According to Ampere Analysis’ director of gaming research, Piers Harding-Rolls, who believes Sony PlayStation is “under pressure to respond” to the massive Xbox takeover.
Nearly two years after the acquisition was first announced, Microsoft last Friday officially completed its $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard.
Completing the biggest deal ever in the gaming industry (and Microsoft), the Xbox maker has acquired console and PC franchises including Call of Duty, Warcraft and Diablo, and established a significant presence in mobile gaming with the addition of Candy Crush developer King. .
Harding-Rolls told… GamesIndustry:
“Sony is certainly under pressure to respond, even after its Bungie acquisition.” “I expect further investments and acquisitions for the company, including a large operation that will move the waters for them in a meaningful way.”
Sony acquired Destiny developer Bungie last July in a $3.6 billion deal, which was one of the Japanese company’s largest acquisitions to date.
Karol Severin, senior games analyst at Media Research, said he believes Sony is unlikely to respond by buying a leading third-party publisher on the scale of Rockstar’s Take-Two, which has a market value of about $24.6 billion.
However, he suggested that Sony could try to leverage its strength in movies, TV, gaming and music by launching a new subscription entertainment offering.
“Sony has one of the most impressive content catalogs on Earth,” Severin said. “Bringing them together in a subscription offering, for example, could be a strong competitive answer to Xbox’s cross-platform efforts.
“It will be increasingly difficult to compete with Microsoft in games alone. Sony’s only response when it comes to gaming is to buy something very big like Take-Two, since it’s the only company that could be as big as a Microsoft acquisition, but that’s unlikely.
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