With the PlayStation 5 sales taking off in Europe, Sony may have the money to expand its PlayStation Studios portfolio.

In 2021, Sony said that it had set aside the equivalent of about $18.4 billion worth of yen for “strategic investments” in the entertainment industry over the next three years. Attending the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference, Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s chief financial officer, said nearly two years after Sony’s announcement that they still have the equivalent of about $5.1 billion for further expansion.

It means that their plans have been slightly modified, as they had 2 trillion yen, of which 1.3 trillion yen was spent on acquiring Bungie or Housemarque, for example. So they have 700 billion left, but he explained the change of plan: “We spent almost ¥1.3 trillion by the end of last year. We have another year more. We want to create more than ¥3 trillion cash flow in three years. Next year is the last year in our current mid-range plan. We will allocate operating cash flow to strategic investment, capital expenditure, and share buyback.”

It should be pointed out that this money is earmarked for the entire Sony company, not PlayStation. Square Enix is valued at about $5 billion, so Sony could pull the Japanese publisher in, as it did with Housemarque, Nixxes Software, Firesprite, Bluepoint Games, Valkyrie Entertainment, Savage Game Studios, Haven Studios, and Bungie. The company has also invested in Devolver Digital, FromSoftware, and Epic Games, but Sony owns Crunchyroll.

According to Gamesindustry, GSD data shows that in February, the PlayStation 5 “comfortably” beat the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series. Microsoft was 13% stronger than last February but still came last in the old continent; the Nintendo Switch was 28% weaker (understandable given its age), and the PlayStation 5 almost doubled the Switch’s sales.

This extra money will be used for expansion.

Source: WCCFTech, PSL