Gamers go to Sony’s PlayStation sales space on the annual China Joy gaming convention in Shanghai on July 30, 2021.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Sony shares fell greater than 12% in Tokyo on Wednesday after Microsoft announced plans to buy Activision.
Investors doubtless worry rising competitors to Sony’s PlayStation division in addition to the potential for Microsoft to drag some fashionable video games from the Japanese leisure big’s platforms.
For a while, Sony has been forward of Microsoft with its portfolio of first-party video games, permitting it to remain forward within the console wars. But ought to Microsoft shut the acquisition of Activision, it would have a powerful portfolio of hit video games from the Call of Duty franchise to World of Warcraft.
That content material may help energy Microsoft’s subscription technique round Game Pass, a pay-monthly service that enables customers to entry a library of video games throughout totally different units. It is a rival to Sony’s “PlayStation Plus” and “PlayStation Now” providers.
When console makers personal the gaming studio, they usually make these video games unique to their platforms. Games like Call of Duty are presently out there on each PlayStation and Xbox.
But traders worry Microsoft may take these video games off of PlayStation’s platforms, giving the U.S. firm extra enticing content material to rival Sony.
“There is little question that this deal weakens Sony place available in the market,” Piers Harding-Rolls, video games analysis director at Ampere Analysis, stated in a notice revealed Wednesday.
“Whether or not Activision Blizzard’s content material is progressively made unique to Xbox platforms and providers, inclusion of latest releases into Xbox Game Pass for a number of main video games franchises, together with Call of Duty, will undermine Sony’s third-party enterprise. Sony has benefitted from the power to barter timed unique content material for Call of Duty however that is now underneath risk.”
Overreaction?
Sony has been investing closely in first-party unique content material for some years which has allowed it to convey unique hit video games corresponding to Spider-Man and The Last of Us to the PlayStation.
Meanwhile, it has been investing in digital actuality and this month took the wraps off its second-generation headset called the PlayStation VR2.
Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo, Japan-based consultancy Kantan Games, stated Sony will doubtless proceed to give attention to robust content material.
“Sony will nonetheless proceed to push out blockbusters, there might be little question about that,” Toto stated.
“I feel the market has completely overreacted in Japan at present,” he added.
Sony itself isn’t any stranger to acquisitions albeit nowhere close to the scale of Microsoft. Last yr, the Japanese agency swallowed up a handful of small studios together with Valkyrie Entertainment, the maker of hit sport God of War. Toto stated Sony will doubtless hunt for additional acquisitions.
“Sony can after all battle again: they nonetheless have their very own high in-house studios unfold all over the world, PlayStation stays a robust model in gaming, and acquisitions are within the playing cards for Sony as properly,” he stated.