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Mergers and Acquisitions |OT| Thread Merged

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Came here to post that. Some interesting quotes:

Sony has now revealed it has spent 850 billion yen (roughly $7.4 billion) of its allocated budget, leaving about $10 billion left for further purchases. Sony's current bill includes the substantial $3.6 billion buyout of Bungie, as well as billions in share buybacks.
What's interesting is that the $7.4 billion investment total also includes deals that haven't been made public yet. Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan said more acquisitions are coming: "We should absolutely expect more. We have many more moves to make."
Basically, we haven't even heard about everything they have acquired, besides the 10b they still haven't spent.

Might not be for videogames though.
If Sony has acquired something it has to be a private company right? If not, we would know it by now i think...
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
Yo Yo?
Dis you
v
v
v
v


Id take a long step back before accusing people of having limited comprehension.

maxresdefault.jpg



call-of-duty-mobile-.jpg



diablo-immortal-1.jpg



candycrush.png


The epitome of limited comprehension:

- Showing 4 JPEGs to try to prove a point, one of which belonging to a game that wasn't even released (lol), and another to a game that wasn't mentioned in the quoted post.



Here are Activision-Blizzard's revenues from their latest annual reports:


tWIG1Tw.png



Most of that mobile revenue is coming from King games (which are all mobile):


4bdzTwr.png





So no, the list of Starcraft + Warcraft + Diablo + Call of Duty franchises with an aggregated revenue of under $500M are not substantially relevant for the $70B mobile games market.





But by all means, do keep posting those JPEGs of games that didn't come out yet, as proof that Diablo is so important to the mobile games market. While claiming the others have limited comprehension.
 

Papacheeks

Banned

Biggest part of this article was this in my opinion:

The bulk of Sony's spending was made on content IP, which follows the current feeding frenzy for games and franchises, and the lion's share was spent on its Games and Network Services segment.

What's interesting is that the $7.4 billion investment total also includes deals that haven't been made public yet. Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan said more acquisitions are coming: "We should absolutely expect more. We have many more moves to make."

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/8436...spend-on-acquisitions-through-2023/index.html

"The amount of capital allocated to strategic investments, including the acquisition of Bungie...and repurchases of Sony stock, from the beginning of this fiscal year until today, and including acquisitions and asset purchases that have closed as well as those that have been decided but not closed, totals approximately 850 billion yen."

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/8436...spend-on-acquisitions-through-2023/index.html
 
The epitome of limited comprehension:

- Showing 4 JPEGs to try to prove a point, one of which belonging to a game that wasn't even released (lol), and another to a game that wasn't mentioned in the quoted post.



Here are Activision-Blizzard's revenues from their latest annual reports:


tWIG1Tw.png



Most of that mobile revenue is coming from King games (which are all mobile):


4bdzTwr.png





So no, the list of Starcraft + Warcraft + Diablo + Call of Duty franchises with an aggregated revenue of under $500M are not substantially relevant for the $70B mobile games market.





But by all means, do keep posting those JPEGs of games that didn't come out yet, as proof that Diablo is so important to the mobile games market. While claiming the others have limited comprehension.
CoD Mobile alone hit over $1B in revenue in 2021. You're done here, sorry.
 
Even after the acquisition MS won't even be the 2nd in the gaming market, or even specifically in consoles. Or in PC. Or in mobile. Or in VR. They aren't market leaders even in game subscriptions. As Satya Nutella says, they'll barely have around 10% of the gaming market. There is absolutely no reason to block this acquisition.


Do you remember Second Life and PS Home? Basically that with better visuals, and in some cases in VR.


The Japanese goverment doesn't allow to sell Sony or Nintendo to foreigner companies. So even if Sony and Nintendo would want to sell that wouldn't happen.

I agree that Sony most likely couldn't be acquired by a foreign corporation, because they also have a deep hand in supplying various Japanese governmental organizations, research firms, medical fields etc. with equipment and supplies, not to mention their involvement in the financial market (their financing division).

