Sony’s counter-moves to Microsoft’s purchase of Activision
Sony, unnerved by the acquisition of Microsoft, warns: 5 billion in the pot to go shopping for development studies. And the rumor of the purchase of the GTA software house is back
For the moment, Sony has been keeping a close watch, while letting the irritation for the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft leak out (so much so that in no uncertain terms it has defined the agreement between Redmond and Nintendo to also get the consoles of Kyoto the Call of Duty saga for a decade "smoke and mirrors"). But it is clear that if the operation were to finally go through (the competition authorities of the EU, USA and UK will have to decide), the videogame market will suddenly become much smaller. The multi-platform era could suddenly end and the three big names on the market (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) could in short rely much more than in the past on exclusives.
OVER 5 BILLION IN THE PLATE
The money to operate a respectable shopping campaign is there. In fact, the Japanese company still has 5.1 billion dollars available to invest by 2024 for the possible acquisition of further studies to add to its stable of software houses.
Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki recalled this in a cryptic way during a Morgan Stanley conference at the end of February. The Japanese software house has a treasury of two trillion yen allocated in 2020 to be used in the following three years precisely for a restructuring involving acquisitions. Of course, the weak yen, at historic lows, does not encourage Japanese companies to shop abroad (and in fact could also look within the Japanese archipelago), but Totoki confirms that there are still 0.7 trillion yen left at the moment (equal to 5.1 billion dollars) to be used in this specific context.
Compared to what was stated by the CFO, who from April 1st will also be the new Sony president and this makes his words practically an agenda to be implemented, it must however be reiterated that not only the gaming division draws from that fund, but the entire Sony Group : the company is also expanding in the automotive sector and could decide to expand collaborations in that sector, but given that the PlayStation Studios represent the hub of the activities, it is difficult for them to remain dry.
SONY DEVOURS TAKE-TWO TO RESPOND TO MICROSOFT?
Also because the rumor that Sony would like to buy Take-Two is becoming more and more insistent. It would be a blow not attributable in economic scope to what Microsoft has done with Activision (the value of the group settles at around 20 billion, against the 70 paid by Redmond), but which at a playful level would allow the Japanese to pocket the proceeds from the rights to titles such as NBA 2K, WWE 2K, BioShock, Mafia and above all Grand Theft Auto by Rockstar Games (the latter a subsidiary of Take-Two since 1998) up to casual products such as Farmville and other social and mobile games by Zynga . Also in this case, to avoid the accusation of concentration, Sony would probably opt to keep the purchased IPs multiplatform (ie also accessible to Microsoft and Nintendo).
WHAT DOESN'T COME BACK ABOUT THE RUMOR
But these are only rumors, albeit insistent and vintage, since they have been talked about from memory since well before the outbreak of the pandemic. What is certain is that the money available to Sony at the moment would be enough to buy only a quarter of Take Two, so it is easy that the Japanese are actually targeting other smaller but no less profitable software houses. And, indeed, given the situation of the yen, they could decide to look at home…
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/le-contromosse-di-sony-allacquisto-di-activision-da-parte-di-microsoft/ on Thu, 09 Mar 2023 07:19:31 +0000.