than PS Studio as a whole.

It doesnt seem that Sony has the money to acquire any big game-changer studios, not in the same way MS got Bethesda and Act/Blizz. And I dunno about this thing they do where they acquire a small studio and hope for a new franchise that could be a hit. Atm I think they should be worried about their short-term future because their lack of big name exclusive is an issue and what do they expect the PS6 to be? Tech isnt advancing fast enough to make it noticeably different from the PS5, what are they gon do next, a console with a gimmick?

They probably couldn't have bought Activision.

They certainly could have afforded something on the scale of Bethesda. 

Something on the scale of Take Two (barring regulatory issues) would probably also be doable, but difficult. 

Sony has plenty of capability of buying something reasonably big between cash, loans, and stock sales.  

Japanese companies in general seem like they're usually pretty conservative about acquiring things, even if they can. 

They're finding other avenues of improving tech. 

PS5's biggest improvement was an SSD with dedicated IO to reduce loading times. 

I don't think Sony would go for Take Two if they went all in for one deal.

If Sony were to go that route, it would be an acquisition that elevates the entire company, and while Take Two does that in a variety of ways, their crown developer in Rockstar releases one game per generation. This would be a deal that could easily exceed 30B+ with a premium, its a bit risky even with the MTX coming in from NBA/GTA, and evergreen titles like GTAV/RDR. Not to mention, if there is a scenario where Google or Microsoft are willing to outspend them, a bidding war for Take Two could be one of them, with a massive regulatory hurdle on top of that.

I think if Sony were going to go all in for a major acquisition in the video game market, Bandai Namco, EA Entertainment, and Valve due to being a private company, would be more viable options.

I feel like Namco is more valuable to the rest of Sony Group than the others. But I don't think they're that valuable to SIE. A couple of their biggest IPs are by studios that Sony also has a relationship with.

Take Two also owns Zynga, and they would also have some big IPs like Bioshock, Borderlands, Civilization.

I feel like they're more realistic than EA Entertainment or Valve.

But frankly I feel like all of them are long shots. But I would have thought the same for MS buying Activision.