I don't get the people that fail to fact check the simple things
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Sony to invest $18.4b on strategic investments to grow subscribers to gaming and entertainment
- Thread starter cormack12
- Start date
megreotsugua
Banned
The only way to entice the casuals into gaming is to package it with movies and TV shows. Maybe they're about to embark on that business venture?
I had a thread about this.
Gamepass Competitor: How about a Sony+? (PSNow+Funimation/Crunchyroll+Sony Movies&Shows)
Edit: Please ignore the thread title saying it's a gamepass competitor. I just realized this is not a game pass competitor but a Netflix (300M subs) and Disney+ (80M subs in a year) competitor targeting the masses who like entertainment but occasionally play games as well. This has larger...
Checking online Capcom seems to be worth $8.29B and Square Enix about $6.3B, though Sony doesn't need to outright buy these companies, buying more than half the company value in shares and deeper relationships with those companies, along with Kadokawa could be a way to get way more content exclusive to PlayStation.
I certainly see the likes of Housemarque, Sumo Digital, Respawn (Edit here: for those that may quote my post I meant to say Remedy Entertainment) and Bluepoint Games being in Sony's crosshairs for potential outright Acquisitions or major investment and closer relationships going forward.
Large scale recruitment from the gaming industry to get highly experienced and new talent into Worldwide Studios could be how they go about it too, if Sony just provides a better working environment and better salaries or bonus structures for better ratings and sales of products then many devs may choose to leave companies like Bethesda to go and work for PlayStation.
Good devs are a very difficult thing to come buy, so they must realise that they should be valued by Platform Holders and big Publishers, this could be where Sony excels.
We already see Sony supporting the likes of Jade Raymond and her crew to create a new Studio to make new exclusives for PlayStation, Kojima is also onboard with Sony in a big way too, especially after the great relationship his studio formed with Guerrilla Games and them giving KP their engine code no strings attached.
That money could go a very long way towards building out exactly how much new content the company can produce and it's only over the next 3 years, I wouldn't be shocked if that figure gets increased as the end results begin to become apparent.
I certainly see the likes of Housemarque, Sumo Digital, Respawn (Edit here: for those that may quote my post I meant to say Remedy Entertainment) and Bluepoint Games being in Sony's crosshairs for potential outright Acquisitions or major investment and closer relationships going forward.
Large scale recruitment from the gaming industry to get highly experienced and new talent into Worldwide Studios could be how they go about it too, if Sony just provides a better working environment and better salaries or bonus structures for better ratings and sales of products then many devs may choose to leave companies like Bethesda to go and work for PlayStation.
Good devs are a very difficult thing to come buy, so they must realise that they should be valued by Platform Holders and big Publishers, this could be where Sony excels.
We already see Sony supporting the likes of Jade Raymond and her crew to create a new Studio to make new exclusives for PlayStation, Kojima is also onboard with Sony in a big way too, especially after the great relationship his studio formed with Guerrilla Games and them giving KP their engine code no strings attached.
That money could go a very long way towards building out exactly how much new content the company can produce and it's only over the next 3 years, I wouldn't be shocked if that figure gets increased as the end results begin to become apparent.
Last edited:
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
Tbf it wasn't long ago they were in that ball park
They've skyrocked since then to overvalued levels
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Varteras
Gold Member
Respawn is owned by EA. Sumo Digital is part of a holding company called Sumo Group which already has Tencent owning 10% (lol) of the company.
Thirty7ven
Banned
They could tell me they were going to spend 40 billion and I still couldn’t guess where exactly they would be spending it.
They aren’t buying IP nor are they buying a publisher, and there’s really no independent studio out there right now that would be available.
Years from now we will still be wondering where exactly did they invest the money.
They aren’t buying IP nor are they buying a publisher, and there’s really no independent studio out there right now that would be available.
Years from now we will still be wondering where exactly did they invest the money.
mejin
Member
But only the latter is dreaming.
yurinka
Member
160M? What other 'gaming and entertainment services' do they own other than PS Plus, PS Now, Crunchyroll and Funimation?
Nah, unlike MS Sony makes a ton of money selling games for their console and that's their main revenue source. So even if they may invest on their subscriptions, they will keep subscriptions as somoething secondary for their strategy compared to selling console games.
Last edited:
yurinka
Member
They said they were going to increase this year in $183M their cost of 1st party internal game development, and Jimbo said they are open for acquisitions. So maybe they buy some gamedev studio this year.
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
You don't need a sub to use crunchyroll or funimation
I'd imagine that number includes both subs and just active accounts
Last edited:
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Exactly, since they just created Plus and PSNow this year....
He's always throwing dumb comments to be laughed at, forgetting that the biggest gaming subscription right now is PS Plus with 47.6M.