Nintendo, though? I get that they dominate the Japanese non-mobile portable gaming market, and they're a huge company, but they're also purely a gaming company. IIRC, while Japan has protectionary rules for corporations involved in "key sectors" from being acquired by foreign corporations (mainly via hostile takeovers), gaming isn't one of those "key sectors" IIRC. So it would make companies like Nintendo potentially exempt and open for acquisition by a foreign corporation.

Or I could be wrong and just their sheer size even in a market like gaming would make them a special case. But for other, much smaller Japanese gaming publishers, they could definitely be acquired by foreign corporations (particularly Western ones) as long as regulations are followed and everything clears. Japan does make it a bit harder for foreign companies to do such a thing, but it's nowhere near uncommon.

That said I do think Nintendo would be a specific exemption, considering their ecosystem supports so many other publishers & developers in the region. And Sony of course are exempted because of their involvement in markets that fall under defined "key sectors". They probably couldn't even be acquired by another Japanese corporation, though they could probably enter a merger with one.

Which, push come to shove, they would most likely opt for that. At one point Matsushita was even bigger than Sony, but not anymore. Hitachi is the 2nd biggest; considering their previous work with CPUs and other semiconductor designs, they could be a viable merger off into the future.

Everyone here needs to relax and stop calling each other out based on a landscape that is constantly changing. Given everything that has happened the past few weeks (that no one saw coming), do you ALL really need to act so immaturely — bringing up things people may have said in the past as a "gotcha" moment? Are ya'll serious? lol come on guys. You can do better than this.

Well if some people didn't try downplaying Activision-Blizzard's non-COD mobile output as being essentially "nothingburgers" in total revenue, or saying they had no presence on mobile at all when they factually do, then they wouldn't get responses proving them wrong 🤷‍♂️

Another thing that really gets me is why anyone here would want any of the two companies to OWN everything. Yeah, we should acknowledge and assess the situation based on what has happened but it is perfectly fine for people to say that the deal will go through and also perfectly fine for others to point out why it might not go through. I know its hard and I have been guilty of this too (and regret it) but it's time to move on from what may have been said, may not have been said to what is happening now.

Just chill.

I agree that there are people who now have a fetish for acquisitions, and it's probably weird, and it's always best to just assess things based on what's happened instead of what some do in theorizing more acquisitions like a game of fantasy football.

However, if the same few people keep insisting the deal "won't go through" based on supposed evidence that amounts to nothing, have been shown multiple times why their insistence of the deal being "successfully challenged" is wrong, and continue to double-down anyway, then it's pretty clear they just simply don't want the deal to go through, probably due to very nonsensical reasons.

What the FTC is doing is a formal process; it's normal. Anyone trying to make it out as something "more than usual" to suggest the deal might get blocked are playing themselves. Investigations can always bring a deal to a pause that otherwise resumes and the acquisition goes through anyway. That just happened not long ago with Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll; it was being investigated (as per normal), then got stopped. I'm sure Sony's people, Crunchyroll's people and the investigating body (dunno if it was the FTC or DOJ) discussed a few things, probably made some slight alterations, and then the investigation was concluded and the deal went through anyway.

Some people literally still view every Microsoft acquisition as some immoral event to be turned into a circus event at the courts, all stemming from a single event dating back decades under a way different management. Almost every reason most people gave to seriously imply the Zenimax acquisition would not pass, or are doing now to suggest similar with the Activision-Blizzard one, comes from perceptions painted from that one trail back at the turn of the century. That's their only real leverage, and it hasn't been relevant to modern-day Microsoft for over two decades.

The epitome of limited comprehension:

- Showing 4 JPEGs to try to prove a point, one of which belonging to a game that wasn't even released (lol), and another to a game that wasn't mentioned in the quoted post.



