Microsoft has been the focus of the acquisition market with its acquisition of Bethesda and its fight for Activision Blizzard, but Sony is also quietly going about its acquisition plans. In the past few years, PlayStation has acquired a number of game companies such as Bungie and Housemarque, and it seems to be continuing to do so.
As early as 2021, Sony said it would allocate 2 trillion yen (currently about RMB 102 billion) over three years for “strategic investments” in the entertainment industry. In a recent Q&A session at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Sony CFO Hiroki Gaioka updated this plan. Two years on, they have spent about 1.3 trillion yen, leaving about 700 billion yen (currently about 35.7 billion yuan) for further investment, “We have spent almost 1.3 trillion yen by the end of last year, and we have one more year to go. We hope to generate more than 3 trillion yen in cash flow within three years. Next year is the last year of our current medium-term plan. We will allocate operating cash flow to strategic investments and capital expenditures as well as stock buybacks.”
From what Gaioka said, it seems that Sony is not strictly adhering to their initial commitment to invest 2 trillion yen, as it may allocate more operating cash flow to strategic investments and capital expenditures. It should be noted that the funds set aside are for Sony as a whole, not just the PlayStation division.
In previous acquisitions, Sony has already invested about 1.3 trillion yen in acquiring other studios, a huge sum that has allowed Sony to smoothly acquire several game developers such as Bungie and Housemarque, and invest in companies such as Epic and FromSoftware. Sony also used the money to acquire companies like Crunchyroll, which provides non-game content on the PlayStation platform.
