• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sony has acquired Bluepoint

yurinka

Member
All these Sony acquisitions, and Hulst saying they are not done, sound to me like a preemptive defensive move. Sony has always worked closely with 3rd party studios but only now are they acquiring them.
Sony always bought studios who previously did work on exclusives for them, in all the generations. They won't scale down 2nd and 3rd party exclusives side, the opposite: they are also pushing harder there too.

With MS buying Bethesda and rumored to be buying another publisher or two it must have sent Sony in an aggressive move. That's smart on Sony's part and Vinciquerra's word on the gaming industry consolidating is foreshadowing on what's happening now.
It isn't a defensive move, PS always did this of acquiring people who successfully worked for them for a long period.

And MS even with Bethesda is still way behind Sony, Sony's game division continues making way more revenue (and profit) than the MS one. Zenimax game sales were less than 3% (probably 2%) of PS4 game sales, which are growing.

So Sony won't miss Zenimax and is making way more money than MS, so no defensive moves are needed.
 

kyliethicc

Member
Finally lol. Was becoming blueballs games.

Makes perfect sense after the last 8 years of making 1st party games.

Can't wait to see what they do next.

TEaF0We.jpg
 
Last edited:
When did they "NOT" acquire studios though?

Not at the rate they have acquired studios in the past couple of years.

Sony always bought studios who previously did work on exclusives for them, in all the generations. They won't scale down 2nd and 3rd party exclusives side, the opposite: they are also pushing harder there too.


It isn't a defensive move, PS always did this of acquiring people who successfully worked for them for a long period.

And MS even with Bethesda is still way behind Sony, Sony's game division continues making way more revenue (and profit) than the MS one. Zenimax game sales were less than 3% (probably 2%) of PS4 game sales, which are growing.

So Sony won't miss Zenimax and is making way more money than MS, so no defensive moves are needed.

I disagree. I think it's a defensive move, or better yet a proactive move, as MS is rumored to be making moves and both Nadella and Spencer have hinted at such. I think MS would buy another publisher or two. Sony's own Vinciquerra has mentioned consolidation is happening in the game space.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Hopefully they will do bloodborne 2…

but business wise it’s a really a bad deal for Sony.. there is no IP attached to the purchase. All the talent could just up and quit tomorrow and what would Sony have after that? This might be a case where Sony just wanted to show that they could buy someone as well🤷‍♂️
 
Last edited:

Agent X

Member
So, Hulst and Ryan still wants to talk that they are not in arms race and they prefer organic growth?

Because if answer is yes I just need to know to believe exact opposite of what they are talking in future...

But congratz to the team. I'm interested what they will do when not making remakes...
They created Blast Factor for PlayStation 3, which was one of the First downloadable games that was available for that system at its launch.
 

yurinka

Member
I disagree. I think it's a defensive move, or better yet a proactive move, as MS is rumored to be making moves and both Nadella and Spencer have hinted at such. I think MS would buy another publisher or two. Sony's own Vinciquerra has mentioned consolidation is happening in the game space.
Sony makes way more revenue than MS with their gaming division, selling consoles, selling games for them, selling 1st party games and selling game subscription services for them. Sony also releases way more exclusives (including 1st, 2nd and 3rd party) for them and their exclusives win a lot of more GOTY awards than the MS ones.

Sony has zero reasons to make a defensive move against a direct competition they are dominating in all areas. And if they would want to make a defensive move they'd buy some big publishers because they have cash to make it. Instead of spending $10B as MS did in the recent years, they could go and spend $30B only with cash they have available and that has been mostly generated by their gaming division, the one who made $25B in revenue this fiscal year.

They bought a small studio that makes PC port, another small one that makes remakes, a mid sized one that made their first AAA game after several small games and a couple of studios who made some VR games but has a lot of staff who previously did work for them. These studios don't have any interesting IP.

These acquisitions that Sony made are nothing compared to the acquisition of Zenimax, they are in a very different scale. They are only a consolidation of the relationship they had with people who did work for them and to secure they'll work in some strategic areas helping to milk better the IPs Sony already has with some PC ports of old games, some remakes, some VR games and maybe some extra AAA sequel or some AAA new IP.

Zenimax instead was a big publisher with a lot of top AAA IPs and top AAA studios because MS needed them because they were way behind Sony in term of active top AAA IPs and top AAA studios. Sony doesn't need to acquire a lot of IPs or big studios.
 

Yoboman

Member
Not exactly sure how credible she is, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case.


