Quite a few acquisitions have been made in the video game industry lately. Microsoft went out and made some big moves with the purchase of ZeniMax Media and now their attempt to obtain Activision Blizzard. However, that doesn’t mean Sony won’t have any money to throw around to pick up some studios as well. A budget was set in place to make several acquisitions, and recently we have a new figure of what is left for the company. During a Morgan Stanley conference, the CFO for Sony, Hiroki Totoki, commented on what their budget currently looks like in terms of acquisitions.
While the company doesn’t have a budget to make a massive purchase like Microsoft’s big for Activision Blizzard, there is still quite a bit of money left. Apparently, Hiroki Totoki has stated that there is $5.1 billion left to spend on acquisitions this year. That means 2023 could still see plenty of studios being picked up, but it’s well worth pointing out that this budget is not strictly for PlayStation. This is a budget for Sony as a whole, so the acquisitions made in the past were not only for video game development. Instead, we also saw acquisitions for film, music, and television.
Since 2021, Sony has made a few notable acquisitions for Sony Interactive Entertainment. For a refresher, we saw studios, Housemarque, Nixxes Software, Firesprite, Bluepoint Games, and Bungie get picked up. Of course, that’s not all the video game acquisitions made, and it’s certainly not the only acquisitions Sony has made since they started to pick up companies in 2021. But with a little over $5 billion left to make these purchases, it should be interesting to see if there are any additional studios that are purchased for game development before 2024 arrives.
Right now, when it comes to acquisitions, the main focus has been on Microsoft. Currently, the company is awaiting regulator decisions to see if they are able to follow through with their massive bid for Activision Blizzard. The problem here is that this deal would also come with Call of Duty, a heavy-hitting IP franchise. To appease regulators, Microsoft has attempted to make deals to ensure that the game franchise would continue to see a release on competitor platforms. But for now, it’s purely a waiting game to see if this acquisition deal will go in favor of Microsoft or not.
