We can expect half an hour of PlayStation news in a matter of days, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Sony announced that further acquisitions would have been agreed upon later this summer.
Sony has announced on the PlayStation Blog that a new State of Play broadcast will air on June 2 at 3 PM PT/6 PM Eastern (or 11:59 in Central European Time). It will be streamed on YouTube and Twitch. The half-hour show will include new announcements, sneak peeks, and updates. The brief sneak peeks will be on games coming to PlayStation VR2. There will also be “some exciting reveals from” their “third-party partners” (it’s almost a certainty that Final Fantasy XVI from Square Enix will be among them).
VGC has written up what Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan had to say about further acquisitions (M&A stands for merger & acquisition!): “In terms of future M&A activity, the answer to that is we are not at all finished with our strategy of trying to grow PlayStation Studios inorganically. As we transition from our historic game development strategy to a much broader market reach than we enjoy today, the inorganic stimulus will likely be required to help us realise these dreams. And to the extent that potential targets fit with our strategy, to the extent that potential targets allow us to accelerate how we can deliver on our strategy, we will certainly consider further M&A activity to add to our business portfolio.”
Ryan then explained the rationale behind Sony Interactive Entertainment’s acquisition strategy: “We’ve been highly active in M&A and investment. Deals to fully acquire five developers have closed, with talks going with Bungie and Haven Studios. Strategic investments have been made in Discord, Devolver Digital, and AccelByte. It should also be noted that this does not include the further investments made into Epic Games by Sony Group Corporation. The purpose of these investments is to increase our core strength at PlayStation Studios and acquire expertise in game development areas where historically we have not had a significant presence. The planned Bungie partnership is an excellent example of the latter.
Bungie is one of the leading developers and publishers of live service games today, and we’re incredibly excited at the thought of applying their expertise and lessons learned as we build out our plans in the area of live services. Correspondingly, we believe that many of SIE’s assets and expertise will allow us to help Bungie to fulfil its dream to be one of the world’s leading entertainment companies.”
Ryan is much drier in business terms than Xbox boss Phil Spencer. Let’s just say that after his downplaying of the Middle East and backwards compatibility (all of which we’ve reported on in the past!), it’s fairer to say he’s a businessman, not a real gamer…
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