Here are Activision-Blizzard's revenues from their latest annual reports:


tWIG1Tw.png



Most of that mobile revenue is coming from King games (which are all mobile):


4bdzTwr.png





So no, the list of Starcraft + Warcraft + Diablo + Call of Duty franchises with an aggregated revenue of under $500M are not substantially relevant for the $70B mobile games market.





But by all means, do keep posting those JPEGs of games that didn't come out yet, as proof that Diablo is so important to the mobile games market. While claiming the others have limited comprehension.

You do realize that $500 million in revenue is absolutely not a "pittance", though, right? That's still way more than the majority of publishers on consoles see for all their releases combined in the entire year.

Even a company the size of Activision-Blizzard is always going to notice $500 million missing. There's no downplaying that.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I agree that Sony most likely couldn't be acquired by a foreign corporation, because they also have a deep hand in supplying various Japanese governmental organizations, research firms, medical fields etc. with equipment and supplies, not to mention their involvement in the financial market (their financing division).

Nintendo, though? I get that they dominate the Japanese non-mobile portable gaming market, and they're a huge company, but they're also purely a gaming company. IIRC, while Japan has protectionary rules for corporations involved in "key sectors" from being acquired by foreign corporations (mainly via hostile takeovers), gaming isn't one of those "key sectors" IIRC. So it would make companies like Nintendo potentially exempt and open for acquisition by a foreign corporation.

Or I could be wrong and just their sheer size even in a market like gaming would make them a special case. But for other, much smaller Japanese gaming publishers, they could definitely be acquired by foreign corporations (particularly Western ones) as long as regulations are followed and everything clears. Japan does make it a bit harder for foreign companies to do such a thing, but it's nowhere near uncommon.

That said I do think Nintendo would be a specific exemption, considering their ecosystem supports so many other publishers & developers in the region. And Sony of course are exempted because of their involvement in markets that fall under defined "key sectors". They probably couldn't even be acquired by another Japanese corporation, though they could probably enter a merger with one.

Which, push come to shove, they would most likely opt for that. At one point Matsushita was even bigger than Sony, but not anymore. Hitachi is the 2nd biggest; considering their previous work with CPUs and other semiconductor designs, they could be a viable merger off into the future.



Well if some people didn't try downplaying Activision-Blizzard's non-COD mobile output as being essentially "nothingburgers" in total revenue, or saying they had no presence on mobile at all when they factually do, then they wouldn't get responses proving them wrong 🤷‍♂️



I agree that there are people who now have a fetish for acquisitions, and it's probably weird, and it's always best to just assess things based on what's happened instead of what some do in theorizing more acquisitions like a game of fantasy football.

However, if the same few people keep insisting the deal "won't go through" based on supposed evidence that amounts to nothing, have been shown multiple times why their insistence of the deal being "successfully challenged" is wrong, and continue to double-down anyway, then it's pretty clear they just simply don't want the deal to go through, probably due to very nonsensical reasons.

What the FTC is doing is a formal process; it's normal. Anyone trying to make it out as something "more than usual" to suggest the deal might get blocked are playing themselves. Investigations can always bring a deal to a pause that otherwise resumes and the acquisition goes through anyway. That just happened not long ago with Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll; it was being investigated (as per normal), then got stopped. I'm sure Sony's people, Crunchyroll's people and the investigating body (dunno if it was the FTC or DOJ) discussed a few things, probably made some slight alterations, and then the investigation was concluded and the deal went through anyway.

Some people literally still view every Microsoft acquisition as some immoral event to be turned into a circus event at the courts, all stemming from a single event dating back decades under a way different management. Almost every reason most people gave to seriously imply the Zenimax acquisition would not pass, or are doing now to suggest similar with the Activision-Blizzard one, comes from perceptions painted from that one trail back at the turn of the century. That's their only real leverage, and it hasn't been relevant to modern-day Microsoft for over two decades.



