Buying the entire studio is the strongest show of confidence possible and is a huge cause for concern as Sony’s judgement is clearly way of base for the first time its history.
I’ll say it again; the move to California has killed the brand we grew up with.
The issue is not really misguided confidence, it's desperation.
People often think that Sony bought up a bunch of these no-names like Firewalk, Firesprite and Haven as a sort of tit-for-tat response to Microsoft buying some of their own. The timing of the announcements over the last years contributed to that impression, but I don't think retaliatory acquisitions against MS was the goal. I think the reality is that Sony had also destroyed so many of their own IP factories over the years and themselves needed to urgently replenish - just preferably in Jim's ill-fated live service direction.
Whenever I hear people talk about "just invest money into more single player", I have to stop and ask - what studio is going to make them? The single player studios they own already have AAA projects on their plate. These take 5+ years to produce nowadays if not usually longer. Sony are now faced with holes in their release calendar which have to be plugged with third-party exclusivity deals. Just look at this year's releases for a perfect example of that. They don't have enough studios any more to make their own content, partly because over the last couple of generations they
closed restructured Japan Studio, shuttered half a dozen of their UK studios and killed off Zipper (who in a stroke of irony could've made the very live service wank they've embarked upon).
These are the teams who used to put out a lot of their genre and middle market games which filled out release calendars, as well as provided the bulk of support for their side-hustles like PSVR, PSP and Vita. Every time PSVR2 is brought up, people always ask "where's the games"? Well, there's only about two internal studios left to actually make exclusives for it. Can't really expect miracles from something so anemic. There's currently rumors of a new Sony handheld coming out and, if it's not just going to be a cross-platform / port machine (snooze...), I guarantee people will be asking the same question - because again, who's going to make them?
This is what you get when you don't invest in talent and just cut what stops immediately making you money. Both Sony and Microsoft have found this out the hard way because what they've acquired to cement over the cracks is producing
dogshit.
