It makes more sense to be with Tencent than with Sony. I don't see why Sony would want these studios. Sony doesn't need studios to make porting, F2P or these type of games, and they typically buy studios who previously did work with them many times. Splash Damage would be a good fit for Micrososft instead.
If Sony wants to buy someone, they should go after Kojipro, Quantic Dream, Remedy, Bluepoint, Housemarque, Ready at Dawn (once Facebook shuts down their gaming division after two or three years), R8Games (to make Wipeout games), or (if possible) From Software.
They are very successful focusing on single player games. They don't need to change that.
They had some onlines like GT or Street Fighter, and the online games are mostly dominated and saturated by multi games. And most of these multis like GTA, CoD, Destiny, FIFA (and now Fortnite?) etc already have marketing deals with Sony.
And well, if they want to bet harder on multi it wouldn't help to buy 2nd (or 3rd) tier studios.
They are very successful focusing on single player games. They don't need to change that.
They had some onlines like GT or Street Fighter, and the online games are mostly dominated and saturated by multi games. And most of these multis like GTA, CoD, Destiny, FIFA (and now Fortnite?) etc already have marketing deals with Sony.
And well, if they want to bet harder on multi it wouldn't help to buy 2nd (or 3rd) tier studios.
Last gen Sony had tons of shooters. Too many to keep track of.... KZ, Resistance, MAG, SOCOM, Warhawk/Starhawk, a couple of those PC-based ones like Planetside. I might have even missed a few.
Some better than others. Problem is that just shotgunned as many they could hoping one would stick as a big name shooter to keep up with EA and Activision franchises.
Sony could make great shooters if they just focused their attention on 1 or 2 shooters. If KZ is the key one, then just focus on that and make a really good KZ every 4 years like last gen. Only Call of Duty is annual. Every other shooter is around 3-4 years per sequel.
I think what happened is they had so many to keep afloat they decided to just give up on the whole genre.
No company has 5+ shooter franchises all going a once.
Warframe is Warframe. The value is multiplat and a tough grow.
Splash Damage is an interesting get. Talented support studio and good to give them a shot at an original IP or something. Guess you also keep a trusted studio away from MS/your competition....but
None of this really seems worth it.
Maybe theres a master plan, maybe it's for other territories or something. I dunno.
I think it's as much a political move as anything else - China is putting the hammers on Hong Kong with some recent law passed making dissent punishable, slowly the last vestiges of the semi-autonomous Hong Kong are passing away as it becomes fully Chinese Communist Party controlled.
Sony is getting 30% of all the money that all the games make on PlayStation, including these 3rd party online games. In fact they just invested $250M in the company behind one of them.
Sony already tried the last generation to make their own online multis and shooters, and didn't work out. That market was already saturated by the big players, so for PS4 they decided to switch to another strategy: to focus on single player content that is what works better for them, and to support these 3rd party big multiplayer games with marketing deals.
This new strategy gave them a record success beating the best numbers in the industry with their consoles selling more games an the previous ones, getting more money from game services than anyone else, and even their 1st party games selling better than they ever did. Some of these records are only topped by the best selling console ever, the PS2, which aligning sales did a very similar job than in PS4.
Sony's current strategy on focusing where they shine and supporting the best online multi performers is doing a great job, so it would be stupid to make important changes there. They should tweak it a bit with logical improvements, but without important changes.