Also they have Funimation and their new Bravia Core, Crunchyroll on the road. It could mean anything, really.
For mobile gaming, Sony Music earned $4-5 billion dollars with one single game.
Fate/Grand Order Surpasses $4 Billion After Becoming Japan’s Top Grossing Mobile Game of 2019
Fate/Grand Order hits $4 billion in lifetime gross revenue, Sensor Tower data shows.
And that's by December 2019, and it's still making crazy revenue:
Last edited:
I meant Remedy Entertainment, just had my second Covid Jab and I didn't sleep last night.
You're right, I didn't mean the Titanfall devs, I meant the Control devs.
TBiddy
Member
Microsoft also makes money on selling games, as well as add-ons and microtransactions - just like Sony does.
But I assume the rather large investment and their ambition of reaching an audience of 1 billion could point in the direction, that Sony will aggressively expand their streaming solution - just like Microsoft.
Varteras
Gold Member
JLB
Banned
Or buy btc and eth
Bo_Hazem
Banned
"Sony said in a statement it would accelerate investments in mobile and online services with the aim of expanding the number of consumers directly connected to its services to 1 billion people from 160 million."
now where have i heard this before?
That "billion people" is different from what you've heard before: Cloud gaming vs Native mobile gaming for existing Android and iOS users.
Bryank75
Banned
They need a growth target..... not a niche developer TBH.
Something like MiHoYo that make Genshin Impact, would help them break into China even more and is PlayStation and mobile, they could put loads of perks on PS+ subscriptions for the game every month or two and subs would explode.
Square would be a slower and more expensive growth target but with so much content, they could feed a rebranded PSNow with stuff like Outriders, MLB, Life is Strange and all the old FF and KH games along with other more niche titles.
Then they could add new big AAA games to their exclusive roster to bulk up without having to constantly pay for exclusivity.
The publisher, HR and PR etc integration would also make it more efficient.
Square also have films, anime and manga.
If they wanted to target the PC audience, they should buy kadokawa outright and make their games PlayStation only, simple as that.... not one goes to PC. That would make PS a necessary console to at least accompany a PC or in some cases replace.... given the chip shortages in combination.
Something like MiHoYo that make Genshin Impact, would help them break into China even more and is PlayStation and mobile, they could put loads of perks on PS+ subscriptions for the game every month or two and subs would explode.
Square would be a slower and more expensive growth target but with so much content, they could feed a rebranded PSNow with stuff like Outriders, MLB, Life is Strange and all the old FF and KH games along with other more niche titles.
Then they could add new big AAA games to their exclusive roster to bulk up without having to constantly pay for exclusivity.
The publisher, HR and PR etc integration would also make it more efficient.
Square also have films, anime and manga.
If they wanted to target the PC audience, they should buy kadokawa outright and make their games PlayStation only, simple as that.... not one goes to PC. That would make PS a necessary console to at least accompany a PC or in some cases replace.... given the chip shortages in combination.
yurinka
Member
Yes, MS also sells games/dlc/mtx. But the difference in revenue from gaming, or specifically from their software, it's very big. MS is on a distant third place compared to Sony and Nintendo to the point they decided to move their main focus away from console gaming (they don't have games fully exclusive for their console, all of them get released on PC day one) to console, mobile and specially PC (where they have Windows and so on) and from selling games to subscriptions. Their sales shouldn't be so big if they decided to get rid of them putting all these AAA games day one on a subscription.
In addition to this, notice the quote says 'accelerate investments in mobile and online services with the aim of expanding the number of consumers directly connected to its services to 1 billion people from 160 million.'
So first, some of these services maybe aren't subscriptions. Second, they talk about 'mobile and online' so very likely they are including non-gaming services here, maybe stuff like their anime subscriptins or something they may have for movies, music o even other stuff they may have and I don't know, or mobile services Sony may have like the PSN app or other services they may have for other departments (mobile phones or cameras maybe?). And third, notice they mention to grow from '160M' and PS Now+PS Plus combined aren't even 60M, so they are including somehting else.
The quote says 'accelerate investments in mobile and online services with the aim of expanding the number of consumers directly connected to its services to 1 billion people from 160 million.' So Funimation and Crunchyroll are included in these 'mobile and online services' (they didn't specify if they were talking about subscriptions or not).
Last edited:
TBiddy
Member
Of course Sony has higher revenue - they sell more consoles and more games
But I believe Sony will rapidly expand their streaming solution. They recently invested in Ubitus and have made an initial agreement with Microsoft to use Azure for streaming. But time will tell, I suppose.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
They already were in the subscription game. What are you talking about?
alabtrosMyster
Banned
They has PSNow for longer than GamePass has been on xbox (if this is what you are referring to), and Sony gamers gave PSNow the cold shoulder, this should show xbox gamers how to react when they are pushed that kind of stuff (with nicer slogans and less content)... Yet it works on xbox for some reason.
