As mentioned, that's all a bunch of fairy dust to me - maybe the third party deals they have pan out, maybe not. I'm personally not overly impressed with what they have revealed. No doubt Remedy is an efficient studio, but so was Insomniac (insomniac, even moreso, always having multiple teams working games).
Max Payne and Alan Wake are in the distant past. Most of their games have been pretty lukewarm on the success scale. Max Payne arguably their only large success. You're right that Insomniac hasn't had great success with their own IP, but I'd argue they've always been able to deliver high quality games even if they couldn't manage to create an IP that felt unique and highly compelling. If we look at sales data, Resistance series outsold most of Remedy's titles. The recent Ratchet has also done surprisingly well compared to the PS3 titles.
This was seen with their release of Spider-man, the high quality game aspects came through in abundance, and when paired with a great IP they achieved massive success. This was certainly not a sure thing, as the Spider-Man IP has been attempted in gaming in the past with pretty terrible results.
Please note that Insomniac was acquired AFTER it was known Spider-Man was a big hit, so that was also baked into their price. I'm not saying Remedy isn't talented, I'm just saying that their current valuation seems a bit stretched at over 2x Insomniac. I don't see that, personally. Insomnic IS no doubt the better studio in my mind by a pretty significant margin. But perhaps this is a matter of Insomniac being undervalued rather than Remedy being overvalued, I guess time will tell in terms of how Remedy does in the future...
The future is unknown. Spiderman-2 could not be as successful as Spiderman 2. Rachet and Clank PS5 could sell as well as PS4 ratchet or sell like PS3 Rachet. Everyone could go on Stadia next year and so Sony and Microsoft could lose a bunch of money. We don't know that but people value companies on the momentum and they value the deals. IT's worth money to have a bunch of companies paying you to make games and you get to reap the profits. You don't have to think Remedy is worth necessarily worth $540 million but I'm just saying you need to look at it more like a business today. Opposed to a group of people that make games you might not like. Again apart from their great financials like profits/growth, a lot of Remedy's value comes from Control and their deals and what they are working on which they have a lot of. Remedy is trying to be a games company not just a studio. What Insomniac seemed to want to do but I don't think panned out.
What Remedy has been doing or the deals that helped Remedy value go up so much:
- Control DLC, ultimate, and constant marketing/promotion to increase lifetime sales
- Deal with Smilegate that includes creating content for CrossFireHD and creating the entire game CrossfireX
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Two profit sharing (50/50) fully backed game deals with Epic Games
- A GaaS game (Vanguard)
- I believe 1-2 other small projects
- They are also expanding their publishing business so that they can publish some of their own games in the future to be more.
Not everyone can land all the deals or are operating at this scope. They could all fail but again that can be said about anything Insomniac or any other company has lined up. I don't think they've done anything in the past where you'd expect them to fail either. They have recent success (and past success) and have shown recent efficiencies. That they can be like if you own us we can directly give some of your money back.
I only bring up Max Payne and Alan Wake, because I disagree with "Insomniac being far more successful than remedy historically". "Deliveirng high quality" is highly subjective and not how companies are evaluated. In the same way that Sony was not really evaluated for being known for creating high quality electronics it was evaluated for how much money it actually made and what it's future outlook like at the time.
I haven't been able to find any reliable sales data on Resistance but I'd be interested to know how much it sold.
Spiderman's success helps but doesn't make Insomniac worth that much more as business. From what I understand in these deals it's generally safer but generally not as lucrative as owning the IP and just getting someone else to publish. They are basically a contractor/subcontractor. The deal has value, and could have brought them more value if they sold to someone else. But at least to Sony its not great for bargaining because they control the deal. Maybe Insomniac could have sold higher to another buyer because the volume was pretty good for Spiderman. But I still think Remedy with what they have in place that they are worth more as a business today.
And as a side note, the more I read up on them the more I like them. Even though I'm an a lot bigger fan of Insomniac's games than Remedy's games as a gamer.