If accurate and the original content is smaller in scope I'd like the original content to be a Demons Souls expansion with the broken arch

Good way to do it, they don't really experiment too much on the original and we finally get to see then go all out if they can make something great with original content
 
Last edited:
The least surprising acquisition ever, they already worked exclusively for Sony since years. Maybe with some serious Sony money they will show us more than just remakes/remasters in the future. There is definately talent.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Next on the bucket list

Kojima Productions
Ember Labs
Arc System Works
Kadokawa

Arc systems and Ember labs. But Ember labs also does video/animation for commercials. SO unless they agree to be a game only studio I don't know if that will happen? Arc systems to me is a no brainer. Specifically for the Japanese crowd where Blaze Blue, gran blue sell the most.

Imagine Arc Sytems making a action game in that style but for a license like Cowboy bebop which now Sony owns rights too.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Not trying to be an ass, I love Sony and Demon's Souls, not starting a war ...

But isn't 1.4 mil over a year a little low when games like MK11 sell like 2mil in the first week or something?
Low PS5 userbase. Demon Souls will get more sales
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Not trying to be an ass, I love Sony and Demon's Souls, not starting a war ...

But isn't 1.4 mil over a year a little low when games like MK11 sell like 2mil in the first week or something?


Also demons souls is more niche, and was les discounted than MK 11. i bought mk for $20 with all the dlc couple weeks ago. Demons souls lowest has been $50.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Totally expected, was just a matter of time. But I have to say, BP looks like a bunch of clowns now with that infamous instant "INDEPENDENT STUDIO" Twitter bio update after Sony JPN accidentally leaked the acquisition, this whole show was totally unnecessary, should've just confirmed it when it happened, everyone with common sense saw it coming anyway.

But it's kind of sad to hear they're already working on a new, independent IP, there are still so many great PS3 titles that could've use BP's expertise to give them a second life.

EDIT:
I see people discredit DS sales, but I'm personally shocked it's that high, I thought I reached just a few hundreds of thousands copies, and turns out I was dead wrong. For comparison DS sold almost as much as Returnal and Ratchet combined, and that's a specific niche title, think about it.

I know everyone here is sick of console warring, but these acquistions wouldn't have happened if MS didnt buy Bethesda. After spending an entire generation closing down 4 studios, and buying just one new studio in Insomniac, Sony has bought 4 studios (housemarque, Nixxes, Firesprite and BP) in a matter of months.

Competition is good. I'd argue that MS doesn't go out and acquire Playground Games, Ninja Theory and Obsidian if Sony first party wasnt so goddamn successful last gen. They were pretty much forced to respond, and I feel Sony was forced to act as well.

We don't need all the big companies buying up all the smaller studios, but there is no denying that healthy competition between two industry giants is good for the gaming industry as whole. Studios like BP, Housemarque, Ninja Theory and Obsidian struggle to get big money from third party devs and thats exactly where first party support is needed.

Keep the pressure up on your favorite company. Dont let them get complacent and good things will follow. Taking pot shots at their competition is fun, but criticism of your favorite company can be quite productive.

I was thinking the same, up until very recently Sony basically had 6 studios, each making one, maybe two games per generation, and now they have double of that of potent studios, and many are even working on two projects simultaneously. And none of that would've happened if the competition didn't step up their game, not just MS but Amazon, Google, FB etc. also want a slice of that video games pie, so Sony had no choice but to react and secure their part as well until there's nothing left.
 
Last edited:
But you do know the options for 3rd party at that time were limited.

In the PS1 era, they had Sega Saturn (a dead platform) and N64 (with its high costs thanks to cartridge). It was easy to jump on Sony wagon, even more when they were the only who really cared about 3rd party.

These are extremely limited simplifications and not exactly true in terms of being absolutes for the entire gen. Saturn was an actual competitor in Japan from 1994 to 1997, and the N64 was very strong in Western territories, at times outselling PS1 in them and that is well past the launch of the system there, too.

Phrasing it as if Sony were the only one who "really cared about 3P" is a nice way of wording they were the only one with the money, distribution channel pipelines and marketing infrastructure to use as bullet points to prospective 3P devs/pubs to lure their talent over to their platform (and later, lock in exclusivity deals with pubs like Eidos, Capcom, Konami, etc.). Don't get it twisted: these were 100% business-focused moves where Sony leveraged money and resources that Sega & Nintendo simply didn't have.
In the PS2 era, Sony continued to be the best option for partnership but this didn't stop MS and Nintendo to get some nice deals with 3rd party. That's what competition really means.

It doesn't change the fact it was a form of consolidation: content consolidation. The particulars aren't important here, just the reality that such is what it was. They also took advantage of some situations early on to drive away support from Dreamcast to PS2; several 3P devs with projects planned for Dreamcast cancelled them in favor of PS2 and this was before it actually launched. Some of these were negotiated in the early days of that gen, well before a runaway effect had formed.