Their main paid subscription service is PS+ (still much bigger than other paid services).
160million active accounts (MAUs I assume) is pretty impressive, Steam has 120million xbox "more than" 100million...but getting to 1billion, I'm sceptic, that sounds like management wet dreams.
Last edited:
kyussman
Member
See,this is why competition is good....PlayStation stomp all over Xbox last gen with exclusive after exclusive of high quality,Microsoft say fuck this shit time to get serious and aquire a fuck load of studios....Sony see this and respond in kind with massive investment of their own.....result,lots of great games for us all to play.
DavidGzz
Member
If only more gamers could think like this instead of squabbling and waving their pompoms for their favorite plastic box.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Exactly!
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Wow. $18 billion on gaming partnerships, investments and sub growth over 3 years, or $6 billion on average per year.
That's more than the annual profit for the gaming division in an entire year. Their latest gaming division profit was around $3 billion per year.
OK Sony fans, how is this profitable and sustainable? You've criticized MS for spending beyond its division. And now Sony is loading up on spending that's literally double their divisions annual profit.
That's more than the annual profit for the gaming division in an entire year. Their latest gaming division profit was around $3 billion per year.
OK Sony fans, how is this profitable and sustainable? You've criticized MS for spending beyond its division. And now Sony is loading up on spending that's literally double their divisions annual profit.
Last edited:
alabtrosMyster
Banned
Xbox uses the pronouns they/garage!
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Totally.
And it's great news for Sony gamers because with how bad PS Now subs are now compared to their goal, it means Sony will be promoting the service a ton. More games, deals, partnerships and door crasher prices.
They arent going to get to their sub plan growth targets by doing what they are doing now. That $18 billion is going to be divied up into buckets. And no doubt some sweet cheap deals will be coming.
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
This isn't $18 billion just for their gaming division.
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
They arent getting to 1 billion connected products by only focusing on PS. And they arent either by focusing on PS and PC gamers.
As said in the OP info, mobile is a big thing and that's where the possible 1 billion target comes from. So getting tons of PS brand on smartphones will be key. Expect tons of mobile games to come.
alabtrosMyster
Banned
If they really buy their BS they think they will grow their gaming division over 6x because of unicorn gamers.
I think that they watched the MS gamepass promotion and MS got them to make a stupid move. I did not think that, but MS are playing chess here, they spend little actual energy to get their opponent to make a bold costly move.
Blond
Banned
We’re at most seen AA games launch. I don’t honestly consider Gears AAA anymore since the series has been going downhill since 2.
Microsoft will determine if this is worth it when they start launching these 100+ million dollar games on the service regularly. Warner Brothers backed out the “all films Day 1 on streaming” the moment they saw it wasn’t worth it
Negotiator101
Member
That's not likely that all that money would go to acquisitions, also Sony will never buy a publisher. Microsoft can do it because its peanuts to them. You see 18 billion over 3 years across all entertainment divisions, not so much now is it?
TBiddy
Member
At least read the thread and my multiple responses first.
yurinka
Member
Yes, a couple of years ago they had a meeting with inverstors where they did talk about 'next gen' plans for streaming and mentioned they plan to improve it up in many areas (to release it in more devices, more countries, improve streaming quality, pricing, content, to include PS5 games, support 5G, etc) and to scale it up after all these years of building the technology and catalog and test it.Of course Sony has higher revenue - they sell more consoles and more games
But I believe Sony will rapidly expand their streaming solution. They recently invested in Ubitus and have made an initial agreement with Microsoft to use Azure for streaming. But time will tell, I suppose.
They weren't too specific but hinted that they also plan to do something like Stadia this gen: in addition to buy a game as retail or digital download, to buy it for streaming. Regarding to use Azure or now, it doesn't affect how PS Now works. Azure is just a cloud server brand that offers basically the same than Amazon AWS, Google Cloud and so on, pretty likely they moved there because MS offered a better price or something like that. Azure/AWS/etc is the server infrastructure, a cloud to manage their 'physical' servers. Another thing is the cloud of their services like PSN or PS Now, that can be hosted using a server infrastructure or another one.
Azure isn't the market leader, and has a market share of about 20%. Like the other server clouds, most of their datacenters -where they physical servers are stored across the world- aren't owned by MS, but instead are from 3rd party data center companies who outsource their servers to Amazon, Google, Facebook, MS, and so on. So the data center you have close to your home and use for some AWS stuff pretty likely is the same that also runs Azure stuff.
The Sony and MS deal was more related to share efforts on cloud gaming R&D researching stuff for the future, that later I assume both could use in xCloud and PS Now.
