PlayStation’s Response To Microsoft – Activision Deal Is To Seek More “Developer Partners”
Sony has revealed their response to Microsoft’s recently closed acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.
Eric Lempel, PlayStation’s head of business operations, was up front about their position in an interview with CNBC. He said that his company continues to look for new developer partners. Those partnerships do not always mean that they will be acquiring said companies.
These are Lempel’s direct quotes:
“We have a number of ways of looking at this. In terms of great content, that’s where we’re focused.
We’ve done more M&A [mergers and acquisitions] in the past decade than we’ve ever done.
We’re always looking to work with new partners, whether that’s somebody as an external provider … or working with a developer along with the way and then acquiring them later.”
Lempel than gives Insomniac Games as an example, the producers of the Marvel’s Spider-Man games. This was a studio that they started out by partnering with independently, but later chose to acquire.
Sony has historically done very well by partnering with third party companies. It was these partnerships that got them plum deals for major franchises such as Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto, Tekken, and of course, Final Fantasy. Many of those partnered franchises made them the market leader and an indelible part of the industry.
On the other hand, the company has had a messier history with acquisitions. There was a notorious period in the 2010s were they closed studios they had acquired in the 2000s, including Bigbig Studios, Evolution Studios, and David Scott Jaffee’s Incognito Entertainment.
While closing studios or selling them off after failed ventures is nothing new in the industry, this was particularly damning. It had seemed that Sony acquired these studios,
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