• 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 invested another $1b in Epic Games

Bo_Hazem

Banned
My universes, I mean eco-systems, are merging....
black-hole-smush_1024.gif

Is that some weird ass?

These are two blackholes merging into one massive blackhole, not the one you might wanna tickle.
 

JaksGhost

Member
So Epic is to help make new televisions and headphones? Gotcha.
Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Pictures have both already leveraged tools provided by Epic. Oh and yeah they do help them with some of their displays:
 
Last edited:
Sony is about to put 1 billion in Epic a year. They had a little taste, now they are addicts.

At this point, why look to buy Bungie and possibly Capcom. Just put 10 billion more into Epic. Sony would be betting on Epic becoming a 100 billion $ company.
 

John Wick

Member
Yes, the budget they have for acquisitions (which now there should be maybe around 7 Billions left) is for investments. Includes investments like this one, or for acquisitions, or for repurchase of Sony stocks.


We also should substract the unknown amount of money they paid for Haven.


Investors earn money by investing on profitable companies, I assume Sony knows or expects Epic to continue being protitable and grow in the following years due to UE5 (not only in gaming, but also for movies, tv shows, ads, architecture...). Pretty likely this investment isn't to get exclusives for PS, or anytning related to the EGS. Only a strategical investment to make money and improve their relationship with a strategical partner.
It's probably a bit of both. Obviously Sony make movies and TV shows as well as games. This helps bring Sony closer to Epic. It's a win win for Sony both ways. Their investment will increase in value and they will have access to Unreal engine for whatever needs etc etc.
 

AllBizness

Banned
Make EGS the hub for Sony's first party output on PC, what else.
This is such a ridiculous take. Steam has the largest userbase and if not for Steam no PlayStation games would even be on PC. This is an investment for Sony corp, the gaming division had nothing to do with this purchase.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I was talking the bigger studios.

Bigger studios use their own to squeeze as much as possible out of PS platforms. UE4 is a sloppy engine and Housemarque bashed it due to constant troubles they had with it and forced them to 1080p and still had plenty of trouble. The dev called it "typical Unreal" as to be known for such things. Bend dropped unreal and moving to Decima going forward.

If you got the talent to make solid engines then you don't really need UE. UE5 could be much better, but time will tell if it's not too unnecessarily taxing.
 
Last edited:

8BiTw0LF

Banned
This just means more money for Tencent
Waste of money for Sony
Should used that 1 billion to buy more game studio
Sony owns 5% of Epic now - let's do the "math"..

~$5 billion in revenue each year - will undoubtedly rise because:

Multiple game studios switching to UE5
~50% increase in EGS user accounts every year

I'll say that's a pretty good investment.
 

zedinen

Member
I'm seriously concerned about how Jimbo and Hermen are spending the well earned Sony money in the past Playstation generations into a bunch of random bullshits.

Sony invests in Epic Games through Sony Corporation of America.
1E7Bkqj.jpeg




You should be concerned about how Yoshida and Totoki are investing in Pictures, Music and Financial segments the well earned PlayStation money during the Jim Ryan era.

2T0iSQW.jpeg



Remember how they assassinated Japan Studio aka one of the most innovative game dev of all time, but there seem no problem to them into throwning Millions and Billions into Epic games.

Ken Kutaragi, a genius beaten by his own ego, burned down the house and left Japan studio in shambles.

Hirai, House and Ryan saved whatever could be saved.


HSYha2a.jpeg


vlfFty0.jpeg


uCOXX2T.jpeg



Jim Ryan gets the job done on tight budget, while Yoshida splashes out billions.

From its inception, PlayStation has been treated like a side business, a piggy bank for Sony Pictures, Music, Financial and Electronics, and a trojan horse for their IPs and tech.
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
I don’t think they will, with Decima and Insomniac as well as ND having their own that gets lowest level of the API.
Maybe short term. But it will continue to become more difficult and expensive to keep updating their own internal engines as time goes on. Of course, it will depend on how well they can get UE5 working on their boxes.
 

Shmunter

Member
It is strange how Sony is investing so much in Epic. Meanwhile, Microsoft is using it for basically all of their first-party games, while Sony studios are almost all using their own engines.
Wonder if it will become more prominent at Sony at some point. Days Gone was the first AAA I think?
 
Last edited:

Varteras

Gold Member
Wonder if it will become more prominent at Sony at some point. Days Gone was the first AAA I think?
I believe Firesprite, PixelOpus, and Haven were confirmed to be using UE5. I'm guessing Bend will also use it for their next game since their last one ran UE4 and they're not likely far along on their current project.
 
Sony owns 5% of Epic now - let's do the "math"..

~$5 billion in revenue each year - will undoubtedly rise because:

Multiple game studios switching to UE5
~50% increase in EGS user accounts every year

I'll say that's a pretty good investment.
It not i rather they used that 1 billion to buy like 4 plus Insomniac size game studio
considering Sony bought Insomniac for 229 million
 

Varteras

Gold Member
It not i rather they used that 1 billion to buy like 4 plus Insomniac size game studio
considering Sony bought Insomniac for 229 million
The problem with that is a studio like Insomniac would cost more than that now. Way more. Even then, Sony got them for a steal. Today? Between inflation (one of the reasons these companies are dumping reserve cash) and the market climate for acquisitions, you're not getting a studio like Insomniac for anywhere near that. I wouldn't even be surprised if the average cost of the studios Sony has bought since last year is $250 million. Not including Bungie.

We have to remember that Sony isn't Nintendo. Gaming is not their sole focus. They have other ambitions, too. Not only does Epic offer them other uses like for movies and music, but as others have pointed out, their valuation is increasing quite a bit. Buying stock in a company whose value is rapidly growing and expected to continue is a very smart move for the future. The investments like that which they make now could very well lead to bigger things down the road. Imagine investing a billion now and having that be worth five billion in a few years.

And yes, Sony has plenty of money to work with. This $1 billion isn't going to prevent them from making a lot of other moves. As of December 2021, they had $19 billion in cash reserves (actual cash and marketable securities) and have shown the ability to add as much as $13 billion into those reserves in a year. As they did in 2020. Their current assets (cash, marketable securities, and assets they could sell within one year) are valued at $47 billion right now. They also have a very low long-term debt to net asset ratio of 3%. Meaning they have plenty of room to even take out a big loan if they wanted.
 
Do they? why invest more in Epic when Tencent own 40% of Epic already and Epic is 3rd party so what is there to be gain much from it at all

Of course they do. They've been doing exactly that for the past year.

Why do you think any company acquires minority stakes? It doesn't all revolve around M&As. When they use the word partnerships with these investments it's not just PR talk. Minority stakes facilitate cooperation.
 
Last edited:
The problem with that is a studio like Insomniac would cost more than that now. Way more. Even then, Sony got them for a steal. Today? Between inflation (one of the reasons these companies are dumping reserve cash) and the market climate for acquisitions, you're not getting a studio like Insomniac for anywhere near that. I wouldn't even be surprised if the average cost of the studios Sony has bought since last year is $250 million. Not including Bungie.

We have to remember that Sony isn't Nintendo. Gaming is not their sole focus. They have other ambitions, too. Not only does Epic offer them other uses like for movies and music, but as others have pointed out, their valuation is increasing quite a bit. Buying stock in a company whose value is rapidly growing and expected to continue is a very smart move for the future. The investments like that which they make now could very well lead to bigger things down the road. Imagine investing a billion now and having that be worth five billion in a few years.

And yes, Sony has plenty of money to work with. This $1 billion isn't going to prevent them from making a lot of other moves. As of December 2021, they had $19 billion in cash reserves (actual cash and marketable securities) and have shown the ability to add as much as $13 billion into those reserves in a year. As they did in 2020. Their current assets (cash, marketable securities, and assets they could sell within one year) are valued at $47 billion right now. They also have a very low long-term debt to net asset ratio of 3%. Meaning they have plenty of room to even take out a big loan if they wanted.
I believe Insomniac priced for 229 million only is because they do not own any valuable IP since all of the IP they worked on were own by Sony so that why they were priced like that
even if bought today would be priced similar cause they own no IP
Bungie on the other hand is priced like that cause they owned 1 of the biggest FPS IP ever
Destiny IP alone is probably worth more than 1 billion plus
 
Top Bottom