Apparently, 2022 is the year of games industry acquisitions, because we’re barely two months into the year and simply put, everything is happening. Microsoft announced their upcoming acquisition of Activision during my worst timed lunch break ever, and just a few days ago, Sony seemingly fired back with their own plans to buy Bungie, the studio behind Destiny (and the creation of the Halo series).
Sony’s deal, despite costing $3.6 billion dollars, pales in comparison to Microsoft’s $68.9 billion deal, but of course, it’s still a lot of money. And in fact, some are suggesting that it might have been a lot more money than it really needed to be.
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According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, Sony may have acted a little bit hastily out of sheer desperation: “Sony, I think, just did a me too statement and said, we're not going to be left behind. So we'll buy Bungie,” he said, speaking to Yahoo Finance Live.
“Just to compare and contrast, EA bought Respawn about three or four years ago for $700 million with 400 developers. And those guys generate $700 million a year in revenue. Bungie does about $200 million in revenue,” he explained. “So I think Sony vastly overpaid. I think this was a statement that we're not going to let Microsoft get ahead of us, so we'll just buy something out of desperation. It's not really a deal that makes a whole lot of sense to me.”
Now, admittedly I’m no finance expert, but you wouldn’t think that any acquisitions, let alone any with billions of dollars fuelling them, would be able to be completely organised in under two weeks, because that’s how little time there was between Microsoft’s and Sony’s deals being announced. I just can’t imagine that you could go out and panic-buy an entire studio, but what do I know?
Currently, there’s been no date given for when we can expect Sony’s deal to go through, but they’ve made it clear that Bungie will continue to operate independently, and will remain a multiplatform studio.
Featured Image Credit: Sony, BungieTopics: Sony, Bungie, PlayStation