You do realize that $500 million in revenue is absolutely not a "pittance", though, right? That's still way more than the majority of publishers on consoles see for all their releases combined in the entire year.

Even a company the size of Activision-Blizzard is always going to notice $500 million missing. There's no downplaying that.

Interesting take, despite reading only 10%. How many books have you released so far though? Your typing skills seem to be insane.
 

sainraja

Member
Well if some people didn't try downplaying Activision-Blizzard's non-COD mobile output as being essentially "nothingburgers" in total revenue, or saying they had no presence on mobile at all when they factually do, then they wouldn't get responses proving them wrong 🤷‍♂️

I agree that there are people who now have a fetish for acquisitions, and it's probably weird, and it's always best to just assess things based on what's happened instead of what some do in theorizing more acquisitions like a game of fantasy football.

However, if the same few people keep insisting the deal "won't go through" based on supposed evidence that amounts to nothing, have been shown multiple times why their insistence of the deal being "successfully challenged" is wrong, and continue to double-down anyway, then it's pretty clear they just simply don't want the deal to go through, probably due to very nonsensical reasons.

What the FTC is doing is a formal process; it's normal. Anyone trying to make it out as something "more than usual" to suggest the deal might get blocked are playing themselves. Investigations can always bring a deal to a pause that otherwise resumes and the acquisition goes through anyway. That just happened not long ago with Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll; it was being investigated (as per normal), then got stopped. I'm sure Sony's people, Crunchyroll's people and the investigating body (dunno if it was the FTC or DOJ) discussed a few things, probably made some slight alterations, and then the investigation was concluded and the deal went through anyway.

Some people literally still view every Microsoft acquisition as some immoral event to be turned into a circus event at the courts, all stemming from a single event dating back decades under a way different management. Almost every reason most people gave to seriously imply the Zenimax acquisition would not pass, or are doing now to suggest similar with the Activision-Blizzard one, comes from perceptions painted from that one trail back at the turn of the century. That's their only real leverage, and it hasn't been relevant to modern-day Microsoft for over two decades.
Then it's cyclical. You all are just going to rinse/repeat the same thing over and over any time this topic surfaces. But that wasn't what my post was directed at — the points you are bringing up are discussions around this topic, you all can keep doing that, that's the point...ofcourse doesn't mean everyone will agree. I was questioning the need for bringing up things people may have said in the past — calling each other out as if opinions are simply static as a "gotcha" moment.
 
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Fess

Member
Oh yeah, definitely were pretty big on Amiga; I've seen some channels dig into their history and it's pretty extensive. But even in places like Europe, I always got the impression publishers like Ocean were quite bigger and more prolific.

Then again, that might be due to the fact Ocean loved to make licensed games. A lot.
Both were huge but Ocean was slightly bigger going by these lists, 96 vs 73 games:
 

Lognor

Banned
The Forbes article you referenced alludes to exactly what I was saying; Microsoft wasn't willing to let Bungie operate as independently as they desired. Just switch Microsoft with Sony and vice versa in bolded statement as this is what ended up happening:




Bungie's independence is VERY different. They have level of autonomy at the legal/entity level with their own board of directors.
Well to be fair, the author of that article has no clue about the negotiations. It's riddles with maybes and possiblys and perhaps and it's hard to believe.....He is just speculating. We don't know the details of the deal. We know they were trying to work out a deal and I think we know that Bungie wanted too much money.
 

yurinka

Member
I agree that Sony most likely couldn't be acquired by a foreign corporation, because they also have a deep hand in supplying various Japanese governmental organizations, research firms, medical fields etc. with equipment and supplies, not to mention their involvement in the financial market (their financing division).

Nintendo, though? I get that they dominate the Japanese non-mobile portable gaming market, and they're a huge company, but they're also purely a gaming company. IIRC, while Japan has protectionary rules for corporations involved in "key sectors" from being acquired by foreign corporations (mainly via hostile takeovers), gaming isn't one of those "key sectors" IIRC. So it would make companies like Nintendo potentially exempt and open for acquisition by a foreign corporation.

