Bryank75
Banned
The From Soft rumor was that after Elder Ring they will go exclusive to make Super Knack 3
Square and Capcom have several fertile top IPs and more than capable teams to keep milking them in addition to potential to grow and improve under a new management, and loads of great catalog games for PS Now & Plus. IPs they can milk in cinema and anime too.
Unfair to Nintendo? Other than the two recent Monster Hunters, as I remember for Switch and WiiU they mostly released old ports and some small games most of them also available (sooner or later) in the other consoles.
I think both would be a great acquisition, but I think Square and Capcom won't want to sell because they are in a good shape and are doing fine, and that non-PS consoles are a good chunk of their revenue so to lose the other consoles would drop their value.
I don't see Sony buying them because they already release almost all their important games on PS, in many cases even as exclusive worldwide, and when not they are de facto console exclusives in Japan due to almost non-existant Xbox there. I think they only would buy them as a defensive move if they see MS is making moves to acquire them.
Same goes for Sega and Kadokawa but in a smaller way, but in these case with publishers whose exclusives in the recent years more focused on exclusives for PS, with smaller? size but in Kadokawa's case with the plus of having the anime stuff and tons of related IPs. The weird part in Kadokawa or Sega is that they have a huge chuck of these companies that wouldn't interest Sony, so they should separate it and sell it to reduce the cost of the acquisition.
If you ask me, if I was Jimbo I'd buy them all: Square, Capcom, Sega and Kadokawa. But I think they won't buy them and instead they will continue getting 2nd and 3rd party exclusive games from therm unless MS or Nintendo tries to buy them.
Well, if I was Sony... I would be talking to all of them. See who was most willing and least willing to sell. Buy 51% of anyone who was most willing to sell and control them as a non-wholly owned subsidiary.
It protects the companies from takeover and gives them full say on what happens in the company. It also costs less and the shares can be sold off later.
If nobody is going to sell, they could bring that money west for a publisher... maybe buy a chunk of TTwo to protect them from takeover.
Or buy a few very high quality studios.
The issue is, they have a lot of cash just sitting there and it's not doing any work for them if not invested now.