Last edited:
Dabaus
Banned
I said this in another thread:
We’ve heard Sony wants to focus on entertainment this coming next few years. As far as what Sony’s goal or strategy is consider this:
Music: They already own a significant chunk of the music industry and any major moves such as acquisitions in that field will get looked at by antitrust lawyer’s.
Anime: same as music. Crunchy roll is already being reviewed by the doj to see if they don’t have a monopoly. Either way I could see Sony acquiring a few anime/manga houses in Japan if the doj blocks them.
Movies/film: I could see them expanding their movie studios productions, whatever that entails, but what movie studios are even available to purchase that wouldn’t be some 50 billion dollar investment? Heck MGM might get bought by Amazon for 9 billion and the only IP worth anything is James Bond.
Electronics: Not entertainment but maybe a chip maker or a factory or two?
Cell phone gaming: it’s a growing market and worth more than console gaming. It wouldn’t be a sexy investment but it makes sense. I doubt they’d blow their load on a cell phone gaming company but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.
Console gaming: There are still a lot of independent studios they can acquire or partner with. In my opinion there’s no good reason that SE or capcom haven’t been acquired or at least had a major stock purchase. Console gaming seems like the best place to focus on short and long term.
All in my opinion of course.
If they’re not in the mood for out right acquisitions then I could see major stock share buys in up and coming Chinese companies too.
We’ve heard Sony wants to focus on entertainment this coming next few years. As far as what Sony’s goal or strategy is consider this:
Music: They already own a significant chunk of the music industry and any major moves such as acquisitions in that field will get looked at by antitrust lawyer’s.
Anime: same as music. Crunchy roll is already being reviewed by the doj to see if they don’t have a monopoly. Either way I could see Sony acquiring a few anime/manga houses in Japan if the doj blocks them.
Movies/film: I could see them expanding their movie studios productions, whatever that entails, but what movie studios are even available to purchase that wouldn’t be some 50 billion dollar investment? Heck MGM might get bought by Amazon for 9 billion and the only IP worth anything is James Bond.
Electronics: Not entertainment but maybe a chip maker or a factory or two?
Cell phone gaming: it’s a growing market and worth more than console gaming. It wouldn’t be a sexy investment but it makes sense. I doubt they’d blow their load on a cell phone gaming company but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.
Console gaming: There are still a lot of independent studios they can acquire or partner with. In my opinion there’s no good reason that SE or capcom haven’t been acquired or at least had a major stock purchase. Console gaming seems like the best place to focus on short and long term.
All in my opinion of course.
If they’re not in the mood for out right acquisitions then I could see major stock share buys in up and coming Chinese companies too.
reinking
Gold Member
You are leaving out their entire music and media divisions.
Dr. Kitty Muffins
Member
I'd like to see them push Funimation more on Playstation. Perhaps start including a trial subscription with every PS5.
TaylorSwiftFan
Member
Turns Sony has deep pockets too.
It's like your saying microsoft doesn't have native android/ios games with full xbox integration. You know things like forza street, gears pop, minecraft.
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Yes, but the original comment was mainly about Gamepass and cloud gaming. And for mobile gaming both MS and PS are too small currently, and the massive Sony mobile game that is in the top 3 worldwide making billions of revenue is actually a Sony Music game.
John Wick
Member
Quite easy as the investment is for growth and increased sales and profit. If they add 5-10 million more subs just to PS+ that's money we'll spent.
D
Deleted member 471617
Unconfirmed Member
Come on Sony..................give me that PlayStation Game Pass with your exclusives day one for a monthly fee of $10 (I would go as high as $20). Let's go!!!! And start putting your exclusives on PC day one as well. Just a matter of time anyway so just do it already.
PharaoTutAnchAmun
Member
There are always people that do just that, they are born factcheckers, problem solved.
GHG
Member
Yeh indeed, since 2006. Well done, have a cookie.
Ev1L AuRoN
Member
Hope they continue bringing games for PC. Apart from that I don't really care...
yurinka
Member
They won't do it, because they already are market leaders in most areas using another strategy that, unlike would be to put their AAA games day one on a subscription, is profitable and sustainable.
They also get a most of their revenue from games and services for their console. So it's important for them to give it a ton of cool exclusive content at least with a temporal exclusivity to make them more appealing. For MS instead makes more senese to migrate their gaming business to PC because they make most of their revenue there, Windows is their platform, etc.
To release some PC ports of old previous gen games is ok for them as an extra revenue source, but will keep their main next gen games as full PS5 exclusive for many years.
Last edited:
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
NO SONY! DON'T DO THIS!!!!
Last edited:
John Wick
Member
Highly doubt it that they will put their games on PC day one. Maybe 6 months or a year down the line.
Similar threads
- Locked