Or I could be wrong and just their sheer size even in a market like gaming would make them a special case.

But for other, much smaller Japanese gaming publishers, they could definitely be acquired by foreign corporations (particularly Western ones) as long as regulations are followed and everything clears. Japan does make it a bit harder for foreign companies to do such a thing, but it's nowhere near uncommon.

That said I do think Nintendo would be a specific exemption, considering their ecosystem supports so many other publishers & developers in the region. And Sony of course are exempted because of their involvement in markets that fall under defined "key sectors". They probably couldn't even be acquired by another Japanese corporation, though they could probably enter a merger with one.

Which, push come to shove, they would most likely opt for that. At one point Matsushita was even bigger than Sony, but not anymore. Hitachi is the 2nd biggest; considering their previous work with CPUs and other semiconductor designs, they could be a viable merger off into the future.
The Japanese forbids to sell some top Japanese companies from some strategical areas to foreigners. Inside tech, two of these companies are Sony and Nintendo. For all telcom (I think this doesn't apply for games companies, at leastt the ones who doesn't have a telcom company inside their corporation) companies the goverment must approve (doesn't forbid) any shares acquisition which means thatt a foreigner gets over 10% of the company.

I don't know the list of companies affectted by these regulattions, but I assume smaller Japanese publishers and devs aren't affected by this. It would be nice to make some reseach about this topic.
 

Wulfer

Member
I'm cheering for Sony acquisition not because of "my games on my favorite console only", but to prevent other corporation from snagging it.
I don't really care much about acquisitions UNTIL the acquisition of Zenimax and Activision by Microsoft.

If there is a mega corporation out there snagging up mega publishers left and right, you would hope for acquisitions by your favorite company as a defensive position as well, im just being realistic here, just like every playstation/xbox gamer out there.
The time for being realistic has passed my friend. The time of "Nukem" is upon us!
 

yurinka

Member
They need some of those money for other business. SIE isnt their only sector. They need to be careful on how much they spend.
Reading the article I just saw that in the $7.4B already spent of this $17.4B budget there are deals that haven't been made public yet.


"What's interesting is that the $7.4 billion investment total also includes deals that haven't been made public yet. Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan said more acquisitions are coming: "We should absolutely expect more. We have many more moves to make."
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
CoD Mobile alone hit over $1B in revenue in 2021. You're done here, sorry.
Neither do you know how much it made in 2021 because Activision-Blizzard didn't publish their FY 2021 results yet, nor did Activision-Blizzard ever state that the game crossed $1B.

When they released their Q2 results they claimed the game was on track to exceed $1B spending for the year. Which BTW is something they did not claim for the next quarter.

You're done here, bye.


You do realize that $500 million in revenue is absolutely not a "pittance", though, right? That's still way more than the majority of publishers on consoles see for all their releases combined in the entire year.

Even a company the size of Activision-Blizzard is always going to notice $500 million missing. There's no downplaying that.


The point was that CoD + Diablo + Warcraft + Starcraft (+ Overwatch while we're at it) is exponentially more significant to the console + PC markets than they are for mobile.
Claiming that they need CoD + Diablo + Warcraft + Starcraft + Overwatch (which constitutes de bulk of the $75B purchase considering their revenue proportions) to be able to compete in the mobile market for metaverse content is just false.

Whether or not that will stick on FTC's eyes, is a whole other subject.
 
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The Japanese forbids to sell some top Japanese companies from some strategical areas to foreigners. Inside tech, two of these companies are Sony and Nintendo. For all telcom (I think this doesn't apply for games companies, at leastt the ones who doesn't have a telcom company inside their corporation) companies the goverment must approve (doesn't forbid) any shares acquisition which means thatt a foreigner gets over 10% of the company.