I didn't say there wasn't competition or "real" competition, just that there was content consolidation that gen which is 100% true, and therefore falls into the definition as a form of consolidation (the type people are now fearmongering about these days).

So, no. It is not the same thing.

It effectively is when considering market conditions and realities of the day, dynamics, and market size. Consolidation is consolidation, whether it be with games (regardless HOW that happens), dev acquisitions, pub acquisitions, etc. You're getting lost in semantics.

MS started a trend where they are locking devs and publishers to their ecosystem. Sony never did that before,

Uh, they have? Psygnosis was a multi-plat dev before Sony acquired them, but that went away after a few years. They practically secured Square (and Final Fantasy) away from Nintendo where they had been for a decade prior to PS1. That is a form of "locking" them down to their ecosystem. History flat-out shows you're wrong.

but they'll have to now cause they can lose some important partners if not.

That's always a possibility, and doesn't always revolve around acquisitions. Some of those partners could just run out of money and go out of business, or pivot to another industry altogether. It's happened before and will happen again, acquisitions be damned.

Sony always bought studios who previously did work on exclusives for them, in all the generations. They won't scale down 2nd and 3rd party exclusives side, the opposite: they are also pushing harder there too.


It isn't a defensive move, PS always did this of acquiring people who successfully worked for them for a long period.

That wasn't the case for Naughty Dog, or Psygnosis tho, who are two of their first acquisitions. Also, while calling their recent acquisitions "defensive" might be a bit much, they are at least in some form reactionary, or partially reactionary. You can notice it in the language they use when they make the announcements, and their recent language regards acquisitions in general.

And MS even with Bethesda is still way behind Sony, Sony's game division continues making way more revenue (and profit) than the MS one. Zenimax game sales were less than 3% (probably 2%) of PS4 game sales, which are growing.

3% out of a sea of 1600 million, though. Considering Sony's total are probably averaged at around 10% of that, and they have released way more games than Zenimax/Bethesda last gen as a whole (especially in terms of new games)...I'd say those are actually quite good percentages for Zenimax/Bethesda on the platform.

So Sony won't miss Zenimax and is making way more money than MS, so no defensive moves are needed.

As a corporation no, they aren't making more money than MS in fact the inverse of that is true but...what does that necessarily have to do with trying to justify an acquisition?

Interesting... She knew about the Wolverine reveal before it was officially announced.



So did David Jaffe. What were timestamps of that one tweet he posted talking about the event, where he later said it said "bub" i.e a Wolverine catchphrase? Also who is she and what's her track record?
 
Sony makes way more revenue than MS with their gaming division, selling consoles, selling games for them, selling 1st party games and selling game subscription services for them. Sony also releases way more exclusives (including 1st, 2nd and 3rd party) for them and their exclusives win a lot of more GOTY awards than the MS ones.

Sony has zero reasons to make a defensive move against a direct competition they are dominating in all areas. And if they would want to make a defensive move they'd buy some big publishers because they have cash to make it. Instead of spending $10B as MS did in the recent years, they could go and spend $30B only with cash they have available and that has been mostly generated by their gaming division, the one who made $25B in revenue this fiscal year.

They bought a small studio that makes PC port, another small one that makes remakes, a mid sized one that made their first AAA game after several small games and a couple of studios who made some VR games but has a lot of staff who previously did work for them. These studios don't have any interesting IP.

These acquisitions that Sony made are nothing compared to the acquisition of Zenimax, they are in a very different scale. They are only a consolidation of the relationship they had with people who did work for them and to secure they'll work in some strategic areas helping to milk better the IPs Sony already has with some PC ports of old games, some remakes, some VR games and maybe some extra AAA sequel or some AAA new IP.

Zenimax instead was a big publisher with a lot of top AAA IPs and top AAA studios because MS needed them because they were way behind Sony in term of active top AAA IPs and top AAA studios. Sony doesn't need to acquire a lot of IPs or big studios.

Agree to disagree.
 

Yoboman

Member
Arc systems and Ember labs. But Ember labs also does video/animation for commercials. SO unless they agree to be a game only studio I don't know if that will happen? Arc systems to me is a no brainer. Specifically for the Japanese crowd where Blaze Blue, gran blue sell the most.

Imagine Arc Sytems making a action game in that style but for a license like Cowboy bebop which now Sony owns rights too.
Sony owns the rights to Cowboy Bebop?
 
This acquisition really shocked me. Well, not really. I expected and predicted it awhile back. In all seriousness, congratulations to them. Seems like a talented team to have on board.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom