As the global investment and acquisition boom in the game industry that began last year has become more and more hot, people are now beginning to struggle with how to determine the "large amount" in the "large acquisition". From Take-Two's acquisition of Zyng for more than $11 billion at the beginning of the year, Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and Sony's $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie, this year's global game acquisition industry has been constantly in turmoil.
Last year, ByteDance's acquisition of Mu Hitomi Technology was rumored to cost $4 billion, directly squeezed into the global game acquisition case Top5, when the $4 billion far exceeded the "large" standard of market recognition, called "super large" or "huge". With the beginning of this year, the continuous emergence of super-large game acquisitions, people's understanding of the amount of game acquisition cases has been constantly refreshed. If before this year, more than $1 billion in game acquisitions was already a huge amount of industry shocks, but now, when people in the industry hear about "large acquisitions", the understanding of "large amounts" has become more and more upward.
Is it rumored that Sony's next "big acquisition" will be a Japanese factory?
In the wave of major manufacturers and global game acquisitions, Sony is currently one of the most watched companies, on the one hand, Sony released a strategic plan of "planning to invest 2 trillion yen (about $18 billion) in the next three years (not limited to games)" last year; on the other hand, after the game investment tide became hotter and hotter last year, the metacosm became a new hot word, Sony's investment budget obviously increased, in october last year's speculation, Sony is in the state of "expansion and acquisition", It is expected that $13-18 billion will be used to acquire game studios.
In fact, since Sony announced a strategic investment budget of $18 billion last year, to April 15, there have been more than 8 public game studio investment acquisitions, with a total investment amount of more than $5 billion, and the well-known foreign uncle party has also revealed that Sony's acquisition plan this year is very large, and there will be a "very big" acquisition to be announced.
In addition, after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and Bunjie was exposed this year, TGA founder Geoff Keighley also hinted on the push: "This year, there are many large acquisition plans that have entered the late stages, and it will be a very lively year." This is also confirmed by the next "big move" of Sony, who was exposed by the uncle party.
Interestingly, after Sony's rumors that there will be a large acquisition, whether it is gamers or major analysts to discuss and speculate, The Japanese factory is its hottest discussion target.
In September last year, there were also uncles who broke the news that "Microsoft is secretly carrying out a huge acquisition project" and predicted that in the near future, there will be many lawyers on the Internet to debate the monopoly law, and the uncle party's acquisition target at that time was undoubtedly Activision Blizzard. However, at that time, for the discussion about Microsoft's acquisition action that broke out of this news, everyone still aimed the rumored target at the Japanese manufacturer.
Exclusive Japanese manufacturers are not exclusive of Sony
The reason for this situation, on the one hand, is that the Japanese game industry is developed, and the foundation is deep, the masterpieces are frequent, there are many IP, and there are many manufacturers that meet the "large amount" standard, on the other hand, in recent years, many Japanese factories have dismal financial reports, whether it is new works or transformations, they are not ideal, and the possibility of being acquired has also greatly increased, resulting in frequent frequent customers in recent acquisition rumors.
But in fact, buying a Japanese factory is not an easy task, and at the beginning of this year, Microsoft announced that it wanted to buy Asian game companies, especially Japanese studios. A number of foreign analysts pointed out that this is difficult for Microsoft, because of cultural reasons, Japanese factories have maintained a highly resistant attitude to overseas acquisitions, even if some studios have relaxed their tone, but for Microsoft or pure Western and Japanese game companies, it is basically impossible to acquire Japanese manufacturers.
However, compared with the rumors of Microsoft's acquisition of a large Japanese factory, the credibility of Sony's Japanese factory acquisition rumors is much higher.
Sony's Japanese factory attributes have a natural advantage, even if the current Sony as a whole is more inclined to the European and American markets, the Japanese factory taste is getting weaker and weaker, but it is still a Japanese factory. This has led to the fact that sony has not been so affected by the xenophobic impact of the acquisition of the japanese factory. At the same time, due to the overwhelming victory of PS in Japan in the console market war since the beginning of the last century, Sony has a deep cooperative relationship with a large number of Japanese manufacturers, supporting many small and medium-sized Japanese manufacturers, and has also invested in SE, which has a deep foundation in the Japanese game industry.
At present, the Japanese factories that are "very large" and may be acquired are se and Sega and FromSoftware.
SE owns "Final Fantasy", "Dragon Quest" and other national IP, and Sony is closely related, a variety of games are exclusively owned by PS, at the beginning of the year there is also "SE is developing more Sony PS platform exclusive games" news came, at the same time in recent years SE in the mobile game business is not smooth, performance and income fluctuations are larger, many game products have failed one after another, and there are repeated acquisition rumors.
Sega also has a series of IP arrays such as "Like Dragon" and "Sonic", and has well-known game studios such as Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive, Atlus, Amplitude Studios, and compared to SE, sega's revenue situation in recent years is even less ideal, continuous profit decline, market value continues to shrink, and finally stopped the downward trend after giving up the arcade market last year to turn a profit. At present, the focus has completely shifted to the video game business, which is in line with Sony's current requirements to improve game development capabilities, expand the game business, and expand first-party game studios.
And recently with the "Eldon's Ring of Law" and more famous FromSoftware, created "Dark Souls", "Blood Curse", "Only Wolf" and other well-known masterpieces, its 1994 transformation of game development with Sony, its parent company Kadokawa Bookstore also has a very good relationship with Sony, if Sony negotiates the acquisition, and can take away its core team and "Dark Souls" series IP, which is also in line with the "large acquisition" and Sony to strengthen the development capabilities, expand the purpose of the first-party game studio.
It should be noted that in addition to the above-mentioned Japanese factories, Konami and Capcom may also become Sony targets, but at present, the two Japanese factories in Capcom in recent years have a double harvest of word-of-mouth revenue, whether it is financial reports or game business are booming; Konami financial reports have also maintained a growth trend, although in recent years, Konami's game business has repeatedly been rotten, but the business outside the game has allowed it to maintain good revenue, even in the recent news circulating, Sony's biggest move against Konami is also limited to acquiring some of its game IP. From the perspective of corporate acquisitions, for the current Sony, the acquisition of these two may be slightly lower than the three Japanese factories mentioned above.
Is it really impossible to buy Japanese factories overseas?
Has been high consumption but also extremely exclusive to leave an impression on the Outside world of the Japanese market, 5 years ago, no one can think of tactical competitive mobile games can become a national mobile game in this competitive game desert, at that time in the Japanese market repeatedly defeated many game manufacturers, it is difficult to think of the current many domestic games to become the top ten japanese game best-sellers, a number of Chinese game companies in the Japanese market repeatedly won the situation.
There are many domestic games at the top of Japan's best-seller list
On the topic of game acquisitions, in fact, with the acceleration of the wave of globalization in recent years and the continuous deterioration of the Japanese game industry environment, its game companies are also seeking changes, although most companies still oppose and resist acquisitions, but some companies have softened their attitudes.
In a report on The Japanese cultural content industry released by Mizuho Bank, one of Japan's three major banks, it is believed that Japanese games are currently facing three major problems: "market size reduction", "lack of employees" and "insufficient output of original content". At the same time, due to the difference in the taste of Japanese and world games, as well as the lack of technical reserves, the competitiveness of Japanese games in the world has been low in recent years.
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In this case, there are companies like Platinum Studios that say that "if the company's free creative rights are guaranteed, they don't mind being acquired", and there are also companies like SNK that have gone bankrupt many times due to poor management and have finally been resold and acquired many times. Even if the old Japanese factory has not yet relaxed, it is foreseeable that under the irreversible trend of globalization of the current game market, unless it can complete the evolution of the era and reverse the decline of the entire Japanese game market, it is inevitable that it will make a change, and the change in the attitude towards acquisition and investment will be an important part of it.