I don't know the list of companies affectted by these regulattions, but I assume smaller Japanese publishers and devs aren't affected by this. It would be nice to make some reseach about this topic.

Here's the list of companies protected for anyone interested

 

Thirty7ven

Banned
I don’t believe there’s even a moral argument to be made against MS buying AB, but of course I have my own biased personal opinion.

If Im being objective I might feel it’s anti competitive, but at the end of the day it isn’t. It’s a bit gross, gratuitous even, but setting aside my role playing character of a a PlayStation schill… it’s fair and square.

It’s not like MS first move with Xbox was buying AB, they have an established brand and presence in the game that has been cultivated throughout three generation of consoles, and that’s not the same as Google or Amazon or whatever coming in hot. Hell Kotic’s first choice was Meta, which tells you all you need to know about how much he cared about the industry, for all intents and purposes, AB’s legacy IPs are in better hands.


What does Nvidia and ARM have to say about this?

Friday Movie GIF

Heh, that’s mostly due to the lobbying power of competitors, even MS went in on it. If these other mega corps didn’t rush to cry foul I bet the FTC wouldn’t have done shit.
 
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kingfey

Banned
Reading the article I just saw that in the $7.4B already spent of this $17.4B budget there are deals that haven't been made public yet.


"What's interesting is that the $7.4 billion investment total also includes deals that haven't been made public yet. Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan said more acquisitions are coming: "We should absolutely expect more. We have many more moves to make."
Square is in the bag then.
 
Reading the article I just saw that in the $7.4B already spent of this $17.4B budget there are deals that haven't been made public yet.


"What's interesting is that the $7.4 billion investment total also includes deals that haven't been made public yet. Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan said more acquisitions are coming: "We should absolutely expect more. We have many more moves to make."
I bet that $7.4 billion number includes all of the Bungie $3.6 billion, in which today it seems we learned that $1.2 billion of it is a long term incentive for employees to stay. So there is a good chance that $1.2 billion is actually not part of the $17.4B allocation for acquisitions since it's a long term pay out. There's a good chance that $7.4B should actually be $6.2B. So Sony might have $11.2B left of the $17.4B, not just $10 billion.
 
I agree that Sony most likely couldn't be acquired by a foreign corporation, because they also have a deep hand in supplying various Japanese governmental organizations, research firms, medical fields etc. with equipment and supplies, not to mention their involvement in the financial market (their financing division).

Nintendo, though? I get that they dominate the Japanese non-mobile portable gaming market, and they're a huge company, but they're also purely a gaming company. IIRC, while Japan has protectionary rules for corporations involved in "key sectors" from being acquired by foreign corporations (mainly via hostile takeovers), gaming isn't one of those "key sectors" IIRC. So it would make companies like Nintendo potentially exempt and open for acquisition by a foreign corporation.

Or I could be wrong and just their sheer size even in a market like gaming would make them a special case. But for other, much smaller Japanese gaming publishers, they could definitely be acquired by foreign corporations (particularly Western ones) as long as regulations are followed and everything clears. Japan does make it a bit harder for foreign companies to do such a thing, but it's nowhere near uncommon.

That said I do think Nintendo would be a specific exemption, considering their ecosystem supports so many other publishers & developers in the region. And Sony of course are exempted because of their involvement in markets that fall under defined "key sectors". They probably couldn't even be acquired by another Japanese corporation, though they could probably enter a merger with one.

Which, push come to shove, they would most likely opt for that. At one point Matsushita was even bigger than Sony, but not anymore. Hitachi is the 2nd biggest; considering their previous work with CPUs and other semiconductor designs, they could be a viable merger off into the future.



Well if some people didn't try downplaying Activision-Blizzard's non-COD mobile output as being essentially "nothingburgers" in total revenue, or saying they had no presence on mobile at all when they factually do, then they wouldn't get responses proving them wrong 🤷‍♂️



I agree that there are people who now have a fetish for acquisitions, and it's probably weird, and it's always best to just assess things based on what's happened instead of what some do in theorizing more acquisitions like a game of fantasy football.

However, if the same few people keep insisting the deal "won't go through" based on supposed evidence that amounts to nothing, have been shown multiple times why their insistence of the deal being "successfully challenged" is wrong, and continue to double-down anyway, then it's pretty clear they just simply don't want the deal to go through, probably due to very nonsensical reasons.

What the FTC is doing is a formal process; it's normal. Anyone trying to make it out as something "more than usual" to suggest the deal might get blocked are playing themselves. Investigations can always bring a deal to a pause that otherwise resumes and the acquisition goes through anyway. That just happened not long ago with Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll; it was being investigated (as per normal), then got stopped. I'm sure Sony's people, Crunchyroll's people and the investigating body (dunno if it was the FTC or DOJ) discussed a few things, probably made some slight alterations, and then the investigation was concluded and the deal went through anyway.

Some people literally still view every Microsoft acquisition as some immoral event to be turned into a circus event at the courts, all stemming from a single event dating back decades under a way different management. Almost every reason most people gave to seriously imply the Zenimax acquisition would not pass, or are doing now to suggest similar with the Activision-Blizzard one, comes from perceptions painted from that one trail back at the turn of the century. That's their only real leverage, and it hasn't been relevant to modern-day Microsoft for over two decades.



You do realize that $500 million in revenue is absolutely not a "pittance", though, right? That's still way more than the majority of publishers on consoles see for all their releases combined in the entire year.

Even a company the size of Activision-Blizzard is always going to notice $500 million missing. There's no downplaying that.

The Japanese forbids to sell some top Japanese companies from some strategical areas to foreigners. Inside tech, two of these companies are Sony and Nintendo. For all telcom (I think this doesn't apply for games companies, at leastt the ones who doesn't have a telcom company inside their corporation) companies the goverment must approve (doesn't forbid) any shares acquisition which means thatt a foreigner gets over 10% of the company.

I don't know the list of companies affectted by these regulattions, but I assume smaller Japanese publishers and devs aren't affected by this. It would be nice to make some reseach about this topic.


Sony is level 3 company, cannot be acquired by foreign entities due to national security, lots of manufacturing and electronic companies in this category

Nintendo is level 2 company, will be VERY hard to acquire by foreign entity due to its status as Japan icon/symbol, to preserve national identity

basically, no they cannot be acquired by foreign entity
 
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yurinka

Member
I bet that $7.4 billion number includes all of the Bungie $3.6 billion, in which today it seems we learned that $1.2 billion of it is a long term incentive for employees to stay. So there is a good chance that $1.2 billion is actually not part of the $17.4B allocation for acquisitions since it's a long term pay out. There's a good chance that $7.4B should actually be $6.2B. So Sony might have $11.2B left of the $17.4B, not just $10 billion.
84367_54_sony-has-10-billion-left-to-spend-on-acquisitions-through-2023_full.png

I found this, seems 37.5% of the 7.4B are for G&NS, so ~$2.78B. Bungie was 'decided' inside this period, so I assume that as you said in only counts $2.4B of Bungie:

$2.78B of budged closed or decided in tthe part of SIE from:
-$2.4B in buying Bungie
-$200M investing on Epic
-~$180M (I assume, it's the remaining part, butt seems too low) in 5% of Devolver and the acquisitions of Housemarque, Bluepoint, Firesprite, Fabrik, Nixxes and Valkyrie

The acquisition of Lasengle, Crunchyroll and investmentts on Scopely and Discord would be from oher divisions
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Sony is level 3 company, cannot be acquired by foreign entities due to national security, lots of manufacturing and electronic companies in this category

Nintendo is level 2 company, will be VERY hard to acquire by foreign entity due to its status as Japan icon/symbol, to preserve national identity

basically, no they cannot be acquired by foreign entity

What about a company like Sega, Capcom, SNK etc?
 

Helghan

Member
Came here to post that. Some interesting quotes:



Basically, we haven't even heard about everything they have acquired, besides the 10b they still haven't spent.

Might not be for videogames though.
If Sony has acquired something it has to be a private company right? If not, we would know it by now i think...
Indeed, if they were listed we would already know about it. Since they've got another 10 billion left, they can do some cool stuff with that. No EA or TakeTwo, but Ubisoft is still possible, Capcom. A lot of potential.
 

yurinka

Member
Here's the list of companies protected for anyone interested



  • Sony is level 3 company, cannot be acquired by foreign entities due to national security, lots of manufacturing and electronic companies in this category

    Nintendo is level 2 company, will be VERY hard to acquire by foreign entity due to its status as Japan icon/symbol, to preserve national identity

    basically, no they cannot be acquired by foreign entity

Ok htanks. Do you know how this is called or where I can find more info about the 3 levels and until which level it forbids or avoid being acquired from foreigner companies? I did some searches and found these game companies in the list:

Level 1
  • Capcom
  • Square Enix
  • Marvelous

Level 2
  • Nintendo
  • Sega Sammy
  • Konami
  • Bandai Namco
  • Kadokawa (From Sofware parent company)
  • Koei Tecmo
  • GungHo
  • CyberAgent
  • Nexon

Level 3
  • Sony
Edit: I think it's explained it here and I'm not sure about it, I don't understand it. Is it really forbidden? https://thelawreviews.co.uk/title/the-foreign-investment-regulation-review/japan
 
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What about a company like Sega, Capcom, SNK etc?

they can be acquired by foreign entities. But from what I've heard, Japanese are very traditionalist people, they'd rather sell their stakes to fellow Japanese (many rich Japanese families own chunks of portions of these companies)
 
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yurinka

Member
National security risk. Tencent can buy Sony, and pose a national security threat to japan. They dont want that.
I understand the idea you mention, but I did a small research and what I found doesn't say that. It basically says that Tencent needs to do some notification/paperwork to buy it, not that the govenment will stop it.

I didn't find any source mentioning that the government forbids these acquisitions, in the same way that I didn't find an accurate description of the 3 levels.
 

kingfey

Banned
I understand the idea you mention, but I did a small research and what I found doesn't say that. It basically says that Tencent needs to do some notification/paperwork to buy it, not that the govenment will stop it.

I didn't find any source mentioning that the government forbids these acquisitions, in the same way that I didn't find an accurate description of the 3 levels.

basically this.
 
This is not a good comparison considering starfeild and ES6 can come out and do 20 million each and ESO is on game pass and they still have 5 or 6 other studios that come with this acquisition that can potentially make a hit. Ehhhh
Bungie makes it from one game. Zenimax makes all of that from multiple games. They already said they are planning

Nothing says the Starfield will be as big as Bungie’s next game.
 
Bungie makes it from one game. Zenimax makes all of that from multiple games. They already said they are planning

Nothing says the Starfield will be as big as Bungie’s next game.

Nothing says Bungie's next game will be as big as any game by any Zenimax studio, modern Bungie has only made the Destiny games, it's not like they're some guaranteed studio that will absolutely make a hit with their next game
 

Kagey K

Banned
Nothing says Bungie's next game will be as big as any game by any Zenimax studio, modern Bungie has only made the Destiny games, it's not like they're some guaranteed studio that will absolutely make a hit with their next game
They have literally only made 2 games since 2001, Halo and MMO lite Halo (Destiny)

Not the best track record.

They were also the ones with the "I dont have time to explain" dialogue in the already thin story.
 
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kingfey

Banned
trying to find out when they started investing.

they invested between q3 2020 and stopped in q2 2021 for activision, disclosure was q3 21
SA PIF have been hard on investing these following years. They bought New Castle united from the premier league.

People want to get rid of their cash money fast. I wouldn't be surprised if we see these type of deals.
 
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